COMMUNITY MEDIA - THE LONG MARCH

The May 2010 issue of "Telematics and Informatics. An interdisciplinary journal on the social impacts of new technologies"
is now available and presents a special issue on COMMUNITY MEDIA - THE LONG MARCH.

The new generation of media technologies and the success of the so-called 'Web 2.0' platforms has put at the centre of academic and industry discussions the participatory potential of internet-based media. 'Old' participatory platforms, alternative and community using traditional broadcasting or print outlets, though, have a long history of close involvement of their audiences in practices that have put communities' communicative needs at the centre of their everyday work and fought for the democratization of media systems. Despite their financial and organisational weaknesses as individual stations or projects, community media are being increasingly recognised as the third and distinct sector of broadcasting by recent policy and regulatory developments in Europe and across the globe. The contributions presented in this issue present the opportunities and challenges that are characterising the sector at this time, as the switchover to digital broadcasting platforms, and the need of constant presence at the European Union and Council of Europe levels to make sure that community media are considered with equal dignity among other broadcasters in media policy debates.

Practice based accounts also show the contribution of community media to intercultural dialogue, an impressive range of interactions with civil society organisations present in their communities, and the potential of giving voice to local and diasporic communities through innovative combinations of FM and web-based broadcasting. Finally, this special issue also shows evidence of the important role that civil society plays in the production of situated knowledge along, and in collaboration with, ongoing academic research in this area of study.

Guest Editors: Nico Carpentier & Salvatore Scifo Contributors: K. Jakubowicz, H. Peissl, O Tremetzberger, N. Jimenez,
S. Scifo, M. Sandoval, C. Fuchs, L. Hallett, A. Hintz, M. Santana, N. Carpentier, S. Tenner, A. Borger, N. Bellardi, T. Kupfer, F. Diasio and S. Milan

Online access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/07365853

Abstract of Introductory Chapter

The new generation of media technologies and the success of the so-called ‘Web 2.0’ platforms has put at the centre of academic and industry discussions the participatory potential of internet-based media. ‘Old’ participatory platforms, alternative and community using traditional broadcasting or print outlets, though, have a long history of close involvement of their audiences in practices that have put communities’ communicative needs at the centre of their everyday work and fought for the democratization of media systems. Despite their financial and organisational weaknesses as individual stations or projects, community media are being increasingly recognised as the third and distinct sector of broadcasting by recent policy and regulatory developments in Europe and across the globe. The contributions present in this issue present the opportunities and challenges that are characterising the sector at this time, as the switchover to digital broadcasting platforms, and the need of constant presence at the European Union and Council of Europe levels to make sure that community media are considered with equal dignity among other broadcasters in media policy debates. Practice-based accounts also show the contribution of community media to intercultural dialogue, an impressive range of interactions with civil society organisations present in their communities, and the potential of giving voice to local and diasporic communities through innovative combinations of FM and web-based broadcasting. Finally, this special issue also shows evidence of the important role that civil society plays in the production of situated knowledge along, and in collaboration with, ongoing academic research in this area of study.

More information on Telematics and Informatics available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/07365853

Part One: Interview with Lina Fruzzetti

Painting and singing stories told in scrolls (patas in Bengali) goes back to ancient times in India. For generations hereditary painter-singers (Patuas or Chitrakars) have been practicing their craft in the Midnapur district of West Bengal. In the village of Naya, 3 hours from Calcutta, many Chitrakar women have recently taken up the Patua craft.

Patuas are Muslims, and they tell the stories of Muslim saints (pirs and fakirs) as well as Hindu Gods and Goddesses, and offer devotion to saints at Muslim shrines. In the past they used to wander from village to village, receiving rice, vegetables and coins for their recital. They would unroll a scroll, a frame at a time, and sing their own compositions. But competition from other media eroded this way of life and nowadays the Patuas are trying to adapt to changing conditions.
A website about Naya and the Patuas is at http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/naya/intro.html
The website contains translated texts of the songs that are performed with the scrolls. This is the song about HIV/AIDS
Artist: Swarna Chitrakar
Listen, everyone, pay attention. I would like to talk about HIV AIDS
HIV came from the west & has infected hundreds in India.It is not an infectious disease. It spreads from 4 things:
Using the same syringe for addiction, using the same syringe for injection; from pregnant HIV carrier women. Or having unprotected sex with ‘infected’ women

In case these 4 things are taken care of, HIV will not occur. That is why I request the Doctors; the syringes for injection should be changed.
In case of blood transfusion, the blood has to be checked first.
If a pregnant mother carries a baby, it can be born infected.
I appeal to all Indians to use Nirodh condoms.
If anybody has AIDS, don’t keep it secret. Get admitted to the district hospital. You can test your blood in confidence paying Rs 10 in VCTC centers.

Lina Fruzzetti, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, has worked with the women of Naya. This is an interview made in her office in Providence, RI, in November 2009.
Interview Part Two Lina Fruzzetti Interview Part Three Lina Fruzzetti's page at Brown University:Within social anthropology, my specialty is in the relationship between kinship, marriage, and rituals and the meaning of the construction of gender in India. I have done extensive work on caste and the life cycle rites of Hindus; now I am addressing the recent structural changes to the institution of marriage and what constitutes the person. My research on nationalism and post colonial studies has taken me to a more comparative approach addressing the feminist movement, and the problems and politics of identity and citizenship within Islam and Hinduism. In addition to the primary research work in India, I also focus on East and North Africa communities.

My interest in visual anthropology took me beyond using films to teach. I co-directed four documentary films on varied themes and topics about the communities with which I work.

Proposal for Community TV in Canada

Cathy Edwards speaking about community TV in Israel.
CACTUS Offers New Cost-Effective Model for Maintaining and Increasing Local OTA Service

Ottawa (24 November 2009) In its submission to the CRTC hearing on November 25, The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) will propose a novel and cost-effective way to maintain, support and increase local programming content.

"As one of the three elements protected by the Broadcasting Act, community broadcasting must be community-controlled," says Cathy Edwards, spokesperson for CACTUS. "While Canada’s community radio stations offer intensely local content, our community television sector’s dependence on the cable industry has resulted in studio closures, reduced community access, and attempts to commercialize community channels to compete for advertising with local TV stations."

To give Canadian communities a true community alternative, CACTUS will be asking the CRTC to liberate the money earmarked for community access to an independent production fund directed at volunteer community TV boards. They would offer free over-the-air community TV, free training to community participants and free access on all platforms including new media. "We see community TV much like a public library. It should be the communications hub and active voice of Canadians in their cities and towns," said Edwards.

CACTUS believes that the coming analog-digital transition offers community TV the chance to develop a new business model, and to help remote private and public signals such as CTV and the CBC, remain available over the air to all communities, regardless of their size.

CACTUS is encouraging Canadians to express their views and support the community sector, by commenting on the CRTC’s consultation notice on community TV (Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2009-661). Canadians can write to the CRTC (CRTC, Ottawa, ON K1A 0N2) or file online at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-661.htm. The CRTC’s dead-line for comments on this policy is February 1, 2010.

Contact: Catherine Edwards, (819) 772-2862

Digital Oral History from Durban

DURBAN SINGS is a regional audio media and oral history project with a story, an open platform for contributions and re-mixes from other listeners, and a trajectory of joining hemispheres via audio correspondence between listeners: building on a listening bridge between ‘grass-roots’ organisation of community, artists and activist groups of the Southern and Northern hemispheres.

“Its oral history aspect is about reclaiming the re-membering of our condition. (us = Azanians) and sharing this with global audience: the attempt in advancing an African theory of history.” (Motho)

Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph Haile Selassie (His Imperial Majesty, 1892)

We tend to privilege experience itself, as if black life is lived experience outside of representation. . . . Instead, it is only through the way in which we represent and imagine ourselves that we come to know how we are constituted and who we are.” Stuart Hall. (“What Is This ‘Black’” 30)

In the telling and retelling of their stories/ They create communities of memory/ History, despite it’s wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced /With courage, need not be lived again.
(Maya Angelou)

Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

"The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy is a group of 17 media, policy and community leaders. Its purpose is to assess the information needs of communities, and recommend measures to help Americans better meet those needs. http://report.knightcomm.org/

"The Knight Commission sees new thinking about news and information as a necessary step to sustaining democracy in the digital age. It thus follows in the footsteps of the 1940s Hutchins Commission and the Kerner and Carnegie Commissions of the 1960s.

"But in the digital age the stakes are even higher. Technological, economic and behavioral changes are dramatically altering how Americans communicate. Communications systems no longer run along the lines of local communities, and the gap in access to digital tools and skills is wide and troubling.

"The Commission seeks to start a national discussion – leading to real action. Its aims are to maximize the availability and flow of credible local information; to enhance access and capacity to use the new tools of knowledge and exchange; and to encourage people to engage with information and each other within their geographic communities."

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The Knight Foundation has been criticized for its connection with U.S. national security agencies.
This from http://www.Swans.com:
"The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (also known as the Knight Foundation), is a major supporter of seemingly "independent" media projects, and was created in 1940 with monies generated from the Akron Beacon Journal. Since 2005, the president and CEO of the foundation has been Alberto Ibarguen, the former publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. Ibarguen maintains impressive democracy-manipulating credentials, as he is a US member of the imperialist Inter-American Dialogue, board member of the CIA-linked Council on Foreign Relations, and has held high-level appointments within a number of media-manipulating groups like the Freedom Forum's Newseum, and the Inter American Press Association. Ibarguen, however, is a board member of the newly formed and ostensibly progressive investigative journalism project, Pro Publica -- for a critique of this organization's work see "Investigating the Investigators: A Critical Look at Pro Publica."

The Knight Foundation supports a number of media projects, one of which is the Internews Network. This is a significant show of support as the Internews Network is a large media agency that has a long history of collaboration with the US government and the National Endowment for Democracy. Created in 1982, Internews, like CIMA, promotes a special brand of independent media; that is, media that is independent -- or free -- of any questioning of the hegemonic US media.(4) In 2005, the president of Internews, David Hoffman, co-wrote an article (with conservative commentator Helle Dale) in which he observed that his network played a crucial role in the "war of ideas," a war that he believes should rely upon the "two pillars of American democracy -- free enterprise and free media."

This commentary is part of an article by Michael Barker entitled: "Global Media Managers"

(Swans - March 9, 2009) On January 13, 2009, the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), a recently formed international media manipulator, released a report titled, "Soft Censorship: How Governments Around the Globe Use Money to Manipulate the Media." The report documents the manner in which various governments manipulate media systems within their own countries (e.g., the Ukraine and Chile). Significantly the report fails to identify the US government's extensive efforts to manipulate media systems in those same countries or the conduct of CIMA itself. When it is revealed that CIMA is a project of the US government's CIA-inspired National Endowment for Democracy (NED) this failure is contextualised. For example, by providing strategic support to local media projects the NED played a key role in facilitating Ukraine's Orange Revolution (in 2005), and in catalysing the ouster of Chile's resident dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1987. (1)