I’m absolutely thrilled to be joining the second year of the Partnerships for Evidence-based Public Policy (PEPP) Fellowship program, which is sponsored and hosted by the Social & Behavioral Science Institute (SBSI) and the Institute for Government and Public Affairs (IGPA) at Illinois. As the newsletter announcement explains, Beginning in August 2026, PEPP fellows will undertake projects focused on…
Broadband Adoption
The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation
I look forward to participating in this wonderful event tomorrow at 1pm ET via the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society‘s YouTube page in celebration of Alisa Valentin and Claudia Ruiz’s new excellent paper, titled “The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation” from Public Knowledge, UnidosUS, and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA). From the Benton…
“The Ability to Pay for Broadband” Now Open Access
I am thrilled to announce that our 2019 paper, titled “The Ability to Pay for Broadband” (Rhinesmith, Reisdorf, & Bishop) is now open open access in Communication Research and Practice. As I described in a previous post after the article was published, “In our recent paper, published in a special issue of Communications Research and…
Investing in the Human Infrastructure of Broadband
I’m excited to announce that our collaborative final report, co-authored with Dr. Revati Prasad (Benton Institute for Broadband & Society) along with significant contributions from Dr. Caroline Stratton (National Digital inclusion Alliance) and Larra Clark (American Library Association) on the Human Infrastructure of Broadband is out today! The report, titled “From the Ground Up: investing…
Special Issue on Homelessness and Mobile Media Published
My article, titled “‘It’s one of the most important things we carry for us”: How mobile hotspots support people experiencing homelessness” has been included in the new Special Issue on Homelessness and Mobile Media just published in volume 12, issue 2 of Mobile Media & Communication. The article, first published last November, presents findings from…
New Report Highlights Participatory Action Research Project with Tech Goes Home
Over the past year, my team and I at the Digital Equity Research Center at METRO co-led a participatory action research project with Tech Goes Home (TGH). The purpose of the study was to develop a theory of change for TGH, as well as an analysis of the challenges and opportunities facing community-based organizations in…
Defining “Adoption of Broadband” in the Infrastructure Bill
It was thrilling to see that the definition of “meaningful broadband adoption” from my 2016 Benton Foundation report appeared in the final version of H.R. 3684, the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” This bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden on November 15, 2021. There are many people to thank…
CBSN Interview on Affordable Internet Access and Biden’s Infrastructure Plan
This evening, I joined CBS News political contributor and BluePrint Strategy founder Antjuan Seawright to talk with CBSN’s Lana Zak about the necessity of affordable internet access and President Biden’s infrastructure plan. For more on the “Homework Gap,” I would recommend my colleague, John Horrigan’s excellent work in the recent Alliance for Excellent Education report, “Students…
Research Cited in CSR Report
The Congressional Research Service is a department within the Library of Congress that has been providing timely research to the U.S. Congress that is “objective, authoritative and confidential, thereby contributing to an informed national legislature,” since 1914. I am honored to share the news that my research on Digital Inclusion and Meaningful Broadband Adoption published by…
Broadband Workarounds
In our new article, titled “The Ability of Pay for Broadband” in the journal Communication Research and Practice, my co-authors Dr. Bianca Reisdorf, Madison Bishop, and I introduce a term that we are calling broadband workarounds based on the findings from our research. The concept builds on research by the late Les Gasser who I…