Research



Although my scholarship spans a number of research areas, it is united by a central concern with how media institutions and systems constrain and enable democratic practices. In particular, my work focuses on the policies, politics, history, and democratic theory that structure media institutions, and how media figure within the broader U.S. and global political economy. More specifically, my work focuses on global and U.S. media policy, the politics driving specific policy regimes, and activist efforts toward changing them. I have published on the following subjects: The history and future of journalism; Indymedia and Internet politics; global communication, Internet governance policies, and communication rights; the complex relationships between media activists, political elites, and the mainstream press; and the politics of digital media policies such as network neutrality.

Much of my current work focuses on the future of journalism and news media. In particular, I focus on alternative journalistic models in global, historical, and contemporary contexts, and their implications for the current challenges facing advertising-supported news media. In this vein, I was the lead author on an influential white paper, "Saving the News," which was the first comprehensive study of the journalism crisis that erupted in 2008-2009. These interests led to a co-edited book with Robert McChesney, Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done To Fix It, published with the New Press in May 2011.

My dissertation, "Media Democracy Deferred: The Postwar Settlement for U.S. Communications, 1945-1949," historicizes current media policies and reform efforts. Based on extensive archival research, it analyzes the postwar critical juncture when policymakers, social movements, and communication industries grappled over the role of a commercial press in a democratic society. By focusing on policy formations around the Hutchins Commission, the FCC Blue Book, and the Fairness Doctrine, I chronicle how a vibrant media reform movement was largely co-opted and quelled, resulting in a "postwar settlement" marked by three assumptions: media should remain self- regulated, practice social responsibility, and adhere to a negative conception of the First Amendment--a freedom of the press privileging the rights of media producers and owners over listeners, readers, and the broader public. This social contract between the state, the polity, and media institutions consolidated an industry-friendly arrangement that contained reform movements, foreclosed on alternative models, and discouraged structural critiques of the U.S. media system. These outcomes continue to have a major impact on much of the media Americans interact with today.

I am drawing from my dissertation research for a book- length study based on the 1940s media reform movement, the resultant normative foundations for media policies like the Fairness Doctrine, and the lessons these antecedents hold for contemporary policymakers and reformers, particularly around questions regarding the future of news media and its role in a democratic society. A future book project will examine how this "postwar settlement" has helped create a "misinformation society" that structurally undercuts democratic ideals of civil deliberation around important policy issues. I also am working on a book that examines the tactics, strengths, weaknesses, tensions, and democratic theories underlying different types of media activism. Finally, I am in the early stages of planning a monograph-length comparative analysis of the normative foundations of global media and telecommunication policy regimes.

Selected Publications


Academic Journal Articles

Victor Pickard (2011).
The Battle over the FCC Blue Book: Determining the Role of Broadcast Media in a Democratic Society, 1945- 1948. Media, Culture & Society 33(2)171-191.

Victor Pickard (2011).
Can Government Support the Press? Historicizing and Internationalizing a Policy Approach to the Journalism Crisis.The Communication Review 14 (2)73 - 95.

Sascha Meinrath, James Losey & Victor Pickard (2011).
Digital Feudalism: Enclosures and Erasures from Digital Rights Management to the Digital Divide. CommLaw Conspectus: Journal of Communications Law and Policy, 423-479.

Victor Pickard (2010).
'Whether the Giants Should Be Slain or Persuaded to Be Good': Revisiting the Hutchins Commission and the Role of Media in a Democratic Society. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 27, 4, 391-411.

Victor Pickard (2010).
Reopening the Postwar Settlement for U.S. Media: The Origins and Implications of the Social Contract between Media, the State, and the Polity. Communication, Culture & Critique 3, 2, 170-189.

Victor Pickard & Sascha Meinrath (2009).
Revitalizing the Public Airwaves: Opportunistic Unlicensed Reuse of Government Spectrum. International Journal of Communication, 3, 1052- 1084.

Sascha Meinrath and Victor Pickard (2008).
Transcending Net Neutrality: Ten Steps Toward an Open Internet. Journal of Internet Law, 12 (6), 1, 12-21.

Victor Pickard (2008).
Cooptation and Cooperation: Institutional Exemplars of Democratic Internet Technology. New Media and Society 10 (4), 625-645.

Sascha Meinrath and Victor Pickard (2008).
The New Network Neutrality: Criteria for Internet Freedom. International Journal of Communication Law and Policy, 12, 225-243.

Victor Pickard (2007).
Neoliberal Visions and Revisions in Global Communications Policy from NWICO to WSIS. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 31 (2), 118-139.

Victor Pickard (2006).
A ssessing the Radical Democracy of Indymedia: Discursive, Technical and Institutional Constructions. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 23 (1), 19-38.

Victor Pickard (2006).
United yet Autonomous: Indymedia and the Struggle to Sustain a Radical Democratic Network. Media Culture & Society, 28 (3), 315-336.

Lisa McLaughlin and Victor Pickard (2005).
What is Bottom Up About Global Internet Governance? Global Media and Communication, 1 (3), 359-375.

W. Lance Bennett, Victor Pickard, David P. Iozzi, Carl L. Schroeder, Taso Lagos, and Courtney Evans-Caswell (2004).
Managing the Public Sphere: Journalistic Construction of the Great Globalization Debate. Journal of Communication, 54, 437-455.

Kevin Coe, David Domke, Erica Graham, Sue John and Victor Pickard (2004).
No Shades of Gray: The Binary Discourse of George W. Bush and an Echoing Press. Journal of Communication, 54, 234-252.

Book Chapters

Sascha Meinrath & Victor Pickard (2009).
The Rise of the Intranet Era: Media, Research and Policy in an Age of Communications Revolution. Globalization and Communicative Democracy: Community Media in the 21st Century (Ed. Kevin Howley), London: Sage Publications, pp. 327-340

Reference Articles

Victor W. Pickard (2008).
Communication Rights in a Global Context. In Robin Anderson and Jonathan Gray (Eds.), Battleground: The Media, Vol. 1. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, pp. 91-97.

Victor W. Pickard (2008).
The Indymedia Model: Strengths and Weaknesses of a Radical Democratic Experiment. Global Civil Society Yearbook 2007/8: Communicative Power and Democracy. London: Sage Publications, pp. 207, 210-212.

Victor W. Pickard (2007).
Alternative Media. In Todd M. Schaefer and Thomas A. Birkland (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Media and Politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press, pp.12-13.

Victor W. Pickard (2007).
Telecommunications Act of 1996. In Todd M. Schaefer and Thomas A. Birkland (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Media and Politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press, p.280.

Book Reviews

Victor Pickard (2011).
Understanding Communication Power. Invited review of Manuel Castells's Communication Power, for Global Media and Communication 7 (1), 54-56.

Victor Pickard.
Future Active and the Future of the Internet. Review of Graham Meikle's Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. November 2005.

White Papers and Policy Reports

Victor Pickard, Josh Stearns & Craig Aaron (2009).
Saving the News: Toward a National Journalism Strategy. Free Press.

Victor Pickard & Sascha Meinrath (2009).
Revitalizing the Public Airwaves: Opportunistic Unlicensed Reuse of Government Spectrum. New America Foundation.

Magazine Articles

Victor Pickard,
Forgotten Lessons for Journalism's Future. Communication Currents, December, 2010.

Op-eds

Victor Pickard,
Cracks in the Pay Walls. SavetheNews.net, August 24, 2009.

Victor Pickard,
Take the Profit Motive out of News. Guardian UK, July 23, 2009.

Victor Pickard,
Costs of the Journalism Crisis. SavetheNews.net, July 22, 2009.

Victor Pickard & Joe Torres,
Saving America's Democracy- sustaining Journalism. Seattle Times, July 5, 2009.

Victor Pickard,
Confronting the Crisis in Journalism. Smart Assets: The Philanthropy New York Blog, June 12, 2009.

Victor Pickard & Sascha Meinrath,
Internet for All: Competition, Consumer Choice, and the Cost of Connectivity. InternetforEveryone.net, December 5, 2009.

Public Documents

Federal Communications Commission (1946)
Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees "