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- Volume 1, Issue 1, 2016
Journal of Alternative & Community Media - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2016
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2016
- Introduction
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- Essays
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- Articles
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Alternative media, self-representation and Arab-American women
By Kenza OumlilArab-American women often find themselves represented in the mainstream media as oppressed victims in need of saving, but what sometimes gets less attention are the ways in which Arab-American women themselves are adding to the media landscape, through poetry, film and other forms. This article offers a textual analysis of artistic interventions circulated by Arab-American women in the media sphere, and supplements the analysis of the content and context of these interventions with individual interviews with the artists involved. It focuses on the poetry of Suheir Hammad and the cinematic interventions of Annemarie Jacir, which I situate as alternative media. I conceptualise alternative media as media content that challenges dominant assumptions and offers stylistic innovations for the purpose of inspiring social change. In addition, I argue that alternative media consist of transforming the existing stock of material into one’s own language in order to promote social justice. The article concludes with remarks regarding the opportunities and the limitations of alternative media in effecting social transformation.
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Putting the ‘love back in’ to journalism: Transforming habitus in Aboriginal affairs student reporting
Authors: Bonita Mason, Chris Thomson, Dawn Bennett and Michelle JohnstonWhile journalism scholars have identified a lack of critical reflexivity in journalism, few have identified ways to educate university students for critically reflexive journalism practice. This article reports on a university teaching project that enables such practice as a means to counter exclusions, stereotyping and misrepresentation of Aboriginal people by large-scale Australian media. Using Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to track transformations in student dispositions, particularly as they relate to practice, the article shows how participating students became more competent and confident Aboriginal affairs journalists with a strengthened sense of themselves, their practice and the journalistic field. Their investment in the field was strengthened as they sought to tell hidden and disregarded stories, and to include previously excluded voices, perspectives and representations. The article describes and analyses an example of critically reflexive learning, practice and teaching that has the potential to transform students’ learning, the journalistic field and relations between Aboriginal non-Aboriginal Australians.
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Towards a reconceptualisation of the lumpenproletariat: The collective organisation of poverty for social change through participatory media
More LessThis study examines the activist-oriented participatory media processes of those who arguably could be classified as contemporary lumpenproletariat in San Francisco, California. Based on ethnographic research conducted at POOR Magazine in San Francisco, this article argues that, despite obstacles of disenfranchisement and disindividuation, people living in poverty and homelessness can organise collectively for social change via participatory media processes. Working with POOR Magazine, I conducted a qualitative analysis of the process of participatory media production and the media artefacts of people living in poverty and homelessness. The data are analysed through a critical/cultural theoretical lens to help reframe and redefine the conception of the lumpenproletariat. The findings of this study saw the possibility for collective organisation emerge in four ways: ideology, leadership, organisation and collective identity; this gives us a better understanding of the power and potential of lumpenproletariat media.
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The ‘imagined community’ of readers of hyperlocal news: A case study of Baristanet
By Renee BarnesHyperlocal media are characterised by their narrow focus on small geographic regions, and citizen or community participation in the news-production process. However, very little work has focused on the dynamics of community development in relation to these websites – including the role of participation. Based on a case study of award-winning New Jersey-based hyperlocal news website Baristanet, this article draws on an online survey of readers about how and why they participate on the website. The analysis finds low levels of active contributions in the form of comments following news stories and evidence of a limited representative community on the website. Specifically, analysis of the survey responses suggests that contested user notions of an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1991) have significant impacts on participatory behaviour. The article argues that a virtual community, based on an offline geographic region, can face particular barriers when it comes to fostering website participation, which may suggest a reinterpretation of Anderson’s imagined community in the age of participatory journalism.
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Communicative sovereignty in Latin America: The case of Radio Mundo Real
More LessCommunicative sovereignty is emerging as an anchoring concept for community and alternative media in Latin America. The usage of the term is often unclear, however, especially as it relates to the current historical juncture. This article therefore presents a detailed analysis of the work of RadioMundoReal.fm (RMR), a regional alternative news production and distribution service that supplies content to local community media outlets. Findings show that RMR makes national struggles and regional events more visible, but users feel it should support the construction of alternative ways of living and communicating. This suggests that the concept of communicative sovereignty, as it is evolving in Latin America, reflects shifting approaches to both expressions of authority and alternative media work. The challenge is to develop media strategies that support emerging goals.
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Community radio and peace-building in Kenya
More LessIn December 2007, violence broke out after the disputed general election in Kenya, which resulted in the death of 1100 Kenyans and left more than 660,000 displaced. Reports criticised media, especially vernacular media, for inflating the violence by using hate speech and incitement to violence, and suggested that Kenya would benefit from more community media to prevent history from repeating itself. This article focuses on how Koch FM and Pamoja FM, two community radio stations in Nairobi, Kenya, worked during the 2007–08 tumult and 2013 general election. The article is based on observations and interviews with community radio practitioners conducted between 2007 and 2013, and addresses the following questions: How do the community radio stations work during elections – times of increased tensions? How do they discourage ethnic violence in their community? How is participation used in order to bring unity to the community?
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An opposition newspaper under an oppressive regime: A critical analysis of The Daily News
More LessThis study focuses on the unprecedented ways in which newspaper journalism helped the cause of democratisation at the height of the economic and political governance crisis, also known as the ‘Zimbabwe Crisis’, from 1997 to 2010. The research is designed as a qualitative case study of The Daily News, an independent private newspaper. It was based on semi-structured interviews with respondents, who were mainly journalists and politicians living in Zimbabwe. The analytical lens of alternative media facilitates a construction of how The Daily News and its journalists experienced, reported, confronted and navigated state authoritarianism in a historical moment of political turmoil. The study discusses the complex relationships between the independent and privately owned press, the political opposition and civil society organisations. The research provides an original analysis of the operations of The Daily News and its journalists in the context of a highly undemocratic political moment. Some journalists crossed the floor to join civic and opposition forces in order to confront the state. The state responded through arrests and physical attacks against the journalists; however, journalists continued to work with opposition forces while the government enacted repressive media and security law to curtail coverage of the crisis.
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Introducing Community Audio Towers as an alternative to community radio in Uganda
More LessCommunity radio started as an alternative to commercial media. The need for an alternative was clear, with many societal voices unrepresented, indicating the domination of the means of mental production by a few. This article presents two communities in Uganda that use Community Audio Towers (CATs) as an alternative to community radio, and examines why the communities prefer the use of CATs to ‘mainstream’ community radio. Using data collected through observation at two sites in Uganda and 10 key informant interviews from major communication stakeholders, including Uganda’s Minister of Information and Communication Technology, the article presents findings indicating that CATs are self-sustaining, with no NGO influence, and they redefine news to mean local emergencies and occurrences, while having no structures (horizontal/vertical rhetoric) as they are started and run by one community member. The challenges of the new alternative media are also discussed.
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- Book Reviews
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Martínez Hermida, M. & Sierra Caballero, F. (eds) (2012). Comunicación y Desarrollo. Prácticas comunicativas y empoderamiento local [Communication and Development: Communicative Practices and Local Empowerment]. Barcelona: Gedisa
More LessReview of: Martínez Hermida, M. & Sierra Caballero, F. (eds) (2012). Comunicación y Desarrollo. Prácticas comunicativas y empoderamiento local [Communication and Development: Communicative Practices and Local Empowerment]. Barcelona: Gedisa.
ISBN 9 7884 9784 6912, 429 pp.
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Kitchin, Rob (2014). The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures & Their Consequences
By Arne HintzReview of: Kitchin, Rob (2014). The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures & Their Consequences. London: Sage. ISBN: 9 7814 4628 7484.
Elmer, Greg, Ganaele Langlois and Joanna Redden (eds) (2015). Compromised Data: From Social Media to Big Data. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN: 9 7815 0130 6518.
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Robie, D (2014) Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Rights in the Pacific
More LessReview of: Robie, D (2014) Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Rights in the Pacific. Auckland: Little Island Press. ISBN 9 7818 7748 4254, 208 pp.
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