{"id":9,"date":"2009-05-06T08:00:14","date_gmt":"2009-05-06T08:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/?p=9"},"modified":"2022-11-08T12:09:56","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T12:09:56","slug":"social-network-structure-of-network-neutrality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/06\/social-network-structure-of-network-neutrality\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Network Structure of Network Neutrality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abstract<\/a><\/h3>\n

The concurrent arrival of the network neutrality debate in both the United States and Canada raises doubts about their separate national character, and suspicions about the influence of transnational economic interests, and suggests lessons about the political ramifications of economic integration. While a great deal has been written both in favour and against network neutrality policies, substantially less work has been done to interrogate the social networks of the many vested interests in the policy discussion. This paper draws on the interlocking directorate tradition of Social Network Analysis to investigate the political economy of network neutrality. By conducting a qualitative experiment using social network graphing software to test three plausible hypotheses it investigates the social relations of interests vested in the outcome of this contentious telecommunications policy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/a><\/h3>\n

\u201cNet neutrality means simply that all like Internet content must be treated alike and move at the same speed over the network. The owners of the Internet’s wires cannot discriminate. This is the simple but brilliant \u2018end-to-end\u2019 design of the Internet that has made it such a powerful force for economic and social good: All of the intelligence and control is held by producers and users, not the networks that connect them.\u201d \u2013\u2013 Lawrence Lessig & Robert McChesney (2006)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While the later decades of the 20th century in North America were marked by widespread economic deregulation and the proliferation of digital communication networks (i.e. the internet), the first decade of the 21st century produced a public battle over how to regulate the digital network infrastructure and, consequently, the content they deliver. Broadly described in North America as \u201cnetwork neutrality\u201d and \u201copen access\u201d, the regulatory policies in contention will likely shape the political economy of communication in the centre of the world system for the foreseeable future. The concurrent arrival of this debate in both the United States and Canada raises doubts about their separate national character, and suspicions about the influence of transnational economic interests, and suggests lessons about the political ramifications of economic integration.<\/p>\n

There has been a great deal written about network neutrality since AT&T Corp v. City of Portland (2000) and Brand X v. FCC (2003, 2005), such that the International Journal of Communication had a special issue on the topic in 2007. However, a review of the literature suggests that the vast majority of scholarship has revolved around the question of whether or not network neutrality is \u201cgood\u201d and very little (if any) work has been done to interrogate the social networks of the many vested interests in the policy discussion. Leaving aside the question of whether network neutrality should be national policy, this paper draws on the interlocking directorate tradition of Social Network Analysis (Fennema & Schijf, 1978) to investigate the political economy of this telecommunication policy debate. The first part of this paper first discuses two theoretical approaches to network neutrality \u2013 Harold Innis\u2019 bias of communications and Dan Schiller\u2019s demand side political economy \u2013 and samples news reports which suggest the transnational character of policy negotiation. The second part describes a qualitative experiment using social network graphing software which investigates three plausible hypotheses about the social relations of interests vested in the outcome of network neutrality policy.
\n<\/p>\n

Two Political Economy Approaches to Network Neutrality<\/h3>\n

Harold Innis\u2019 work may provide the clearest model for placing network neutrality in a historical context. In the last century, the high capital costs of the production of paper, radio and television communication created a \u201cmonopoly of knowledge\u2026 that invited competition from a new medium of communication, which appeared on the fringes of [American] culture and was available to meet the demands of lower strata of society\u201d (Innis, 2007, p. 146). When similar monopolies of knowledge have arisen in human history, they \u201cdeveloped and declined partly in relation to the medium of communication on which they were built and tended to alternate as they emphasized religion, decentralization, and time, and force, centralization, and space\u201d (Innis, 2007, p 192). Whereas the production and distribution of radio and television favours the centralization of production and \u201cone-to-many\u201d broadcast distribution, the internet favours decentralization of production and \u201cmany-to-many\u201d distribution of communication. Because the internet has disrupted the monopolies of the previously dominant media, it is the bias of these competing media, and the financial capital interested heavily invested in each of them, that is the source of the conflict over network neutrality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe debate about network neutrality is often portrayed as protection of the consumer experience, and regulations are often framed in these terms. But it should be clear that what happens to the consumer is a by-product of how the battles among the large stakeholders are resolved\u201d (Clark, 2007, p.706). In How to Think about Information, Dan Schiller argues that in the evolution of the U.S. telecommunication system \u201cindustrial, financial, and commercial telecommunication users have played a formative and even a determining role\u201d (Schiller, 2007, p. 61). It is a mistake, he writes, to focus on the supply side because \u201cthe demand side of the telecommunications equation has been pivotal\u201d (ibid, p.61). Just as business-user demand helped justify the post-office system and the telegraph was \u201cdisproportionately used by large-scale enterprises oriented toward a truly national political economy\u201d (ibid, p.62), so too the regulated AT&T telephone monopoly was born out of the policy preferences of business-user pressure groups (ibid, 63). In the 1980s and 1990s, desktop computers and local area networks (LANs) \u201cmushroomed mostly throughout major corporations\u201d (ibid, p. 78) creating the \u201caccelerating demand for cheap, wider-area interconnectivity\u201d (ibid, p. 79) that justified \u201ctwo-thirds of the spectacularly increased Internet investment\u201d (ibid, p.79). Schiller\u2019s argument suggests that a study of network neutrality interrogates the role played by demand side business-users in lobbying for their preferred policy outcomes, in addition to the relationships between network owners, consumer groups and grassroots movements.
\n<\/p>\n

<\/a>Network Neutrality in Two Countries<\/h3>\n

A survey of network neutrality debates in both the United States and Canada shows that they have been engaged from the (non-exclusive) perspectives of business management, culture studies, economics, journalism, law, marketing, political economy, public administration, public relations, science and technology studies (STS), and technical engineering. Generally, the ideological and intellectual arguments which have been marshalled to these debates betray the liberal ideology of economic and political elites: much of the discussion presumes that perfect competition is preferable so the debates largely centre on whether there is sufficient competition in the telephone-cable duopolies which exist in most geographic markets (Cleland, 2009). Consequently, these debates are less about whether the networks should be regulated than they are about who should regulate the networks: one side attempts to reassert government regulation in the \u2018common carrier\u2019 tradition while the other seeks to advance corporate consolidation in the tradition of the \u2018enclosure of the commons\u2019: \u201cmore private control for corporate users, network suppliers, and investors translates into less societal control and reduced democratic accountability\u201d (Schiller, 2008, p.96).<\/p>\n

In a 22 January 2006 article in The Washington Post, journalist Christopher Stern described the conventional wisdom of the two teams in \u201cThe Coming Tug of War Over the Internet\u201d: the FCC-approved mega-mergers in the telecommunications sector in 2005 and the U.S. Congress plan to rewrite the Telecommunications Act of 1996, set the stage for a conflict between two camps (Stern, 2006). The first camp, Stern wrote, is composed of public interest groups joined by Google, Yahoo, and \u201chundreds of other companies that do business on the Web\u201d which would fight to preserve the status quo of network neutrality on the internet. The opposing camp is composed of AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth, Comcast, Time Warner and other cable companies seeking to develop new revenues from their ownership of internet \u201con-ramps\u201d. On 8 June 2006, professors Lawrence Lessig and Robert McChesney co-authored an editorial in The Washington Post which described network neutrality as \u201cthe most important public policy you’ve probably never heard of\u201d (Lessig & McChesney, 2006) and expanded the field of combatants to \u201chigh-priced lobbyists; coin-operated think tanks; and sham \u2018Astroturf\u2019 groups\u201d versus a \u201creal grass-roots coalition of more than 700 groups, 5,000 bloggers and 750,000 individual Americans\u201d. In November 2007, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama released a technology policy plan which strongly supported network neutrality (Techweb, 2007). When Republican presidential candidate John McCain released his technology policy plan in August 2008 it strongly opposed network neutrality regulations (Techweb, 2008). While recognizing the philosophical and ideological differences which inform the two candidates, a Bloomberg.com article by Christopher Stern declared that \u201cA Barack Obama presidency would bode well for Google Inc. A John McCain victory would be good for AT&T Inc\u201d (Stern, 2008).<\/p>\n

During a February 2007 debate in the Canadian House of Commons, Bloc Quebecois MP Paul Cr\u00eate unsuccessfully challenged Conservative Minister of Industry Maxime Bernier to commit the government to the principles of network neutrality (Canada, 2007). The next day, the Canadian Press reported that the Minister\u2019s backgrounder was decisively against taking regulatory action: \u201cAt this point it is premature to adopt a position on net neutrality\u201d (Geist, February 6 2007). In September 2008, the business section of the Toronto Star ran an editorial in which Michael Geist continued his campaign for network neutrality in Canada (i.e. see Geist, 2005, 2006, 2007) by noting that both Obama and McCain had \u201cunveiled detailed digital policy positions\u201d but that \u201cCanadian leaders have yet to promote their policies\u201d (Geist, 2008). Geist urged candidates and Canadians to discuss five digital issues \u2013 including network neutrality \u2013 in the weeks leading up to the October 2008 Canadian federal election.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Social Network Structure of Network Neutrality<\/h3>\n

Early in the 20th century Social Network Analysis (SNA) developed out of attempts to use graph theory to study and represent the structure of complex relationships between members of social groups (Sola Pool & Kochen, 1978). L\u00f3pez and Scott, quoted in Knox, Savage & Harvey, state that \u201cthe basic presumption of social network analysis is that sociograms of points and lines can be used to represent agents and their social relations. The pattern of connections among these lines in a sociogram represents the relations structure of a society or social group\u201d (Knox, et al, 2006, p. 117). Researchers engaged in the study of \u2018ego-networks\u2019 \u201cdo not enumerate all the relationships between all members of a (sub-) population, but only between a given individual and his or her \u2018alters\u2019\u201d (Knox, et al, 2006, p.118). The study of \u2018whole networks\u2019, however, requires that data on a whole populations be collected so that \u201call the ties in a given population can be measured to understand the complete structure of role relationship\u201d (ibid, p.119).<\/p>\n

This qualitative experiment attempts to combine a number of ego-networks into a representative whole network, before using SNA to test three hypotheses about the political economy of network neutrality debates in Canada and the United States:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. the network neutrality debates in Canada and the United States share the same pool of actors because the economic interests are transnational corporations;<\/li>\n
  2. the relationships between those actors will reveal a conflict between the supply side and the demand side;<\/li>\n
  3. relationships will align with corporate actors with NGOs which share their policy position.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/p>\n

    <\/a>Data Collection<\/h3>\n

    The data set consists of a convenience sample produced by using high-search ranked websites to seed multiple snowball samples. Individuals, corporations, non-profits, websites, associations, coalitions and government entities are treated as unitary actors and coded as \u2018nodes\u2019. Any membership or collaborative correspondence is treated a relationship and coded as an \u2018edge\u2019. During the data cleaning process, attempts are made to standardize names of organizations. It is assumed that subsidiaries share the policy preferences of their corporate parents, and are therefore re-named after the parent company (i.e. AT&T Canada Inc became AT&T). The data set consisting of 9916 edges for 3953 nodes can be downloaded http:\/\/www.sfu.ca\/~jkm9\/neutralnet\/data_all.txt.<\/p>\n

    The data set includes members of coalitions like SaveTheInternet.com, the Open Internet Coalition, SaveOurNet.ca, HandsOffTheInternet.com and NetCompetition.org, as well as members of connected industry organizations including the National Association of Manufacturers, CATA Alliance, the Information Technology Association of America and the Canadian Association of Internet Providers. Where relevant documents could be identified, the data set includes co-signers to open letters, amicus briefs, whitepapers and advisory reports to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. When the boards of directors and senior staff of NGOs and industry associations are immediately available, they are included in the data set, though the board members of corporations are not.<\/p>\n

    <\/a>Exploring the Data<\/h3>\n

    The data set exhibits the characteristics of a power law graph in which the top 8% most connected nodes account for 50% of all edges, and the top 0.5% most connected nodes account for 38% of all edges. Figure 1, which graphs the top 100 most connected nodes, (44% of all edges) illustrates the phenomenon.<\/p>\n

    Less than 200 nodes have 3 or more edges and fewer than 1500 of the nodes have 2 or more edges. Over half of the organizations in the data set are \u2018leaf nodes\u2019 which have only one edge and connect to only one other node. Table 1 lists the top 45 most-connected nodes, and includes many of the largest coalitions in the net neutrality debates as well as many of the most influential NGOs and largest corporations. There is clearly an influence of researcher bias in this data, as many of the search seeds are highly represented, including neutrality.ca, SaveTheInternet.com, the Open Internet Coalition and others. However, many high-ranking rank individuals and organizations are present because they are genuinely well connected, including the Free Press, Union des consommateurs, Rogers, Accenture, Deloitte & Touche and Andre Delattre.<\/p>\n

    <\/a>Visualizing the Network Structure<\/h3>\n

    Visualization of the data sets was produced with SemaSpace, a platform-independent, java based, dynamic network graph plotter \u201cspecially designed for the fast, interactive manipulation of very large networks\u201d (Offenhuber & Dirmoser, 2008). Initial graphing of the full data set, which includes edges to government agencies like the FCC and CRTC, revealed the complexity of network neutrality lobbying efforts but obscured inter-actor relationships by treating government agencies as allies of the lobbying entities. The data set was consequently segregated into six ego-centric networks centred on high ranked and high-interest nodes, and consisting of all edges and nodes which connect at one degree. All six of these networks were loaded into SemaSpace and manually arranged to clarify similar linkages.
    \n<\/p>\n

    <\/a>From Ego-Centric Networks to Whole Network<\/h3>\n

    Figure 2 labels the Industry Association network and the three grass-roots activist networks. The Industry Association network centred on the American Electronics Association (85 edges), CATA Alliance (165 edges), Consumer Electronics Association (117 edges), Information Technology Association of America (265 edges), Information Technology Association of Canada (282 edges), and the National Association of Manufacturers (438 edges). The Internet Service Providers network centered on the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (51 edges), the Coalition of Internet Service Providers (12 edges), and the Coalition of Quebec Internet Service Providers (13 edges). The Broadband\/Advertising network consisted of Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators (18 edges) an the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (18 edges). The openNet Coalition (319 edges), saveournet.ca (665 edges), savetheinternet.com (865 edges) formed three more networks.<\/p>\n

    Figure 3 labels the NGO network and the Student Activist network. NGO network centred of the American Civil Liberties Union (4 edges), Center for Democracy and Technology (19 edges), Electronic Privacy Information Center (12 edges), Free Press (17 edges) and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (14 edges). The Student Activist network centred on U.S. Public Interest Research Groups (43 edges) and Students for Free Culture (52 edges). Figure 4 labels the Big Corporation network, centred on AOL Time-Warner (7 edges), Google Inc (4 edges), IBM (10 edges), Rogers (10 edges), Verizon (7 edges) and Yahoo! (2 edges).
    \n<\/p>\n

    <\/a>Hypothesis 1: shared transnational actors<\/h3>\n

    The first hypothesis posits that the network neutrality debates in Canada and the United States share the same pool of actors because the economic interests are transnational corporations. Figure 5 shows three paths between SaveOurNet.ca and SaveTheInternet.ca with the connection node in red, the first degree in yellow and the second degree in green. At the top of the figure are the World Association of Christian Communication and P2Pnet (a website dedicated to advocating peer-to-peer file sharing software) while the Free Press, with four edges, is lower down (the Free Press\u2019 relationship to SaveOurNet.ca appears more distant that it is because the intermediary nodes are individuals participating in both organizations).<\/p>\n

    The next closest path between SaveOurNet.ca and SaveTheInternet.com, the largest grass-roots campaigns in Canada and the Untied States, requires five degrees of relationship: the Public Interest Advocacy Centre is a member of both SaveOutNet.ca and the Canadian Association of Internet Providers, of which Google is a member; Google is also a member of the Open Internet Coalition which is a partner in the SaveTheInternet.com campaign. If kind words were coded as relationships (they were not in this study) then Google and SaveTheInternet.com would share an edge.
    \nWhen focusing upon the largest grass-roots campaigns, there is little support for the first hypothesis: it is unlikely that 4 bridges between 1530 nodes can be interpreted as \u201cthe same pool of actors\u201d in both Canada and the United States. While it is possible that closer inspection of the funding for the three bridge organizations will reveal substantial support from transnational economic interests, it is perhaps indicative of a larger trend that three organizations are intermediary nodes between the two campaigns and any corporation or industry association: the nodes marked in red in Figures 6 are, from left to right, the Open Internet Coalition, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers and the Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators.<\/p>\n

    Hypothesis 1, as originally articulated, is probably disproven but observations of this data set suggest an alternate hypothesis involving transnational membership in intermediary industry associations which represent business interests in partnership with civil society NGOs.<\/p>\n

    <\/a>Hypothesis 2: a conflict between the supply side and demand side<\/h3>\n

    Hypothesis 2 draws from Dan Schiller\u2019s work to posit that the relationships between actors in the network neutrality debate will reveal a conflict between the supply side (telecommunication carriers) and the demand side (content providers and industrial conglomerates). As discussed in the previous section, there is no corporation directly bridging SaveTheInternet.com or SaveOurNet.ca or any industry association, so this discussion will look for support for Hypothesis 2 in relationships to organizations one degree removed.<\/p>\n

    The Canadian Association of Internet Providers has several direct ties to the CATA Alliance (a technology industry association) as well as Bell Canada, Sprint, Telus, AOL-Time Warner and Google (other members, including MCI and Allstream, are leaf nodes); of these five corporate giants, only Google is strongly in support of network neutrality. SONY, Google, eBay and Sling Media (a set-top video over the internet manufacturer) are the most connected members of the Open Internet Coalition, a pro-network neutrality industry organization. The Consumer Electronics Association is connected to the Open Internet Coalition through SONY and Sling Media, while the Information Technology Association of Canada is connected via eBay.<\/p>\n

    While large industry associations including the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Electronics Association, the Information Technology Association of America, are one degree removed from Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators, the CBUI is two degrees from either of the American network neutrality coalitions. Figure 7 highlights the National Association of Manufacturers in red; its 438 edges are in yellow and relationships of the third degree are in green.<\/p>\n

    These observations suggest that Hypothesis #2<\/a> is false and that there is no widespread engagement of the network neutrality issues debate by business users. This may indicate that industrial giants are confident in their ability to use their market power to negotiate the terms of service and thus view network neutrality as a retail issue irrelevant to their organization\u2019s telecommunications infrastructure (Schiller, 2008, p.94). Financial giants, for their part, may view the end of network neutrality as an opportunity to recoup losses from devalued loans and investments made during the telecommunications investment boom (Schiller, 2008, p. 92). Regardless, Hypothesis 2 is here tentatively disproved, baring new information.<\/p>\n

    <\/a>Hypothesis 3: alignment between corporate and NGO actors<\/h3>\n

    Hypothesis 3 posited that corporate actors have relationships with NGOs which share their policy preferences. This hypothesis derived from a comment by anti-network neutrality activist (and NetCompetition.org founder) Scott Cleland, alleging that Google was using NGOs and pro-network neutrality campaigns as proxies for Google\u2019s interests (Cleland, 2007). While there is little support for this hypothesis in observations of pro-neutrality groups, the data set does not include direct and indirect financial contributions, or official publications which encourage users to join SaveTheInternet.com and sign a petition to the U.S. Congress (Google, n.d). Figure 8, however, illustrates the ties between the two main anti-neutrality organizations, their telecommunication industry members and the National Association of Manufacturers.<\/p>\n

    <\/a>Conclusion<\/h3>\n

    While the experiment provides support for the use of social networks to explore elite cleavages in the study of policy issues and suggest further areas of inquiry, a number of methodological weaknesses may undermine the attempts to conclusively prove or disprove the three hypotheses posited above. For example, the implausible discovery that the only member of the openNet Coalition (early 1990s) with more than one edge is AOL-Time Warner strongly suggests a deficit in the data set. While these weaknesses primarily draw from the use incomplete data about the subject population to study a whole network, the results of combining ego-centric networks of known key actors better represents the structural form of the network neutrality debate than any single ego-centric network.<\/p>\n

    While the findings do suggest some validity to the assumption that membership in coalitions and industry associations is an indication of policy preference, the stated goals of the organizations should be separately coded. The participation of both pro- and anti-network neutrality companies in organizations like Canadian Association of Internet Providers cautions against the assumption that all organizations concerned with telecommunications policy are engaged in the issue because of their membership. Future studies should be expanded to incorporate political contributions, charitable donation, lobbying expenditures and legal council in key litigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A qualitative study using Social Network Analysis to investigate the social relations and the political economy of Network Neutrality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[210],"tags":[103,2,104,105,11,106,107,34,108,109,3,17,51,110,111,112,44,95,97,23],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-att","tag-canada","tag-federal-communications-commission","tag-harold-innis","tag-internet","tag-internet-service-provider","tag-lawrence-lessig","tag-media","tag-net-neutrality","tag-network-neutrality","tag-political-economy","tag-politics","tag-research","tag-robert-mcchesney","tag-social-network-analysis","tag-social-network-structure-of-network-neutrality","tag-software","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1840,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/1840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opendna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}