Community radio, democratic participation and the public sphere

Abstract

Community radio is unique when compared to its commercial and public service counterparts in that, as a non-profit activity, it is owned, managed and controlled by local communities, In theory therefore, community radio offers the potential for more broad-based participation in deliberation and debate within the public sphere engaging multiple voices and perspectives and contributing towards progressive social change. Drawing on a study of four community radio stations in Ireland within a framework drawn from the evolving work of Habermas and associated deliberative, social and media theorists, in this article we examine the extent to which this is the case in practice. We find that democratic participation is still not optimised within the four stations studied. We argue that the reasons for this lie in four main areas: a somewhat limited policy framework; a focus within training programmes on technical competencies over content; the weakness of linkages between stations and their local community groups; and the failure of the latter to understand the unique remit of community radio. The article draws lessons of specific interest to researchers and activists in these domains, as well as offering a framework to those interested in examining community media’s contribution to the re-animation of the public sphere more broadly.

Communicating Sustainability: Using Community Media to Influence Rural People’s Intention to Adopt Sustainable Behaviour

“…No media system meets these criteria more fully than community radio; this two-way community communications medium (third-tier broadcasting) [8,18] is the most trusted and authentic among the rural masses [82]. It gives its listeners access to both the information and means of informing [24,25,83]. It provides communications which are consistent and based on the socio-cultural context [5], as well as beneficiary-oriented [7,84].…”

“…Community radios organize participatory programs in different forms [122], where the community's people can take part physically, mentally and emotionally [103,111,112], along with outside experts, to critically analyse a community's multiple problems and solutions from different socio-economic and socio-cultural perspectives at the grassroots level [24,25,85,122]. This process of participation may provide psychological feedback to the participants.…”

“…The first two CRs in its history were introduced with the motto of removing poverty and social injustice in Latin America in 1947 [24]. The primary role of this non-profit social institute is to democratise communication through community participation to solve specific needs in various social contexts and implement the development agenda [20,25]. Therefore, throughout the developing world since the 1990s, community radios have been established faster than either state or commercial radios; across Africa, they multiplied by 1,386 percent between 2000 and 2006, as well as growing remarkably in Asia [26,27] and Latin America [28].…”

“…This community broadcasting service is the third pillar of media, alongside commercial and public broadcasters [35,36]. Although community radios share a few characteristics with other social media (e.g., user-generated content), both theoretically and practically, community radio is unique when compared to its commercial and public service counterparts [25]. Its purpose and pattern of communication are different from the conventional social media.…”

“…Its purpose and pattern of communication are different from the conventional social media. For example, it is a real participatory broadcaster (face-to-face meetings between the beneficiaries and the benefactors happen frequently and easily), a grassroots media, voice of the voiceless and a tool for progressive social change and development to protect local culture and language [24,25,30,[32][33][34][35][36][37].…”