Understanding Community Media

This volume examines community-based media from theoretical, empirical, and practical perspectives. More than 35 essays provide an analysis of the relationships between media and society, technology and culture, and communication and community. From the publisher: "Organized thematically, this collection explores the intersection between community media and issues of democratic theory and the public sphere, cultural politics and social movement theory, neoliberal communication policy and media reform efforts, as well as media activism and international solidarity building. Foregrounding the relationship between symbolic and material relations of power in an increasingly interdependent world, this collection examines the role of alternative, independent, and community-based media in the global struggle for communicative democracy."

Key features include the following:

• Provides examples of community and alternative media initiatives from around the world.
  
• Explores a wide range of media institutions, forms, and practices - community radio, participatory video, street newspapers, independent media centres, and community informatics.
  
• Offers analysis of community and alternative media with essays from new, emerging, and established voices in the field, including essays on women’s video collectives in India, indigenous radio in Colombia, street newspapers in Canada, and independent media in Nigeria.
  
• Takes a multidimensional approach to community media studies by highlighting the social, economic, cultural, and political significance of alternative, independent, and community-oriented media organisations.
  
• Enters the ongoing debates regarding the theory and practice of community media.
  

This core text is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses such as Community Media, Alternative Media, Media & Social Change, Communication & Culture, and Participatory Communication in the departments of communication, media studies, sociology, and cultural studies.