ABSTRACT
STUDIES of the FCC’s role in communications policymaking have originated from a variety of disciplines, including political science, law, and sociology. However, as media policy issues have become increasingly common subject matter for communications research, the need to understand the behavior of the Federal Communications Commission has become more central to the field and attention to FCC behavior among communications researchers has increased. x The FCC’s authority to regulate the structure, content, and technologies of an industry that has the capacity to affect the cultural and political attitudes and values of the nation places it in a powerful position of indirect social influence. Thus, “it is as important to understand how the regulations within the [FCC] are constructed as understanding the specific regulations” (Krugman & Reid, 1980, p. 311).
