Printable PDF File

Exploring the Promise of Community Media
in the Twenty-first Century

Review by
Jill E. Hopke
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Understanding Community Media, edited by Kevin Howley. London: Sage, 2010. ISBN 9781412959056 (paperback), 9781412959049 (hardcover). 424pp.

In this ambitious effort Kevin Howley brings together the work of academics and practitioners to map the field of global community media. It would be a challenge for anyone to take on such a project given its diversity and the academic contention over even defining “community” media. Taking on this challenge, Howley is a fitting editor for such a volume. His own work sits at the intersection of academic and practitioner. As an associate professor of media studies at DePauw University his research focuses on participatory communication, social movements, and media literacy. He has previously authored Community Media: People, Places, and Communication Technologies (2005), a must-read for students of community media. Outside of academia, he contributes to The Bloomington Alternative. In addition, Free Speech TV and Pacifica Radio in the United States have broadcast his video and audio productions.

A global perspective on what have traditionally been locally rooted media projects is needed now more than ever. Understanding Community Media’s main strength is its topical diversity. Howley weaves together a rich collection of chapters that draw on disciples ranging from human geography to social movement studies. The book is organized thematically around the major theoretical approaches to the study of communication processes: public sphere, human and cultural geography, development communication, social movements, political communication, and globalization. Taken together this collection of mostly geographically based case studies draws connections between wide-ranging participatory media production experiences around the world.  

While the case studies included lean towards the predominately English-language countries of the United States and the United Kingdom, the collection clearly reflects an active effort on Howley’s part to reach beyond linguistic and cultural boundaries. Readers are rewarded with chapters detailing a diverse range of media projects, including: Māori television in New Zealand, Romani media in Macedonia, Dalit sangham women producing videos in India, participatory media efforts to reduce HIV stigma in Ghana, indigenous community radio in Colombia, the role of Chinese American media in activism in the United States, Zapatista videos in Mexico, community radio in Hungary, and Indymedia as a global social justice movement.  

This volume successfully shows that within the context of globalization, and the rise of “new” media, scholars must expanded conceptualizations of what constitutes community media beyond traditional forms such as community radio, video, and theater. Many of the chapters question established notions of “community,” advocating a broader view of what constitutes community—mediated or otherwise—in the twenty-first century. For example, Matt Sienkiewicz, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and documentary filmmaker whose film credits include Live: From Bethlehem, argues for the inclusion of online mediated communities that challenge traditional definitions of community media. In chapter 15, he details the production of the Orthodox Jewish Chabad.org children’s video program, The Itche Kadoozy Show. The program open an online public sphere for both Orthodox and non-Orthodox audiences to dialogue together about what it means to be Jewish. Sienkiewicz successfully makes the case for the necessity of taking a broader view of the field in the twenty-first century, raising yet fully explored questions about what it means to be community media in a rapidly changing media environment.

As this book illustrates, community media are at the heart of “communication-centered struggles” in the twenty-first century (Uzelman, 2005, as cited in Howley, 2010, p. 283). Contributors tackle the questions of what it means to create “democratic” media and why it matters who speaks for whom. Past scholarship has detailed the intent of community media outlets to promote community and individual empowerment (see for example Rodriguez, 2001). Many of the chapters in this volume add additional cases of these already well-documented production processes. In an example from India Sourayan Mookerjea, of the University of Alberta, shows how Dalit women sangham farmers use video production to take “control over their self-representation” and challenge traditionally defined class and gender roles, as well as teach sustainable agriculture practices (p. 202).

Beyond the empowerment dimension of sector, Howley wisely includes contributions that connect community media to broader policy oriented efforts to democratize media systems in countries around the world and on a transnational scale. In a particularly interesting case, Rosalind Bresnahan of California State University, San Bernardino examines the deeper “participatory democracy” struggles behind the development of community radio and video in Chile’s transition to democratic governance during the 1990s and the limits imposed by neoliberal media legislation.  

The collection’s main weakness is that it is skewed toward contributions from Western countries. A third of the authors hail from institutions in the United States, followed in numerical representation by Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. There is one contributor from an academic institution in Mexico and none from Africa or Asia. While this is only one measure of inclusion, there are vibrant community media traditions in these regions, as membership in the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) indicates, that are unfortunately underrepresented in this volume in the way that community media best embodies representation, through individuals and communities speaking for themselves. Rather than any reflection on Howley as an editor, this is indicative of a deeper academic-practitioner divide. Luckily for both camps there are organizations such as OURMedia/NUESTROSMedios working to bridge this divide and promote the sharing of academic and professional expertise.

Potential and practice are often blurred in literature on community media and the chapters of this collection are no exception. Academics studying community media need to make a clearer distinction between reporting on what community media say they do and empirically measurable impacts. This volume, as is the case with the wider body of scholarship on community media, is comprised mostly of case studies of production practices, which does not allow for drawing conclusions about the affects on participants and audiences. In this book, despite some measurement issues, chapter 16 is a notable exception. Shawn Sobers, of the University of the West of England, longitudinally tracks participants in a youth video production summer program Channel Zer0 that took place in Bristol, the United Kingdom. 

On the whole, with Understanding Community Media, Howley delivers another must-read for scholars and practitioners of community media alike. This book should be the go to volume for those new to the field, as well as more advanced scholars, for an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of community and participatory media theory and best practices from around the world. 

References

Howley, K. (2010). Understanding Community Media. London: Sage Publications.

Rodríguez, C. (2001). Fissures in the Mediascape: An International Study of Citizens' Media. Cresskill, N.J: Hampton Press.