Alternative Media Scholars & Media Organisations: What Role Can They Play?

Abstract

This paper will present some ideas about how communication scholars doing research on alternative media can contribute to the work of alternative media practitioners, NGOs, and policy activists. Alternative media NGOs such as AMARC have specific needs in the areas of audience research, self-evaluation, and documentation that scholars could contribute to. The paper urges for more dialogue and collaboration between alternative media practitioners and scholars.

When expressing their voice, communities reach another dimension in the political sphere. Asthey talk communities put themselves in the flux of symbolic circulation; they gain fluidity in theirparticipation in mediated life of citizens. Therefore, these communicative institutions facilitateacknowledging - and some times discovering - scattered, fragmented social groups as they irruptin citizen life. This way, community media guarantee diversity and support pluralism.Community media are long time and experienced survivers. They have survived the cold war,democratic crises at local and regional levels, and the unquestionable faith on the market´sability to distribute resources and to solve social conflicts. They survived academics disinterestand the shift on investment priorities of financial agencies and multilateral and bilateralorganisations.

Community media have been relegated to a marginal place on the debate, planning, andimplementation of a communication public sphere. Nevertheless, they have been able to survive.Currently, they face another challenge: that of globalisation. But I think community media willovercome this challenge taking advantages of the opportunities that globalisation offers.

Community media should use certain tools of globalisation, such as broader and cheapernetworking resources towards the creation of a global community of support.The response of community media towards globalisation must include the following aspects:

• fair and clear rules of the game that allow the recognition of community media as a third media sector, along side public and private media sector.
• recognition of the Right to Communicate.
• Recognition of the airwaves as a public good that belongs to the entire society.
• Adoption of suitable mechanisms to guarantee access to this resource.
• Recognition of community media as institutions that are part of the communities and asproducers of significant social capital.
• Acknowledgment of the role of community media in defending and promoting linguisticand cultural diversity.
• Establishment of a friendly financial environment that can respond to the singularities of community media.

The development of these key elements is not a synchronic process. It is not a question of asingle, rigid strategy for everybody neither is it going to be a response to an isolate source of pressure. These goals will depend on regional and local historical conditions, andeconomical and political factors. In many cases the force that functions as a catalyst hasbeen the intervention of a specific social actor while in other cases it is an unpredictableinteraction of stakeholders that almost accidentally make things move.

Click here for the full PDF version of this paper.