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from: Community Media in Transition

Rethinking Participation and Access in Public Access Media
February 24th, 2008 by Colin Rhinesmith

In June 2007, after learning about this project Felicia Sullivan recommended that I read Community Media: A Global Introduction by Ellie Rennie. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve only just begun to realize - sigh - what an amazing resource it truly is. Particularly for students and scholars of old and new media interested in finding fresh perspectives within media studies and democratic theories of governance.

Rennie investigates community media through the frameworks of political and legal theory to study its ambition “in what it sets out to achieve” (12) and its “sometimes contradictory principles” (61) (see, Rethinking Access Philosophy).

Central to the definition of community media, Rennie highlights the terms “participation” and “access.”

“meaning that nonprofessional media makers are encouraged to become involved (participation), providing individuals and communities with a platform to express their views (access).” (3)

Terms both associated with the cultural phenomenon of self-produced media content and refuted by media justice advocates, who write “the critical issue of access isn’t access to the technology but access to power over how that technology is developed.” In her chapter, “Access Reconfigured,” Rennie reinforces the latter position by considering community media within Internet commons and free software philosophies. She writes

“Some have called it ‘a new public interest,’ one that is based on an alternative regime where access is no longer about gaining access to a controlled territory, but where that territory is freely accessible to begin with.” (167)

While “alternative” and “radical” theories of community media remain part of their history, Rennie provides alternatives in her book that make us also look at “the good, the bad and the ordinary” (24). It is within this space, that Higgins’ approach to community media as process - rather than a means to an end (e.g., a program aired on public access television) - finds its place within community media studies.

“Community television as process conceptualizes constant change within individuals and the collectivities within which they participate” (Higgins, 1999).

A process, for Rennie, that brings “civil society into view” to understand how community media can negotiate both group needs and individual freedom (59).

This brings me back to my interest in the role of the community media center in the U.S. and its unique ability to provide spaces where individuals and groups in local communities can negotiate such concerns. In addition, these spaces provide opportunities for local residents with the community resources to contribute to and get back from a system created by, for and of those located in a geographic region.

When this process moves to the Internet it becomes a representation that also allows others to participate in making it their reality - wherever they may live around the world. This is where the potential exists for individuals and groups across distant locations to connect to shared visions within the process of community centric media - a form distinct from self-produced or self-representative (Rennie 188) media found on the web.