Transcript Community radio: encouraging the involvement of citizens

Community radio: encouraging
the involvement of citizens in
public spheres
Peter Lewis
London School of Economics
Introduction
• Hispanic-anglophone academic
dialogue
• objectives of the IREN project
: “to identify what instances exist, and what
potential there is, for radio’s use in encouraging
the involvement of citizens in public spheres,
locally, nationally and at a European level”
(IREN Consortium Agreement 3.2.4)
Introduction
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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
Theoretical tour d’horizon
• 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
Theoretical tour d’horizon
public sphere
Habermas
Negt & Kluge
Community
Radio
Public sphere
• Habermas’s 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
• Hochheimer’s questions: , “who decides what
are the legitimate voices to be heard?.. What
happens when power, or people, become
entrenched?”
(Hochheimer 1993: 477)
radical democracy
Laclau &Mouffe
public sphere
Habermas
Negt & Kluge
Community
Radio
Radical democracy
• Rodriguez (2001) draws on Mouffe’s notion of
radical democracy
• political action - an active striving in the sociopolitical arena by subjects attempting to
transform relations of subordination
• appropriate “discursive conditions” must
precede political change
(Laclau & Mouffe 1985: 153)
radical democracy
Laclau &Mouffe
public sphere
Habermas
Negt & Kluge
collective action
Melucci
Community
Radio
Collective action
• Melucci’s 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
radical democracy
Laclau &Mouffe
public sphere
Habermas
Negt & Kluge
collective action
Melucci
Community
Radio
conscientization
Freire
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
collective action
radical democracy
Melucci
conscientization
Freire
Laclau &Mouffe
hegemony
Gramsci
public sphere
Habermas
Negt & Kluge
Community
Radio
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] rather…contingent and volatile…a
unity of differences; a unity forged through symbol,
ritual, language and discursive practices” (Howley
2005:6)
collective action
radical democracy
Melucci
conscientization
Freire
Laclau &Mouffe
hegemony
Gramsci
public sphere
Habermas
Negt & Kluge
Community
Radio
globalisation
Giddens
Castells
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 1990:64)
• 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 2005:269
collective action
radical democracy
Melucci
conscientization
Freire
Laclau &Mouffe
hegemony
Gramsci
public sphere
Habermas
Negt & Kluge
Community
Radio
globalisation
Giddens
Castells
social capital
Bourdieu
Putnam
social capital
• Putnam 2000 on social capital
collective action
radical democracy
Melucci
conscientization
Freire
Laclau &Mouffe
hegemony
Gramsci
public sphere
Habermas
Negt & Kluge
identity
Martin-Barbero
Hall
Community
Radio
globalisation
Giddens
Castells
social capital
Bourdieu
Putnam
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)
collective action
radical democracy
Melucci
conscientization
Freire
Laclau &Mouffe
hegemony
Gramsci
public sphere
Habermas
Negt & Kluge
identity
Martin-Barbero
Hall
Community
Radio
globalisation
Giddens
Castells
social capital
Bourdieu
Putnam
Everitt’s 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
Conclusion.
If we are to give CR its proper attention,
there will have to be transformations in Europe’s radio