Nico Carpentier

1
Beyond the confinements of locality. The on-line
community media database RadioSwap as a
translocal tool to broaden the communicative
rhizome.
Nico Carpentier 'Community Radio People,
Places and Processes' conference Mary Immaculate
College (Limerick) November 3rd 2005
2
In Latin America, they are termed popular radio,
educational radio, miners' radio, or peasants'
radio. In Africa, they refer to local rural
radio, while in Europe it is often called
associative radio, free radio, neighborhood
radio, or community radio. Asians speak of radio
for development, and of community radio, in
Oceania of aboriginal radio, public radio and of
community radio
Community media and diversity
? Capturing elusiveness?
3
Positioning the four theoretical approaches
(Carpentier, et al., 2003)
4
Amarc labels a community radio station a
non-profit station, currently broadcasting,
which offers a service to the community in which
it is located, or to which it broadcasts, while
promoting the participation of this community in
the radio (Amarc, 1994 4).
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Approach I Serving the community
Validating and strengthening the
community Enabling and facilitating access and
participation by members of that
community Opening a channel of communication for
misrepresented, stigmatized or repressed societal
groups
Approach II An alternative to mainstream
Community media show that the third way is
still open for media organizations alternative
ways of organization, other representations and
discourses, other formats and genres - room for
experiments Emphasis on self-representation,
resulting in a multiplicity of societal voices
Approach III Part of civil society
Importance of civil society (as such) for
democracy, with community media as part of civil
society Democratization of media in relation to
micro- macro-participation Democratization
through media extensive participation in public
debate and opportunities for self-representation
in the (or a) public sphere
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Approach IV Rhizome
(Rodriguez, 2001 20)
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Approach IV Rhizome
Community media as the crossroads where people
from different types of movements and struggles
meet and collaborate Deepening democracy by
linking diverse democratic struggles Highlighting
the fluidity and contingency of media
organizations Questioning and destabilizing
(deterritorializing) the rigidities and
certainties of public and commercial media
organizations, making at the same time room for
collaboration and partnerships Elusiveness makes
community media (as a whole) hard to control and
to encapsulate guaranteeing their independence
8
Civil society and community media as rhizome
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Being reduced to the local?
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• Threats and problems
• world of one-way communications
• making democracy work?
• participatory inefficiency
• financial and organisational stability
• isolationism (no crossroads)
• lack of a common ground
• antagonism with state and market
• risk of incorporation
• confinement to one side of the local-global
  dichotomy
• link to traditional media-centred approaches (1
  2)
• weakens CM
• expand CMs societal democratic role?
• reconfiguration needed

11

• Reconfiguration of community
• geographical non-geographical (interest /
  virtual)
• structural cultural (interpretative / c of
  meaning)
• Rhizomatic approach
• avoiding the arbolic
• development of rhizomatic networks
• grounded in local communities and become
  simultaneously engaged in translocal networks
• assisted (not determined) by ICTs

12
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13
The Radioswap.net project aims to develop a
technical as well as organizational system that
will allow staff working for non-commercial and
community radio stations inside and outside
Belgium to exchange radio programs via the
Internet. (RadioSwap, 2001)
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15

• Evaluating the potential of rhizomatic
  technologies
• potential global distribution of representations
  and discourses, circulating beyond the local
• ? But interface difficult to handle
• possiblities for collaboration and co-creation
• But in future
• Language problems
• Lack of human interaction
• RadioSwap as outside and inside
• Appropriation?
• Involvement?
• Still strengthening CMs discourse, reproducing
  alternative antagonisms
• RadioSwap as political tool

16
It is a problem when a project comes from the
outside, when it is not a project where the radio
station could participate in the formulation of
the objectives, when it is a project that one has
to accept as it is. (KB, RUN) We discovered
little by little that we werent facing
organizations (CM or not) with whom we could
construct a project starting from their expertise
, but some individuals that had accepted
sometimes unwillingly to come once in a while
to a meeting where they could only speak on their
own behalf. (DD, RadioSwap)
17

• Translocal community of interest?
• exchange of self-produced content
• sense of belonging? mere arbolic?
• network size
• technology-centred
• escape usual constraints
• fluid project
• phase II coming some credit

18

• Conclusion
• Crucial players in the local democratic playing
  field
• More?
• ? Thorns in the side of polical power (Keane)
  or simply harmless?
• ? Mindsets are transnational, confined to
  locality
• ? Why should the rhizome stop at the edge of
  community?
• RadioSwap modest step, but important because
• incorporated this unattainable horizon
• materialization of the need and the dream to
  move beyond the local rhizome
• a viable alternative for the global (media)
  market of the future