This article examines the representation of racial and ethnic minorities in contemporary U.S. broadband policy, an emerging area of communication policy that attempts to address merging media and telecommunications competition, diversity and inclusion issues for the digital age. A summary of three dominant themes in the literature regarding media diversity outlines the primary concerns of digital media policy. An interpretative policy analysis of the National Broadband Plan sheds lights on how regulators address diversity and access issues in the digital transition, particularly for communities of color. The analysis reveals that unlike prior exclusions of certain racial and ethnic groups in communications infrastructure, the unfolding broadband framework is attempting to be explicit about the inclusion of historically marginalized populations. We argue that the emerging media governance framework is both influenced by the problematic history of media diversity as well as a discursive and material shift that emphasizes market orientations.As policymakers, industries, and communities grapple with the evolving digitalization of telecommunications, recognizing who has access, how and why is critical for ensuring that individuals from all backgrounds are represented in the digital era, and that the discriminatory mistakes from the past are not reproduced.

This article examines the collaboration of audiences with a commercial enterprise to translate non-English TV shows. The aim is to explore the ways in which people engage in the circulation of international media products through privately owned digital platforms while shedding light into new and complex forms of collaboration between audiences and media industries. Drawing on notions of labor value, affect, and re-subjectivation by Gibson-Graham, the purpose is to understand the motivations and values that people find in their digital volunteering, and how they reconcile their positions as both fans and co-producers of content. I argue that the recognition and social connections that people obtain through their online practices provide satisfactions that positively impact their offline activities and daily lives. This is how they turn their collaboration into a worthy exchange, challenging positions that underestimate people’s digital engagement as a form of alternative economic activity producing nonmonetary gains.

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