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

• 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

Community Radio

public sphereHabermas

Negt & Kluge

Theoretical tour d’horizon

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)

Community Radio

public sphereHabermas

Negt & Kluge

radical democracyLaclau &Mouffe

Radical democracy

• Rodriguez (2001) draws on Mouffe’s 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)

Community Radio

public sphereHabermas

Negt & Kluge

radical democracyLaclau &Mouffe

collective actionMelucci

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

Community Radio

public sphereHabermas

Negt & Kluge

radical democracyLaclau &Mouffe

collective actionMelucci

conscientizationFreire

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

Community Radio

public sphereHabermas

Negt & Kluge

radical democracyLaclau &Mouffe

collective actionMelucci

conscientizationFreire

hegemonyGramsci

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)

Community Radio

public sphereHabermas

Negt & Kluge

radical democracyLaclau &Mouffe

collective actionMelucci

conscientizationFreire

hegemonyGramsci

globalisationGiddensCastells

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

Community Radio

public sphereHabermas

Negt & Kluge

radical democracyLaclau &Mouffe

collective actionMelucci

conscientizationFreire

hegemonyGramsci

globalisationGiddensCastells

social capitalBourdieuPutnam

social capital

• Putnam 2000 on social capital

Community Radio

public sphereHabermas

Negt & Kluge

radical democracyLaclau &Mouffe

collective actionMelucci

conscientizationFreire

hegemonyGramsci

globalisationGiddensCastells

social capitalBourdieuPutnam

identityMartin-Barbero

Hall

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)

Community Radio

public sphereHabermas

Negt & Kluge

radical democracyLaclau &Mouffe

collective actionMelucci

conscientizationFreire

hegemonyGramsci

globalisationGiddensCastells

social capitalBourdieuPutnam

identityMartin-Barbero

Hall

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