17. Television Studies and Television Policy Regulation
John McMurria (DePaul University); participants: Jennifer Proffitt (Florida State University), Cynthia Chris (College of Staten Island/City University of New York), Philip Napoli (Fordham University), Minna Aslama (Fordham University), Jennifer Holt (University of California-Santa Barbara), moderator: Allison Perlman (University of Texas at Austin)

Question: Television studies scholarship, and other disciplines steeped in the humanities and soft social sciences, has remained marginal within media policy forums. Often policy officials privilege the perceived certainties of quantitative methods and the universalistic claims of the behavioral sciences while television studies scholarship is less often articulated toward immediate policy goals. This panel will bring people together from policy, industry and academic backgrounds to discuss how the critical cultural studies and ethnographic approaches of television scholars can engage with policy issues during a period when the regulatory regimes of broadcasting, cable, satellite and the internet are converging. We will ask how the policy legacies of broadcast, telephony, cable and the internet get evoked in decision making as they pertain to issues of access and diversity across indices of race, gender and class. How can critical cultural studies engage with the different registers of content regulations across distribution platforms? How might television studies scholars design research agendas that better direct their work toward policy-making goals?

Philip Napoli and Minna Aslama's Response

Cynthia Chris's Response

Jennifer Proffitt's Response

John McMurria's Response

Jennifer Holt's Response