Understanding Alternative Media (Issues in Cultural and Media Studies)

214 Pages·2007·8.85 MB·English

by  Olga Bailey

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I S S U E S n
IN CULTURAL AND MEDIA STUDIES d CCa Olga Guedes Bailey, Bart Cammaerts
S E R I E S E D I T O R : S T U A R T A L L A N arm
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Understanding Alternative tieertiley
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Media
• What are alternative media?
• What roles do alternative media play in pluralistic,
democratic societies?
• What are the similarities and differences between
alternative media, community media, civil society
media and rhizomatic media?
• How do alternative media work in practice?
This clear and concise text offers a one-stop guide
through the complex political, social and economic
debates that surround alternative media and provides a
fresh and insightful look at the renewed importance of
this form of communication.
Combing diverse case studies from countries including
the UK, North America and Brazil, the authors propose
an original theoretical framework to help understand the
subject. Looking at both ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, the book
argues for the importance of an alternative media and
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suggests a political agenda as a way of broadening its scope.
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Understanding
Understanding Alternative Mediais valuable reading for students d
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in media, journalism and communications studies, researchers,
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academics, and journalists. s
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Olga Guedes Bailey is a journalist and Senior Lecturer in
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the Institute of Cultural Analysis at Nottingham Trent i
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University, UK. Bart Cammaertsis a political scientist and
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Media Researcher lecturing on media, citizenship, and
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democracy at the Media and Communication Department of
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the London School of Economics and Political Science, e Media
University of London, UK. Nico Carpentier is a media r
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sociologist working at the Communication Studies a
Departments of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the t
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Katholieke Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. v
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Cover illustration: Charlotte Combe
Cover design: del norte (Leeds) Ltd e
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I S S U E S
I N C U L T U R A L A N D M E D I A S T U D I E S
U N D E R S T A N D I N G A L T E R N A T I V E
M E D I A
I S S U E S i n C U L T U R A L a n d M E D I A S T U D I E S
Series editor: Stuart Allan
Published titles:
News Culture, 2nd edition Rethinking Cultural Policy
Stuart Allan Jim McGuigan
Modernity and Postmodern Culture, 2nd ed. Media, Politics and the Network Society
Jim McGuigan Robert Hassan
Television, Globalization and Cultural Identities Television and Sexuality
Chris Barker Jane Arthurs
Ethnic Minorities and the Media Identity and Culture
Edited by Simon Cottle Chris Weedon
Cinema and Cultural Modernity
Media Discourses
Gill Branston
Donald Matheson
Compassion, Morality and the Media
Citizens or Consumers
Keith Tester
Justin Lewis, Sanna Inthorn and Karin
Masculinities and Culture Wahl-Jorgensen
John Beynon
Science, Technology & Culture
Cultures of Popular Music David Bell
Andy Bennett
Museums, Media and Cultural Theory
Media, Risk and Science
Michelle Henning
Stuart Allan
Media Talk
Violence and the Media
Ian Hutchby
Cynthia Carter and C. Kay Weaver
Critical Readings: Moral Panics and the Media
Moral Panics and the Media
Edited by Chas Critcher
Chas Critcher
Cities and Urban Cultures Critical Readings: Violence and the Media
Deborah Stevenson Edited by C. Kay Weaver and Cynthia Carter
Cultural Citizenship Mediatized Conflict
Nick Stevenson Simon Cottle
Culture on Display Games Cultures: Computer Games as New
Bella Dicks Media
Jon Dovey and Helen Kennedy
Critical Readings: Media and Gender
Edited by Cynthia Carter and Linda Steiner Perspectives on Global Culture
Critical Readings: Media and Audiences Ramaswami Harindranath
Edited by Virginia Nightingale and Karen Ross Understanding Popular Science
Media and Audiences Peter Broks
Karen Ross and Virginia Nightingale Understanding Alternative Media
Critical Readings: Sport, Culture and the Media Olga Guedes Bailey, Bart Cammaerts and
Edited by David Rowe Nico Carpentier
Sport, Culture and the Media, 2nd edition Media Technology
David Rowe Joost Van Loon
U N D E R S T A N D I N G
A L T E R N A T I V E M E D I A
O l g a G u e d e s B a i l e y
B a r t C a m m a e r t s
N i c o C a r p e n t i e r
Open University Press
McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
Shoppenhangers Road
Maidenhead
Berkshire
England
SL6 2QL
email: [email protected]
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk
and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121–2289, USA
First published 2007
Copyright © Olga Bailey, Bart Cammaerts and Nico Carpentier 2008
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism
and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the
Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic
reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House,
6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN10: 0 335 22210 2 (pb) 0 335 2211 0 (hb)
ISBN13: 978 0 335 22210 0 (pb) 978 0 335 22211 7 (hb)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Poland by OZGraf S.A.
www.polskabook.pl
C O N T E N T S
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
FOREWORD ix
INTRODUCTION xi
Part I
Theorizing Alternative Media
1 || FOUR APPROACHES TO ALTERNATIVE MEDIA 3
2 || AN INTRODUCTORY CASE STUDY – RADIO FAVELA: REPRESENTING ALTERNATIVE MEDIA 35
Part II
Case Studies
Serving the community
3 || COMMUNITY APPROACHES IN WESTERN RADIO POLICIES 51
4 || DIASPORAS AND ALTERNATIVE MEDIA PRACTICES 63
An alternative to the mainstream
5 || BLOGS IN THE SECOND IRAQI WAR: ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CHALLENGING THE MAINSTREAM? 72
6 || ETHNIC-RELIGIOUS GROUPS AND ALTERNATIVE JOURNALISM 84
||
vi UNDERSTANDING ALTERNATIVE MEDIA
Linking alternative media to the civil society
7 || ONLINE PARTICIPATION AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE: CIVIL SOCIETY MAILING LISTS
AND FORUMS 97
8 || THE BRAZILIAN LANDLESS RURAL WORKERS’ MOVEMENT: IDENTITY, ACTION,
AND COMMUNICATION 108
Alternative media as rhizome
9 || TRANSLOCALIZATION, GLOCALIZATION AND THE INTERNET: THE RADIOSWAP PROJECT 122
10 || JAMMING THE POLITICAL: REVERSE-ENGINEERING, HACKING THE DOMINANT CODES 137
CONCLUSION 149
GLOSSARY 158
ACRONYMS 167
FURTHER READING 168
REFERENCES 172
INDEX 191
A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S
The idea of this book started in 2004 when we – Olga, Bart, and Stuart – were in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil on our way back to the UK after the IAMCR conference in Porto Alegre,
in the South of Brazil. While enjoying the ‘pleasures’ of Brazilian food in Copacabana,
we had an inspiring conversation about media issues which would contribute to the
current debates in media and cultural studies, particularly regarding media and dem-
ocracy in the current context of global politics. Alternative media, we all agreed, were a
case in point. From there, the project slowly started to take shape, with Nico later
joining the team, which from the beginning had a strong commitment to producing an
exciting book.
This book is the result of productive and engaging conversations among us, our
colleagues who read the manuscript, our editors, the anonymous external reviewers, and
interviewees. The responsibility for the content is ours, but their input certainly made
this a better text. To all of them our deepest thanks. We are especially grateful to S. Allan
for his comments, guidance, and support which were fundamental in enabling us to dare
to cross the established theoretical boundaries of what constitutes ‘alternative media’.
Due to the transnational nature of this project, some expressions of gratitude are
specifically linked to individual authors.
Olga is grateful to her colleagues at Nottingham Trent University for their support.
She expresses her gratitude to Russell, Flavia, and David, for sharing as dores e as
delícias of this experience.
Bart would like to express his gratitude to his colleagues at the LSE and, in particu-
lar, to Robin, Maggie, and Shani for their continued support and feedback. He also
extends his gratitude to his close friends, sisters, mother, and daughter Manon for
having to do without him for extended periods.
Nico wishes to thank J. Servaes and R. Lie for assisting in the development of the
original theoretical model that structured this book, within the framework of a
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viii UNDERSTANDING ALTERNATIVE MEDIA
UNESCO project. He wants to thank all collaborators of the RadioSwap evaluation,
and the two RadioSwap coordinators, D. Demorcy and P. De Jaeger. Finally, his warm
thanks also goes to R. Day, O. Deedniks, and S. Van Bauwel.
Last, but not least, the authors would like to thank DimensionFM, RadioSwap,
MST, Mister Hepburn, the Labour Party, and Jekino Films for granting us permission
to use their visual images.
S E R I E S E D I T O R ’ S F O R E W O R D
Prefigured in any sense of the ‘mainstream’ media is some conception of the
alternatives that fall outside of typical sorts of definitions. Western ideas about what
counts as citizen journalism, for instance, look very different in countries where
ordinary people lack basic access to electricity, let alone to a television set or computer.
In civil war-torn Liberia, Alfred Sirleaf’s efforts to perform a role akin to the citizen
journalist are a case in point. As the managing editor of The Daily Talk, he writes up
news and editorials on a chalkboard positioned on the street outside his ‘newsroom’
shed every day, thereby providing passers-by with important insights into what is
happening in Monrovia. ‘I like to write the way people talk so they can understand it
well,’ he told The New York Times. ‘You got to reach the common [person].] Equipped
with his ‘nose for a good scoop,’ this ‘self-taught newshound’ scours newspapers – and
calls on an informal network of friends acting as correspondents – for the information
necessary to keep everyone ‘in the know.’ For those unable to read words on a chalk-
board, there are symbols – a blue helmet hanging beside the board means the story
involves the United Nations peacekeeping force, while a chrome hubcap represents the
president (the ‘iron lady’ of Liberian politics). In previous years his dedication to
critical reporting has met resistance from those in power; he was arrested and spent a
brief spell in prison, then went into exile while his newsstand was torn down. Today,
with his plywood shed rebuilt, he remains steadfast in his belief that what he is doing
matters for the country’s emergent democracy. ‘Daily Talk’s objective is that everybody
should absorb the news,’ he maintains. ‘Because when a few people out there make
decisions on behalf of the masses that do not go down with them, we are all going
to be victims.’
It is precisely this type of commitment to democratising the relations of power at the
heart of communication that animates Olga Guedes Bailey, Bart Cammaerts and Nico
Carpentier’s Understanding Alternative Media. In a wide-ranging discussion, they