Research

Digital technology use has the potential to both benefit young people’s well-being and to expose them to significant harms. The use of social media and digital technology can provide opportunities for self-directed learning, forming community, and reducing isolation. This can be especially important for youth who are marginalized or experiencing mental distress. This report summarizes the evidence on young people’s use of online platforms and the risks and benefits to their health, safety, and privacy.

For years, the people building powerful artificial intelligence systems have used enormous troves of text, images and videos pulled from the internet to train their models. Now, that data is drying up. Many of the most important web sources used for training A.I.

A new report funded by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI) through Massachusetts ARPA State Fiscal Recovery Funds examines access to information technology in Worcester, and the “capacity needed for full participation in our society, democracy, and economy,” which is part of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NOIA) definition of “Digital Equity.” The City of Worcester is a member of the Municipal Digital Equity Planning Program through the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI).

Although broadband internet access is a functional prerequisite for modern civic and economic life, significant inequities in broadband access remain. The Federal Communications Commission’s most recent report on the state of broadband in America (2021 Broadband Deployment Report) finds that millions of Americans lack access to reliable broadband service, and that millions more must procure broadband service from a local monopolist. U.S.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred global change from traditional office-based work to remote work, driven by policy interventions, and resulting in a significant number of employees worldwide transitioning to working from home. Existing research presents conflicting evidence regarding the relationship between remote work and productivity. However, few have examined the specific mechanisms through which remote work affects productivity.

Access to information is riding a turbulent sea of costs, technology shifts, and ever-rising requirements for digital connectivity. Although the notion of information as a foundation of democracy seems commonplace in the United States, it took the COVID-19 pandemic to drive home the disarray of access around the country and across the globe. The broader subject of the “digital divide” has received a lot of attention as a proxy for ideas around digital access. Understanding of the divide has evolved alongside the internet itself.

To explore the expanding role of libraries in providing internet access and promoting digital literacy, this article examines ten libraries in one state that developed Digital Navigator programs. Representing a mix of small and rural as well as metropolitan and large libraries, the libraries’ efforts offer a different philosophy in dealing with digital divide factors. This research investigates how libraries launched Digital Navigator programs, the processes behind developing them, and how they reflect notions of information access.

This research analyzed how much bidders in the record-breaking C-Band spectrum (3.7–4.2 GHz) auction were willing to pay for earlier access to frequency rights and the policy implications of the incentive system employed by the Federal Communications Commission to clear the band on an accelerated timeline. The analysis found that bidders paid 20.7 percent more on average for licenses available two years earlier with no subsequent legal challenges.

The period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s saw the transformation of information and communication infrastructure. In the same period, TPRC evolved from a narrower focus on conventional telecommunications and information policy to “The Research Conference on Communications, Information, and Internet Policy.” Through the lens of interdisciplinary work on Internet policy and intersecting TPRC activity, this retrospective describes an arc of change that began at the 1994 TPRC and continued for about a decade.

In March 2021, President Biden announced the American Jobs Plan, a precursor to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act designed to kick-start the U.S. economy amid the global coronavirus pandemic. As part of the announcement, the President made a prophetic statement: “broadband is the new electricity.” Comparing the Internet and electricity connected the dots between a centuries-long experiment in universal access.