Digital Commons Network^™

She Speaks For Millions: The Emergence Of Female Diplomatic Voices In The Russo-Ukrainian War, Amber Brittain-Hale, Amber Brittain-Hale

Education Division Scholarship

This research critically investigates the public diplomacy strategies deployed by a cohort of influential female European leaders on Twitter during the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022-2023. The study comprises eight leaders - Kallas (Estonia), Marin (Finland), von der Leyen (President of the European Commission), Metsola (President of the European Parliament), Sandu (Moldova), Simonyte (Lithuania), Zourabichvili (Georgia), and Meloni (Italy) - representing millions of constituents. By mirroring the analytical attention given to Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this study scrutinizes the distinct approaches and dif erences in emotional, cognitive, and structural language use between these influential female figures and President Zelenskyy in their …

Theory-Building And Tool-Building For A Science Of Dysfunctional Political Discourse, Eric Hamilton, Marguerite Williamson, Andrew Hurford

Education Division Scholarship

This paper extends a developing analytic framework for political discourse that takes place over digital social media. Earlier presentations of the framework have furnished a rationale for applying the conceptual framework of epistemic frame theory and the tools of quantitative ethnography for political discourse analysis. They have provided early existence proofs of the viability of epistemic network analysis (ENA) for rudimentary models of social media threads that involve political content. The current theoretical paper moves significantly beyond this foundation. It summarizes and deepens the explanation of the constructs of discursive transactions, response grammars, and epistemic frames in political discourse. It …

Mobile Banking As A Mechanism To Increase Access To Financial Services, Luisa Blanco, C. Andrew Bosque, Xizhu Wang

School of Public Policy Working Papers

We study the determinants of mobile banking adoption, with a special interest on how mobile banking can increase access to financial services among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. In our analysis, we use survey data from two different sources: 1) Survey of Consumers' Use of Mobile Financial Services (SCUMFS) We conduct a regression analysis and Oaxaca Decomposition to determine the explanatory factors of racial and ethnic gaps in bank account ownership. We find that minorities are less likely to use mobile banking than Whites in the NSUUH, but more likely to adopt mobile banking according to SCUMFS, …

Mobile Data Roaming And Incentives For Investment In Rural Broadband Infrastructure, James Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Mobile broadband Internet access is highly important to the American economy and millions of users. There were almost 200 million mobile broadband connections by the end of 2013 in the United States, far more than the number of fixed broadband connections (FCC, 2014a, Table 1). The economic activity created by the provision and usage of mobile broadband is sizeable, and has been documented at the national level (Gruber and Koutroumpis, 2011; Thompson and Garbacz, 2011; Katz, 2012) and specifically for rural areas (Whitacre, Gallardo, and Strover, 2014). The benefits of mobile broadband—and indeed the entire broadband ecosystem—depend on investment in …

The Growth Of The Broadband Internet Access Market In California: Deployment, Competition, Adoption, And Challenges For Policy, James E. Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

This report examines the great progress made in availability and adoption in the broadband market over the past few decades and shows how Californian residents and businesses have come to use broadband widely. The policy issues involved with continuing the tremendous strides already made are discussed, along with recommendations for policy-makers.

The report begins by documenting the rapid growth of Internet usage in the U.S. and California. There is a review of the current state of competition in voice and broadband markets, discussing the decline of traditional telephone service, which is rapidly approaching irrelevance, and the rise of wireless and …

The Growth Of The Broadband Internet Access Market In California: Deployment, Competition, Adoption, And Challenges For Policy (Research Brief), James E. Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

This report is a brief version of a longer study of the California broadband market (Paper 63). Readers interested in more background information, more empirical analysis, and more complete documentation of sources and methodology can refer to the longer report, which is available at: http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/sppworkingpapers/63/.

The Impact Of Government Policies On Access To Broadband, James Prieger

School of Public Policy Working Papers

With a new focus for federal universal service programs on broadband and the NTIA BTOP funding for broadband adoption projects, recent years have been “exciting times” for those interested in broadband policy aimed at stimulating adoption. While most of the recent programs are still too new to be evaluated rigorously, lessons from older academic study can inform our expectations and lend guidance toward evaluating program success. In this brief work, I review what we know from the last decade and a half of literature on the impact of regulation on broadband adoption, discuss the (mostly woeful) attempts at evaluating adoption …

A Basic Analysis Of Entry And Exit In The Us Broadband Market, 2005-2008: More Detail And Additional Results, James Prieger, Michelle Connolly

School of Public Policy Working Papers

We conduct a basic yet thorough analysis of entry and exit in the US broadband market, using a complete FCC census of providers from 2005 to 2008. There is a tremendous amount of (simultaneous) entry and exit in the US broadband market. Most entry is from existing providers expanding into new geographic areas. Entry and exit vary widely across the various modes of provision, which argues against treating broadband as a homogenous service in theoretical or empirical work. The highest entry rates also generally have the highest entrant shares. Entry rates display positive autocorrelation, and the same is true for …

A Basic Analysis Of Entry And Exit In The Us Broadband Market, 2005-2008, James Prieger, Michelle Connolly

School of Public Policy Working Papers

We conduct a basic yet thorough analysis of entry and exit in the US broadband market, using a complete FCC census of providers from 2005 to 2008. There is a tremendous amount of (simultaneous) entry and exit in the US broadband market. Most entry is from existing providers expanding into new geographic areas. Entry and exit vary widely across the various modes of provision, which argues against treating broadband as a homogenous service in theoretical or empirical work. The highest entry rates also generally have the highest entrant shares. Entry rates display positive autocorrelation, and the same is true for …

Demand-Side Programs To Stimulate Adoption Of Broadband: What Works?, James Prieger, Janice A. Hauge

School of Public Policy Working Papers

We examine the evidence available on the efficacy of demand-side programs intended to stimulate broadband adoption. We review studies that attempt to measure results. Our suggestions for future program evaluations are to include cost-benefit analysis as a standard part of program review and to make clear that the purpose of evaluation is to assess progress made toward the ultimate policy goals rather than the program’s proximate implementation goals. Appropriate data must be collected to draw conclusions, and appropriate statistical methods must be used to determine the causal impacts of a program. This has rarely been done to date.

The Broadcasters’ Transition Date Roulette: Strategic Aspects Of The Dtv Transition, James Prieger, James Miller

School of Public Policy Working Papers

The analog to digital "DTV transition" completed in June 2009 was a technological event unprecedented in scale in the broadcast television industry. The final analog cutoff for TV stations culminated more than ten years of complex regulatory decisions. Facing concerns that costs and revenue could change dramatically, stations chose when to transition in response to both market and regulatory forces. The history of broadcasting reveals a continual interplay between consumer demand, technological change, and regulation. This article describes the various forces that influenced the DTV transition, and empirically examines the stations’ decisions regarding when to switch. The economic and strategic …

The Empirics Of The Digital Divide: Can Duration Analysis Help?, James Prieger, Wei-Min Hu

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Accurate measurement of digital divides is important for policy purposes. Empirical studies on broadband subscription gaps have largely used cross-sectional data, which cannot speak to the timing of technological adoption. Yet, the dynamics of a digital divide are important and deserve study. With the goal of improving our understanding of appropriate techniques for analyzing digital divides, we review competing econometric methodology and propose the use of duration analysis. We compare the performance of alternative estimation methods using a large dataset on DSL subscription in the U.S., paying particular attention to whether women, blacks, and Hispanics catch up to others in …

The Rules Of The Road Or Roadblocks On The Information Highway? Regulation And Innovation In Telecommunications, James Prieger, Daniel Heil

School of Public Policy Working Papers

Regulatory policy in telecommunications must balance short-term efficiency (low prices) against the firms’ incentives to innovate, which have longer reaching impacts on economic welfare. Historically, policy tended to sacrifice dynamic efficiency for the sake of competitive prices and static efficiency. In the last few decades, economists and other researchers have begun to document the large welfare costs of ignoring dynamic efficiency. We analyze the impact regulation has on innovation in a simple theoretical framework. We then turn to the empirical evidence that regulation dampens firms’ incentive to innovate in the telecommunications industry in general and the market for broadband Internet …

The Broadband Digital Divide And The Nexus Of Race, Competition, And Quality, James Prieger, Wei-Min Hu

School of Public Policy Working Papers

We examine the gap in broadband access to the Internet between minority groups and white households with geographically fine data on DSL subscription. In addition to income and demographics, we also examine quality of service and competition as components of the Digital Divide. The gaps in DSL demand for blacks and Hispanics do not disappear when income, education, and other demographic variables are accounted for. However, lack of competition is an important driver of the Digital Divide for blacks. Service quality is an important determinant of demand, and ignoring it masks the true size of the DSL gap for Hispanics.