World Media Economics and Management Conference 2016

From a management perspective, we were interested in how media framed the debate of Net Neutrality. Of particular interest was how the public and the government administration was so swiftly galvanized to protect the interests of free access to the Internet. It often seems the media can be its own worst enemy in portraying issues or sides of a story related to its own industry. The potential for bias is particularly problematic and open to criticism. For this study, we looked at how three key newspapers framed the debate of net neutrality during the heat of the argument leading up to President Obama’s support. Both pro and anti-net neutrality frames were identified. Three stages of a content analysis were conducted. The first was computerized looking at manifest content. The second was manual looking at latent content. Types of sources used were also analyzed. Results indicated that media brought this topic to the public forefront by focusing on frames and sources most supportive of a pro net neutrality stance. Finally, the study looks at government policy from an historical perspective to predict what media organizations might expect in the near future regarding regulation of the Internet.