Community Media, International Perspectives

I am reading “Community Media, International Perspectives” by Linda K Fuller.
Though I have read around 4 chapters I would like to discuss the first chapter titled Introduction.

Media, which can also be referred to as corporate media is strictly profit oriented and treat people as consumers. Community media on the other hand is driven by social objectives to empower people and nurture local knowledge. They are committed to human rights, social justice, the environment and sustainable approaches to development.

She defines public access as public spaces where issues pertaining to local communities that are normally under-represented can be brought forward and democratically resolved.

Community media can be defined be following characteristics (Maslog 1997)
• Owned and controlled by people in the community
• Usually smaller and low-cost
• Provides interactive two-way communication
• Nonprofit and autonomous, therefore, noncommercial
• Has limited coverage or reach
• Utilizes appropriate, indigenous materials and resources
• Reflects community needs and interests
• Its program or contect support community development

Corporate media is dominated by advertisement, canned programming and audience-tested news casting. This book is recommended for those who are interested and parallel media. Later chapters are case studies of community media in different parts of the world and good examples on how culture can be preserved with community media. One of the biggest hurdle in my opinion is the availability of content for such medium. As one of the case studies say that the listeners got bored of the community radio channel where same programs were run again and again.

Community media is also referred to as Citizens Media.