We are happy to announce that our program collaborator Dr. Phil Napoli (Fordam) and Michelle Seaton (Fordam) have published a new paper in the Federal Communications Law Journal (Issue March 2007, Vol. 59, No. 2) entitled "Necessary Knowledge for Communications Policy: Information Asymmetries and Commercial Data Access and Usage in the Policymaking Process." The paper illustrates issues of access to data for communications policymaking via a case study of the FCC’s 2003 media ownership proceeding and offers suggestions for how the existing disparities in access to policy-relevant data might be addressed.

Full text of the paper can be accessed online at http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v59/no2/8-Napoli.pdf .

This research builds upon recommendations found in the SSRC-sponsored paper “Towards a Federal Data Agenda for Communications Policymaking” which was released in February, as part of the work of the Data Consortium for Media and Communications Policy.

For more information about  the Data Consortium contact us at mediahub@ssrc.org.