Community Media (original) (raw)

Cinema and Media Studies

Abstract

Long before digital devices put the means of media production and distribution into “users’” hands, and participatory culture became an academic and industry buzzword, community media have provided everyday people access to the channels of public communication. From a historical perspective, then, community media constitute a prefigurative form of contemporary social media practice: a dynamic, contested, and frequently messy means of cultural expression, civic engagement, and democratic communication. Unsurprisingly, scholars and practitioners employ an assortment of terms, such as “alternative,” “citizens,’” “grassroots,” “participatory,” and “radical,” to explain how and why local populations make use of electronic media for community communication. Despite or perhaps because of these disparate labels, and the inferences and emphases associated with each, researchers take an interdisciplinary approach to community media studies, including but not limited to perspectives from polit...

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