3CMedia
Journal of Community, Citizen's and Third Sector Media and Communication
ISSN 1832-6161
Issue 1 (February) 2005
Mobilising The Community Radio Audience (295KB PDF)
Christina Spurgeon and Joanna McCarthy Page 1
In 2004 the first, national, statistically robust, quantitative assessment of the Australian community broadcasting sector's audience reach was undertaken. Conducted by McNair Ingenuity, this research provided a major breakthrough in the wider shift to a more audience-centred approach to managing the sector. The findings, significance and implications of this research are considered here. Following developments in critical cultural policy studies, this renewed concern for community broadcasting audiences is located within a 'larger cycle of decision-making' (O'Regan, Balnaves and Sternberg 2002: 2). The emerging spectrum market and the imminent transition to digital transmission for broadcasting are important to understanding why community broadcasting resistance to market-based conceptions of audience is being overcome, and how audience-centredness might be used to facilitate the continuing development of this 'third' sector of Australian broadcasting.
Perfect Match? Qualitative audience research and the community broadcasting sector (271KB PDF)
Michael Meadows, Susan Forde, Jacqui Ewart & Kerrie Foxwell Page 13
This paper reports on the first comprehensive qualitative audience study of the community media sector in Australia and responds to a need within the sector, from policy bodies and the broader Australian community, to better understand community broadcasters and their diverse audiences. Internationally, this project, in both scale and approach, is unprecedented. Thus, it heralds an exciting and pioneering stage in community broadcasting research. This paper outlines the aims and objectives of the project and our methodology for accessing Australian community media audiences. A qualitative engagement with the diversity of audiences characteristic of the community media sector has demanded new ways of doing audience research. This paper discusses some of the methodological hurdles we have crossed in our attempts to negotiate the research terrain and we raise some of the questions associated with the qualitative method and assert its validity and portability as a tool for better understanding and knowing the nature and composition of community media audiences in Australia.
Supporting the Democratic Voice through Community Media Centres in South Asia (288KB PDF)
Jo Tacchi Page 25
This paper considers the potential of community based information and communication technology (ICT) centres to support and promote the democratic voice. It does so through presenting comparative research findings from eight ICT centres in South Asia. The research uses a methodology that combines ethnographic approaches with action research. Here I look at the notion of 'democratic voice' in a loosely defined sense, referring to the ability of 'ordinary' people to access media and other information and communication technologies, and to create their own local content. As such it describes to some extent the processes of 'metamorphosis' involved in 'citizen's media' participants becoming, through these activities, 'active citizens' (Rodriguez 2004). At a point in time when alternative media studies are recognising a new relevance and development communication research facing a crisis in direction, this paper considers research findings emerging from and utilised in community based ICT initiatives across South Asia. Looking at the research in a comparative framework, lessons can be learned about the relevance of community media for supporting democratic voice, and the processes that are most likely to achieve this.
A Balancing Act: Entrepreneurship in Community Media (299KB PDF)
Saba El-Ghul Page 37
The community radio sector is experiencing a time of rapid growth in Australia. While community broadcasting participants generally welcome the sector's growth, they have expressed concern over the lack of proportionate funding increase from the Federal government. The key issue is the need to find ways to enhance community radio's sources of funding without imperilling its status as a not-for-profit sector, and as one main option, the deregulation of sponsorship time presently limited to five minutes per hour may enhance income generation for community radio. This paper argues that there is no inherent conflict between entrepreneurial principles and not-for-profit principles.
Different Values for Changing Times? The Melbourne 2001 Community Broadcasting Licence Grants (269KB PDF)
Peter Marcato Page 50
In November 2001, the Australian Broadcasting Authority concluded its investigation into the allocation of the four community licences available in the Melbourne metropolitan area. This long process, spanning more than eight years resulted in many broken dreams and anger at the way the process was undertaken. This paper looks at who received the licences and why; and what the experience of the licence allocation process in Melbourne tell us about the way the ABA operates. This paper examines these issues along with the broader issue of whether there is a passing of values from the initial implementation of community radio in the mid-seventies. What do the decisions tell us about how values that led to the emergence of community broadcasting have changed? What does the future hold for community broadcasting? How can the sector be 'connecting communities' when many aspirant groups missed out on a licence? This paper will be makes suggestions as to how the system can be improved and what the future holds in this area.
Agitate Educate Organise. The roles of information-based programming on 4ZzZ (329KB PDF)
Heather Anderson Page 58
Community radio in Australia, and community media in general, has received increased attention from academics in recent years. Forde et al (2002) highlight the need for further study into news and current affairs programming in the community broadcasting sector, saying that they are keen to discover more about its format and content, especially in terms of the attitudes and practices of information-based program producers. This paper attempts to clarify some of these issues by outlining the results of a case study of information-based programming at Brisbane community radio 4ZzZ and adopting a modified citizen's media framework.
Online Youth Networks: Researching the Experiences of 'Peripheral' Young People in Using New Media Tools for Creative Participation and Representation (310KB PDF)
Tanya Notley and Jo Tacchi Page 73
Online networks can support broad communicative participation and interaction and new media technologies have the potential to allow individuals and groups to reflect, create, maintain, establish, challenge and subvert the media and political representations that affect them. For 'peripheral' youth - those living outside of national and global cultural and economic core centres - new media technologies can enable access to multiple and diverse audiences, that may otherwise have not been reachable. This paper will explore the meaning of 'peripheral youth' and will consider how, using the Internet as a medium for distribution and communication, these young people can represent their local lives and explore different issues, identities and representations through participation in an online youth network.
Disturbing the Global: liquid connections shaping the future (318KB PDF)
Bevin Yeatman Page 82
A range of interesting community-based media initiatives have emerged from the chaos of New Zealand's broadcasting system. This paper theorises experiences of innovations in community television in this environment. It considers the significance and relationship of these local new media practices to the dynamic complexity of the global media system.
Democracy and the 'marketisation' of local radio in Australia (408KB PDF)
Peter Collingwood Page 96
This paper examines the changing contribution of local radio to the democratic process in Australia. It takes the whole local area approach suggested by the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, to examine all the services available in three regional areas to assess their potential in facilitating public sphere discussion, disputation and deliberation, and (since the common assumption is that deregulation severely curtailed these processes) it does this in a historical frame, comparing the changes in services from 1976 to 2001. Because of its strengths in the analysis of relationships between the state (public) and private sectors, Habermas's public sphere theory is used to frame this discussion. Recent theoretical extensions have also seen the welcome elaboration of issues of power (Fraser, 1992, 2000) and the inclusion of a new and subtle range of cultural issues (Peters, 1993; McGuigan, 1997, 2004; Keane, 1998) inside its developing literature.