Respublika! Archive
The content here used to reside in NeMe’s dedicated Respublika! subdomain. Although there were more posts under this section in the subdomain, the content was curated for the purpose of this site.
The art of community media organisations
Community media(¹) are more than media organisations. With diversity, contingency and fluidity as key characteristics, community media act as crossroads of civil society (Santana and Carpentier, 2010), bringing together a wide variety of people: Educators, experts, activists, visual artists, sound artists and musicians, journalists, and many more. Their alternativity allows community media to transgress fixed borders, and to shift into areas that are not traditionally associated with (mainstream) media organisations, including the arts. To use Deleuze and Guattari’s words (2004: 8), which are very appropriate for community media: “A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles.”
Why community media? A bit more context and references
Community media are therefore key locations of democracy, for a number of reasons. Earlier research (see Carpentier, Lie and Servaes, 2003; see also Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier, 2007; Carpentier, 2011) has shown that community media are characterised by high levels diversity, but that they also share a number of key defining elements, which make them different from commercial media, and from public media. In particular, it is their integration into the community, the civil society and their commitment to (media) democracy and participation make them stand out.
The Respublika! project was made possible thanks to funding by the Cultural Services of the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture and the kind support from Medochemie, Sheila Pinkel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Uppsala University, CCMC, and H4C.
