Telecommunications History/Policy
- LAST REVIEWED: 31 March 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 31 March 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0035
- LAST REVIEWED: 31 March 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 31 March 2016
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0035
Introduction
This bibliography on telecommunication history and policy is organized with a global perspective as the fundamental concept for understanding the past, present, and future of telecommunication issues. Placing the global first and foremost is shaped by contemporary conditions. Nation-state and regional actions and analyses remain extremely important, and often run against the grain, wittingly or unwittingly, of global trajectories and concepts. Indeed, through the latter half of the 19th century and for much of the 20th century, the actions, decisions, and policies of nations and empires tell us more about the history of telecommunication than do global-level actions, decisions, and policies. Yet from the start, telecommunication was always a potentially borderless process, a series of theories and practices that could be and often were construed as global—even if that global vision was little more than a future fantasy for many theorists and practitioners. The visions of the past and the realities of the present argue in favor of a global continuity, a globalization now realized, as a central organizational schema for understanding telecommunication history and policy. Finally, the centrality of a global approach is likely to be thematically and organizationally sustainable for future research and scholarship regarding telecommunication history and telecommunication policy.
The Global Regulatory Domains
Herein we focus on three global regulatory domains: the International Telegraph Union, which began in 1865 and later changed its name to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU); the ITU from after its incorporation into the United Nations to the present day; and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the major global regulatory domain for the Internet. The ITU was founded by European nations in response to emergent problems in the internationalization of telegraphy, including conflicting technical standards across national borders, questions about billing practices for telegrams crossing national boundaries, and issues regarding new technological developments in telegraphy. Membership expanded beyond Europe starting in the early 1900s. The ITU was, at this time, headquartered in Switzerland. The Second World War had a significant impact on the ITU, including the expulsion of Germany and Japan (later readmitted). In 1947, as part of the organization of the United Nations, the ITU was brought into the UN system as a United Nations agency, and remains a part of the UN. ICANN was created in 1998. Although the ITU and other global regulatory domains do have relevance to Internet-based issues—particularly regarding issues related to the physical wire-and-wave–based global infrastructure that provides Internet global connectivity—Internet policy has, in the main, seen the development of its own global regulatory domain, most prominently represented by ICANN. Unlike the ITU, whose membership is centrally composed of nation-states, ICANN is a private-sector nonprofit corporation centrally involved in policy issues and technical challenges regarding the Internet Domain Name System. Beyond the ITU and ICANN, other global regulatory agencies and nongovernmental organizations do impact telecommunication policy and history, including, but not limited to, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). This section includes the main websites for ITU, ICANN, WTO, and IGF. For all of these organizations, their websites are significant resources for research.
International Telecommunications Union.
The home page provides links to a wealth of data. For historical work and for a summary of ITU structure, the about ITU link leads to overviews. The Newsroom provides current press releases. Publications offers thousands of reports and analyses. Statistics offers a significant amount of accessible data.
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
The ICANN website provides beginner’s guides that are quick tutorials on the basics of ICANN. In addition, information on newly awarded gTLDs (generic top-level domains, such as com, edu, gov, and org) and recent domain name transfers. Also available are news and media announcements, policy reports, and similar resources.
The IGF promotes dialogue, best practices, social and economic development, and the organized study and research of cooperative public-private policies and approaches to Internet governance and growth. The Documents section provides a number of globally themed reports.
At the WTO site, Trade Topics leads to links covering import licensing, information technology, intellectual technology, electronic commerce, and technical barriers to trade. Also available is a news site, and a documents site.
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Article
- Accounting Communication
- Acculturation Processes and Communication
- Action Assembly Theory
- Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis
- Activist Media
- Adherence and Communication
- Adolescence and the Media
- Advertisements, Televised Political
- Advertising
- Advertising, Children and
- Advertising, International
- Advocacy Journalism
- Agenda Setting
- Annenberg, Walter H.
- Apologies and Accounts
- Applied Communication Research Methods
- Argumentation
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advertising
- Attitude-Behavior Consistency
- Audience Fragmentation
- Audience Studies
- Authoritarian Societies, Journalism in
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bandwagon Effect
- Baudrillard, Jean
- Blockchain and Communication
- Blogs
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Brand Equity
- British and Irish Magazine, History of the
- Broadcasting, Public Service
- Capture, Media
- Castells, Manuel
- Celebrity and Public Persona
- Censorship
- Civic Duty
- Civil Rights Movement and the Media, The
- CNN
- Co-Cultural Theory and Communication
- Codes and Cultural Discourse Analysis
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Collective Memory, Communication and
- Comedic News
- Communication Apprehension
- Communication Campaigns
- Communication, Definitions and Concepts of
- Communication History
- Communication Law
- Communication Management
- Communication Networks
- Communication, Philosophy of
- Community Attachment
- Community Journalism
- Community Structure Approach
- Computational Journalism
- Computer-Mediated Communication
- Content Analysis
- Corporate Social Responsibility and Communication
- Crisis Communication
- Critical and Cultural Studies
- Critical Race Theory and Communication
- Cross-tools and Cross-media Effects
- Cultivation
- Cultural and Creative Industries
- Cultural Imperialism Theories
- Cultural Mapping
- Cultural Persuadables
- Cultural Pluralism and Communication
- Cyberpolitics
- 3D Media
- Death, Dying, and Communication
- Debates, Televised
- Deliberation
- Developmental Communication
- Diffusion of Innovations
- Digital Divide
- Digital Gender Diversity
- Digital Intimacies
- Digital Literacy
- Diplomacy, Public
- Distributed Work, Comunication and
- Documentary and Communication
- E-democracy/E-participation
- E-Government
- Elaboration Likelihood Model
- Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM)
- Embedded Coverage
- Entertainment
- Entertainment-Education
- Environmental Communication
- Ethnic Media
- Ethnography of Communication
- Experiments
- Families, Multicultural
- Family Communication
- Federal Communications Commission
- Feminist and Queer Game Studies
- Feminist Data Studies
- Feminist Journalism
- Feminist Theory
- Focus Groups
- Food Studies and Communication
- Freedom of the Press
- Friendships, Intercultural
- Gatekeeping
- Gender and the Media
- Global Englishes
- Global Media, History of
- Global Media Organizations
- Glocalization
- Goffman, Erving
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Habituation and Communication
- Health Communication
- Hegemony
- Hermeneutic Communication Studies
- Heuristics
- Homelessness and Communication
- Hook-Up and Dating Apps
- Hostile Media Effect
- Identification with Media Characters
- Identity, Cultural
- Image Repair Theory
- Implicit Measurement
- Impression Management
- Indexing
- Infographics
- Information and Communication Technology for Development
- Information Management
- Information Overload
- Information Processing
- Infotainment
- Innis, Harold
- Instructional Communication
- Integrated Marketing Communications
- Interactivity
- Intercultural Capital
- Intercultural Communication
- Intercultural Communication, Tourism and
- Intercultural Communication, Worldview in
- Intercultural Competence
- Intercultural Conflict Mediation
- Intercultural Dialogue
- Intercultural New Media
- Intergenerational Communication
- Intergroup Communication
- International Communications
- Interpersonal Communication
- Interpersonal LGBTQ Communication
- Interpretation/Reception
- Interpretive Communities
- Journalism
- Journalism, Accuracy in
- Journalism, Alternative
- Journalism and Trauma
- Journalism, Citizen
- Journalism, Citizen, History of
- Journalism Ethics
- Journalism, Interpretive
- Journalism, Peace
- Journalism, Tabloid
- Journalists, Violence against
- Knowledge Gap
- Language Ecology
- Lazarsfeld, Paul
- Leadership and Communication
- LGBTQ+ Family Communication
- LGBTQ+ People and Media Industries
- Mass Communication
- McLuhan, Marshall
- Media Activism
- Media Aesthetics
- Media and Time
- Media Bias
- Media Convergence
- Media Credibility
- Media Dependency
- Media Ecology
- Media Economics
- Media Economics, Theories of
- Media, Educational
- Media Effects
- Media Ethics
- Media Events
- Media Exposure Measurement
- Media, Gays and Lesbians in the
- Media Literacy
- Media Logic
- Media Management
- Media Policy and Governance
- Media Regulation
- Media, Social
- Media Sociology
- Media Streaming
- Media Systems Theory
- Merton, Robert K.
- Message Characteristics and Persuasion
- Mobile Communication Studies
- Muckraking
- Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Approaches to
- Multinational Organizations, Communication and Culture in
- Murdoch, Rupert
- Narrative
- Narrative Engagement
- Narrative Persuasion
- Net Neutrality
- News, Fake
- News Framing
- News Media Coverage of Women
- NGOs, Communication and
- Online Campaigning
- Open Access
- Organizational Change and Organizational Change Communicat...
- Organizational Communication
- Organizational Communication, Aging and
- Parasocial Theory in Communication
- Participation, Civic/Political
- Participatory Action Research
- Patient-Provider Communication
- Peacebuilding and Communication
- Perceived Realism
- Personalized Communication
- Persuasion and Social Influence
- Persuasion, Resisting
- Photojournalism
- Political Advertising
- Political Communication, Normative Analysis of
- Political Economy
- Political Knowledge
- Political Marketing
- Political Scandals
- Political Socialization
- Polls, Opinion
- Priming
- Product Placement
- Propaganda
- Proxemics
- Public Interest Communication
- Public Opinion
- Public Relations
- Public Sphere
- Queer Intercultural Communication
- Queer Migration and Digital Media
- Race and Communication
- Racism and Communication
- Radio Studies
- Reality Television
- Reasoned Action Frameworks
- Religion and the Media
- Reporting, Investigative
- Rhetoric and Communication
- Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication
- Rhetoric and Social Movements
- Rhetoric, Religious
- Rhetoric, Visual
- Risk Communication
- Rumor and Communication
- Schramm, Wilbur
- Science Communication
- Scripps, E. W.
- Selective Exposure
- Semiotics
- Sense-Making/Sensemaking
- Sesame Street
- Sex in the Media
- Small-Group Communication
- Social Capital
- Social Change
- Social Cognition
- Social Construction
- Social Identity Theory and Communication
- Social Interaction
- Social Movements
- Social Network Analysis
- Social Protest
- Sports Communication
- Stereotypes
- Strategic Communication
- Superdiversity
- Surveillance and Communication
- Symbolic Interactionism in Communication
- Synchrony in Intercultural Communication
- Tabloidization
- Telecommunications History/Policy
- Television
- Television, Cable
- Textual Analysis and Communication
- Third Culture Kids
- Third-Person Effect
- Time Warner
- Transgender Media Studies
- Transmedia Storytelling
- Two-Step Flow
- UNESCO
- United Nations and Communication
- Urban Communication
- Uses and Gratifications
- Video
- Video Deficit
- Video Games and Communication
- Violence in the Media
- Virtual Reality and Communication
- Visual Communication
- Web 2.0
- Web3 and Communication
- Web Archiving
- Webcare
- Whistleblowing
- Whiteness Theory in Intercultural Communication
- WikiLeaks
- Youth and Media
- Zines and Communication