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This article investigates the role that community media play in the translocal negotiation of local culture in Latin America. Translocal is a concept that captures the way that local cultural producers engage with national and transnational forces in shaping everyday cultural practices. This study focuses on community radio station Ecos de Manantlán in Zapotitlán de Vadillo, Mexico (Radio Zapotitlán), during the years 2006–2012. Radio Zapotitlán is officially categorized as a campesino or agricultural laborer/peasant station and presents its campesino identity through radio and Internet content. Analyses of that content, along with interviews with station associates and listeners, reveal the complex cultural mediations between local media producers, national regulators, and transnational donors. This study investigates the local production of a transnationally funded radionovela, or radio soap opera, as a window onto the station’s role as a cultural mediator. This article argues that station participants used the radionovela to express local values and meanings and to marginalize the educational goals of the transnational agency funding the project. Radio Zapotitlán offers a concrete case of cultural negotiation in which local interests engage with – and transform – donor-funded content aimed at the local community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the ways in which efforts aimed at democratising the media system and empowering communities in Indonesia in three discursive periods (the 1998 "Revolution Movement," the "Reform Era" follow-up, and the 2002 Broadcasting Act up till the present time) have ebbed and flowed. The main result of the changing winds so far has been the liberalisation of the market, in line with global media trends. The Government has tried to frustrate the prospects of community media. Hence, the current development of community radio in the country remains stagnant, the main challenge being to create a more visible position in the media landscape, which in turn may bring about a more supportive stance in the government's policies. Our tour d'horizon of the state of affairs of community radio, its complementary status to the mainstream national media scene, and the assessment of current needs are based upon empirical evidence gathered in the Manado and Jogyakarta areas. Departing from the different dynamics of these two cases, weaknesses and critical success factors will be assessed, taking into account the different backgrounds of the regions, radio practitioners as well as their audiences in terms of religion, ethnicity, and life styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]