Community Media Notes

March 6, 2008

It’s Spring Break in Chicago, and the snow is still falling!

I’ve been looking over the research papers from the Guerilla Media class, and I am pleased at the range of student topics–from guerilla marketing to the guerilla girls; from podcasting to community radio in Sierra Leone; from Howard Dean’s 04 digital presidential campaign strategies to Tom Weinburg on the history of independent television.

Guerilla media tactics are everywhere.

If you want your story, your art, or your issue to find an audience in today’s saturated media environment, you will need to find an equivalent to Studs Terkel on a Chicago soapbox: see Mediaburn.org.

The chaos of the Internet makes you realize that the invention of the index is in the top 100 of greatest inventions ever. Not surprising that discerning who invented the index is loaded with historic and religious controversies. Preserving history and the materials that inscribe it is nothing new either… But, as we realize how fragile the materials of digital media are, preservation suddenly seems much more important.

Whatever happened to good ole’ stone? Why does film seem like a solid, archival device now? When did library science become such an exciting career?

Libraries are linked to mortality.

So is the Internet…

Feb. 13, 2008

In Community Media: A Global Introduction by Ellie Rennie, we have covered the first three chapters so far and sections from Dee Dee Halleck’s Hand-held Visions.

Rennie, Community Media
Introduction, Ch. One: Community

Defining community media:
Pg. 3 “ Community media is local tv in Denmark, microradio and public access tv in the US, local newsletters produced by women in Bengal, and the web-based Indymedia that operates in seventy cities around the worlds….Community media is usually run on a not for profit basis and provides community members with an opportunity to participate in the production process. However, community stations do vary immensely in their finances, structures, and the audiences for which they are intended…In Europe, community media is often described as ‘local media,’ while in Third World contexts it is often called ‘participatory media’…”

Pg. 4 IMACR defines community media as media that “originates, circulates and resonates from the sphere of civil society…This is the field of media communication that exists outside of the state and the market (often non-government and non-profit), yet which may interact with both.”

Pg. 7 “At the core of this book is the notion of civil society and its revival. Civil Society is sometimes referred to as the ‘third sector.’….”

Community media theories have developed over time from oppositional and ‘alternative’ to more progressive, inclusive ideas of community and “alternative media based on empowerment and citiczenship.” (9)
See discussion on Liberalism, communitarianism

Ch. Two: Access and Free Speech

Development of PEG access in U.S. and free speech model of access (just open the doors and train volunteers on technology) vs. access that includes empowerment ‘training’ in addition to technology. “Passive audience members could be transformed into active producers.” (pg. 18) See Alternative Media Center at NYU, Boston Neighborhood Network, and Alliance for Community Media’s magazine issue on “Rethinking Access Philosophy.”

Covers history of community access in Canada—Challenge for Change program, as well as Lewis Hine and Pacifica-KPFA in San Fran, and regulations surrounding Low Power TV and radio stations

Ch. Three: Quality and the Public Interest

Different European issues, where Public/Government broadcast had more control over market or community. “Where the U.S. tradition sees civil society as necessarily separate from the state, and potentially distorted by state involvement, the European tradition sees civil society as dependent upon, and made stronger through, the state’s assistance. (pg. 78)

Issues of decentralization of ‘monopoly public systems’ are foregrounded. Also, questions of community media’s ‘amateurish’ qualities or the market’s drive towards exploitation and lowest common denominator for content (e.g. pornography, celebrity news, etc..)

See discussion of Netherland’s Salto media channels. Also oovers community radio and history of pirate radio in Europe.

Dee Dee Halleck’s Hand-held Visions: The impossible possibilities of Community Media.

Halleck discusses her experiences with teaching media on the Lower East side of NYC in the early 1960s. Also discusses the MacBride Report initiated by UNESCO that encouraged governments to develop communication systems that give access/voice to and representation of ‘others’. MacBride was Amnesty International founder. (pg. 85-86). She also discusses public access’s ‘reputation’ for promoting “images of kinky sex and Nazis.” (99)

Halleck looks at how access offers an emergency back-up system during times of crisis—weather-related, etc.. And offers space for public dissent: e.g. Deep Dish TV network’s coverage of Gulf War.

She covers history of ITVS and NAMAC and relationships to public television and funding for Media Centers, “Guerilla” video”, and the early history of video art, TVTV’s work. Halleck also looks at how ‘guerilla’ news tactics were ‘co-opted’ in the 80s by police shows and gossip shows. But still, important work was begun and sustained by Appalshop in Kentucky, the 90’s (Tom Weinberg) in Chicago, and Downtown Community Television in NYC.

See John Downing’s work on Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements
See Deidre Boyle’s book, Subject to Change: Guerilla Television Revisited

~ by ecoffman on March 6, 2008.