Abstract
This chapter highlights trends and challenges and proposes solutions in crafting a new policy for critical communication in the midst of American diversity. Here and now, in the early twenty-first century, diversity can be understood neither as trend nor as evolution, but as the defining element of the American present. The fact of rapidly shifting populations deepens and renders more complex the challenge Americans face as they address communication needs in times of crisis. Understanding and contextualizing the trends driving the future of the American population is key to any discussion of critical information needs. The chapter provides an overview of Hispanic-American, African-American, Asian-American, and language diversity demographics in the USA and how policymakers can approach the information needs of a changing American population.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
American Anthropological Association, Statement on Race. 1998. Available at http://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx.
Anderson, Monica, and Andrew Perrin. 2015. 15% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they? Pew Research Center, July 28. Available at http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/28/15-of-americans-dont-use-the-internet-who-are-they/.
Belinfante, Alexander. 1993. Telephone subscribership in the United States. Washington, DC: Federal Communications Commission.
Brooks, John. 1975. Telephone: The first hundred years. New York: Harper & Row.
Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company. 1993. Telephone penetration project: Door-to-door survey, Affordability of Telephone Service 1: Non-customer survey. Washington DC: Field Research Corporation.
Fothergill, A., E.G.M. Maestas, and J.D. Darlington. 1999. Race, ethnicity and disasters in the United States: A review of the literature. Disasters 23: 156–173.
Frederickson, George M. 2002. Racism a short history. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hausman, Jerry, Timothy Tardiff, and Alexander Belinfante. 1993. The effects of the breakup of AT&T on telephone penetration in the United States. American Economic Review 83(2): 178–184.
Hodgkinson, Harold L. 2001. What Should We Call People?. Race and Ethnicity: Debates and controversies 1.2 (2001): 19.
Horrigan, John B., and Lodis Rhodes. 1995. The evolution of universal service in Texas. Austin: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas.
Hunter, Margaret. 2016. Colorism in the classroom: How skin tone stratifies African American and Latina/o students. Theory Into Practice 55(1): 54–61.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 1998. “Whiteness of a different colour.” European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lee, Sook‐Jung, Silvia Bartolic, and Elizabeth A. Vandewater. 2009. Predicting children’s media use in the USA: Differences in cross‐sectional and longitudinal analysis. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 27(1): 123–143.
Lenhart, A., L. Rainie, and O. Lewis. 2001. Teenage life online: The rise of the instant-message generation and the internet’s impact. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Mueller, Milton L., and Jorge Reina Schement. 1995. Universal service from the bottom up: A profile of telecommunications access in Camden, New Jersey. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Project on Information Policy.
Mueller, Milton L., and Jorge Reina Schement. 1996. Universal service from the bottom up: A study of telephone penetration in Camden, New Jersey. The Information Society 12: 273–292.
National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). 1995. Falling through the net: A survey of the “have nots” in rural and urban America. Washington DC: Department of Commerce.
National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). 1998. Falling through the net II: New data on the digital divide. Washington DC: Department of Commerce.
Perl, L.J. 1983. Residential demand for telephone service 1983. Prepared for Central Service Organisation of the Bell Operating Companies, Inc. BOCs, National Economic Research Associates, Inc. New York: White Plains.
Rainie, Lee. 2015. Digital divides 2015. Pew Research Center, September 22. Retrieved December 10 from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/09/22/digital-divides-2015/.
Rideout, V.J., U.G. Foehr, and D.F. Roberts. 2010. Generation M2: Media in the lives of 8- to 18-year-olds. Menlo Park: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Schement, Jorge Reina. 1995. Beyond universal service: Characteristics of Americans without telephones, 1980–1993. Telecommunications Policy 19(6): 477–485.
Schement, Jorge Reina. 1998. Thorough Americans: Minorities and the new media. In Investing in diversity: Advancing opportunities for minorities and the media, ed. Amy Korzick Garmer. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute.
Schement, Jorge Reina. 2003. Three for society: Households and media in the creation of twenty-first century communities. In The wired homestead, ed. Joseph Turow and Andrea L. Kavanaugh. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Schement, Jorge Reina, and Scott C. Forbes. 2000. Identifying temporary and permanent gaps in universal service. The Information Society 16: 117–126.
Schement, Jorge Reina, Alex Belinfante, and Paurance Povich. 1997. Trends in telephone penetration in the United States 1984–1994. In Globalism and localism in telecommunications, ed. Eli M. Noam and Alex J. Wolfson. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Smith, Aaron. 2014. Older adults and technology use: Usage and adoption. Pew Research Center, April 3. Available at http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/04/03/usage-and-adoption/.
Snipp, C. Matthew. 2003. Racial measurement in the American census: Past practices and implications for the future. Annual Review of Sociology 29. Annual Reviews: 563–588. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036980.
Sussman, Robert Wald. 2014. The myth of race: The troubling persistence of an unscientific idea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
U.S. Census Bureau. 2004. U.S. interim projections by age, sex, race, and hispanic origin. Available at http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/usinterimproj/.
Vespa, Jonathan, Jamie M. Lewis, and Rose M. Kreider. 2013. America’s families and living arrangements: 2012. Current Population Reports, 20–570.
Vittrup, Brigitte, et al. 2014. Parental perceptions of the role of media and technology in their young children’s lives. Journal of Early Childhood Research: doi:10.1177/1476718X14523749.
Williams, Frederick, and Susan Hadden. 1991. On the prospects for redefining universal service: From connectivity to content (Report of the Policy Research Project). Austin: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas.
Yanow, Dvora. 2015. Constructing “race” and “ethnicity” in America: Category-making in public policy and administration. Abingdon/Oxon/Oxfordshire/New York: Routledge.
Zickuhr, Kathryn, and Aaron Smith. 2013. Home broadband 2013. Pew Research Center, August 26. Available at http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/08/26/home-broadband-2013/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lloyd, M., Llorenz, J., Schement, J.R. (2016). Understanding a Diverse America’s Critical Information Needs. In: Lloyd, M., Friedland, L. (eds) The Communication Crisis in America, And How to Fix It. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94925-0_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94925-0_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-94924-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-94925-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)