Books by Victor Pickard
In Democracy Without Journalism? Victor Pickard argues that we’re overlooking the core roots of t... more In Democracy Without Journalism? Victor Pickard argues that we’re overlooking the core roots of the crisis. By uncovering degradations caused by run-amok commercialism, he brings into focus the historical antecedents, market failures, and policy inaction that led to the implosion of commercial journalism and the proliferation of misinformation through both social media and mainstream news. The problem isn’t just the loss of journalism or irresponsibility of Facebook, but the very structure upon which our profit-driven media system is built. The rise of a “misinformation society” is symptomatic of historical and endemic weaknesses in the American media system tracing back to the early commercialization of the press in the 1800s. While professionalization was meant to resolve tensions between journalism’s public service and profit imperatives, Pickard argues that it merely camouflaged deeper structural maladies. Journalism has always been in crisis. The market never supported the levels of journalism—especially local, international, policy, and investigative reporting—that a healthy democracy requires. Today these long-term defects have metastasized.
After Net Neutrality: A New Deal for the Digital Age, 2019
A provocative analysis of net neutrality and a call to democratize online communication This shor... more A provocative analysis of net neutrality and a call to democratize online communication This short book is both a primer that explains net neutrality's history and politics, as well as an argument for a more equitable framework for internet regulation. Pickard and Berman assert that we should see access to the internet not as a commodity but as a public good necessary for sustaining democratic society in the twentyfirst century. They aim to reframe the threat to net neutrality as more than a conflict between content providers like Netflix and internet service providers like Comcast-they argue its part of the much wider project to commercialize the public sphere and undermine the free speech essential for democracy. Readers will come away with a better understanding of the key concepts underpinning the net neutrality battle and rallying points for future action to democratize online communication.
(2017) Media Activism in the Digital Age
This new edited collection brings together leading scholars and activists to explore how varietie... more This new edited collection brings together leading scholars and activists to explore how varieties of activism are mediated through communication technologies, how activists deploy strategies for changing the structures of media systems, and how governments and corporations seek to police media activism. From memes to zines, hacktivism to artivism, Media Activism in the Digital Age considers activist practices involving both older kinds of media and newer digital, social, and network-based forms.
Victor Pickard and Guobin Yang have assembled essays by leading scholars and activists to provide case studies of feminist, technological, and political interventions during different historical periods and at local, national, and global levels. Looking at the underlying theories, histories, politics, ideologies, tactics, strategies, and aesthetics, the book takes an expansive view of media activism. It explores how varieties of activism are mediated through communication technologies, how activists deploy strategies for changing the structures of media systems, and how governments and corporations seek to police media activism. From memes to zines, hacktivism to artivism, this volume considers activist practices involving both older kinds of media and newer digital, social, and network-based forms.
Media Activism in the Digital Age provides a useful cross-section of this growing field for both students and researchers.
Articles, Essays, and Book Chapters by Victor Pickard
The history of US public media is challenging to chart. Relative to its counterparts in liberal d... more The history of US public media is challenging to chart. Relative to its counterparts in liberal democracies around the world, the American public broadcasting system emerged late (formally established only in the late 1960s) and was politically vulnerable from its inception (Avery 2017). The United States is a global outlier for how little it funds public broadcasting. Federal expenditures on public media typically average out to a paltry $1.40 per capita (Neff and Pickard 2021). Even to call the US system 'public' is a misnomer; networks such as NPR and PBS receive large percentages of their funding from private sources-including corporations who underwrite programming and promote their wares across the media they help sponsor. American public broadcasting's weaknesses notwithstanding, that it exists at all required a remarkable feat that took many years of tireless activism and advocacy. Very few historians have traced this decades-long struggle back to its actual origins. For these reasons and more, Josh Shepperd's Shadow of the New Deal is an invaluable contribution, chronicling how the American public media system was founded and how it could have developed differently. Although somewhat celebratory in treating the birth of US public broadcasting as a triumph-the subtitle of the book is, after all, The Victory of Public Broadcasting-the book also underscores the many contingencies and contradictions that brought the system to fruition. And it does so with great care and nuance. Interdisciplinary and wide-ranging in its scope, Shadow of the New Deal engages with scholarship in the fields of media history, media policy, political economy, media industry studies, critical media studies and other
NiemanLab, 2024
While federal-level initiatives are mostly nonstarters for the immediate future, possibilities ex... more While federal-level initiatives are mostly nonstarters for the immediate future, possibilities exist at the state and local levels. Recent years have witnessed a wide range of creative policy measures — in states like California, New Jersey, and New York — aimed at bolstering local media. Democrat-controlled state legislatures could redouble efforts toward working with grassroots groups to support local journalism initiatives. Even some Republican lawmakers might wish to salvage what’s left of rural and small-town newspapers.
Justice Rising, 2024
Truly democratic and engaged journalism
requires that people own and control their
own media. It ... more Truly democratic and engaged journalism
requires that people own and control their
own media. It also requires that journalism serves
not just profit imperatives, but also addresses
people’s needs, tells their stories, and goes where
the silences are. While providing critical information
is always a key mission for good journalism,
local media is about much more than informing
citizens, keeping a watchful eye on the powerful,
and ringing alarm bells about social problems. As
important as these essential services are, good
journalism — especially participatory journalism
— is also about building community and solidarity
among diverse publics.
People living under oppressive regimes rarely take press freedoms for granted. But for those livi... more People living under oppressive regimes rarely take press freedoms for granted. But for those living in liberal democracies and accustomed to capitalist economics, losing such freedoms seems like a distant concern. Here in the US for example, despite the oft-rehearsed truism that democracy requires a free press, we rarely pause to consider whether journalism is receiving the requisite institutional support-or whether government has an affirmative duty to ensure that a press system exists at all. To the extent that we ever think about these relationships, most people living in market-driven societies assume that capitalist laws of supply and demand will always sustain local journalism. Few are attuned to detect market failure or consider what policy interventions are necessary to sustain the kind of journalism that is rarely profitable, but that democracy requires.
Javnost, 2023
Despite their absence within dominant policy discourses, radical ideas for structurally reforming... more Despite their absence within dominant policy discourses, radical ideas for structurally reforming information and communication systems are proliferating. This article begins to explore and synthesise several policy proposals for creating ambitious-even utopian-models that better serve democratic societies' information needs. These initiatives generally aim to decommodify the entire digital media system, thus requiring a holistic approach, with special attention given to discrete layers of content production and dissemination. Within this broader framework, it is necessary that policies attend to the political, economic, and technological specificities of platforms and journalism.
Media Development, 2022
The democratic world faces a wicked problem. Information and communication systems that people re... more The democratic world faces a wicked problem. Information and communication systems that people rely on for many facets of their daily lives have become increasingly antidemocratic, causing profound harm across the globe. The technologies driving these systems – aimed primarily to extract data from users and sell for prot – are designed and deployed without public consent. How do we bring platform companies that operate these systems under democratic control?
The early broadcast era and our current platform era bear some striking resemblances, but one par... more The early broadcast era and our current platform era bear some striking resemblances, but one parallel looms large: In the 1940s, we lost a key battle to build a potentially liberating and wondrous medium—and we are on the cusp of doing so again. Then as now, commercial operators defined the terms by which we could use our core communication and information infrastructures. While reaping tremendous profits from the public airwaves, a few corporate firms became the sole providers for much of the nation’s media.
This study examines whether and how public media systems contribute to the health of democracies ... more This study examines whether and how public media systems contribute to the health of democracies in 33 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, the Middle East, Latin America, and South America. We gather national economic data and public media funding levels, audience shares, and regulatory data, primarily for 2018 and 2019 but in some cases earlier, due to lack of available data. We then assess correlations with strength of democracy indices and extend Hallin and Mancini's typology of North American and European media systems through hierarchical cluster analysis of these 33 countries. We find five models of public media systems around the world, ranging from "state-administered" systems with low levels of independence (Botswana and Tunisia) to systems aligning with Hallin and Mancini's "Democratic Corporatist" model, with strong and secure (multiyear) funding, large audience shares, and strong regulatory protection for their independence. In between, we identify three mixed models: a "Liberal-Pluralist" model, a "Direct Funding" model, and a "Commercial-Public" model. Correlations and cluster analyses show that high levels of secure funding for public media systems and strong structural protections for the political and economic independence of those systems are consistently and positively correlated with healthy democracies.
The notion of censorship typically evokes fear of oppressive governments or corporate media polic... more The notion of censorship typically evokes fear of oppressive governments or corporate media policing the bounds of acceptable discourse and constricting the range of political opinion. A long history—including many cases carefully documented by Project Censored over the decades—shows that we should be concerned about such abuses. However, a deeper, more systemic, form of censorship warps our media, one we too often neglect. This subtle—but no less malignant—filtering process is a byproduct of toxic commercialism, a set of values that systematically privilege entertainment over information, treats audiences as consumers not citizens, and consistently marginalize progressive arguments and issues. Resulting in a truncated public sphere and an impoverished imagination of what is possible, this profit-driven logic structures much of our news and information. We might refer to such patterns of omission and emphasis—where some voices and views are elevated and others muffled according to commercial values, profit accumulation, and corporate power — as “market censorship”.
With Trump-era fascistic tendencies receding into the past (though still ever present), a reckoni... more With Trump-era fascistic tendencies receding into the past (though still ever present), a reckoning of the structural conditions that enabled their ascendance is overdue. Degraded information and communication systems were not the sole factor in escalating what is sometimes euphemistically referred to as "democratic backsliding" (Bermeo, 2016), but media institutions-from Fox News to Facebook-played a contributing role. They amplified election-theft conspiracy theories and whipped up long-standing right-wing prejudices and grievances. At the same time, a devastated local news landscape-combined with an extremely commercialized, ratings-driven national media system fixating on the "Trump Show"-provided fertile ground for dangerous discourses to take root. While these structural pathologies certainly predated Trump (Pickard, 2017), it is important to recognize how his administration helped accelerate various media-related crises that produced hospitable conditions for fascistic movements. These same conditions-an overly commercialized media system, the collapse of local journalism, monopolistic media firms-are still very much in effect and, in most cases, continuing to worsen. In envisioning a better future, we must acknowledge that our media system needs more than repair and restoration; it requires a structural transformation from the ground up. My purpose here is to assess the Trump-era wreckage before presenting useful frameworks for understanding the structural nature of ongoing crises. I conclude with a discussion regarding the prerequisites for a post-commercial media system. The analysis is US-focused but has clear implications for democratic societies around the world.
A new disinformation age is upon us-or so it seems. But much of what appears to be unprecedented ... more A new disinformation age is upon us-or so it seems. But much of what appears to be unprecedented is not new at all. Concerns about misinformation's effects on democracy are as old as media. The many systemic failures abetting Trump's ascendance-as well as more recent election-and pandemic-related conspiracies-were decades in the making. Yet, our degraded information systems escaped sufficient scrutiny for so long. Why?
This chapter contends that a corporate libertarian vision of media policy established the discurs... more This chapter contends that a corporate libertarian vision of media policy established the discursive terrain in which conservative media thrived in the United States after World War II. The corporate libertarian approach conceives of news media as a commodity—as opposed to a public resource—best left under private control and ownership. This vision became a hegemonic common sense that came to dominate US media policy discourses beginning in the late 1940s—thanks in part to a propagandistic influence campaign executed by corporate interests. This led to insufficient resources invested in a democratic news system. Such a policy orientation created conditions for a commercial media system driven by a competition to meet consumer demand. It also created a space for right-wing media activists to mobilize and cultivate conservative publics through outlets propped up by patronage networks and ideologically motivated venture capital.
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Books by Victor Pickard
Victor Pickard and Guobin Yang have assembled essays by leading scholars and activists to provide case studies of feminist, technological, and political interventions during different historical periods and at local, national, and global levels. Looking at the underlying theories, histories, politics, ideologies, tactics, strategies, and aesthetics, the book takes an expansive view of media activism. It explores how varieties of activism are mediated through communication technologies, how activists deploy strategies for changing the structures of media systems, and how governments and corporations seek to police media activism. From memes to zines, hacktivism to artivism, this volume considers activist practices involving both older kinds of media and newer digital, social, and network-based forms.
Media Activism in the Digital Age provides a useful cross-section of this growing field for both students and researchers.
Articles, Essays, and Book Chapters by Victor Pickard
requires that people own and control their
own media. It also requires that journalism serves
not just profit imperatives, but also addresses
people’s needs, tells their stories, and goes where
the silences are. While providing critical information
is always a key mission for good journalism,
local media is about much more than informing
citizens, keeping a watchful eye on the powerful,
and ringing alarm bells about social problems. As
important as these essential services are, good
journalism — especially participatory journalism
— is also about building community and solidarity
among diverse publics.
Victor Pickard and Guobin Yang have assembled essays by leading scholars and activists to provide case studies of feminist, technological, and political interventions during different historical periods and at local, national, and global levels. Looking at the underlying theories, histories, politics, ideologies, tactics, strategies, and aesthetics, the book takes an expansive view of media activism. It explores how varieties of activism are mediated through communication technologies, how activists deploy strategies for changing the structures of media systems, and how governments and corporations seek to police media activism. From memes to zines, hacktivism to artivism, this volume considers activist practices involving both older kinds of media and newer digital, social, and network-based forms.
Media Activism in the Digital Age provides a useful cross-section of this growing field for both students and researchers.
requires that people own and control their
own media. It also requires that journalism serves
not just profit imperatives, but also addresses
people’s needs, tells their stories, and goes where
the silences are. While providing critical information
is always a key mission for good journalism,
local media is about much more than informing
citizens, keeping a watchful eye on the powerful,
and ringing alarm bells about social problems. As
important as these essential services are, good
journalism — especially participatory journalism
— is also about building community and solidarity
among diverse publics.
market libertarianism.
Yet, as local commercial journalism continues to collapse and misinformation and extremism continue to rise, this inaction toward market failure deserves scrutiny. Why does the federal government underfund public alternatives to broken commercial models? What are the implications of this decades-long under-valuing of public media’s well-known civic benefits, which are enjoyed by the world’s strongest democracies?
financially struggling small-town and city newspapers — still Americans’
main source for original local journalism — a desperate search is
underway for alternative models. Analysts are looking around the world
and back through history for examples of news media that don’t depend
on advertising revenue — a collapsing business model that is unlikely to
ever return. Ideas range from starting donor-funded nonprofit
organizations to repurposing public broadcasting systems. But one
intriguing experiment from American history has been almost entirely
forgotten: the municipal newspaper.
of principles to help policymakers determine public value.
structures and practices that form the basis of the news media. The research reviewed treats news media
institutions as political actors and makes assumptions about journalism’s importance in a democratic society.
Although this line of research, with its emphasis on political economic and normative questions, often has been
marginalized in American mass communication scholarship, the authors explain its ongoing importance,
particularly in relation to the journalism crisis, and, suggest future directions.