Alternative Media: Commodification and the Vexing Coordinates of Alterity (original) (raw)
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tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, 2024
This work discusses the potentials, limits, and problems of alternative media in capitalism. It compares alternative media to commercial media and public service media. A model is introduced that compares commercial and non-commercial media projects. Its dimensions are the economy, work, production, and communication. Dilemmas of alternative media are analysed. As an example, a conflict at the Austrian free radio station Radio Orange is analysed. The paper discusses the political economy of alternative media. Alternative media such as free radio stations have set out to do media in a way that is different to capitalist media. In this context, the role of the audience as media producers and the rejection of the market, capital, and commodities are important aspects of alternative media. The analysis shows the problems and antagonisms that non-commercial, alternative media face in capitalist society. They struggle to establish independence from markets, capital, and the state. They face the problem of how to deal with these antagonisms which results in the alternative between adopting to capitalist pressures or operating as small-scale niche alternatives with small audiences and precarious labour. The paper concludes that material aspects and the political economy of alternative media need to be taken seriously. Not selling commodities and not paying wages puts many alternative media at a disadvantage vis-à-vis commercial media.
Exploring the Alternative-Mainstream Dialectic: What 'Alternative Media' Means to a Hybrid Audience
Communication, Culture and Critique, 2015
This article enriches debates about “alternative media” by exploring what the term means to users through an audience survey (n=224). Responses revealed values and practices that respondents agreed were important to alternative media. Users deemed a wide array of media “alternative”: political blogs, public broadcasting, foreign sources, and alternative-press institutions as well as The Daily Show, Facebook, Fox News, and Huffington Post. Despite criticizing corporations and advertising, this audience considered some corporate, commercial outlets “alternative media.” Respondents valued alternative content (neglected issues, diverse voices, mobilizing information) more highly than alternative form (being nonprofit, noncommercial, small-scale). I argue here that the dialectic of alternative media/mainstream media continues to provide a critical and cultural touchstone for users in a converged environment.
Communication Theory and Alternative Media
2005
The article draws firstly on theories that question the exclusionary nature of mass communication in terms of the emancipatory potential of ‘new media’; of the democratization of communication; or even in terms of advancing alternative forms of communication. By probing specifically into various small-scale, decentralised media projects, issues concerning the social as well as the cultural context of their implementation; their creation, production and dissemination; the employment of new technologies; and, instances of the very mediation process itself, across both the production and reception process, are addressed. From the perspective of a non-essentialist account of such media projects, the paper draws finally on approaches that evaluate these projects on the grounds of their ‘lived experience’, in terms of their social actors, agents; acknowledging thus an overall framework of understanding the practice of such projects, as instances of the constitution of citizenship.
This paper asserts that truly activist media must be dually committed to critical education and to political action. Whereas my previous work has focused on the need for activist media to challenge media power from within, it is my goal here to build a model of activist media characterized by direct action through engagement in critical education and activism in both content and production. Such a model will provide insight both into the limitations of previous research on the oppositional potential of alternative media and into the challenge facing alternative media scholars and practitioners alike – that of rising above the noise of the dominant media of the cultural industry in order to communicate for radical social change.
Understanding Alternative Media Power
Democratic Communiqué, 2016
Alternative media is a term that signifies a range of media forms and practices , from radical critical media to independent media, and from grassroots autonomous media to community, citizen and participatory media. This paper critically analyzes the political content and organizational practices of different alternative media types to reveal the ideologies and conceptions of power embedded in specific conceptions of alternative media. Considering several competing conceptions of alternative media theory, including subcul-ture studies (Hebdige 1979), community media for social change (Rodríguez 2011), critical communication studies (Fuchs 2010), and radical media (Downing 2001), four distinct categories emerge: DIY media influenced by individualist ideologies and subcultural belonging; citizen media theorized by third-world Marxism and engaged in local community organizing; critical media influenced by the Frankfurt School of critical theory and focused on global anti-capitalist content; and autonomous media influenced by social anarchism and rooted in global anti-authoritarian social movements. This synthesized taxonomy provides an important mapping of key similarities and differences among the diverse political projects, theories, practices and ideologies of alternative media, allowing for a more comprehensive and nuanced