Community media emerges in societies struggling to find meaning from the mainstream media, which is failing to reflect their reality. As a medium for democratic discourse, journalism is compromised through the concentration of mainstream media ownership and through state controlled press systems (Hacket and Carroll 2006). When the dissemination of information is manipulated by anyone other than the public, a need for community media arises. Around the world, disenfranchised cultures are using community journalists to democratize society and empower people.
In Korea, media needs to be understood in historical and political context. Since Korea’s emancipation from Japan in 1945 and the subsequent political North-South split of the peninsula, the media has been an ally of dominant political paradigms (Park, Kim and Sohn 2000a:111). Korea’s cultivation of political superiority has pervaded the mainstream media, which has thus alienated itself from its audience. Furthermore, the limited number of nationwide networks means that Korea experiences cultural and social homogenisation (Park, Kim and Sohn 2000b:118). However, the Korean audience has exhibited pockets of resistance to authoritarian media control since the 1970’s. It continues to do so today.
Aspiring to democratic communication and in the face of an elite media system, the South Korean media organisation Ohmynews was established in 2000 (Hamilton and Kim 2006). Drawing information from over 40,000 members of the public, OhmyNews might be one of the world’s clearest examples of ‘citizen’s media’ as described by Rodriguez (Rodriguez 2001). Certainly, audience participation and access describe the horizontal structure characterizing community journalism (Carpentier, Rie, and Servaes 2003a). The number of citizen journalists who contribute news to the internet based organisation is testament to the lack of real representation by the conservative mainstream media, which comprises 80 percent of the news market (Min 2005). Public participation through the construction of news content and online debate, are vehicles through which OhmyNews seeks to balance the nation’s skewed media regime and foster self representation. The emergence of participatory media practices as seen in Korea offers the public the chance to reproduce their own culture as they themselves interpret it.
Similarly in Venezuela, the dramatic growth of community media is symbolic of the public’s discontent with mainstream journalism, which functions in a culture of economy. With financial stakes in the oil industry, Venezuelan leaders have traditionally held a tight grip on the flow of information (Klein 2003a). The manipulation of information by the oil industry sponsored press has caused widespread discontent in a nation plagued by poverty. In 2002, the failed coup to oust democratically elected President Chavez was blatantly encouraged by the media. In a bid to offset the strength of the private press sector, the Chavez regime has supported community journalism by deregulating the previous government’s strict legislation. In an affront to Venezuela’s media cartel, community media outlets have doubled since the coup as they endeavor to recover balance in the media sector by supplying news that reflects the community (Wilpert 2004). This is an exemplary case for the public’s call for the democratization of the media in the public sphere and the promotion of community solidarity.
However, free press remains a contestable subject in Venezuela. If community media is to be the carrier of counter hegemonic discourse it needs to occur in a context independent of the market as well as the state (Carpentier, Lie and Servaes 2003b). Since community journalists reported resistance of the coup, they have enjoyed active support from the autocratic leader. Furthermore, there is evidence suggesting that the Venezuelan government is investigating a national newspaper that “vilified” a state representative (Klein 2003b). This begs the question: Has the pendulum swung in the opposite direction from privately controlled press to state controlled? What will happen to journalists critical of the government? Will they have the opportunity to marshal opposition (Klein 2003c)? It would seem that in Venezuela the war for media sovereignty parallels the political war for oil.
As in the case of pre-Chavez Venezuela, the corporate interests of powerful media moguls have immense influence on mainstream journalism and on the way in which they impact culture. The citizen’s ability to make informed decisions, a concept vital for a functioning democratic society, is eliminated by the concentration of a commercially driven private sector. This is particularly true in Australia where Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation owns over 70 percent of the daily newspaper market (Cunningham and Flew 2000a:237). The quest for profit concedes diversity of information and expression. As in the Korean experience, Australian mainstream media aligns itself with government practice, political economy and the resulting cultural nationalism. The mainstream media has been implicit in propagating the Australian government’s historical reluctance to address the problem of Indigenous stereotypes and racist behavior (Meadows 2001a). Furthermore, Australia experiences proportionally the world’s second highest immigration with 40 percent of the population born in another place (Cunningham and Flew 2000b:241). Consequentially, the ubiquity of community journalism in Australia is indicative of the public’s protest at the mainstream media’s deficiency in reporting plurality while marginalising minority groups. In fact, four million Australians tune into community radio each week (Meadows, Forde, Ewart and Foxwell 2009a). This validates community journalists’ role in countering the mainstream media tendency to manufacture political and cultural consent.
Indeed, the objective of community journalism in Australia is to empower the politically disenfranchised by presenting them with ownership of the content and production of information (Jankowski 2002:7). Resistant agendas in the media, which provide positive coverage of marginalised and deterritorialised populations, are achieved through the efforts of community journalists. They intend to address the lack of democracy and challenge hegemony by managing the production of culture in the community from which they evolve and are directly related to (Meadows 2001b). The financial facility and accessibility of radio, as well as community radio’s trademark ability to encourage active participation, makes it a successful medium through which to do this. There are almost 400 community radio licenses in Australia that are serviced by 30,000 people who regularly participate in their production (Meadows, Forde, Ewart and Foxwell 2009b; Forde, Foxwell and Meadows 2003a).
Barlow’s (Barlow 2002:153) case study into a locally conceived Aboriginal people’s radio station found that ownership of a communications medium was integral to empowerment. Located in a remote regional centre, the setting of paid positions as an alternative to volunteers provided a sense of propriety in an industry otherwise unreachable to the Indigenous community. The opportunity for actual self representation of culture and language in one’s own environment is critical to democratic discourse and fundamental to contesting the deep seeded racial sentiment pervasive in Australian social doctrine (Meadows 2001c). Maintaining it’s independence from commercial stations and commercial advertising means that the station is typically reliant on increasingly limited government funds, placing its original anti hegemonic ethos (and future) on shaky ground. Since 1985 the amount of government spending on community broadcasting has remained the same despite the sector trebling in size (Meadows, Forde, Ewart and Foxwell 2009c). Yet the tenacious grip of community radio reflects Australia’s multicultural and Indigenous people’s determination to be represented. In fact, almost 50 percent of community radio workers are volunteers and a further 20 percent are part time volunteers (Forde, Foxwell and Meadows 2003b). The public’s commitment to community media is further substantiated by evidence indicating that over half of paid employees work for considerably less than Australia’s annual mean income (Forde, Foxwell and Meadows 2003c).
The encouragement of social, cultural, geographical and linguistic diversity is met through the community media sector across the Australian continent as well as across the world. In an attempt to decentralise the mass media’s power and the tendency it has to homogenize culture, the north eastern Catalan region of Spain promotes community broadcast and the internet as mediums through which to activate cultural and political pluralism (Domingo, Lopez and Moragas Spa 2002a:294).
Catalonia’s experience with community journalism needs to be placed in historical context. Cultural homogenisation has a long standing tradition in Spain. The 700 year long campaign to oust the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula marked the unification of the political landscape of Spain in the seventeenth century. More recently the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco from 1939 to 1975 worked towards further unifying the socio-political divides. During Franco’s regime the Catalan region suffered the persecution of Catalan culture and language (Rodriguez 2001b:85). Catalonian people contested this by discovering unique ways in which they could unite and maintain their cultural identity in the face of autocratic repression. Rodriguez (Rodriguez 2001c:86) describes the very grass roots of Catalan community media via chess clubs, dances and small pamphlets.
Since the 1980’s the articulation of Catalan language through the broadcast sector significantly impacts the fostering of culture. Due to the hazy legalities of independent television stations, committed Catalonian’s have established the Federation for the Regualtion of Catalonian Local Television Stations, which regulates distribution, programming and financial management (Rodriguez 2001d:92). The active participation of the public to create its own ‘voice’ signifies a clear resistance to the dominant culture produced by mainstream media.
While the face of Franco fades, it is fast replaced by the global concentration of media ownership and its suffocating control over the currency of information. Spa, Domingo and Lopez (Domingo, Lopez and Moragas Spa 2002b:293) state that in spite of this, local community media continues to enjoy dramatic growth. Indeed, if community journalism arises out of a need for actual representation, then the industrial convergence of the international media sector will present an ever greater need for the ability of community media to empower people and cheer plurality. In the digital arena, the authors encapsulate community media with social and civil society, so that the resulted decentralisation of power serves to counter the dominant ideologies expressed by the mainstream media (Domingo, Lopez and Moragas Spa 2002c:295).
The mainstream media’s role as the Fourth Estate, that is, as an independent body to provide critical assessment of policy makers, is continually challenged in the international culture of economy. While the ethical fibers of journalism wear thin in a press system driven by market forces, the media’s power to produce meaning is unraveled by its alliance with the hand that feeds it; the government. In every case however, the dogged determination of the public to be represented fairly, accurately and truthfully, forms a solid foundation for community journalism to spring from.
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Keriruri's Point 