Research

Blacks and Hispanics remain less likely than whites to own a traditional computer or have high-speed internet at home, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in fall 2016. But mobile devices are playing important roles in helping to bridge these differences.

Roughly eight-in-ten whites (83%) report owning a desktop or laptop computer, compared with 66% of blacks and 60% of Hispanics. There are also substantial racial or ethnic differences in broadband adoption, with whites more likely than either blacks or Hispanics to report having a broadband connection at home. (There were not enough Asian respondents in the sample to be broken out into a separate analysis.) But despite these inequalities, blacks and Hispanics have mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers in shares similar to whites. There are differences between Hispanics born inside and outside the U.S.: 88% of native-born Hispanics own a smartphone, compared with 62% of Hispanics born abroad. About three-quarters of whites and blacks own a smartphone. Mobile devices play an outsize role for blacks and Hispanics when it comes to their online access options. About two-in-ten Hispanics (22%) and 15% of blacks are “smartphone only” internet users – meaning they lack traditional home broadband service but do own a smartphone. By comparison, 9% of whites fall into this category. In addition, blacks and Hispanics are also more likely than whites to rely on their smartphones for a number of activities, such as looking up health information or looking for work.

The Internet Innovation Alliance, a lobbying organization for AT&T and broadband plant suppliers like Alcatel-Lucent and Corning, says that a survey it commissioned concludes that consumers use the internet primarily as an information service.

A majority of the respondents said they used the net to get information, like reading and or catching up on the news and sports (71%), searching for information via Google or Bing or other engines (61%), or researching products or services (60%). The poll, conducted online by CivicScience, was of at least 10,000 U.S. adults 18 and older. IIA says the poll "reaffirms the FCC’s assumptions that broadband, is by definition, an information service."

In the hours after European antitrust regulators levied a record $2.7 billion fine against Google in late June, an influential Washington think tank learned what can happen when a tech giant that shapes public policy debates with its enormous wealth is criticized.

The New America Foundation has received more than $21 million from Google; its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt; and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999. That money helped to establish New America as an elite voice in policy debates on the American left. But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Schmidt, who had chaired New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar. The statement disappeared from New America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Schmidt’s displeasure rippled through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington offices where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.” The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors.

Those worries seemed to be substantiated a couple of days later, when Slaughter summoned the scholar who wrote the critical statement, Barry Lynn, to her office. He ran a New America initiative called Open Markets that has led a growing chorus of liberal criticism of the market dominance of telecom and tech giants, including Google, which is now part of a larger corporate entity known as Alphabet, for which Schmidt serves as executive chairman. Slaughter told Lynn that “the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,” according to an email from Slaughter to Lynn. The email suggested that the entire Open Markets team — nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows — would be exiled from New America.

[Commentary] President Donald Trump’s assault on journalistic integrity and shared verifiable facts has ignited a reaction among public intellectuals to demand fealty to scientific truth. Unfortunately, the reaction, like so many produced in the haste of political controversy, has oversimplified and overcorrected for the problem.

One common assumption within the resistance is that existing systems for regulating scientific claims are self-evidently wise. My new article, “Snake Oil“ (forthcoming in the Washington Law Review), is therefore coming out at a rather inconvenient time. I loathe the Trump administration’s disregard for and delegitimization of scientific institutions, including expert federal agencies. Nevertheless, the methods that some expert agencies use to constrain the information flow to consumers are highly flawed.

A new poll of U.S. consumers has found 74% supporting legislation that enshrines the principals of Network Neutrality. The poll suggests consumers are comfortable with Congress taking the issue out of the hands of the FCC and setting the policy in stone. "Americans overwhelmingly favor a permanent net neutrality law over FCC regulations that can be changed from administration to administration," said Mike Montgomery, Executive Director of CALinnovates, a non-partisan tech advocacy group based in San Francisco, which conducted the survey. Previous research has suggested consumers are growing more concerned about Net Neutrality issues, such as potential throttling, blocking, and the creation of so-called fast lanes. Younger consumers appear to feel more strongly about the legislative route than their older counterparts. In fact, 18 to 29 year-olds were almost twice as likely to support making Net Neutrality the law of the land than continuing to leave the issue up to the FCC.

In his first seven months as president, Donald Trump has generally drawn high job approval ratings among Republicans. But a new survey finds that nearly a third of Republicans say they agree with the president on only a few or no issues, while a majority expresses mixed or negative feelings about his conduct as president. A separate survey, conducted on Pew Research Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel, finds stark divisions between those who approve and those who disapprove of Trump’s job performance in their impressions of the president.

Those who disapprove of Trump cite several concerns about him: 32% point to his personality, including his temperament; 25% mention his policies, particularly foreign policy and its impact on U.S. standing in the world; and 19% fault his intelligence or competence. Trump’s supporters raise different concerns: 17% of those who approve of his job performance cite his use of Twitter and other social media, while 16% say they are most concerned about obstruction from others, such as Congress and the news media. About one-in-ten of those who approve of Trump say their biggest concern is his personality (11%) and a similar share point to his policies (10%).

[Commentary] Broadband infrastructure is only a prerequisite for adequate digital inclusion, not a sustainable solution in itself. Research examining the economic impacts of broadband access in rural regions in the US found a stark difference in economic outcomes when ‘access’ was defined as the availability of broadband infrastructure versus ‘access’ being defined as the adoption of a residential broadband connection. Broadband infrastructure alone provided only minimal economic benefits to households and regions, while increased broadband adoption was linked to individual-level and community-level economic improvements.

The cost of fixed broadband subscriptions is often cited as the single most important factor in hindering broadband adoption in areas where the infrastructure is available. However, research suggests that while affordability is certainly key, there are also other factors that should be considered. One well-cited cross-country analysis of cultural factors affecting broadband adoption lists lack of understanding of the services and content that can be accessed online as one reason individuals in the US may not adopt high-speed broadband, as well as an actual insufficiency in online content relevant to a particular community. To truly equalize the digital playing field, we need to carefully consider the factors affecting individuals’ ability to gain high-speed broadband access once the infrastructure becomes available in their geographic region. The findings cited here speak to the importance of investments in educational programs and services addressing digital literacy, content creation, and other aspects critical to sustainable broadband adoption.

[Jana Wilbricht is a Ph.D. Candidate in Communication Studies at the University of Michigan, and worked with NDIA during the summer 2017 as a research fellow of the Consortium on Media Policy Studies (COMPASS).]

President Donald Trump’s war on the media is succeeding in convincing people that press coverage of the president is unfair, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University, but the net impact on public perceptions of Trump still seems to be negative. The good news for the White House is that by a 55-40 margin, respondents say they disapprove of the way the media covers the president. Some of that, of course, is probably people who think the media is too soft on Trump. But by and large it seems like Trump is basically convincing people of his core thesis about the media: They should be nicer to him. On the other hand, the very same poll says that by a 62-35 margin, respondents disapprove of how Trump talks about the media. And by a 54-36 margin, people say they trust the media over Trump “to tell you the truth about important issues.” In short, it seems that Trump’s media bashing has been a negative-sum game that’s eroded confidence in the press while also eroding confidence in Trump.

The most liberal and conservative members of the 115th Congress have attracted more Facebook followers than moderates, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. In both legislative chambers, members’ ideology is a strong predictor of the number of people who follow them on Facebook. The most liberal and most conservative House members had a median of 14,361 followers as of July 25, compared with 9,017 followers for those in the middle of the ideological spectrum. The median number of followers for the Senate’s most liberal and conservative lawmakers was 78,360, while moderates had 32,626.

In “,” Bob Crandall conducts a series of event studies to explore how investors view the effects of the rules on the firms most likely to be affected. Crandall tracks daily equity prices to measure how investors believe the net neutrality regulations will affect Internet service providers (ISPs) and new and traditional media companies (edge companies, or ECs). Overall, Crandall’s analysis identified a limited market response to net neutrality, suggesting that investors did not expect net neutrality regulations to effect significant change in the market. In addition, the small changes in EC equities suggest that investors also believed that net neutrality regulations might not be the boon to EC growth and success that net neutrality proponents expect it to be. This result is particularly notable given the fervor that has developed around this issue. Both proponents and opponents of the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet order argue that regulations or lack thereof will have dire consequences. Crandall’s analysis suggests that the reality may be far more modest.