ISSN: 1329-878X

Citizens' Media No 103 May 2002 Order form Abstracts

Contents

Abstracts

Elinor Rennie: The other road to media citizenship
'Citizens' media' is a deliberate attempt to move beyond existing approaches to community and alternative media. This paper navigates its way through the citizens' media debate (via the articles presented in this issue), looking towards the new possibilities for community media policy arising from this shift.

Alan McKee: I don't want to be a citizen (if it means I have to watch the ABC)
This paper argues that much writing about media and citizenship tends to rely on a set of realist or structuralist assumptions about what constitutes a state, a citizen and politics. Because of these assumptions, other forms of social organisation that could reasonably be described as nations, and other forms of social engagement that could be called citizenship are excluded from consideration. One effect of this blindness is that certain identities, and the cultural formations associated with them, continue to be overvalued as more real and important than others. Areas of culture that are traditionally white, masculine, middle-class and heterosexual remain central in debates, while the political processes of citizens of, for example, a Queer nation, continue to be either ignored or devalued as being somehow trivial, unimportant or less real. The paper demonstrates that this need not be the case - that the language of nation and citizenship can reasonably be expanded to include these other forms of social organisation, and that when such a conceptual move is made, we can find ways of describing contemporary culture that attempt to understand the public-sphere functions of the media without falling back into traditional prejudices against feminised, Queer, working class or non-white forms of culture.

Nick Couldry: Mediation and alternative media, or relocating the centre of media and communication studies
Alternative media should not be marginal, but central, to the developing agenda of media and communication studies, because they challenge the massive concentration of 'symbolic power' (Bourdieu) in mainstream media institutions and the resulting 'exclusion' of most people 'from the power of naming' (Melucci). Precisely because alternative media organisations, in relative terms, lack symbolic resources, their activities tend to be largely invisible, but that is no reason why, as 'weapons of the weak' (Scott), they should be ignored. With some exceptions, media studies has neglected alternative media for too long, and neglected also the inequalities of symbolic power in which media institutions themselves are involved. But now there is less excuse for that neglect. When the 'digital divide' and the atrophy of representative democracy are hotly debated not only by academics but also by policy-makers, media studies should listen to those who are not prepared to accept their exclusion from the power of naming; they are citizens with something important to contribute to debates about democracy, and in paying more attention to them, media studies can make an important link between its own agenda and urgent agendas in political theory and democratic debate.

Chris Lawe Davies: The middle years of Radio 4EB: Acting locally, thinking nationally
Ethnic public radio station 4EB started its life as a local political response to an urgent social problem: giving migrant communities minimal recognition of their heartland biographies - nearly 20 years late for some of them. Within five years, the station's enigmatic but steely president, Tony Manicaros, had taken the same project into the national arena. Tony and the station which had enabled his conviction of the importance of ethnic radio to Australian national identity, and therefore federal government policy, dominated the important middle years of the station, with Tony becoming an important lobbyist and instigator of reforms in federal communications policy.

Rowan Jeffrey: Challenging voices? Going public on community radio
Presenting a program on community radio can be immensely rewarding for community access broadcasters. Yet the experience of 'going public' is not always positive. Based on a case study of the participation of women at one community access radio station in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this paper argues that, particularly for programmers from minority communities, the public nature of broadcasting can be problematic. Whether or not they desire such a role, such broadcasters often become positioned as public representatives of their community. This representative aspect of going public makes it problematic, because public representatives attract criticism as well as praise, and the validity of their voices can be challenged. Drawing on the narratives of women involved at community access station Plains FM and the work of John Hochheimer (1993), this paper addresses issues of participation, representation and legitimacy, and explores the challenges that they pose for the democratic potential of community access media.

Susan Forde, Kerrie Foxwell and Michael Meadows: Creating a community public sphere: Community radio as a cultural resource
This article draws upon recent findings of a study of the community radio sector in Australia.

Jo Tacchi: Transforming the mediascape in South Africa: The continuing struggle to develop community radio
As a new democracy, South Africa's adoption of community radio is significant on a global scale. It can be said to have more progressive broadcasting policies than other long-established democracies. But the sector, despite its rapid growth, is struggling. This paper considers community radio in South Africa as an example of 'citizens' media' that is transforming the country's mediascape. It draws on interviews undertaken in South Africa during late 2001 to discuss the problems that the sector is facing. The role of legislation and regulation is considered as well as an example of a community radio station that serves a severely disadvantaged community. Social and economic underdevelopment in historically disadvantaged communities is seen as a major problem and an example of an initiative that seeks to develop such communities through community radio is described.

Marni Cordell and Sam de Silva: New mediations
The late 1990s saw the global rebirth of an independent media movement of a magnitude and strength not seen since the 1970s. Both the escalation of anti-corporate-globalisation sentiment and the establishment of the IndyMedia online network can be seen as strong catalysts for a media activism that is characterised by the desire to encourate widespread participation in the media-making process. 'Participatory media' is based in the democratic philosophy that anybody has the right to tell their own story, and aims to encourage media diversity by breaking down the information stronghold held by a small number of large and powerful media corporations. This essay examines the way in which the internet has contributed to the facilitation of a greater diversity of views, news, opinions and voices into the public domain.

Kitty van Vuuren: Beyond the studio: A case study of community radio and social capital
This paper explores the community development function of community broadcasting using a case study of three non-metropolitan community radio stations conducted in 1998 and 1999. I apply aspects of the concept of social capital to analyse the results of research conducted at the participating stations. The findings indicate that social capital is related to the age composition of volunteers at community radio.

Rob Cover: Re-sourcing queer subjectivities: Sexual identity and lesbian/gay print media
With most critical discussions of lesbian/gay identities and media focusing on mass-circulation representation, visibility and stereotyping, the lesbian/gay community small press has remained neglected, particularly as it plays a role in the constitution of the performative lesbian/gay subject. This paper brings queer theory and communication theories closer together by focusing on both the reading positions inculcating subjective performativity and the mediation of contemporary discourses of sexuality. By examing the role of the gay press as an affirmative 'first encounter' site with oft-censored discourses of non-heterosexuality, it is concluded that there are issues of responsibility in the discursive foreclosure on sexual alternatives beyond the hetero/homo binary in contemporary media formations.

Tara Brabazon: Pay and scroll: Libraries, reading and the privatisation of knowledge
Libraries are one of the great institutions of the last millennium, but they are frequently politically decentred and intellectually marginalised. The recent Double-Fold crisis, triggered by Nicholson Baker's book, has again raised questions about the function of libraries. Is access for readers to information the primary task for librarians, or should preservation be the over-riding goal? This article - which is actually a thinking piece - affirms a culturally sensitive perspective on digitisation, showing how the privatisation of information delivery will have startling consequences for both research and the act of reading.