ArticlePDF Available

Abstract

In October 1998, the Pacific Centre for Alternative Journalists convened its founding conference in Vancouver. The 60 participants represented a spectrum of media activists—from community radio, the student, feminist and Central American solidarity press, Latin American, labor and community television alliances, community‐based electronic nets, assorted “culture jammers"—as well as social justice activists from the anti‐poverty, student, aboriginal, environmental, and anti‐free trade movements. This article is based on my presentation to the opening plenary, which was called “What makes alternative media valuable to the communities it serves?”
The Value of Alternative Media
Peace Review: Media and Democratic Action
Volume 11 Number 1 March 1999
Dorothy Kidd
In October 1998, the Pacific Centre for Alternative Journalists convened its
founding conference in Vancouver Canada. The sixty participants
represented a spectrum of media activists -- from community radio, the
student, feminist and Central American solidarity press, Latin American,
labour and community television alliances, community-based electronic
nets, assorted “culture jammers” -- as well as social justice activists from
the anti-poverty, student, aboriginal, environmental, and anti-free trade
movements. This article is based on my presentation to the opening plenary
which was called “What makes alternative media valuable to the
communities it serves?”
How are alternative media valuable to the communities they serve? How can
we make them even more valuable? Let me start by examining the concept
of alternative media and then go on to discuss how far we have come and
where we should be going. Alternative media first grew up during the late
1960s and 1970s in the counter-culture movement. And like so much that
has come from that generation it is a concept that has been appropriated by
corporate marketers. Alternative is now used to sell everything, from music
to beer, to a young upscale niche that wants to stand out from the crowd.
So why are we, as media activists, using this term? We could have chosen
others, such as community-oriented, progressive, radical, democratic etc.
But all of those also have their own baggage. Maybe sometime in the future
we will find a better choice. For now, we’ve chosen alternative because it’s
how we are often characterized and how we characterize ourselves. While
the mainstream media tends to think of us as the other, alternative journalists
often use the term to mean the opposite, the counter to mainstream corporate
and state media. Many take pride in this stand on the margins, defining
themselves in those terms. For example, I work in community radio, which
we often describe as the voice of those underrepresented in the mainstream
media.
This role of alternative media as unofficial opposition to mainstream media
has been crucial to the extension of public discussion and debate about a
wide range of concerns and issues. If alternative media are not the first to
break stories, we are usually the first to provide any depth of analysis. For
example, I think of the contribution of Paper Tiger Television in the U.S.
during the Gulf War. Amidst the blizzard of network military maps and
“smart-bomb” talk, and the masses of yellow ribbons, they explored the
corporate and state interests of the U.S. and Allied Forces, as well as
providing the only evidence of significant opposition by US citizens. Or the
e-network that quickly grew out of the cyber-publication of the Zapatista
manifesto. The Zapatistas were daring to challenge the North American Free
Trade Agreement when much more powerful anti-free trade campaigners in
Canada and the U.S. had given up. Alternative media continue to play a
crucial role in the war in Chiapas as the Mexican Army’s campaign of low-
intensity conflict threatens the massacre of Chiapas citizens. Most recently,
alternative media were invaluable in the spread of information, critique, and
above all, international networking, among citizen’s groups around the
world, who were rallying against the fast-track passing of the MAI, the
Multilateral Agreement on Investment. The mainstream press eventually
covered all of these stories. But it was the alternative media that provided
the first in-depth coverage and analysis with first-hand information from
activists organizing around these issues.
Providing alternative messages and points of view is becoming even more
crucial as the global commercial media falls into fewer and fewer corporate
hands. The reduction in the diversity of information sources is also
exacerbated by the decline in state-supported services, here in Canada with
the cuts in support for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC),
throughout Europe and many other regions. There is a very real danger of
our horizon of options being blanked out.
Instead, the television and Internet screens are full of another set of
messages. Disney and Fox, Viacom and Conrad Black, are all telling us that
there is no alternative. You don’t need to worry about any of your daily
crises, your country’s national development priorities, or international food
and security. Those kinds of decisions are best left to the capitalist market.
Just sit back, get your credit card out, and choose from the commercial
options on the screen. Don’t worry about the cuts in your social service
safety net or the privatization of your schools and hospitals. All will be
efficiently run if you’d just let your state leaders arrange a new credit rating
with the bankers in New York, or a loan with the International Monetary
Fund. In Europe, this message that there is no alternative to the corporate
market has become so commonplace that they’ve shortened it to “Tina.” In
this context facing us, alternative media have an even more important role to
play.
However, I think we need to rethink our role. We need to continue the
critique of the mainstream, but we also need to take a greater part in
constructing another vision. How can we make alternative media more
proactive, in tune with our own goals and horizons. We can start by
focussing on the first part of the word alternative, to alter or change.
Alternative media are valuable to the communities they serve when they
advocate and work for social change in the communities and the larger
society. I’ve borrowed this idea from Peruvian media activist, Rafael
Roncagliolo, the most recent President of the World Community Radio
Association. Alternative media who are committed to altering society, to
social, political and economic change, operate with a different vision from
the corporate one, which view people as ever-narrower niches of consumers
to be delivered to advertisers.
Underscoring the social change part of alternative also allows us
differentiate between alternative media. A whole range of media are
described as alternative because they speak to groups who have been
misrepresented, or underrepresented, in the mainstream. For example, Black
Entertainment TV in the US, or the Chinese-Canadian daily newspapers, or
Spanish-language commercial radio. These new services can be important
counter voices, but are they alternative? No, not if they do not operate from
a vision of altering their communities, but are based on the commercial
model. It does not mean that journalists working there might not be
supportive, but they’re not alternative.
Alternative media also operate from a different model than the state or
public services. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was
originally set up by an alliance of people who challenged the status quo.
However, when it was institutionalized in the mid-1930’s, the CBC was
mandated to represent the nation state, focussing on national issues which
are framed by a professional body of journalists who work in the centers of
governmental and corporate power in eastern Canada. Until recently, the
CBC operated at arms length from government, as an independent service
supported by citizens’ taxes. However its mandate is not proactive, to alter
society.
In an increasingly market-driven media environment, national state-
supported services are certainly worth defending, but they are not
alternative. Living now in the United States I tune my radio to the CBC,
BBC, and U.S. National Public Radio as often as I can. There are many
journalists in these services who are sympathetic to social change issues, a
significant number of whom got their professional starts in alternative
media. I hope we can continue to work with them. However, they are not the
alternative. The CBC relies on a professional corps of journalists who,
although more diverse in gender and cultural background, represent the
professional or managerial sectors of society, to interpret our stories for us.
This second model of media service is like the media equivalent of
“representative” democracy.
If corporate media is the first, and state media now the second, alternative
media represent the third option, of “direct” democracy. Alternative media
are most valuable when they present messages directly from individuals and
groups who are working to transform their communities and societies. My
examples of news stories have all been from the political sphere, but
alternative media have also been valuable in their presentation of social,
cultural and economic concerns. I’d like to give you three examples where
alternative media has provided the lead, helping to bring the voices out of
the underground to wider public recognition.
The first example is the contribution of community radio, and more recently
campus radio, to the development of local, national and increasingly
international music. (The corporate recording industry recognized this fact
and regularly checks the alternative play lists.) Secondly, in the province of
British Columbia, where both major corporate publishers support campaigns
against aboriginal sovereignty and the resolution of land claims, the different
positions of First Nation’s peoples have only been presented in the
alternative media. Finally, when the Canadian government threatened to
restrict the manufacture and sale of herbal medicines, the successful
underground resistance first aired its concerns in the alternative media. Each
of these constituencies, of musicians and music fans, aboriginal peoples and
allies, and herbal medicine producers and users, are of significant size
locally and internationally. However, without access to alternative media, I
would not have understood their issues, or the global scope of them.
Five years ago, I argued at Vancouver City Hall that we at Vancouver
Cooperative Radio were fostering a civic public sphere. More recently, I
dubbed this third media option the “the global communications commons”.
Just as commoners in Europe fought off the enclosures of their common
land, media activists today are trying to keep alternative media open and
alive in the face of new enclosures of public discourse by corporate media.
This maintenance of common spaces for public discussion and debate is no
less important for the sustenance of our communities and cultures.
These communications commons are based locally all over the world, and
include traditional media forms as well as community-based and pirate radio
stations, local video production centers, and cyber-publishers and
networkers. From their home bases the local initiatives are starting to link
with regional, national and international networks of alternative media. This
ad hoc web structure is partly a result of our tremendous lack of resources
and funding. However, it is also a tribute to the idea that a grassroots
communications network is only sustainable if it connects people working
on the ground at the local level.
The “communication commons” presents a very different configuration than
the commercial and state media systems. National state broadcasting
systems continue to be very centralized, with program production emanating
from a central hub. The global commercial systems broadcast all over the
world, but most of their “product,” comes from one or two entertainment
production centers in the US. While still a small proportion of available
media internationally, altogether alternative media represent a very different
horizon. Rather than seeing ourselves as marginal, we can help change the
map and demonstrate a much larger plurality of the world’s people. It is a
continuance of the vision of the New World Information and
Communication Order, first proposed in the 1970s by the Non-Aligned
states. However, it has developed because of the strength of the local groups
who sustain the networks.
Alternative media have also made a major contribution at the organizational
level when they have attempted to democratize their own internal structures.
Inadequate and unfinished as these processes may be, alternative media
groups have modelled less hierarchical and more horizontal ways of working
together. They have altered the traditional hierarchies of public speech, in
which the mikes and monitors have been dominated by men, people of
European heritage and training, and most of all, the professional classes.
Challenged to live up to their promise to represent all the voices, a wide
range of groups now have a much greater say in cultural production and in
governance.
If the first part of alternative is alter, the last part of the word alternative is
native. Alternative media is valuable when it is native to the communities it
serves. (It is no accident that I use this word on this continent of the
Americas, where indigenous peoples have fought to create their own
alternative media.) Alternative media grow, like native plants, in the
communities they serve, allowing spaces to generate historical memories
and analyses, nurture visions for their futures, and weed out the
representations of the dominant media. They do this through a wide
combination of genres, from news, storytelling, conversation and debate to
music in local vernaculars. This growing of cultures is especially important
when we’re saturated with the homogenous packaging of global consumer
culture.
Sometimes this heterogeneity and diversity can seem strange, or even
unsettling. It’s not always smooth or pretty to hear and see productions from
cultures other than your own, whether of youth, or indigenous peoples, or
women, or lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered peoples. However, I
think this opportunity for communication across cultures is one of the
greatest potentials of alternative media. As a radio producer, I have often
heard from listeners who were not part of the audience we thought we were
addressing. Much of the time, these listeners -- the men who called the
women’s programmes, or the Euro-Canadians to those of young people of
colour, or the heterosexuals to queer discussions -- were appreciative of the
opportunity to listen to conversations where they were not usually included.
As an older, whiter listener, I have found it invaluable to have access to self-
representations from communities that are not my own. It’s given me
insights into many different ways of seeing, providing more information to
think about issues and challenging my mainstream-fed perceptions. As a
North American, it’s made me aware of the richness and diversity of cultures
from other regions, and, at the same time, more awake to the dangers of the
growing gulf in wealth, political and media power, that looms between us.
At the same time, as indigenous elders have been trying to tell us for five
hundred years, we need to recognize our interdependency. For our survival,
each and everyone of us needs to be able to speak and to listen to all the
voices. This recognition that free speech requires the right to freedom of
expression, and to information from a plurality of sources and of media, that
is driving the international campaign for the “right to communicate.” A
worldwide network of alternative media and of groups organizing for more
democratic communication are circulating The People’s Communication
Charter which calls for greater access to diversity of information, the right to
use the airwaves and communication resources and for their democratic and
transparent management.
What would make alternative media more valuable to the communities it
serves? Alternative media continue to have huge challenges ahead. Day to
day survival is of course the most pressing concern of most groups.
However, unless we have a much larger vision, how can we ask our
communities to support us? I’m going to briefly highlight a few suggestions.
Orienting our work with the aim of proactive social change, one of our first
tasks is to improve our understanding of the changing context and our
representation of what is going on. While most of us are based locally, we
also network regionally, nationally and internationally. We need to foster
stronger connections with people in our communities who are involved in
cultural, political, social and economic change. How can we be more
strategic about helping to build those networks?
Producing media to help alter our communities also means re-positioning
ourselves as media activists. It means offering more support to groups and
campaigns that want to extend the reach of their work to the mainstream
media. In the same way, it means rethinking our relationships with
journalists and producers in the mainstream media. When we stop focussing
on ourselves as marginal, and begin to strategize how to use media for social
change, we can begin to make alliances with other media people based on
strength, and not on our resentments about being treated like the poorer
cousins.
In order to get our messages out, we also need to recognize and utilize the
new media convergences. How can we creatively use these new technologies
to strengthen connections between journalists and producers? At one time,
print, radio, television and video were quite separate and had their own
aesthetics and production sub-cultures. But now the reasons for those
divisions are breaking down. How can we develop greater convergence
between media activists of all kinds, as well as social movements who need
to develop their own alternative media for their campaigns?
While I am suggesting we become more strategic about using our media
skills and resources, I’m not suggesting that we only speak to the converted.
We also need to change and improve our ways of presenting our work. We
work with the challenge of a media-saturated environment in which the
majority of people, and particularly the younger generations, are very
knowledgeable about media forms and genres. We also need to acknowledge
the ways that the majority of people use media as part of the multi-tasking
complex of their day. Their own use of media and their work as consumers
have helped them develop sophisticated understandings of the media. How
can we work more creatively to address our audiences?
Improving our production goes hand in hand with finding out more about
our audiences. Our research needs to go beyond counting heads, to ask
people what sense they’re making from our programming and writing. What
themes do they want us to cover, what debates and discussions really need
more airing, what is enriching and sustaining their lives? How can we
develop a more responsive and playful relationship with the communities we
serve?
Secondly, what would it mean to make alternative media more native
to the communities they serve? For a start, I think it means continuing to
support the development of production groups native to communities of all
kinds and sizes. Doesn’t this just reinforce the division into smaller and
smaller groups? I think this is one of the biggest challenges we face. Too
often we have accepted the mainstream strategy of “niche” fragmentation.
It’s been easier, especially in the relatively media-privileged environments
of North America and western Europe, to avoid dealing with the conflicts
between groups by setting up new media services. Rather than challenge the
traditional hierarchies of power, every new group has just been provided
with, or staked out a special journal issue, new broadcast program or web-
site. This may have increased diversity overall, but it has also led to a form
of media ghettoization and to a fragmentation of our audiences. There is far
too little communication among groups, or translation of what each group is
saying to the other communities.
The divisions among us are very real. We haven’t created the gaps of
economic, political and cultural power. However, if we are to effectively
share our limited communications resources, we need to proactively work to
heal the rifts. It’s not an either or process. We need to continue to support
the efforts of groups with less power to create their own cultural spaces and
actively work to build bridges between autonomous groups. At the same
time we need to seriously consider ways to interrupt the sub-cultural
monologues and create moments for dialogue and arguments across
movements and audiences. How can we create information programs that are
really multi-lingual and multi-cultural? We need to build on past attempts
and make this bridging a priority, figuring out ways to support one another
and to provide opportunities for exchange, dialogue and debate, developing
channels that support our interdependence.
We’re not alone. In the last few years, groups such as the Pacific Centre for
Alternative Journalists have been bridging these professional divides in
sectoral and regional meetings throughout the world. Alliances of media
activists, critics and allies, such as the Union for Democratic
Communication or the Media and Democracy Congresses in the U.S. have
formed in every region of the world. There have also been meetings of
indigenous media activists, particularly in the Americas and Australia, of
women media workers and activists, especially in Asia and Latin America,
and of labor communicators. In 1998, international participants in
conferences in Vienna and El Salvador echoed the call of the People’s
Communication Charter for a World Congress on Media and
Communication. While we have our work to develop here in the Pacific
Region, I know that we can play a part in this growing global social
movement for democratic communication.
Further Reading
The Cuscatlan Charter. (1998) Communication Resource: A Supplement to
Action Newsletter of the World Association for Christian Communication.
Kidd, Dorothy. (1998)Talking the Walk: The Communications Commons
amidst the Media Enclosures. Ph.D. Dissertation, Simon Fraser University,
Burnaby, Canada.
Roncagliolo, Rafael. (1991) Notes on “The Alternative” in Thede, Nancy
and Alain Ambrosi (Eds.) Video the Changing World. Montreal/New York:
Black Rose Books.
Dorothy Kidd has worked as a producer of community radio and video in
Toronto, Vancouver and northern Canada. She is presently teaching Media
Studies at the University of San Francisco.
... It is proposed that interventions of anti-capitalist alternative media forms are needed to dilute the power of neoliberalism. Kidd (1999) notes that alternative media first grew up during the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Bousalis (2021, 1) describes this period as ...
... However, alternative media's self-described position is as a counter-voice (Ihlebaek et al. 2022). Hence, alternative media journalists "use the term to mean the opposite, the counter to mainstream corporate and state media" (Kidd 1999). Alternative media has been theorised by scholars in a few ways such as: community-oriented, progressive, radical, and democratic (see Kidd 1999). ...
... Hence, alternative media journalists "use the term to mean the opposite, the counter to mainstream corporate and state media" (Kidd 1999). Alternative media has been theorised by scholars in a few ways such as: community-oriented, progressive, radical, and democratic (see Kidd 1999). Coyer et al. (2007) understand alternative media as being produced by the socially, culturally, and politically excluded. ...
Article
Neoliberalism has been described as the most successful ideology in world history (Anders-son 2000). This has, in turn, impacted the modern media by dumbing down its public interest role, through cultivating concentrated media ownership patterns, which has produced hyper-commercial and elitist-driven content. This paper has the broad aim of provoking discussions and debates both for the Global South and Global North geospatial locations grappling with these neoliberal consequences, by considering what systemic alternative(s) to capitalist me-dia can be considered. It specifically explores the return of the anti-capitalist alternative media to South Africa’s print media terrain to function in a developmental role. With the aim to dilute the neoliberal capitalist nature of its media that has effectively perpetuated the dominance of the elite class at the expense of citizen-oriented and public interest imperatives (Govenden 2022). It furthers this argument by also comparatively drawing on two BRICS country case studies from Asia i.e. China and India.
... Researching on issues related to alternative media like community radio is not merely a head count; it goes beyond and explores micro realities at the grass roots level (Kidd 1999). Therefore, studies of alternative media tend to employ qualitative approaches. ...
Article
With the dawn of media liberalization, the mass media instead of being a means for advancing freedom and democracy started of producing capital and propaganda for the new and powerful classes that severely excluded the voices of marginal groups. These conditions created an alternative way to express the anxieties of these groups through community radio (CR) because it is of, for, and by the community. Based on case studies of India's pioneer CRs (Sangam Radio, Telangana, and Radio Bundelkhand, Madhya Pradesh) a qualitative inquiry was carried out by using media ethnography tools. The study concludes that CRs can be seen as a means of developing capabilities among marginal communities through equitable inclusion not merely as participants but as active producers and managers that will ultimately help to produce a constructive environment for dialogs and deliberations on community issues and lead towards participatory development.
... Researching on historically disadvantaged communities like NTDNTs is not simply a head count, it needs to explore micro realities, therefore tend to employ qualitative methods (Kidd 1999;Patil 2014). The present paper relies on two focal qualitative methods i) Document analysis of four select autobiographies of NTDNT community members and ii) key informant interviews(KIIs). ...
Article
Full-text available
The diabolical policy approaches and apparatus constructed by colonial state and further reconstructed by post-colonial state under the tactical visions of governmentality and politics of accommodation jeopardised millions of Nomadic and De-notified Tribes NTDNTs. Thus, once located on mainstream of society the NTDNTs are pushed at the bottom of the lowest rungs of socioeconomic and political hierarchy. Against this backdrop, the paper aims to examine the long-troubled trajectory of NTDNTs throwing light on continuities of governmentality and politics of accommodation grounded during colonial-post colonial states methodically captured through (19) select cases of policy approaches and apparatus, respectively. The paper uses life stories of NTDNTs and their envoys voices as prime qualitative method for analyses using hermeneutics tradition. The paper through conceptual lens of governmentality and politics of accommodation concludes that the immensity of NTDNTs subjugation and exclusion instituted by colonial-postcolonial state is the vexing case of world's most elongated hapless victims of 'governmentality and politics of accommodation' beyond the pale of social-accountability. Finally, the paper put-forth unfeigned future policy priorities (FPPs) coupled with integrated model of change actors upon whom the onus lies to ensure NTDNTs reintegration and legitimate possibility of developmental accommodation for a new democratic India.
... Given their inclusive logics and their focus on issues of homelessness and social exclusion, which tend to be disregarded by mainstream media, street papers are seen by some scholars as alternative or participatory media. Howley (2003), employing Dorothy Kidd's (1999) defnition of alternative media, argues that "in publishing material written by people living in poverty, street papers consciously align themselves with the philosophy and tradition associated with alternative media" (p. 274), since they are "committed to 'altering' prevailing social conditions and do so, in part, by publishing 'native' accounts of economic injustice from the local that they serve" (ibid.). ...
Book
Full-text available
This timely volume offers a comprehensive and rigorous overview of the role of communication in the construction of hate speech and polarization in the online and offline arena. Delving into the meanings, implications, contexts and effects of extreme speech and gated communities in the media landscape, the chapters analyse misleading metaphors and rhetoric via focused case studies to understand how we can overcome the risks and threats stemming from the past decade’s defining communicative phenomena. The book brings together an international team of experts, enabling a broad, multidisciplinary approach that examines hate speech, dislike, polarization and enclave deliberation as cross axes that influence offline and digital conversations. The diverse case studies herein offer insights into international news media, television drama and social media in a range of contexts, suggesting an academic frame of reference for examining this emerging phenomenon within the field of communication studies. Offering thoughtful and much-needed analysis, this collection will be of great interest to scholars and students working in communication studies, media studies, journalism, sociology, political science, political communication and cultural industries.
... Given their inclusive logics and their focus on issues of homelessness and social exclusion, which tend to be disregarded by mainstream media, street papers are seen by some scholars as alternative or participatory media. Howley (2003), employing Dorothy Kidd's (1999) defnition of alternative media, argues that "in publishing material written by people living in poverty, street papers consciously align themselves with the philosophy and tradition associated with alternative media" (p. 274), since they are "committed to 'altering' prevailing social conditions and do so, in part, by publishing 'native' accounts of economic injustice from the local that they serve" (ibid.). ...
Article
Data journalism start-ups have emerged as viable forces in the news industry in recent years, with their creation of strong data stories that have won global data journalism awards. Such start-ups may be seen to play particularly important roles to safeguard democracy in societies where mainstream media is strictly controlled, taking on the role of alternative media to challenge the status quo. This study examines such start-ups in Asia, a fast-growing region with high Internet penetration rates but declining democracy and press freedom in international indices. This study focuses on India, Thailand and Singapore, listed as “flawed democracies” in the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, to discover the dimensions and roles of alternative media exhibited by selected data journalism start-ups there, particularly in their organizational structure, form, processes, content, and motive. Results show these organizations as focused not primarily on profits but on creating social change, offering to audiences more critical content and community voices, and playing the roles of interpreter, populist mobilizer, and even adversary. That said, politics and government do not tend to be common topics they cover – rather, systemic faults are revealed through investigations into social issues instead, revealing similarities with broader data journalism practice in the region.
Chapter
Full-text available
A section of Community Radio (CR) scholars around the world firmly argues that the CR should be legally recognized, if it is to be sustainable as an alternative and rights-based sphere of activity. A qualitative study, using case study methods, was conducted in Sri Lanka to determine the extent to which the lack of legal recognition has affected the collapse of CR in Sri Lanka. “SARU”, the first people-led independent CR project, was started in 2005 in Sri Lanka, by the Pulathisi Federation—a people led civil society group based in the north central region. The Federation worked for nearly 10 years—a community which felt the need for a CR was mobilized; a team of 32 youngsters were trained on CR; program guidelines and sustainability plans were established and the test transmission was completed with the highest level of community participation. After such a lengthy struggle with village level lobbying, consultation with government authorities and people, and constant meetings with subject-matter ministers, SARU team realized that the existing broadcasting legal mechanism did not recognize the rights of a civil society group like the Federation to own a radio license and frequency. Though SARU went through such a comprehensive process and a decade of civil struggle, it was not able to reach its goal. This study emphasizes the probable consequences of people’s efforts to establish infrastructure for CR, in the absence of a robust CR policy, and without fighting for their own right to own airwaves. The study also confirms that legal recognition of CR is vital for the civil groups to sustain CR as a rights-based sphere of activity.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.