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In the national strike of June 2022 in Ecuador, the media was the scene of confrontational discourses regarding the mobilization. The community media, unlike the private media, allied themselves with the demonstrators' positions. This theoretical-analytical reflection addresses two particularities that were evidenced in the practices of community media, the media-space relationship and the configuration of discourses, in order to evaluate the power of these media to sustain different and more responsible communication proposals, especially in contexts of high social conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community broadcasting is anecdotally considered a 'training ground' for the mainstream media. However, there is little empirical research that supports these claims around skill development and career outcomes. Similarly, while community broadcasting is broadly recognized as contributing to social cohesion, the focus of much of this research is on audiences rather than the experiences of community media practitioners. This article is based on a broader programme of research that interrogated the experiences of people with significant involvement in the Australian community broadcasting sector to examine the impact of community media participation on career pathways. Here we consider a key finding: working or volunteering in community radio plays an important role in developing robust and meaningful networks, connections, and relationships which are central to shaping personal and professional pathways. These findings draw on rhizome theory to highlight the importance of community broadcasting for building and maintaining diverse and enduring networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many studies that deal with the role of media and the motives for their creation. The present article explores the background behind the development of Ultra-Orthodox journalism. It examines the establishment of Ultra-Orthodox daily newspapers in Israel at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first by analyzing semistructured texts and ideas. The historical background and the way this journalism developed in general and specifically during those years reflect a strong social and censorial orientation. This study concludes that these newspapers can be seen as social definers that help preserve a community through censorship aimed at the general and other Ultra-Orthodox media. It helps communities and individuals self-define and can delineate an additional role for mass media as a social definer. The contention herein is that the establishment of Ultra-Orthodox newspapers in Israel serves as a mode for social definition; a definition that is arrived at by being part of the circle of the newspaper's readers, and the newspaper, in turn, defines itself by its censor board. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hyperlocal media is defined as the general name of journalistic practices that address a specific geographical area or community. However, in the last decade, this concept has started to gain new and important meanings. It is observed that hyperlocal media platforms act with a different purpose and mission than traditional mainstream/local media as a journalistic approach. The starting point of this study is the question of how the theoretical and methodological framework of hyperlocal media appears in Turkey. In this context, it is aimed to define and understand the role, scope and mission of hyperlocal media and to make an evaluation on its reflections in Turkey. In line with these purposes, the problem of this study is the question of "which elements of the hyperlocal media as a journalistic understanding are found in the district newspapers in Turkey." Starting from this basic question, in the first part, the conceptual framework of hyperlocal media is reviewed and its basic features are emphasized. In the analysis part of the study, seven district newspapers that represent seven geographical regions of Turkey were determined. For a month, all news was reviewed daily and, a content analysis was carried out on a total of 908 news. At the end of the study, how the conceptualization of hyperlocal media seems in Turkey is discussed. In addition, it has been determined that there are deficiencies in the context of original news, digital adaptation, civic participation and publicity in terms of applicability and various suggestions were presented for the development of hyperlocal media in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores the struggles and successes of community media journalists in covering gender issues and violence against women in remote rural areas in India. The article introduces some small-scale community newspapers from the country's hindsight and presents an elaborative case study of Khabar Lahariya that prioritise gender issues in the content. The study records the presence and efforts of Khabar Lahariya in the reporting of gender issues by providing testimonies and examples from the field. The women journalists of the organisation successfully create a discourse around gender issues and bring about change in the Bundelkhand region by covering stories of violence and atrocities against women with their gender-sensitive perspective and unshakable confidence. At the same time, they put their own safety at risk for social change. Interestingly, a documentary film on the struggles of these women journalists has made its entry to Oscar nominations for the year 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to reflect on community radio and television in this post-conflict times. To do so, an approximation is made to sustainability as a central category resulting from the balance between economic, political and, particularly, sociocultural aspects. Secondl, two experiences are reviewed: This is how radios sound for the peace in Colombia and the Community Media Conversation. They serve as a pretext to know its reality, its scope and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have recognized how new information and communication technologies (ICTs) have reduced and transformed barriers to producing and circulating community-based media. Yet community media projects tend to apply these technologies within established communities whose histories have been shaped by broader socio-spatial factors. This article draws from critical geography and studies of technology and infrastructure to reconceptualize the problem of media accessibility. Rather than programs for addressing disparities in technology or training, community media projects would benefit from recognizing how significantly their media production activities rely on local communication infrastructures and a collective sense of home. This article uses a case study of public access television in San Francisco to demonstrate how cable and telecommunications policy, urban redevelopment, and community-based media groups co-constitutively determine a scale of political extensibility by providing broader access to decision-making arenas beyond local TV programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how US community media organisations anchored to public, educational and government (PEG) cable channels facilitated community resilience during the 2020 pandemic. We find evidence that they served as active "meso-agents" (institutional actors) in local communication networks. Some 230 completed survey responses and 10 open-ended interviews with PEG staffers demonstrated that access media commonly performed essential functions including official and community communication and teacher training in new virtual platforms; providing news, especially coordinating official information; and providing "contactless community," with virtual versions of ritual occasions. These creative responses also suggest new ways to address "news deserts" in the US, if chronic problems with spotty broadband, underfunding of PEG services and lack of federal incentives can be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional notions of journalism focus exclusively on professionals, often embedded in media outlets and publishing houses. However, preceding decades have seen transformations in the understanding of journalism. This contribution sets out to explore the role of community media in working towards the recognition of participatory, not-for-profit journalism, more diverse discourses and enhanced participation, especially in relation to minorities. This research draws on policy documents at the European level, reports from European projects with community media involvement as well as on interviews with community media activists and journalists. As a result, we can show strategies of bringing peripheral actors to the centre by using community media based on access and participation, social inclusion, giving a voice and media literacy development. The study proposes a model of the role of community media in shifting peripheral actors to more central positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study focuses on indigenous radio practices in Argentina under the implementation of the 2009 Law 26.522 on Audiovisual Communication Services, currently undergoing reform. This pioneering law recognised indigenous broadcasters, thereby satisfying the call of indigenous organisations, during the legislative process, for their right to 'communication with identity' to be included. Nevertheless, we believe that the application of the law has been weak overall, and that the legal definition of media is questionable. Furthermore, we have hypothesised that indigenous media are caught between de jure public ownership and de facto communal belonging. This hypothesis derives from a comparative analysis of the Argentinian legal framework and similar reforms implemented throughout Latin America, as well as from a dialogue between international studies on community media and the literature on indigenous media. In order to determine whether and in what terms indigenous media can be considered as community media, we carried out semi-structured interviews with key informants from indigenous communities who had been authorised to broadcast under the law's implementation. We explored the genesis and objectives of their communication projects; programming and agendas; external relationships; internal organisation (with a focus on the sustainability strategies adopted); respondents' definitions of 'community communication', 'indigenous communication' and 'communication with identity'; and respondents' opinions on the application of the law and its media definition. We found that many indigenous broadcasters in Argentina act as community media and resemble them ontically – that is to say, in how and why they remain in the (mediatised) public space. Nevertheless, indigenous radio is ontologically different from community media because it is often shaped by its ethnic identity, namely, who the indigenous peoples are and how they represent themselves in the (mediatised) public space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of state policies for the sustainability of community media in Argentina between 2008 and 2018. It is based on a comprehensive empirical research that includes: collection and revision of documents about national and local policies, media markets, and history of non-profit media; interviews with their workers and activists. The argument is that state policies of legalization and promotion from human rights framework proved to be crucial for the growth and sustainability of non-profit media in the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates readers' perceptions of Idikelethu newspaper as a tool for community development, particularly in Alice, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Data was collected from two focus group discussions that were held in the areas where Idikelethu newspaper has high readership rates. The findings revealed that development-related issues such as health awareness, education and community safety, among others, are regularly addressed by this community newspaper. Based on the findings and analysis of data, this study concludes that Idikelethu newspaper contributes in many ways to the development of its readers and Alice community in general. It is anticipated that the findings of this paper will play an important role in assisting Idikelethu and other community newspapers to function better as agents of community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present data-driven analyses of activist media produced by inhabitants of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The content was collected using their Facebook pages from 2015 to 2017 and was analyzed through computational and manual methods. The analyses reiterate and extend previous research, showing that the collectives are focused on the particular favela's identity and the demand for rights mainly -but not only- linked to violence, police abuses and state racism. It also presents nontrivial process to look at data produced by media collectives on social networks, by analyzing their posts in an aggregated way through clustering techniques, rather than relying on a few popular posts that may or may not represent their main agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of digital media labs and spaces for content creation in public libraries has been documented in the scholarly literature. However, fewer studies have investigated the outcomes of media literacy initiatives in community media centers (CMCs) and how they might inform similar programs and services in public libraries. This article reports findings from a study that used qualitative research to investigate the current goals and activities of CMCs across the United States. The findings show that the educational, social, and community benefits of these programs could be useful for public libraries to consider in developing or augmenting their own media literacy initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

Starting with considerations on the ongoing transformation of broadcast journalism borne by technological, economic and societal changes, the study aims at clarifying the role of Austrian community media in relation to the public and commercial sector. Setting out from the assumption that legal documents codify social change, and hence are barometers for collectively recognized conceptions and norms and of the changes they undergo, all Austrian legal texts and funding guidelines concerning broadcasting were subject to a comparative analysis with respect to their underlying perceptions of the societal role of broadcast media. The analysis has shown that there is no longer a broadcast journalism as such, but rather that several images of the role of broadcast journalism and conceptions of its function exist side by side. Different conceptions of democracy are perceptible as the basis of their legitimacy and they reflect the change from a traditional representative model to a participatory conception, such as is especially widespread among younger generations. Alternative forms of broadcast journalism, as practiced by community media, are thus acquiring greater significance: forms that no longer treat media communication as one-directional, but rather as fundamentally participative offerings - in order to encourage and empower people to become aware of and responsible for their social environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers conceptual approaches to community media studies. According to the authors, the dominant society centered and media centered approaches need to be clarified and in some cases revised. On the material of ethnic communities' digital media, the conclusion was done that the community centered approach may be relevant in this case, and such an approach deserves special development in research. For empirical study, digital media of Russianspeaking communities were taken, 3 from Finland and 3 from Lebanon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Public malaria health promotion is an integral part of the national malaria elimination programme, which was launched by the Chinese government in 2010. However, the public awareness of malaria needs to improve. This study aims to explore the determinants of public awareness of malaria. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using stratified sampling method from June 2015 to March 2016. Bivariate logistic regression was performed to explore the association between predictors and malaria awareness in the sample population. The homogeneity of the interaction between group assignment and the degree of knowledge related to malaria among the subgroups was calculated by Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test. Results: Community media (including bulletin boards of village clinics or township hospitals, newspapers, exercise books, shopping bags, aprons, disposable cups, leaflets and banner advertisements) was the most prominent determinant influencing public awareness of malaria. The probability of having high-degree of knowledge about malaria among participants who received malaria-related information from community media were 3.99 times greater than those who did not (odds ratio 3.99, 95 % confidence interval 3.04-5.25, p < 0.001). Moreover, socio-demographic predictors including age, distance to township hospital, endemic county type, history of suffering from malaria, electronic media, self-assessed household income level, educational attainment and the knowledge about malaria were clearly associated with public awareness of malaria. Conclusions: Community media played the most important role in public awareness of malaria. However, only a few participants have received malaria knowledge through this media. It suggests that community media was an effective publicity material, which should expand its coverage. Malaria health promotion campaign needs to be aligned with target populations, in particular, people who are under 45 years old and residents (especially in type-3 counties) in remote areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of natural disasters is varied from one community to another. One mitigation tool to manage a disaster's impact is through community media which is referred to as media to which members of the community have access for information, education, or entertainment. They are media in which the community participates, as planners, producers, and performers. This study evaluates the community media as mitigation tools in disasters management which may ultimately serve as basis for schoolbased disaster preparedness and response campaigns. Using De La Salle Lipa (DLSL) college students as respondents through a descriptive design survey, the researcher verifies the level of knowledge and awareness of the students with regard to disaster management, identifies the media information source of the students, recognize the factors used in facilitating the communication of these knowledge and awareness, and determines the media that has the highest impact to the students. The results show that while the respondents are exposed to community media, they distinguish mass media such as broadcast (television and radio) and print (newspaper) and social/digital media (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, etc.) as better sources of information regarding disasters management because of these media's characteristics and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editor Vicki Mayer interviews University of Brasilia (UnB) professor Fernando Oliveira Paulino about his experiences with Brazilian community media initiatives at the university and in the Brazilian historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Internet has rapidly become an important distribution technology for video producers, it is also a problematic one for some of them. I explore the difficulties associated with its use to distribute videos through an analysis of a one-year ethnographic investigation of community, activist and fan video producers in the United States and UK. My analysis draws upon Actor-Network Theory and DeLanda's reading of Deleuze and Guatarri's concept of assemblages, and shows that while my informants were engaged in various processes to create and stabilize their video distribution assemblages, these were precarious as they were also subject to destabilizing processes resulting from their complex and contested nature. This situation often resulted in the producers being left with distribution assemblages which did not satisfy their goals. Framing the problematic aspects of their distribution practices in these terms shows that these aspects can not only be understood as resulting from the producers’ specific circumstances as they struggled with, for example, corporate interests, the limited affordances of the video hosting and social media platforms they used, or the social dynamics of which they were apart, but that they can also be understood more generally as arising from the processes of human-technology entanglements, providing an alternative perspective to previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

This paper focuses on the audiovisual productions of Gulumapu Mapuche (the Mapuche territory located in Chile), developed since the late twentieth century in the context of indigenous processes of socioterritorial resistance and struggle emerged in Chile during the period of postdictatorial transition; in relation to a wider context of socio-environmental conflicts, due to the advancement of extractive economic model in the region. Through tools of documentary film theory and cinema aesthetics, a general description of these film works is displayed, identifying the predominant mode of representation and the discourses interweaving these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current economic and institutional crisis of journalism in Spain has contributed to the revitalization of media and communicational experiences of social movements and non-profit organizations. This revival of citizen participation reaches prominence from the 15M movement in May 2011, which has contributed to the strengthening of networks among the Third Communication of Media, as well as to the first large-scale coordinated broadcasts by community radios in Spain. This article aims at describing the physiognomy of an emerging sector at the margins of public and private-commercial media. Methodology combines observation and documentary research along with structured in-depth interviews to coordinators and citizen reporters of these media coverages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambiguous in nature, the digital divide has come to mean, in relative terms, the gap differentiating the technology haves and have-nots. However, this understanding fails to embody the true nature of the digital divide and the inequities of the current political economy of information. How can the digital divide be understood, instead, as a representation of broader inequities beyond a discrepancy in available technology? Who holds the power within the current political economy of information? How is this power unevenly distributed? How is telecommunications infrastructure important for the development of equitable and just communities? My research examines these questions through case study analysis of the Connected Capital Area Broadband Consortium (CCABC) a collaborative initiative in the Sacramento region seeking to enhance access to and adoption of broadband internet, the prominent telecommunications technology of our time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary focus of this research is on an analysis of legislation and public policy regarding community media in Bolivia and Venezuela. The purpose is to understand the differences and similarities between the two regulatory frameworks, to identify the policies that have been implemented each country to comply with current legislation, to discover the more relevant results of those policies, to know the rights and duties implied in being dubbed as community media in each of these countries, and to identify legal provisions that can trigger spurious results in relation to government intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary examines the intersections of mobility and locality in community-based media practices. In order to investigate how media-oriented practices intertwine with understandings of community, the article sets out a brief history of a community arts organization, Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE), which began as a mobile information service based in Western Sydney, Australia. I examine projects conducted by the organization over the last 25 years to tease out wider shifts from ‘information distribution’ towards ‘community cultural development’. Drawing on interviews with former and current workers at the organization, the article explores how the organization has transformed within the different scales and speeds of communication networks afforded in digital media. The article explores four key themes in order to track these broader changes through shifts away from physical transportation towards virtual communication, from face-to-face community organizing towards digital and networked media systems: ‘what’, ‘who’ and ‘where’ was/is the organization, and ‘how’ did/does it meet and respond to changing technologies? While questions of scale (the ‘where’ axis) and technologies (the ‘how’) persist and have become increasingly complex, the organization’s purpose (the ‘what’), the communities that the organization speaks with and listens to (the ‘who’) seem to have changed rather less. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The current work analyses the conditions of media production made by and/or for the Latin American immigrants in Germany (radio and TV programs, press and digital publications and virtual communities). Qualitative interviews were conducted with immigrant media makers from different German cities. The term "ethnic media" is criticized and it is argued in favour of using the concept "diasporic media". Moreover the importance and role of these media in order to construct an "ethnic public sphere" and its articulation within the public sphere of the German mainstream media are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the contrast between community media and the nature of its communities in Africa that are not participatory but use participatory media. The general contention is that participatory media in Africa preside over non-participatory communities. The paper uses data collected at one Ugandan community media to prove that the limitations between community media and ‘the community’ require over half a century to solve. The immediate solution should be to rethink the idea of community, pay more attention not just to the nature of which media can develop which community as if it (community) was a homogeneous entity but also the idea of which community has the ability to host which media. The paper concludes by suggesting a redefinition of media to include non-media forms that show more potential in enhancing participation for all than community media. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Volunteer recruitment to functions such as programming is imperative to the survival of the majority of community media organisations. These functions are embedded in the regulatory and 'custom and practice' environments in which community stations in Australia operate. The structures in which policies and processes for programming volunteer recruitment are developed are complex and frequently volunteer-led. Within the context of developing these processes for a suburban community radio station in a major capital city of Australia, a participatory action research project was conducted longitudinally over five years to identify the positive and negative impacts that governance may have on the recruitment of programming volunteers. Three years after the completion of the action research project, we undertook a post-project analysis that identified an active dismantling of the policies and processes almost immediately after the project finished, a continued shift towards hierarchical decision-making and the observable impact of skills shortages within a volunteer board. The project also exposed significant ideological fractures that had lasting effects on the station and its role as a community voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details the benefits and challenges of Insight Journalism, a community engagement and research methodology developed by the interdisciplinary Bespoke project. Based in two under-resourced urban neighbourhoods in North West England, Bespoke combined community media with participatory digital design by supporting local residents to create a series of 'old' and 'new' media outputs that were exhibited locally and used within an innovative design process. The digital designs inspired by the journalism were then built by the Bespoke team and deployed within the local area, where Insight Journalists evaluated their reception. Based on our experiences, in this article, we argue that Insight Journalism can provide a vital space for exploring salient civic and social issues, but must be understood as a process of building relationships and competencies, as well as a set of products including the mediated stories and digital designs that resulted from ongoing engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community media producers who are aligned with and supported by the Venezuelan state must reckon with the notion of "press freedom." I argue that rather than embrace dominant liberal norms, which hold that a "free press" requires autonomy from the state, community media producers in Caracas approach the state as a potentially liberatory process of collective engagement. This approach demands that they reexamine Liberal norms for freedom and autonomy. They do so in a context in which social actors inside and outside official state institutions struggle with the limits and future of liberalism in Venezuela. The dilemmas of community madia producers in this context offer an opportunity to develop a critical anthropology of press freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of cable television in the United States represented an unprecedented opportunity for citizens to exercise media policy-making power but required that they translate general federal guidelines into specific solutions tailored to local conditions. This moment thus provides an example of bottom–up, “vernacular” policy making that challenges top–down approaches to policy. Taking the experience of Madison, Wisconsin, as its case study, this essay explores the processes of local policy translation, including metaphors of outcomes, constructions of community identity and power, and struggles over locally dominant understandings of the community within local political-economic conditions. It also draws conclusions about the conditions within which a media-minded public can emerge and organize itself for reform, the relative power of utopian and dystopian rhetoric in citizen policy making, the conflict between citizen activism and bureaucratic governmentality, and the mechanisms by which citizens might secure policy advantages relative to economically and politically more powerful parties. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A rich body of research is dedicated to exploring the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) with minority cultures. Participatory media practices such as digital storytelling and participatory video have been employed in development work in these contexts, with purposes ranging from freeing voices and fostering creative expression to advocacy for community problems, community networking or documentation of traditional knowledge. This article explores the potential of ICTs for supporting minority voices, especially as part of community media initiatives where local people are directly involved in the production of digital content on locally-relevant themes. The main argument put forward is that a fair integration of ICTs for fostering grassroots expression in minority contexts needs to build on a deep understanding of the existing realities, and be managed through the direct participation of the people. This argument is supported by presenting empirical data from a content production project involving a Romani community. The case is based on a methodological framework that combines ethnographic and Participatory Action Research principles and techniques embedded in the design of the content production experience. The empirical data from this case are further used to examine three propositions regarding community participation in content production, focusing on: the opportunities and challenges of embedding content creation initiatives in the local infrastructure, using traditional socialization and communication patterns; the sense of community ownership derived by involving people in the design of the initiative; and the possibilities of defining participation patterns for intergenerational groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The question of how best to facilitate the creation of sustainable new media compositions within communities is vital if these compositions are to become a permanent part of community knowledge-making practices and to reach audiences in a meaningful way. We explore a model of community mediation that is cognizant of the practices and structures of communication within a given community. This model also acknowledges the boundary between the definition of community identity and the possibility of connection to both internal and external audiences. We illustrate this model of community mediation using three cases in which it was practiced: the creation of an informational video that profiles a local neighborhood center, the building of a digital installation on the history of the Cherokee Nation, and the preservation and practice of Indian classical dance amid its remediation via new media technologies. These examples reveal where and how stabilized meaning-making practices can emerge when researchers and other facilitators of new media composition are cognizant of existing mediums that community members use to represent themselves and the complex lifeways embodied by those mediums. Because all cultural practices resist mediation to some degree, we ultimately find that the only way to insure sustainable community mediation is to use existing practices and structures as infrastructures for building new compositions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article identifies the ways that urban social movements in Caracas have sought to engage the hybrid state during the presidency of radical leftist leader Hugo Chávez. Chávez's election has created avenues for previously disenfranchised groups to participate in governance and decision-making. The structures and discourses of exclusion are being contested in multiple arenas since Chàvez has come to power. But, what lines of conflict are emerging as barrio-based movements demand inclusion in the state? In this article, I argue that as urban movements engage with the political arena, they come up against the instrumental rationalities--both liberal and neoliberal--of state administrators. Barrio-based social movements counter the utilitarian logics of technocrats with alternative visions based in "lo cotidiano" (the everyday), local culture and historical memory. We need to combine Foucault's insights about the operation of power through governmentality with Gramsci's insistence on practical politics, in order to account more fully for the contested nature of power. In this article, I suggest the refraining of a Gramscian notion of hegemony in a positive sense as "everyday wars of position," to think about the quotidian and subterranean spaces where technocrats are confronted with alternative visions from below. I use the example of community media in Caracas to illustrate the ways that social movements engage with the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media research has generally focused more attention on analysing the 'problems' of media racism than on exploring possibilities for 'solutions' or change. In this article I introduce community media interventions as an under-developed and highly productive field of research into both the possibilities and the limitations of working for media change in the context of the 'war on terror' and the 'globalisation of the Muslim Other'. The opening sections discuss the concept of 'community media interventions' and provide an overview of media intervention strategies among racialized communities in Sydney, Australia since 11 September 2001. The concluding sections sketch the many limitations and dilemmas for media interventions as strategies for responding to racialized media. I argue that, in order to adequately understand and contribute to struggles for media change, media research needs to attend to the politics of 'listening' in addition to the dynamics of 'speaking up'. Crucially, attention to listening shifts the focus and responsibility for change from marginalized voices and on to the conventions, institutions and privileges that shape who and what can be heard in media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews the founding of the renowned Appalachian community media center, Appalshop, as well as one of its earliest films, Herb E. Smith's In Ya Blood (1971). In doing so, the author discusses the ways in which the media center's initial establishment reflected a middle-class idealism on the part of policymakers and an opportunity to reconstitute an Appalachian mountain subjectivity on the part of Appalshop's early participants. Ultimately, both register an inertial movement away from class as a tool for understanding poverty and toward a managerial liberalism and identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community media represent a crucial input in development processes, playing an important role in democratization, social struggles and awareness raising, impacting on the cultural and social dimensions of change. But despite this important role, often community media face difficulties due to the constraints created by national media laws. The article focuses on frequency allocation processes and funding mechanism to foster sustainability of community media. It looks at the cases of United Kingdom, where the communication regulator OfCom has opened a process to license community radios, and Brazil, where thousands of "illegal" community channels face repression while a consultation process is taking place with the aim of incorporating practitioners' suggestions into a new policy framework, to demonstrate how practically media policies can be re-shaped to meet the needs of community media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a community-based use of location-sensitive media technology, drawing on it to discuss: relationships between personal and community experience and place; participation and ownership of community-based location-sensitive media projects; the potential of this technology for rich and diverse self-representations; and the kind of context that might enable ongoing community-based use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]