Since 2004, for the first time in the history of radio broadcasting in the region, a dozen Latin American countries have recognized alternative and popular community radios and television stations as legal providers of audiovisual communication services. This change in the regulations and state policies occurred along with a technological modification due to the expansion of the possibilities of providing convergent services. Given the new conditions, the strategies of these TV and radio stations changed. What happened to their publics in this new context is a topic that has still received little academic attention. We answer the following questions: Which are the publics that community media expect and construct in their communication strategies? Which characteristics do their real publics have? What are their participation levels? What meanings do they propose around these stations? We present the results of 10 interviews with members of the 7 radio and 3 TV stations of four states of three different regions of Argentina, 37 closed surveys of media consumption among their viewers and listeners, and 6 focus groups with them.

Access and participation are concepts that emerged in the 70s as indicators of the levels of democratization of audiovisual communications. The work seeks to update these notions in a new scenario defined by the convergence between divergent sectors in the past such as audiovisual, computing and telecommunications. For this, is carried out a review of the most recent theoretical developments that address the changes in the broad sector of communication from the view of communication policy proposals and recommendations of legislation emanating from documents of international human rights. Reflection suggests that the actual technological potential to provide a converging universal service, providing internet, audiovisual and telephone services throughout Argentina, it can be seriously limited by onerous conditional modes of access, that can reproduce stratified communication citizenships. This work tries to generate indicators of access and participation that condense particular situations but with a historical look that also consider the increasingly rapid convergence process dynamics.

Las radios y televisoras comunitarias en la Argentina cuentan con una larga y diversa trayectoria que se remonta a cuatro décadas atrás, y se encuentran en todo el territorio del país.A pesar de su relevancia, no existen aún datos completos y fiables sobre la cantidad y características de emisoras activas en el Estado, las universidades, ni las redes que las nuclean. En un trabajo inédito, este artículo releva y analiza los medios comunitarios, populares y alternativos actualmente operativos. Se basa en una exhaustiva investigación empírica de dos años que recolectó, depuró y sistematizó información proveniente de distintos tipos de fuentes.Se argumenta que, a partir de 2008, cuando se inicia el debate público del proyecto de Ley Audiovisual, se produjo un exponencial crecimiento de la cantidad de radios y televisoras del sector social en el país. Esta correlación y estudios previos permiten inferir que las políticas de legalización y promoción establecidas por esa norma tienen una incidencia relevante en ese resultado.

Since 2004 and for the first time in the history of broadcasting in the region, a dozen Latin American countries have acknowledged community radio and television stations as legal providers of audiovisual communication services. In Argentina, a law passed in 2009 not only awarded legal recognition to the sector, it also provided a promotion mechanism for community media. In this respect, it was one of the most ambitious ones in the region. The driving question is: How relevant are public policies for the sustainability of community media in Argentina? The argument is: even though the sector of community media has developed and persisted for decades in illegal conditions imposed by the state, the legalization and promotion policies carried out by the state from the perspective of human rights in a context of extreme media ownership concentration have been critical to the growth and sustainability of non-profit media.