New institutionalism is a collection of institutionalist theories, including historical institutionalism, sociological institutionalism, and rational choice institutionalism. This article focuses on historical institutionalism in communication studies. First, we note that historical institutionalism-a dominant approach in political science-has appeared in relatively few studies of media and communications. Second, we describe the historical institutionalist approach. Third, we describe the historical institutionalist method in detail, breaking it down into 6 steps and demonstrating its usefulness, especially in the areas of communication history and communication policy and law. In the final section, we further develop our contention that the field of communications is a fruitful one for the development of historical institutionalism, and that historical institutionalism is a useful approach for communication scholars, especially in the areas of communication history, policy, and law.

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The next-generation television (TV) standard will give over-the-air (OTA) broadcasters the ability to target advertisements. This could give a competitive advantage to broadcasters with more channels and hence create incentive for consolidation. Consolidation in the OTA TV industry could concern policymakers. We construct a model to estimate revenues and costs of targeted advertising and derive profit-maximizing strategies. We find that profit is maximized by sending targeted advertisements via fixed broadband, even on devices that are watched for only a few minutes per week, but until costs drop significantly, not via mobile broadband in most cases. Our results show that targeted advertisements would not create strong incentive for consolidation in the scenarios that we consider most likely, so policy-makers should be sceptical of arguments that consolidation should be allowed on the grounds that consolidation leads to large cost savings. However, we do identify plausible scenarios where broadcasters with more channels would be significantly more profitable.

Abstract. Despite the growing importance of social media, their political effectiveness remains understudied. Drawing on and updating resource mobilization theory and political process theory, this article considers how social media make “political engagement more probable” and determine the success of online social movements. It does so by examining the mainstreaming of the Canadian “user rights” copyright movement, focusing on the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook page, created in December 2007. This decentralized, grassroots, social media-focused action—the first successful campaign of its kind in Canada and one of the first in the world—changed the terms of the Canadian copyright debate and legitimized Canadian user rights. As this case demonstrates, social media have changed the type and quantity of resources needed to create and sustain social movements, creating openings for new groups and interests. Their success, however, remains dependent on the political context within which they operate.Résumé. Malgré l'importance croissante des médias sociaux, leur efficacité politique est encore peu étudiée. En s'appuyant sur et en mettant á jour la théorie de la mobilisation des ressources et la théorie du processus politique, cet article examine comment les médias sociaux rendent « l'engagement politique plus probable » (Jensen et al., 2012 : 16) et détermine la réussite des mouvements sociaux en ligne. Il le fait en examinant l'intégration du mouvement canadien de « droits d'utilisateur » dans le débat sur les droits d'auteur et en se concentrant sur la page Facebook Fair Copyright for Canada, créée en décembre 2007. Cet action décentralisée populaire, axée sur les médias sociaux—la première campagne réussie de son genre au Canada et l'une des premières du monde—a changé les termes du débat sur les droits d'auteur canadiens et a légitimé les droits d'utilisateur canadiens. Cette affaire montre que les médias sociaux ont changé le type et la quantité des ressources nécessaires pour créer et maintenir les mouvements sociaux, et qu'ils ont crée, par la suite, des ouvertures pour des nouveaux groupes et intérêts. Leur succès reste cependant dépendant du contexte politique dans lequel elles opèrent.

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