Seamus Simpson

This book explores how a globally-accessible online communication environment might provide Nigeria with the opportunity to strategically adopt elements of 21st-century online mass communication to encourage continued development in the future. In this book, Adeyanju Apejoye, Andrew Danjuma Dewan, and Seamus Simpson argue that the most productive, innovative, and effective media systems are those which position accountability to public interest as a crucial factor in the proper functioning of news production and consumption. As the Nigerian news media system has undergone decades of nuanced change and development, the provision and consumption of both traditional and digital news has emerged as a significant topic in research on African media. This book constitutes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the Nigerian news media system in the era of expanding digital information networks and service, providing nuanced analyses of news texts and offering a detailed critical exposition of the history and character of development in the nation.

The book addresses representation of the public interest in Internet standard developing organisations (SDOs). Much of the existing literature on Internet governance focuses on international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The literature covering standard developing organisations has to date focused on organisational aspects. This book breaks new ground with investigation of standard development within SDO fora. Case studies centre on standards relating to privacy and security, mobile communications, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and copyright. The book lifts the lid on internet standard setting with detailed insight into a world which, although highly technical, very much affects the way in which citizens live and work on a daily basis. In doing this it adds significantly to the trajectory of research on Internet standards and SDOs that explore the relationship between politics and protocols. The analysis contributes to academic debates on democracy and the internet, global self-regulation and civil society, and international decision-making processes in unstructured environments. The book advances work on the Multiple Streams Framework (MS) by applying it to decision-making in non-state environments, namely SDOs which have long been dominated by private actors. The book is aimed at academic audiences in political science, computer science, communications, and science and technology studies as well as representatives from civil society, the civil service, government, engineers and experts working within SDO fora. It will also be accessible to students at the postgraduate and undergraduate levels.

With digital technologies blurring media boundaries, this book provides a detailed analysis of how the Internet is producing a convergence of the press, audio-visual and online media. Based on extensive empirical analysis, the authors analyse over 25 years of changes to media forms and expose the reality behind the notion that media convergence is inevitable and inexorable. Peter Humphreys and Seamus Simpson break new ground through exploring a diverse range of topics at the heart of the media convergence governance debate, such as next generation networks, spectrum, copyright and media subsidies. They highlight how reluctance to accommodate non-market based policy solutions creates conflicts and problems resulting in only shallow media convergence thus far. Highly accessible, this book is a valuable read for undergraduate and masters students researching digital media and communications. With guidance on a series of policy directions and innovations that should be developed to fulfil the promise of media convergence, it is also a vital tool for media and communication practitioners and policy makers.

This book breaks new ground by exploring governance strategies that the EU has been developing over the last decade for the growing electronic economy driven by the Internet. Through an analysis of key EU policy initiatives, the authors provide an explanation of both the form and mechanics of emergent governance arrangements within the European e-economy. Drawing on data gathered through interviews with key national and EU level policymakers, the volume applies theoretical insights from academic work on the 'regulatory' and 'post-regulatory' state to situate and explain the EU's role as an international regional actor in a new area of economic activity with important national and global dimensions. The New Electronic Marketplace will be important reading for academics, students and policymakers interested in the politics of new electronic communications regulation, communications policy, EU governance and international political economy. The book will interest the Internet 'policy community', including officials at national and EU level, those working in national regulatory authorities, and Internet, telecoms and other ICT professionals in the private sector.

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the complex interrelationship between technological change, globalisation, 'Europeanisation', national institutional structures, and the transfer of ideas in the reform of European telecommunications regulation. Globalisation, Convergence and European Telecommunications Regulation analyses the achievements and limitations of over twenty years of EU efforts to liberalise markets and to harmonise regulation. A key feature is the author's treatment of the EU's regulatory policy response to technological convergence in the information and communications sector, through its new Electronic Communications Regulatory Framework. The book explores in detail the dynamics of the complex relationship between technological and globalisation pressures, economic interests and European and national policy responses. A key finding is persistent Member State diversity in regulatory implementation alongside remarkable policy convergence on a new institutional model for the telecommunications sector. An overarching trend is the emergence of distinct features of a 'regulatory state', at national and EU level, in the telecommunications sector. Contributing to the ongoing debate on the role of the EC and the extent to which EU telecommunications policy can be described as 'supranational', this book will strongly appeal to academics, researchers, students and practitioners involved in the fields of technology, public policy and European studies.