Chapter 10
Michael Daubs
Although the issue of network neutrality has sparked several vigorous debates, the principles behind it are seemingly and perhaps deceptively simple. Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School professor who coined the phrase “network neutrality,” claims that it is “best defined as a network design principle. The idea is that a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.”1 At its most basic, in other words, net neutrality is simply the belief that a network such as the Internet should have no central control mechanisms and that those who own a network’s infrastructure should have no control over the data that runs through it.2 Proponents of net neutrality argue that there should be no central control over Internet content; opponents argue that net neutrality prevents efficient network traffic management, upgrades, and service.3
The popularity of “smartphones”—multi–function mobile phones with broadband mobile data and Internet connectivity—has added an additional level of complexity to net neutrality debates. A December 2010 ruling of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the “Open Internet” recognized the growth of the mobile data market by outlining net neutrality rules for mobile providers, but the limited bandwidth of the mobile spectrum led regulators to treat mobile data differently from more conventional “fixed” connections. Thus, while this ruling did stipulate that fixed broadband Internet providers “may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices,” it prevents mobile network providers only from blocking websites and applications that “compete with their voice or video telephony services.”4 That wording allows mobile data providers to throttle or even prevent the use of specific mobile applications. Considering the central role mobile technologies have played in recent social and political movements such as the recent #Occupy movement in the United States, this divided approach not only severely compromises net neutrality in general, but also makes it possible for mobile providers to restrict participation in public debates.
Network Neutrality and Civic Participation
The beliefs at the heart of net neutrality policies are also the foundation of the “end-to-end” principle of network design which, according to Mark A. Lemley and Lawrence Lessig, “counsels that the ‘intelligence’ in a network be located at the top of a layered system—at its ‘ends,’ where users put information and applications onto the network—and that the communications protocols themselves (the ‘pipes’ through which information flows) be as simple and general as possible.”5 Wu argues that the end-to-end principle is a “close cousin, if not the direct ancestor of network neutrality.”6 Both principles suggest that less specialized or “dumb” networks are the most valuable—at least to users—in that they can support any application and carry any information. Lemley and Lessig in fact argue that this general idea has guided the development of the Internet since its inception.7
Net neutrality and the end-to-end principle are also related to a much older concept: the “common carrier,” a term used to refer to a private institution that performs a public service. For centuries, common carriage laws have applied to shipping and transportation services such as port authorities and, later, railroads. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, the term common carrier was applied to telecommunications services and mass media such as the telegraph, telephone, radio and television in order to guarantee the interoperability of various networks and the “separation of carriers and content” so that all content—i.e., data—is treated equally.8 The ultimate goal is to ensure universal access to what are considered to be essential services and to guarantee that customers of various service providers—competing telephone systems, for example—can still communicate with one another. Perhaps due to it similarity to or roots in common carrier laws, debates on network neutrality often center upon a user’s ability to access information and engage in interpersonal communication. The potential for Internet providers to block certain websites and file-sharing programs or “throttle” (limit download speeds of) certain online applications, services, or websites is often cited as a reason for the need for regulations that ensure network neutrality.9
These concerns are certainly valid and demand attention. Equally important, however, is an examination of how regulatory policies concerning net neutrality also affect the ability for users to contribute to social debates. Kenneth J. Gergen argues that civic participation is important in “generating independent deliberation about political issues, enabling expressions of resistance, inviting independent initiatives, and mobilizing organized expression.”10 The Internet is often heralded for its ability to allow people to engage in this kind of civic participation. Adam Joinson notes that “[w]hen a new technology develops, there inevitably follow forecasts envisaging a variety of positive outcomes.”11 This tendency can be seen after the removal of access restrictions to the Internet and Tim Berners-Lee’s development of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. Jeffrey Wimmer suggests that a special democratizing potential has always been attributed to digital media, in part because of the perceived nullification of the separation between producers and audiences or senders and receivers.12
Net neutrality is necessary for the realization of this potential. The decentralized and accessible structure of the Internet, coupled with the kinds of personalization, interactivity, and participation possible there, fuel what Jean Burgess and Joshua Green call a “digital utopianism” that “surfaces repeatedly as part of the DIY ideology of participatory culture, the valorization of amateur and community media, and hopeful ideas about the democratization of cultural production.”13 Hans Magnus Enzensberger sees social participation as central to what he calls the “digital gospel” ( das digitale Evangelium) and compares the beliefs of “digital evangelists” ( digitalen Evangelisten) to similar hopes Bertolt Brecht had for the democratizing potential of radio.14
This evangelism can be seen in the work of Henry Jenkins, who espouses the virtues of the new participatory culture made possible by digital media.15 Indeed, the ability for “average” people to create and distribute their own media content is one of the most important pillars of this digital utopianism. Barbara van Schewick asserts that the Internet has “improved democratic discourse, and created a decentralized environment for social and cultural interaction in which anyone can participate.”16 Terry Flew and Jason Wilson similarly note that academic and popular discourse has paid a considerable amount of attention to digital media forms that “generate content and comment ‘from below’ and reinvigo-rate the public sphere,”17 while Axel Bruns argues that “produsers”—a combination of “users” and “producers”—can fundamentally alter the production of information and inform public debates.18
Inspired by this idea, Time magazine named “You” as its 2006 “Person of the Year” for “seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game.”19 Since then, popular discourse has cited YouTube and Twitter as integral to the success of modern activist movements from the Green Wave in Iran to the Arab Spring and, most recently, the #Occupy movement that began in 2011.20 These protests, taking place outside and away from traditional personal computers with wired Internet connections and, in many cases, away from wireless (Wi–Fi) Internet access highlight the importance of the mobile phone, data networks, and mobile applications or “apps” as a way to access online services. Current FCC regulations concerning mobile data networks and net neutrality in the United States, however, have the potential to severely constrain the ability of those within activist movements to participate freely in public debates and present a significant challenge to net neutrality in a mobile age.
Before Smartphones: Mobiles, Counterpublics,
and Democratic Participation
The relevance of mobile phones to net neutrality and civic participation might not be obvious at first, but becomes more evident through a brief examination of the role of mobile technologies in past activist movements. Since their inception, mobile communication technologies have made it easier for people to become more active participants in social debates. Mobile phones are the most used and most rapidly expanding communication technology on the planet. Once a mere status symbol for the rich and powerful, the mobile phone rapidly became what Leopoldina Fortunati, citing Francesco Alberoni, refers to as a “citizenship commodity”—a “must–have” device for modern-day citizens.21 In 2011, an estimated 35 percent of the world’s population used the Internet. In comparison, there were approximately 5.9 billion mobile phone subscriptions, with market penetration reaching 87 percent globally, including 79 percent in developing nations.22
As with other new technologies, the introduction of the mobile phone coupled with its accessibility and rapid dissemination have generated discussions of its democratizing and even revolutionary potential. Mobile technologies have been credited with significantly narrowing the digital divide by providing Internet access to teens from lower-income families in the United States and to developing areas of the world, particularly Africa.23 Howard Rheingold argues that the “power to persuade and communicate, joined with the power to organize and coordinate . . . poses a disruptive political potential that could equal or surpass that of the printing press, landline telephone, television, or the Internet.”24 By labelling it a “citizenship commodity,” Fortunati suggests that the mobile phone is becoming a standard communication technology with democratizing potential. It is perhaps for this reason that she argues that the mobile phone could match the Internet’s ability to generate a “planetary consciousness.”25
While Fortunati’s visions of a planetary consciousness might evoke images of a reinvigorated Habermasian bourgeois Öffentlichkeit or public sphere,26 others see mobile technologies as a potential advantage for people or groups often excluded from public debates. Manuel Castells coined the term the “Fourth World” to refer to those who live a “form of marginalized existence that exists across the globe in both rich and poor nations.”27 He views the emergence of this Fourth World as “inseparable from the rise of informational global capitalism.”28 Although he often focuses on the socioeconomic marginalization of the Fourth World, the voices of its members are also disregarded in public debates. Those who seek to have their voices heard through the organization of social justice movements form what Gergen refers to as a politically “proactive Mittelbau that is a structure of political communication lodged between the national government and the local or civil society, capable of both drawing participation from the local culture and speaking to government.”29 This Mittelbau was first enabled in the 1950s and 1960s by television, in part due to television’s ability to make distant events such as the civil rights protests and feminist demonstrations of the era more immediate.
The Fourth World and proactive Mittelbau are similar to the concept of Gegenöffentlichkeiten or counterpublic spheres. While the public sphere is supposed to be representative of a society and its culture, counterpublic spheres represent smaller, niche segments of a population that embody a culture or ideology that is significantly different from that of the supposedly inclusive public sphere. Nancy Fraser refers to these groups as “subaltern counterpublics in order to signal that they are parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs.”30
Michael Warner argues, however, that a counterpublic is more than a subaltern group with ideas for reform; instead, it is a “dominated group [that] aspires to re-create itself as a public and, in doing so, finds itself in conflict not only with the dominant social group, but also with the norms that constitute the dominant culture as a public.”31 A counterpublic’s message is therefore often “regarded with hostility or with a sense of indecorousness.”32 Although Jürgen Habermas suggests that counterpublics did not evolve until the late nineteenth century, nearly 200 years after the public sphere first emerged as capitalism and mercantilism expanded at the expense of feudalism, Fraser notes that, “[v]irtually from the beginning, counterpublics contested the exclusionary norms of the bourgeois public, elaborating alternative styles of political behavior and alternative norms of public speech.”33
Writing in part as a critique of Habermas’ originally dismissive attitude toward “proletariat” movements, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge argue that counterpublic spheres could be forces of political and social transformation. They suggest that the formation of counterpublic spheres can be a source of solidarity for burgeoning social movements.34 Jonathan Donner explicitly relates media use to social visibility, asserting that “a community’s use of ICTs [information communication technologies] is one of the central determinants of its participation in the informational system, or its relegation to the Fourth World.”35 In other words, he sees an opportunity for marginalized segments of society to seize upon the political potential of mobile technologies and notes several researchers have examined “how users can draw on mobile technology to redistribute political power, giving the previously disenfranchised a voice in the dialogue.”36 Gergen similarly argues that mobile technologies allow formerly private and disconnected streams of thought to easily contribute to public debates, resulting in an exchange that is essential to the democratic process.37 This information exchange is dependent upon an open or “neutral” network. Once network access providers begin to discriminate against particular content, the democratizing potential of that system is limited.
In the absence of such discrimination, however, participation through the use of ICTs can indeed assist counterpublic spheres with fomenting democratic potential and “representing marginalised positions in an advocatory way.”38 Habermas himself has refined the position he set forth in Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit to address changes in the relationship between society and the public sphere. As Fraser notes, Habermas originally believed a “single, over-arching public sphere is a positive and desirable state of affairs, whereas the proliferation of a multiplicity of publics represents a departure from, rather than an advance toward, democracy.”39 He has since revised his interpretation and now sees the democratic potential in a “pluralistic, internally much differentiated mass public[.]”40
Specifically, Habermas points to political mobilizations that seek to generate a counterpublic sphere and asks whether these groups are actually capable of initiating new communicative processes.41 He observes that “in periods of mobilisation, the structures that actually support the authority of a critically engaged public begin to vibrate.”42 Grassroots or counterpublic access to the general public is only granted in what Habermas refers to as moments of “crisis” or periods in which there is political, economic, or ideological uncertainty. During these moments, a “normative self-understanding” of media as a servant of the people emerges which provides the opportunity for increased representation of counter-public content and ideas and enables a shift of media (and therefore political) power to civic groups.43
The political mobilizations to which Habermas refers take the form of social activist groups. These groups are increasingly empowered by mobile technologies which, in the past, have made an “increasingly powerful contribution to the efficacy of political activism.”44 Indeed, the mobile phone has been a primary tool in social activist movements. Text messaging in particular has been a popular method for the organization of protest actions. Rheingold notes the use of mobile phones and text messaging has been used to organize “smart mobs”—a term he uses to refer to rapidly formed and highly coordinated groups— throughout the world including countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.45 The use of mobile devices to communicate between local groups has also generated organized, horizontally structured national movements that lack a centralized leadership structure.46 As a result, participation within movements is democratized.
The combination of the Internet and mobile communication provides additional flexibility to organizers of social movements, as protests dubbed the “Battle in Seattle” against the World Trade Organization (WTO) during their annual meeting in Seattle in 1999 demonstrate. A number of scholars, journalists, and activists have detailed the use of both mobile and Internet-based communications to organize the mass anti-WTO actions.47 A similar overlap between Web and mobile communication can be seen in the Web application TXTmob, which allows users to transmit text messages to multiple mobile numbers at once. TXTmob was employed to organize mass protests against the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 2004, which also attracted a significant amount of traditional and grassroots media attention and led to sympathetic protests in other cities such as Madrid.48
Smartphones, Mobile Apps,
and Activist Movements
In recent years, activist groups have taken advantage of a more literal convergence between mobile and Internet technologies. Smartphones have become a primary tool for organizing, mobilizing, and publicizing protest actions, and one of the fastest growing ICTs in general. Broadband mobile data subscriptions grew at a rate of 45 percent from 2007-2011, outpacing even fixed broadband subscriptions.49
Accessing email and Web browsing on Internet-capable smartphones are certainly common uses of mobile broadband services, but the popularity of mobile apps—small, specialty applications that can be downloaded to mobile smartphones—is difficult to ignore. In 2011, Apple’s App Store—the largest and most popular source for mobile applications which launched in July 2008— boasted 500,000 apps available for download for use its popular iPod, iPhone, and iPad mobile devices while its closest competitor, Google’s Android Marketplace, had 294,000 apps.50 That same year, aggregate mobile downloads surpassed the 30 billion mark and, for the first time since their introduction in 2008, users spent more time in mobile applications on average than in traditional web browsers.51 Their popularity can be attributed to their convenience and speed. Since people tend to carry their mobile devices with them, they can share information, images, or even video instantly from any location rather than having to upload content later from a personal computer. Apps designed to work for specific devices also tend to operate faster than Web-based applications, which makes them more responsive to user needs.
The March 2012 purchase of Instagram for $1 billion by social networking giant Facebook signalled how “momentum in the tech world is shifting to mobile from computers.”52 Instagram had previously been a mobile social network centred on photo sharing and is just one example of a growing number of startups that eschew Web development in favor of mobile-only services left vulnerable to blocking or throttling in the recent FCC net neutrality policy. Many apps are made by established media companies. A growing number, however, are produced by upstart media companies or independent produsers. The focus on a mobile app offers developers several advantages, including a simplified design process and popular pre-existing distribution channels in the form of the Apple App Store and Google’s Android Marketplace. With this in mind, coupled with the recent history of the use of mobile devices to organize protest actions, it is perhaps not terribly surprising that mobile apps, designed to make use of mobile broadband connections, have been developed for activist movements.
The #Occupy movement that began in 2011 provides several excellent examples of specialty apps made for activist purposes and demonstrates how a counterpublic sphere can gain access to the public through the media in a moment of “crisis” as Habermas described. The impetus for the movement can be traced to the global economic crisis brought about by the abuses of multinational banks, rising unemployment rates in the face of record corporate profits, and growing awareness of income disparities between the world’s richest residents and the rest of the population which inspired the movement’s “We are the 99%” slogan. The official start of the #Occupy movement is usually credited to July 13, 2011 blog entry simply titled “#OCCUPYWALLSTREET” on the website of the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters which claimed it was time to protest against “the greatest corrupter of our democracy: Wall Street, the financial Gomorrah of America.”53
Inspired by mass uprisings and social movements in Egypt and Spain, the post suggests a new kind of demonstration—not a temporary demonstration, but rather a prolonged protest action: “On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.”54 Though falling well short of the stated goal of 20,000 demonstrators, roughly a thousand protestors did indeed descend on the Wall Street area, eventually resulting in a weeks–long take-over of Zucotti Park at 1 Liberty Plaza in Lower Manhattan. AdBusters ' inclusion of the Twitter hashtag—the symbol (#) used to identify keywords which help categorize posts or “tweets” so that they show up more easily in searches on the site—signals the importance of online communication to this activist movement. Hashtags such as #occupywallstreet, and #ows, as well as location-specific hashtags such as #occupyboston, were regularly used to mark tweets related to the protests. Protestors and bystanders also “uploaded video and commentary to a variety of social media sites almost instantly, so that it was almost as if the incident were being streamed.”55
Once again, mobile phones played a key role, particularly because the primary tactic of the #Occupy movement—namely, “occupation” of a public space—means wired or even Wi-Fi Internet connections were often unavailable to protestors. The occupation of a physical public space, in other words, was coupled with the “occupation” of another (albeit virtual) public resource: the mobile spectrum. In fact, the physical occupation of areas such as Zuccotti Park was heavily dependent upon the savvy use of mobile technologies.56 Activists and protestors have used smartphone apps for existing Web services such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to rapidly disseminate user-generated information, images, and videos of #Occupy protests in order to publicize events or report alleged police aggression.
In addition, several mobile applications were developed for a variety of smartphones for the #Occupy movement in particular. One app created by Pedro Miranda for Apple devices simply called Occupy focuses on giving users easy access to information about the movement by compiling “official (and unofficial) news feeds, the latest videos, the press, photos, chat, and a lot more.”57 A company called Quadrant 2, supposedly inspired by a real #Occupy-related event, developed an Android app called I’m Getting Arrested which allows people to quickly and easily broadcast a custom text message to the mobile phones of selected friends and loved ones at the push of a button in case they are arrested.58 The basic function resembles that of the TXTmob Web application from a few years earlier, but is more accessible and immediate as a mobile app.
Other apps are specifically designed to help users share information and coordinate #Occupy-related protests. An app called WhatsApp , available for multiple mobile platforms including iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices, allows users to send unlimited and encrypted text messages so that “sensitive communication between two users cannot not be tied to individuals if it were to be intercepted by snoops.”59 Though the company behind WhatsApp claims no affiliation with the #Occupy movement, the advantages for protest organizers—both in terms of cost and security—are obvious. Go HD , an app from pro– #Occupy development company Hollr, allows people to share “anonymous location-based messages, photos and videos” about protests and events, while Protest4 —an app which has apparently been “embraced by free speech movements and political demonstrations in Indonesia, Pakistan Egypt, and even Italy” in addition to those in the #Occupy movement—lets users search for nearby protests in progress.60 Yet another app, Shouty, turns a smartphone into a streaming media server so that people at the back of a crowd or on the other side of the globe can tune into protest speeches.61
The examples listed here are just a few of the dozens of mobile apps that have been employed to aid the coordination, effectiveness, and communicative capabilities of activist movements, and the increasing use of mobile apps by groups such as #Occupy—many of which rely on mobile broadband data connections—reveals how the FCC’s current network neutrality policies present a significant challenge to this rapidly emerging form of democratic participation in the United States. In addition, the increasing reliance on mobile broadband networks in general demonstrates that current policy is ill-suited to an ever-evolving broadband environment.
Wireless Network Neutrality
and Restricting Debate
Their combination of mobile telephony and data services make smartphones more useful to organizers, but it also effectively transforms them from devices providing communication services into devices providing what the FCC, in its 1996 Telecommunications Act, refers to as “information services”—that is, “the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications.”62 This is no small distinction since the FCC considers telecommunications and information services to be two distinct categories. The former are regulated, “basic” common carrier services while the latter are not.
This distinction might explain why the December 2010 ruling of the FCC prevents mobile network providers only from blocking websites and applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services, which problematizes the neutrality of mobile data networks.63 That wording allows mobile data providers to throttle or even prevent the use specific mobile applications, which in turn makes it possible for them to restrict participation in activist movements. Consider, for example, if a group used a particular smartphone app to organize a protest against one of the major mobile providers in the United States such as Verizon or AT&T. What would prevent them from blocking access to those apps in order to circumvent a potential public relations problem? Or what if a provider decided to block access to an app designed for a particular social movement in order to avoid the appearance of supporting that movement?
These questions are, of course, speculative and hypothetical but past events suggest such actions are not out of the realm of possibility. During a 2005 strike by members of the Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU) in Canada, for example, Canadian telecommunications company Telus blocked its Internet customers from accessing “Voices for Change,” a website that was both run by and openly supported the TWU.64 The move was widely criticized, particularly because most of the striking workers were also Telus customers. Neil Barratt and Leslie Regan Shade argue the decision to block access to the site “points out the power of telecommunications companies in controlling content and stifling public access to content that the company deems unnecessary.”65
While the 2010 FCC ruling prevents this type of website blocking in the United States for both mobile and fixed Internet customers, nothing would prevent a telecom company from blocking an app that was perceived as a potential threat. Positioning the “right to reach an audience” as a cornerstone of free speech, Jennifer A. Chandler argues that “[i]f selection intermediaries block or discriminate against a speaker on grounds that listeners would not have selected, that speaker’s ability to speak freely has been undermined.”66 Blocking access to mobile apps dedicated to social movements would not only prevent people from accessing information, but also sharing it. Indeed, the FCC’s current network neutrality policy allows mobile network providers to act as a new “selection intermediary” and effectively prevents the formation of the “decentralized environment for social and cultural interaction” described by van Schewick earlier.
Beyond #Occupy:
Future Considerations for a Mobile World
Mobile apps designed to help those in activist movements such as #Occupy to organize their activities and publicize their goals are only an entry point for a larger discussion about mobile broadband network neutrality. The current FCC policy on mobile networks has the potential to be detrimental to the dissemination of all user-generated content and severely compromises the visions of unfettered participation in social debates and democratization of cultural production. The rapid increase in the use of mobile technologies suggests that the FCC will need to revise these policies sooner rather than later or risk having a completely ineffectual approach to network neutrality.
It is also important to note that mobile broadband net neutrality is not an issue limited to the United States. Developing areas of the world, for example, are experiencing some of the highest growth rates in mobile penetration.67 Furthermore, mobile broadband connections are more likely to be the only option for Internet access available to those within developing countries.68 Ensuring mobile broadband network neutrality in these countries takes on an even greater importance especially considering the United Nations declared Internet access a basic human right in 2011 and specifically questioned the validity of filtering and blocking content.69 Developed nations that often claim to want to encourage the spread of democracy and aid developing countries can set a positive example by supporting mobile network neutrality both at home and abroad.
That said, it is impossible to ignore that there are significant differences in the underlying infrastructure of wired and mobile broadband systems. Limited spectrum space for mobile communications, especially high-bandwidth data, is a legitimate concern for mobile providers, and spectrum space will become a more urgent issue as more customers in the United States switch to next-generation 4G devices. The FCC’s decision to open large blocks of unused spectrum space left vacant after the switch to digital television systems for unlicensed wireless broadband networks demonstrates the Commission’s awareness of spectrum issues.70 However, as Barratt and Shade argue, “cable and telephone companies understand the changing climate of the industry and the potential for profits.”71 The FCC and regulatory bodies in other countries needed to be equally aware of the potentials and pitfalls of this changing climate and ensure their net neutrality policies evolve accordingly, even in the face of fervent resistance from mobile providers. Otherwise, they risk the development of a fractured system that privileges wireless providers, limits the full interoperability of various networks, and institutionalizes limits on the communicative capabilities of users.72
Notes
1. Tim Wu, “Network Neutrality FAQ,” timwu.org, http://timwu.org/network_neutrality.html (accessed August 13, 2012).
2. Neil Barratt and Leslie Regan Shade, “Net Neutrality: Telecom Policy and the Public Interest,” Canadian Journal of Communication 32, no. 2 (2007): 296.
3. For a summary of debates, see Christine M. Stover, “Network Neutrality: A Thematic Analysis of Policy Perspectives across the Globe,” Global Media Journal– Canadian Edition 3, no. 1 (2010).
4. Federal Communications Commission, Report and Order in the Matter of Preserving the Open Internet Broadband Industry Practices, December 21, 2010, http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db1223/FCC-10-201A1.pdf (accessed January 20, 2011). 2.
5. Mark A. Lemley and Lawrence Lessig, “The End of End-to-End: Preserving the Architecture of the Internet in the Broadband Era,” UC Berkeley Law and Econ Research Paper No. 2000–19 (2000): 5.
6. Wu, “Network Neutrality FAQ.”
7. Lemley and Lessig.
8. Barratt and Shade, 296.
9. See, for example, Stover, “Network Neutrality: A Thematic Analysis of Policy Perspectives across the Globe”; Barbara van Schewick and David Farber, “Network Neutrality Nuances: A Discussion of Divergent Paths to Unrestricted Access of Content and Applications Via the Internet,” Communications of the ACM 52, no. 2 (2009).
10. Kenneth J. Gergen, “Mobile Communication and the Transformation of the Democratic Process,” in Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, ed. James E. Katz (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), 298.
11. Adam Joinson, Understanding the Psychology of Internet Behaviour: Virtual Worlds, Real Lives (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 116.
12. Jeffrey Wimmer, (Gegen–)Öffentlichleit in Der Mediengesellschaft: Analyse Eines Medialen Spannungsverhältnisses (Wiesbaden, Germany: VS Verlag, 2007), 139– 140.
13. Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, YouTube, Digital Media and Society Series (Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2009), 12.
14. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Das Digitale Evangelium,” Der Spiegel (2000), http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-15376078.html (accessed August 8, 2012).
15. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 246.
16. van Schewick and Farber, 33.
17. Terry Flew and Jason Wilson, “Journalism as Social Networking: The Australian Youdecide Project and the 2007 Federal Election,” Journalism 11, no. 2 (2010): 132.
18. Axel Bruns, “Some Exploratory Notes on Produsers and Produsage,” Snurblog, http://snurb.info/index.php?q=node/329 (accessed August 8, 2012).
19. Lev Grossman, “Time’s Person of the Year: You,” Time 168 (2006), http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html (August 13, 2012).
20. See, for example, Lev Grossman, “Iran Protests: Twitter, the Medium of the Movement,” TIME (2009), http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html (accessed August 8, 2012); Sarah Maslin Nir, “Wall Street Protesters Broadcast Arrests on Social Media,” The New York Times, http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/wall-street-protesters-broadcast-arrests-on-social-media (accessed August 8, 2012).
21. Leopoldina Fortunati, “The Mobile Phone: Towards New Categories and Social Relations,” Information, Communication and Society 5, no. 4 (2002).
22. International Telecommunication Union, “The World in 2011: ICT Facts and Figures,”(2011), http://www.itu.int/ITUD/ict/facts/2011/material/ICTFactsFigures2011.pdf (Accessed August 13, 2012).
23. For some examples, see Katie Brown, Scott W. Campbell, and Rich Ling, “Mobile Phones Bridging the Digital Divide for Teens in the Us?,” Future Internet 3, no. 2 (2011); Jeffrey James, “Sharing Mobile Phones in Developing Countries: Implications for the Digital Divide,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 78, no. 4 (2011); Peter A. Kwaku Kyem and Peter Kweku LeMaire, “Transforming Recent Gains in the Digital Divide into Digital Opportunities: Africa and the Boom in Mobile Phone Subscription,” The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries 28, no. 5 (2006).
24. Howard Rheingold, “Mobile Media and Political Collective Action,” in Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, ed. James E. Katz (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), 225–226.
25. Fortunati, 521.
26. Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel Der Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990).
27. Jonathan Donner, “Shrinking Fourth World? Mobiles, Development, and Inclusion,” in Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, ed. James E. Katz (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008), 30.
28. Manual Castells, End of Millennium (Malden, Mass.: Wiley, 2010), 169–170.
29. Gergen, 300.
30. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoon (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 67.
31. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002), 112.
32. Ibid., 119.
33. Fraser, 61.
34. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere, trans. Peter Labanyi, Jamie Daniel, and Assenka Oksiloff (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 160– 186.
35. Donner, 30.
36. Ibid., 32.
37. Gergen, 304.
38. Jeffrey Wimmer, “Counter-Public Spheres and the Revival of the European Public Sphere,” The Public 12, no. 2 (2005): 101.
39. Fraser, 66.
40. Jürgen Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992), 438.
41. Ibid., 427.
42. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), 379.
43. Ibid., 379–381.
44. Gergen, 305.
45. Rheingold, 226.
46. Gergen, 297–298; Rheingold, 227.
47. See, for example, Matthew Eagleton-Pierce, “The Internet and the Seattle WTO Protests,” Peace Review 13, no. 3 (2001); Okoth Fred Mudhai, “Exploring the Potential for More Strategic Civil Society Use of Mobile Phones,” in Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society, ed. Jodi Dean, Jon W. Anderson, and Geert Lovink (New York: Routledge, 2006); Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2002).
48. Tad Hirsch and John Henry, “Txtmob: Text Messaging for Protest Swarms,” in CHI ‘05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Portland, Ore., ACM, 2005); Rheingold.
49. International Telecommunication Union.
50. Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “Apple’s Itunes Store: 500,000 Ios Apps and Counting,” CNNMoney, http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/24/apples-itunes-store-500000-iosapps-and-counting/ (accessed January 20, 2012).
51. Erica Ogg, “By the Numbers: Mobile Apps in 2011,” GigaOM, http://gigaom.com/2011/12/30/by-the-numbers-mobile-apps-in-2011 (accessed March 15, 2012); Erica Ogg, “The Year in Mobile Apps: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going,” GigaOM, http://gigaom.com/2011/12/25/the-year-in-mobile-apps-where-weve-been-where-were-going/ (accessed March 15, 2012).
52. Jenna Wortham, “A Billion-Dollar Turning Point for Mobile Apps,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/11/technology/instagram-deal-is-billion-dollar-move-toward-cellphone-from-pc.html (accessed April 10, 2012).
53. Adbusters, “#Occupywallstreet,” AdBusters, http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html (accessed October 13, 2011).
54. Ibid.
55. Nir.
56. The government-regulated mobile spectrum is arguably more “public” than the “privately owned public space” Zuccotti Park. See http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/priv/priv.shtml and http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/priv/mndist1.shtml for more information.
57. A. T. Faust III, “‘Occupy’ App Gives You Even More News on Growing Global Phenomenon,” AppAdvice, http://appadvice.com/appnn/2011/11/occupy-app-gives-you-even-more-news-on-growing-global-phenomenon (accessed January 13, 2012).
58. Jaymar Cabebe, “Help, I’m Getting Arrested!,” CNet, http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20119537-251/help-im-getting-arrested/ (accessed October 12, 2011).
59. Chikodi Chima, “Apps for Occupiers Make Organizing, Communicating and Sharing Easier,” VentureBeat, http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/19/apps-for-occupy-wall-street/ (accessed November 30, 2011).
60. Ibid.
61. Tyler Kingkade, “New Protest Apps Crowd-Sourced from Occupy Wall Street Hackers,” Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/occupy-wall-street-a-diy-tech-tools-protest_n_1032518.html (accessed November 30, 2011).
62. Telecommunications Act of 1996 S.652, 104th Cong., 2nd sess. http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=104_cong_bills&docid=f:s652enr.txt.pdf (accessed August 8, 2012).
63. Interestingly, the policy stipulates that “mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites” but states that only fixed broadband providers may not “unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.” Mobile providers may still “discriminate” against (or throttle) individual websites.
64. “Telus Cuts Subscriber Access to Pro–Union Website,” CBC News, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2005/07/24/telus-sites050724.html (accessed March 2, 2012); Barratt and Shade.
65. Barratt and Shade, 298. Relatedly, in 2010, the online payment service company PayPal prevented donations to WikiLeaks, an international non–profit organization known for publishing classified information including over 250,000 diplomatic cables from the U.S. State Department. Though not directly a net neutrality issue (PayPal claims they disabled the WikiLeaks account due to a violation of the company’s Acceptable Use Policy), their decision does demonstrate that companies are willing to interrupt service to activist organizations in order to avoid the appearance of support. See Kevin Poulson, “Paypal Freezes Wikileaks Account,” Wired (2010), http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/paypal-wikileaks/ (accessed August 8. 2012).
66. Jennifer A. Chandler, “A Right to Reach an Audience: An Approach to Intermediary Bias on the Internet,” Hofstra Law Review 35, no. 3 (2007): 1098.
67. Donner, 29.
68. International Telecommunication Union.
69. United Nations General Assembly, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression,” New York, 2011.
70. Federal Communications Commission, Order in the Matter of Unlicensed Operation in the TV Broadcast Bands: Additional Spectrum for Unlicensed Devices Below 900 Mhz and in the 3 GHz Band, 2011, http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-11-131A1.pdf (accessed August 13, 2012). The Canadian government’s highly anticipated 2013 auction of similar spectrum space referred to as the 700MHz auction demonstrates the desire for more wireless broadband spectrum is not limited to the US.
71. Barratt and Shade, 302.
72. The author wishes to thank Vince Manzerolle and Dr. Zachary Stiegler for their incredibly generous comments and suggestions on this chapter.