by David Ersson on October 23, 2013
In his 2011 book Alternative and activist new media, Leah A. Lievrouw discusses the genres of and within New Media. Since I in a previous blog post briefly mentioned the use and history of community radio and its similarities to how today’s social media can be used, it may be good to have a more profound comparation between them and what genres they represent.
First, I guess we can all agree on that radio, as we meet it today contains content of all kinds possible. On the radio we can hear everything from the latest pop release or the most pointless entertainment to the deepest political analysis and all kinds of different cultural content. But what genres then are represented within social media? [click to continue…]
by Nina Eneroth on October 23, 2013

Since the ’90s there has been several initiatives by activists, academics and civil society organizations to refine pleas and arguments for communication rights, such as the World Summit on the Information Society Civil Society Declaration, Shaping Information Societies to Human Needs. Bart Cammaertz however mean that the struggle for communication rights largely has failed due to free trade, media concentration and copyright protection that has undermined public interest and reduced the citizen to a consumer. (Cammaerts, 2007, p 2-5)
The lack of representation of marginalized groups in mainstream media is a problem globally. Hintz has pointed to that for many marginalized communities different types of civil society media is the only channel where they can hear about their culture and make their voices heard. (2007, p244-246) But as Angela Gillan Rose highlighted here in our blog earlier one of the greatest challenge facing for example community radio today is lack of funding. [click to continue…]