Johannes M. Bauer named FCC Chief Economist
New Quello Center Study: Broadband and Student Performance Gaps After the COVID-19 Pandemic
It builds on the findings of a study on Broadband and Student Performance Gaps released in the weeks before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (Hampton et al., 2020). That report highlighted the low levels of broadband access by rural Michigan students and the detrimental impact from a lack of access on their academic performance, educational aspirations, career choices, and general well-being. In 2022, we returned to the same schools that we first surveyed in 2019. We asked students about their experience with Internet technologies and with learning from home during the pandemic. Our findings paint a picture of how rural school districts and other stakeholders rapidly mobilized to address a national crisis. In a remarkably short period of time, schools accessed state and federal resources to close gaps in rural Internet access and computing devices.
Digital Opportunities Compass: Metrics to Monitor, Evaluate, and Guide Broadband and Digital Equity Policy
East Lansing, MI – February 24, 2023. 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.
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
A new study from Michigan State University warns that gains made to address broadband and internet connectivity in Michigan rural communities are
Digital Opportunities Compass: Metrics to Monitor, Evaluate, and Guide Broadband and Digital Equity Policy Reposted from the Benton Institute for
Via Zoom | RSVP Here | or email quello@msu.edu In the eighteenth century, the printing press enabled the rise of an independent press – the Fourth Estate – that helped check the power of governments, business, and industry. In similar ways, the internet and related digital media are enabling the empowerment of many ordinary individuals to form a more independent collectivity of networked individuals – a Fifth Estate. In my new book, The Fifth Estate, I argue that this network power shift is not only enabling greater democratic accountability in politics and governance but is also helping networked individuals to be empowered in their […]
Via Zoom | Follow the link at the bottom to add to your calendar The first part of this presentation examines the emergent and sometimes paradoxical logic of the internet news ecosystem, in particular: (1) collectively, news diets have become far more concentrated in a small number of outlets; (2) however, individuals have relatively diverse news diets– almost certainly far more diverse than was plausible pre-Internet (as measured by number of unique content producers); (3) the social-algorithmic curation system of the Internet tends to point people to content with their preferences, sometimes in unlikely places. The greater diversity of consumption of news measured […]
Via Zoom | RSVP Here | or email quello@msu.edu When ignoring service terms and agreement implications, people contribute to an internet meme known as “the biggest lie on the internet” (said to be “I agree to the terms and conditions”). This talk will review research unpacking the meme. This includes survey research addressing policy ignoring behaviors, analyses of the length/complexity of service terms, and clickwrap user interface designs. Findings suggest deceptive designs like the clickwrap, and long/complicated policies contribute to ignoring behaviours. Findings also suggest privacy protective behaviors are viewed as tangential to service use goals. This is problematic as online consent processes […]
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 […]