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.
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.
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.
Articles, Essays, and Book Chapters by Victor Pickard
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.
This chapter aims to articulate a positive-rights paradigm that marshals contemporary, historical... more This chapter aims to articulate a positive-rights paradigm that marshals contemporary, historical, and international legal frameworks to argue that government should have an affirmative duty to guarantee meaningful access to news and information for everyone. Drawing from democratic, legal, and economic theories, the chapter builds on a long lineage of argumentation—from Alexander Meiklejohn and Jerome Barron to more recent arguments advanced by C. Edwin Baker and Martha Minow—for why the First Amendment does not forbid government interventions that promote journalism. If we assume that press freedom is rendered meaningless without a press to protect, we arguably should go even further to compel the government to make targeted and democratically determined interventions into the media marketplace to guarantee public alternatives when private commercial media institutions fail to serve democratic needs.
LPE Blog, 2024
The recent spate of job losses in journalism make evident the need for systemic alternatives to c... more The recent spate of job losses in journalism make evident the need for systemic alternatives to commercial media. Tweaking market mechanisms and scrambling for new business models is futile when the market itself is a core part of the problem. Our democracy requires that we disentangle news and information from capitalism — we need a horizon for journalism beyond the market.
Nieman Journalism Lab, 2023
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.
Media and Uncertainty , 2021
Contains the transcripts of the keynote lectures delivered at the 2nd Lisbon Winter School for th... more Contains the transcripts of the keynote lectures delivered at the 2nd Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication.
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.
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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.
chains are going under, and vulture capitalists are picking over the
remains. We need a news bailout — but one that overhauls the
existing corporate model and pushes the media to put the public
before profits.
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.