Information Policy Bibliography

Compiled by Karen A. Metivier-Carreiro

URL:http://www.cpi.seas.gwu.edu/activities/bibliography/bibliogr.htm

Revised: September 10, 1997

There are many "definitions" of information policy. Mostly all of the definitions are dependent upon how one defines information. According to Weingarten, information policy is "the set of all public laws, regulations, and policies that encourage, discourage, or regulate the creation, use, storage, and communication of information." (1989) Rowlands summarizes the many views of information policy to define their common characteristics. Using Weingarten’s view, Rowlands suggests "that the fundamental role of policy is to provide the legal and institutional frameworks within which formal information exchange can take place." (1996, p. 14) Rowlands also addresses Hernon and Relyea’s view that there is no single information policy, but rather policies that address specific problems and issues that are often contradictory. Rowlands argues, "The situation may be messy, but it is inevitable given that the practical realities of information policy are much to do with the art of compromise: there are neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ policies, but maybe there can be effective compromises between competing interests." (1996, pp. 14-15) Rowlands also cites Galvin’s view of balance of competing goals and interests, and suggests that information policy "should be flexible, dynamic and responsive to changing circumstances....a key objective for information policy research might therefore lie in trying to set some kind of bounds and limits to that uncertainty." (1996, p. 15)

A critical point by Rowlands is the differentiation between information policy shaping events as well as responding to events; in other words, serving as both an independent variable and a dependent variable. This concept concludes with Burger’s definition of information policy as "societal mechanisms used to control information, and the societal effects of applying those mechanisms." (Burger, 1993) Rowlands concludes by offering a three-level hierarchical model for information policy:

1. infrastructural policies which apply across society and affect the information sector both directly and indirectly;
2. horizontal information policies which apply to the entire information sector for particular applications such as export-control policies or data protection law; and
3. vertical information policies that apply to a specific part of the information sector for a particular application. (1996, p. 15)

Babe, Robert E. 1995. Communication and the Transformation of Economics: Essays in Information, Public Policy, and Political Economy. In Schiller, Herbert I. (Series Ed.), Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Bailey, Joseph P. and McKnight, Lee W. 1995. Internet Economics: What Happens When Constituencies Collide (April 28, 1995). [On-line] http://www.iso c.org/HMP/PAPER/123/html/paper.html

Bennett, Colin J. 1992. Regulating Privacy: Data Protection and Public Policy in Europe and the United States. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Boyle, James. 1996. Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Braman, Sandra. 1989. Defining Information: An Approach for Policymakers. Telecommunications Policy, September 1989, pp. 233-242.

Braman, Sandra. 1995. Policy for the Net and the Internet. In Williams, Martha E. (ed.), Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST), Vol. 30, pp. 5-75. White Plains, NY: Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc. for the American Society for Information Science.

Brock, Gerald W. 1994. Telecommunication Policy for the Information Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Burger, R. H. 1993. Information Policy: A Framework for Evaluation and Policy Research. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company. As quoted in Rowlands, Ian, 1996, Understanding Information Policy: Concepts, Frameworks and Research Tools. Journal of Information Science 22, no. 1: 13-25.

Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB), National Research Council. 1994. Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB), National Research Council. 1996. The Unpredictable Certainty: Information Infrastructure Through 2000. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Dertouzos, Michael. 1997. What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our Lives. New York: Harper Collins.

Dodge, Martin. 1997. The Geography of Cyberspace (last revised 27/08/97). [Online] http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/geography_of_cyberspace.html

Drake, William J. (ed.). 1996. The New Information Infrastructure: Strategies for U.S. Policy. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press.

Economides, Nicholas. 1996. The Economics of Networks. International Journal of Industrial Organization (October). [On-line] http://raven.stern. nyu.edu/networks/top.html

Kahin, Brian and Nesson, Charles (eds.). 1997. Borders in Cyberspace: Information Policy and the Global Information Infrastructure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lamberton, Donald M. 1984. The Economics of Information and Organization. In Martha E. Williams (ed.), Annual Review of Information Science and Technology ARIST 19: 3-30. White Plains, NY: Knowledge Industry Publications, Inc. for the American Society for Information Science.

McCain, Roger A. 1996. The Economics of Information Products. [On-line] http://william- king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/Infoch/InfoToC.html

McKnight, Lee W. and Bailey, Joseph P. (ed.). 1997. Internet Economics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Merit Network. 1997. The NSFNET Backbone Project. [On-line] http://www.merit.edu/nsf net/.index.html

National Coordinating Office for Computing, Information, and Communications. 1997. Next Generation Internet Initiative Concept Paper. [On-line] http://www.ccic.gov/ngi/concept-Jul97/

Neuman, W. Russell, McKnight, Lee, and Solomon, Richard Jay. 1997. The Gordian Knot: Political Gridlock on the Information Highway. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rowlands, Ian. 1996. Understanding Information Policy: Concepts, Frameworks and Research Tools. Journal of Information Science 22, no. 1: 13-25.

Salus, Peter H. 1995. Casting the Net: From ARPANET to Internet and Beyond. UNIX and Open Systems Series. Boston: Addison-Wesley.

Varian, Hal R. 1996. Economic Issues Facing the Internet (revised September 15, 1996). [On-line] ftp://alfred.sims.berkeley.edu/pub/Papers/econ-issues-internet.html

Weingarten, Fred W. 1989. Federal Information Policy Development: The Congressional Perspective. In McClure, Charles R., Hernon, Peter, and Relyea, Harold C. (eds.), United States Government Information Policies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Company.

Wiggins, Richard W. 1995. Growth of the Internet: An Overview of a Complicated Subject (monograph, Revision 1.5, September 9, 1995). [On-line] http://www.themesh.com/gedit 12.html

Zakon, Robert H. 1997. Hobbes' Internet Timeline v3.1 (revised 25 August 1997) . [On-line] http: //info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html