Community radio: encouraging the involvement of citizens in public spheres

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Community radio encouraging the involvement of
citizens in public spheres

• Peter Lewis
• London School of Economics

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Introduction

• Hispanic-anglophone academic dialogue
• objectives of the IREN project

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to identify what instances exist, and what
potential there is, for radios use in
encouraging the involvement of citizens in public
spheres, locally, nationally and at a European
level (IREN Consortium Agreement 3.2.4)
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Introduction

• Hispanic-anglophone academic dialogue
• objectives of the IREN project
• task is empirical, but also theoretical
• a role for mainstream radio, but
• community radio is better at encouraging
  involvement in the public sphere
• digital transmission not good news for community
  radio

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Theoretical tour dhorizon

• No Holy Grail of a universal theory
• no static relationship
• a shuttling back and forth test theory
  against
• empirical data interpret data in the light of
  theory

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Theoretical tour dhorizon
public sphere Habermas Negt Kluge
Community Radio
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Public sphere

• Habermass original concept needs modification
• not one unitary, public sphere - counter or
  alternative public spheres co-exist
• Community radio station a common meeting ground
  for overlapping, even conflicting, local public
  spheres
• Hochheimers questions , who decides what are
  the legitimate voices to be heard?.. What happens
  when power, or people, become entrenched?
• (Hochheimer 1993 477)

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radical democracy Laclau Mouffe
public sphere Habermas Negt Kluge
Community Radio
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Radical democracy

• Rodriguez (2001) draws on Mouffes notion of
  radical democracy
• political action - an active striving in the
  socio-political arena by subjects attempting to
  transform relations of subordination
• appropriate discursive conditions must precede
  political change
• (Laclau Mouffe 1985 153)

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collective action Melucci
radical democracy Laclau Mouffe
public sphere Habermas Negt Kluge
Community Radio
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Collective action

• Meluccis work on the production of
• meaning in collective action (Melucci 1996)
• by what processes do actors construct their
  
• actors able to define meaning
• researchers need to reach agreement about the
• basis of the knowledge formation
• implications for method - participatory research
  
• approach

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collective action Melucci
conscientization Freire
radical democracy Laclau Mouffe
public sphere Habermas Negt Kluge
Community Radio
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conscientization

• a mutual search for words that have special
  meaning in the students experience thus allowing
  them to name their own reality, and break the
  culture of silence
• collusive relationship between oppressors and
  oppressed
• the stages of codification and decodification
  aim to transform the social reality to become
  subjects of their own destiny

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collective action Melucci
conscientization Freire
radical democracy Laclau Mouffe
hegemony Gramsci
public sphere Habermas Negt Kluge
Community Radio
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hegemony

• An unstable, non-unitary field of relations
  where..
• ..strategic compromises are continually
  negotiated (Atton, 2004 10)
• accepted as normal and unquestionable
• counter-hegemony post-Gramscian notion
• (cp. counter-pubic
  sphere)
• community as an articulation (Hall) of
  different social actors and groups which is
  neither necessary nor inevitable but
  rathercontingent and volatilea unity of
  differences a unity forged through symbol,
  ritual, language and discursive practices
  (Howley 20056)

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collective action Melucci
conscientization Freire
radical democracy Laclau Mouffe
hegemony Gramsci
public sphere Habermas Negt Kluge
Community Radio
globalisation Giddens Castells
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globalisation

• the intensification of world-wide social
  relations which link distant localities in such a
  way that local happenings are shaped by events
  occurring many miles away and vice versa
  (Giddens 199064)
• The case of Indymedia, Internet radio and
  microradio (Coyer 2005)
• Community media permit analysts to interrogate
  the dynamics of global media culture in a local
  context (Howley 2005269

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collective action Melucci
conscientization Freire
radical democracy Laclau Mouffe
hegemony Gramsci
public sphere Habermas Negt Kluge
Community Radio
globalisation Giddens Castells
social capital Bourdieu Putnam
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social capital

• Putnam 2000 on social capital

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collective action Melucci
conscientization Freire
radical democracy Laclau Mouffe
hegemony Gramsci
public sphere Habermas Negt Kluge
Community Radio
globalisation Giddens Castells
social capital Bourdieu Putnam
identity Martin-Barbero Hall
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identity

• Martin-Barbero on the problems of identity in
  modernity local identity is compelled to
  transform itself into a marketable representation
  of difference (Martin-Barbero 2002 626).
• The contradictory movement of globalization and
  the fragmentation of culture simultaneously
  involves the revitalization and worldwide
  extension of the local (ibid p.636).
• Indigenous identities in the face of their
  transformation into modern countries (ibid.
  p.635)

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collective action Melucci
conscientization Freire
radical democracy Laclau Mouffe
hegemony Gramsci
public sphere Habermas Negt Kluge
Community Radio
globalisation Giddens Castells
social capital Bourdieu Putnam
identity Martin-Barbero Hall
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Everitts New Voices

• Access Radio/Community Radio
• provided primarily ..to deliver social gain
  defined as including the following objectives
• reaching listeners who are underserved
• facilitation of discussion and the expression of
  opinion
• education or training for volunteers
• better understanding of the community and the
  strengthening of links
• delivery of services provided by local
  authorities
• promotion of economic development and of social
  enterprises
• the promotion of employment
• gaining work experience
• promotion of social inclusion
• promotion of cultural and linguistic diversity
• promotion of civic participation and
  volunteering

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Conclusion.
If we are to give CR its proper attention, there
will have to be transformations in Europes radio