The introduction of cable television in the United States represented an unprecedented opportunity for citizens to exercise media policy-making power but required that they translate general federal guidelines into specific solutions tailored to local conditions. This moment thus provides an example of bottom–up, “vernacular” policy making that challenges top–down approaches to policy. Taking the experience of Madison, Wisconsin, as its case study, this essay explores the processes of local policy translation, including metaphors of outcomes, constructions of community identity and power, and struggles over locally dominant understandings of the community within local political-economic conditions. It also draws conclusions about the conditions within which a media-minded public can emerge and organize itself for reform, the relative power of utopian and dystopian rhetoric in citizen policy making, the conflict between citizen activism and bureaucratic governmentality, and the mechanisms by which citizens might secure policy advantages relative to economically and politically more powerful parties.
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