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The Argentinian Law 26.522 on Audiovisual Communication Services (currently under reform) aimed at democratizing the media arena by recognizing multiple actors such as community broadcasters, school and indigenous media, among others. According to the legal classification, community broadcasters were regulated as private non-profit media, despite having specific objectives, programming, organizational logic and economic conditions. Conversely, school and indigenous media merged into the public sector, even if they may act as community media. The article compares results arising from two research projects carried out in Northern Argentina through in-depth interviews with key informants from two indigenous radio stations and two school radio stations. The theoretical framework mainly draws on literature about community, alternative and popular communication. Results show that communities participate in such media foundation or management and that media content deals with cultural and political issues related to their interests or needs. Indeed, emerging features allow considering such broadcasters as community media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community radio in Australia is now well established and considered an important part of the radio sector, however, in today's economically driven world it is at the bottom of the media money pile. In order to argue for its continuing existence, funding and development in an ever-changing media landscape, some means of capturing its value is essential. This article describes the development of a theoretical framework of value for community radio. The content of the framework was achieved by, first, examining, community media/radio literature through five relevant lenses of analysis. Secondly, a subsequent meta-analysis was applied to consolidate the framework. In order to test the utility of the draft theoretical framework of value, three case studies were conducted with different types of community radio stations in Perth, Western Australia. Two primary research methods were used: interviews with staff and audience focus groups. The testing exercise provided a multimodal insight into the values of community radio as reflected in real life practice. The analysis revealed how value was perceived by participants across three stations as personal motivations, and second, that value at individual stations was contingent upon the characteristics of the individual community radio stations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]