The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA) and the Digital Equity Act of 2021 (DEA) establish a broad framework and significant funding to advance broadband connectivity and digital equity. Both Acts recognize that closing the broadband access and device gaps are necessary first steps toward digital equity. To fully realize the full benefits of digital technology for individuals, communities, and society at large additional efforts are needed.
The Digital Opportunities Compass offers a framework to assist in the development of state plans that meet the reporting and assessment requirements of IIJA and DEA but go beyond access and affordability to fully harness the benefits of digital technology. As communities and states develop plans to improve digital equity, it is important to establish a shared framework to establish goals and priorities, to identify opportunities, and monitor progress toward these goals.
Recent Talks and Events
Digitization & Social Control: Toward a Digital Political Economy
Milton Mueller, Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in the School of Public Policy & School of Cybersecurity & Privacy
Friday, February 24, 2022 | 11 AM – 12 PM | ET | Via Zoom
More Information Here | Register Here or email quello@msu.edu
Major Federal Grant Awarded to MSU and Merit Network
Announcing MSU and Merit Network as joint recipients of a $10.5 million National Telecommunications and Information Administration Broadband Infrastructure Program Grant to build out “middle mile” networking supporting high-speed internet/broadband to underserved areas of Michigan. From left: NTIA Special Representative for Broadband Andy Berke, Michigan Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist III, MSU Board of Trustees Member Renee Knake-Jefferson, MSU President Samuel L. Stanley, MSU Executive VP for Administration Melissa Woo, Quello Center Director Johannes M. Bauer, Merit President and CEO Joe Sawasky.
Full press release with more information.
Quello Center and Community Partners Recognized with 2022 MSU Distinguished Partnership Award
Featured Research Project:
The Role of Ethics in Information Policy
Research team: Johannes M. Bauer (Quello Center, MSU)
Recent working paper: Bauer, Johannes M., New Guardrails for the Information Society (September 12, 2021). Quello Center Working Paper No. 05-21, Available at SSRN and DOI.
Overcoming COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: A United States-United Kingdom Comparison
Achieving a high overall vaccination rate is crucial for overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic. To prevent widening inequalities, it is also important to increase vaccination rates among the diverse populations that are most gravely affected by the pandemic. Governmental, healthcare, and policy groups need data to guide their strategic vaccination campaigns. This policy brief presents insights from data collected shortly before vaccines were formally approved. Our analysis helps to understand the factors that influence the willingness to be vaccinated and informs strategies to reach vaccine hesitant populations.
Download Quello Center Policy Brief
Broadband and Student Performance Gaps: A Checklist for K12 Schools Considering Online Teaching in Response to COVID-19
School districts face difficult choices. Large scale shifts in public education to an online curriculum must consider inequalities in broadband access, devices and skills, as well as parental and caretaker involvement. However, these inequalities cannot be overcome immediately. Unless schools decide against online teaching altogether because of these concerns (a strategy that has disadvantages for connected students), they need to find responses that minimize potential disadvantages for vulnerable populations. Key considerations are (1) offering of measures to improve the capacity of teachers, parents and learners to adapt to online learning, (2) appropriate design and use of distance learning, and (3) short-term measures to improve access to broadband. Quello Center Policy Brief 01-20 lays out options for short-term and long-term responses to the crisis.
Four Things A School District Needs to Know Before Moving Education Online
Download Quello Center Policy Brief 01-20 | Download Broadband and Performance Gap Report
Digital Opportunities Compass: Metrics to Monitor, Evaluate, and Guide Broadband and Digital Equity Policy Reposted from the Benton Institute for
Keith N. Hampton receives the William F. Ogburn Career Achievement Award from the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology
Via Zoom | So many of the debates about public policy and the digital economy revolve around issues that are social-cybernetic in nature. That is, they deal with control and communication, but not “in the animal and the machine,” as Norbert Wiener’s foundational definition of cybernetics would have it, but control and communication in social systems. AI applications are accused of reinforcing societal biases by replicating patterns that reflect past discriminatory decisions. We want to know how much of our social life can be automated or turned over to robots, and whether this increases or decreases our sense of control […]
Join us in person, Communication Arts & Sciences Room 191 (South entrance) or via Zoom (sign up here). Event is Sponsored by the Rural Computing Research Consortium, Quello Center, American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering Rural places have experienced pernicious digital inequities for decades. Recent Pew Survey data finds that 28% of rural households in the US do not have broadband Internet access. For years, solutions to this digital divide have involved trillions of dollars invested into infrastructure that never quite bridges the gap. Instead of playing a perpetual game of technology […]
Joint event with the Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin Via WebEx | The panel is part of the Symposium on Innovation and Competition in the Digital Economy jointly organized by Prof. Johannes M. Bauer, Quello Center at Michigan State University, and Dr. Volker Stocker, Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society. The event will provide a stimulating venue for researchers from multiple fields, including economics/management and law, to discuss their work and perspectives on the roles of big tech for innovation and competition in the digital economy. Specifically, we would like to discuss the impact of big tech companies on competition and their […]