Four steps to community media as a development tool

Abstract

Community media represent a crucial input in development processes, playing an important role in democratisation, social struggles, and awareness raising. But they often face difficulties on the financial and legal levels due to the constraints created by national media laws. This paper shows the link between community communication and human development. It provides suggestions for development advocates and communities regarding advocacy for a policy environment supportive of community media. It reflects on the licensing process and financial sustainability of the projects. In demonstrating how practically media policy can be reshaped to meet civil society needs, two case studies are considered: the UK, where the communication regulator has opened a process to license community radios; and Brazil, where thousands of ‘illegal’ community stations are facing repression, but where the regulator has inaugurated a consultation process with practitioners.

Full text

Four steps to community media as a
development tool
Stefania Milan
Community media represent a crucial input in development processes, playing an important
role in democratisation, social struggles, and awareness raising. But they often face difficulties
on the financial and legal levels due to the constraints created by national media laws. This
paper shows the link between community communication and human development. It provides
suggestions for development advocates and communities regarding advocacy for a policy
environment supportive of community media. It reflects on the licensing process and financial
sustainability of the projects. In demonstrating how practically media policy can be reshaped
to meet civil society needs, two case studies are considered: the UK, where the communication
regulator has opened a process to license community radios; and Brazil, where thousands of
‘illegal’ community stations are facing repression, but where the regulator has inaugurated
a consultation process with practitioners.
KEY WORDS: Civil society; Governance and public policy; Rights; Technology; Latin America and the
Caribbean; Western and Southern Europe
Community media are usually conceived as local alternatives to mainstream broadcasting, occu-
pying only fringe positions around the edges of big media. However, they represent a crucial
input in development processes, playing an important role in democratisation and building
citizenship, social struggles, and awareness raising. Despite their role in fostering local
development, particularly in the so-called global South, community media still face difficulties
due to the constraints created by national media laws. Often regulators overlook their activities,
and ignore that these activities, far from being simply ‘illegal’ from the legislator’s point of
view, can have a real impact on people’s empowerment.
This paper addresses development advocates and communities,
1
offering them a concrete
proposal for the inclusion of communication activities at the community level in development
projects and advocacy work in the field of media policy. The four sections of the paper, which
can be seen as four ‘steps’, illustrate a sample advocacy process for a policy environment that
supports community media as a development method: (1) understanding the link between com-
munity media and human development; (2) reflecting on the specific needs of local community
598 ISSN 0961-4524 Print/ISSN 1364-9213 Online 4 –50598-12 #2009 Oxfam GB
DOI: 10.1080/09614520902866421 Routledge Publishing
Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 – 5, June 2009

media practitioners; (3) learning from other experiences; and (4) elaborating with practitioners a
few realistic ideas towards a community-friendly policy environment.
Section 1, or step 1, proposes a reading of community media activities through a development
lens, linking the empowering consequences of community communication to social and cultural
development. Step 2 addresses the most pressing issues on which the very survival of commu-
nity media depends: what does a community-based media that is really beneficial to the com-
munity look like? Can financial mechanisms be established to ensure sustainability over time?
Should some analogue or digital frequencies be earmarked to community broadcasting? Step 3
suggests looking around and learning from others. In demonstrating how media policy can be
reshaped ‘in practice’ to meet community needs, I introduce two paradigmatic cases: the UK,
where the communication regulator (Ofcom) has opened a process to license local not-for-profit
media and has set up a Community Media Fund; and Brazil, where thousands of ‘illegal’ com-
munity channels are facing repression and, despite a consultation process launched in 2005 to
incorporate practitioners’ suggestions into a new policy framework, not much has been accom-
plished.
Finally, step 4 discusses what we can learn from the case studies, and provides a checklist for
advocacy, reflecting also on participation in the policy process. As a reference to values and
good practices, I refer to the positions expressed by Community Media Forum Europe
(CMFE), an umbrella organisation representing the ‘Third Sector Media’ in policy making at
the European level.
2
Step 1: understanding the role of community media in local
development
Beyond economic growth, which is an engine and not an end in itself, development is first
and foremost social ... A development model that ignores the cultural dimension is bound
to fail. (UNESCO, World Summit for Social Development, Copenhagen, 1995)
There are different definitions and geographically based experiences of what community media
are or should be. Without being exhaustive, this section presents a brief overview of theoretical
and empirical works on the features of community media and their contributions to local
development. I argue that community media add to the social and cultural dimensions of devel-
opment by providing channels for participation, social and political empowerment, and the
exercise of citizen rights, as they work for community building by transforming individual
experiences in a shared vision of (a better) reality.
According to Hollander et al. (2002), community media provide public communication
(‘made available to everyone’) within a specific context: the community, understood not only
as a geographical setting but primarily as a social setting. Community media are devoted to
the ‘reproduction and representation of common (shared) interests’, and ‘the community
serves as a frame of reference for a shared interpretation’ (Hollander et al. 2002: 23). Emphasis
is on the symbolic experience or the transformation of ‘private individual experience into public
collective experience’ (Hollander et al. 2002: 26). This is, I believe, where one of the main con-
tributions of community media to development lies: in the making or reinforcing of social ties
as the symbolic basis for change. The message is that ‘together we can make it’: in this sense,
community media offer marginalised communities a means for empowerment. This point will
be discussed further in step 3.
Strongly connected to broadcast media, and radio in particular, the category of community
media comprises print media, such as newsletters and local magazines, and nowadays
encompasses digital forms, such as podcasting.
3
However, radio is still the dominant media
Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 and 5, June 2009 599
Four steps to community media as a development tool

for poor communities, because of costs and accessibility: radio transmitters are cheap, easy to
use for illiterate people and where landlines and the Internet are still a mirage. The case studies
provided in this paper concentrate on radio as the media catalysing the widest concern among
policy makers and advocacy groups for its relevance in developing countries.
In the effort to find a policy-operative definition that could be taken for active consideration
by policy makers, community-media advocates have reframed the concept in many ways
(discussed in step 2). A comprehensive list of features and principles unifying the sector has
been identified by CMFE. These include freedom of speech and media pluralism, public and
gender-balanced access, promotion of cultural diversity, not-for-profit status, self-determination,
transparency in structure and work, and promotion of media literacy. I will now look into some of
these features.
Community media are often characterised by a high degree of horizontality, openness, and
possibilities for participation: they are ‘the means of expression of the community, rather
than for the community’ and ‘media to which members of the community have access ...
when they want access’ (Berrigan 1977: 18). According to Dunaway (2002: 63), it is a
matter of access for ordinary citizens (‘uncensored, uncontrollable and inconsistent’ amateur-
ism, maybe even naive) versus a merely commercial audience building. For Girard, community
radio ‘aims not only to participate in the life of the community, but also to allow the community
to participate in the life of the station ... at the level of ownership, programming, management,
direction and financing’ (Girard 1992: 13). But if participation is multi-level, emphasis is
especially on dialogue and communication as a two-way process (Carpentier et al. 2003).
Offor (2002) argues that, to promote social and cultural change, community radio needs to
be not only a channel to transmit to people, but also a means of receiving from them: not
only an instrument to hear from or about the world, but the people’s voice, to make their
voice heard.
Community media cover diverse topics, but often they embrace what can be called a ‘social
mission’. For example, an educational focus characterises many stations in Africa: health- and
childcare programmes, farming tips, human and women’s rights, literacy classes. Their impact
is more relevant when programmes are created by the community for the community.
On the financial level, community media often have (and should have, according to most)
not-for-profit status, and typically a good portion of their workers are volunteers. They represent
a ‘non-commercial way of doing communication’ (Francesco Diasio, personal communication,
2005) independent from political or economic pressures. In some cases, they do not broadcast
commercials, both as an editorial choice and because they do not represent an appealing target
for advertisers. However, the lack of stable funding mechanisms, such as state-managed sub-
sides, jeopardises their very existence, and solutions are currently being sought (see step 2).
The community communication concept draws from experience in the field of communi-
cation for development. The most active international institutions in the field have been the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, since the late 1980s, the
leading agency for the UN Inter-Agency Roundtable on Communication for Development
4
),
and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The
latter is particularly concerned with the development of community media, which ‘ensure
media pluralism, diversity of content, and the representation of a society’s different groups
and interests ... encourage open dialogue and transparency of administration at local level
and offer a voice to the voiceless’, and has funded many community radio initiatives within
its International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).
5
UNDP’s conceptualisation of human development, launched in the 1990s – ‘human devel-
opment focuses on people’ (UNDP 1998: 16) and is the ‘process of enlarging people’s
choices’ (UNDP 1990: 1) – and later picked up by UNESCO, offers a good terrain for
600 Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 and 5, June 2009
Stefania Milan

people’s empowerment through communication initiatives. In this formulation, human develop-
ment includes the ‘equity in access to vital resources and capabilities’, ‘acquisition and distri-
bution of knowledge for human empowerment’, and ‘people’s participation’ (Hamelink 1999:
24). Poverty became recognised as a multidimensional phenomenon, and one of its factors is the
‘deprivation in knowledge and communication’ (UNDP 1997: iii).
I believe that community media contribute to development at the grassroots level, notably the
most difficult to reach through major top – down development programmes. When done by the
community for the community, community media contribute to development in two (main)
ways:
.At the process level, as a channel of participation: community media represent the ‘voice of
the voiceless’, enabling citizens to raise their concerns; as open-access media they represent a
instrument for the exercise of democracy.
.At the symbolic level, as a means of empowerment: giving people the possibility to take
initiative on the local scale, they show that change is possible. They represent a way to exer-
cise and express the imagination, and to translate this imagination into practice by voicing it.
Through the filter of community media, what starts out as individual becomes a collective
experience; in this sense, community media contribute to creating shared meanings and
interpretations of reality, and to highlighting opportunities for change.
Figure 1 visualises the link between community media and human development of people
and communities.
Step 2: reflect on the needs of the local community (media)
Community media are often neglected by policy makers. One of the main reasons for this is the
lack of a shared understanding of what community media are and how they can contribute to an
Figure 1: Step 1 – understand the link between community media and human development
Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 and 5, June 2009 601
Four steps to community media as a development tool

active citizenship. CMFE responded to these challenges with what can be considered the ‘nor-
mative dimension of communication’. Drawing from the CMFE contribution to the Council of
Europe (CoE) consultation on media policy (2004), I provide an overview of the ‘hot issues’ of
community-media advocacy: definition, sustainability, and airwaves allocation.
6
Defining community media
The first phase in the policy process is problem definition or ‘the strategic representation of situ-
ation’ (Stone 1988: 106), which deals with the way a particular problem is ‘sold’ on the policy
market. In its contribution to the CoE consultation, CMFE asked for recognition of the role of
community media as the ‘Third Audio Visual Sector’ and ‘a basic public service’. ‘Issue
naming’ is recognised as crucial in the acknowledgement and eventual endorsement of com-
munity-media needs: once the problem is recognised as deserving policy intervention, other
policy demands, such as access to public funding, can find a fertile ground. So far, many
diverse definitions have been proposed by various people at various times: community
media, alternative media, independent media, third audiovisual sector, public-service broad-
casting, civil-society media.
7
These terms are often used as synonyms, but none of them has
proven particularly efficient in policy arenas.
Reframing community media as a public-interest issue can legitimise new demands and give
legal status to the community-media movement’s requests for access to scarce resources, such
as the radio-frequency spectrum or public funding. As activist Francesco Diasio puts it: ‘When
we acknowledge there is a public interest in community media, we open doors to a certain
number of related requests. The first one is the financing of community radios: how to secure
the right of those community radios which are non-commercial and open to public access to
work properly without broadcasting advertisings’ (Milan 2006).
Funding and sustainability
The financing of community-media initiatives is probably one of the most complex issues for
the community, since start-up and operating costs, including training support, are high, and
require a solution able to give stability to projects. But, as Diasio (personal communication,
2005) points out, sustainability is very much linked to the recognition of the specificity of com-
munity media and their diversity from commercial broadcasters.
The idea of a Community Media Fund financed through public funding or taxes on advertising
revenues to provide funding on a stable basis is not new and some experiments have been carried
out at the national level. The concept is inspired by the support provided to public television in
Western Europe on the basis of ‘public service’ provision. It has been proposed that the fund
could be financed either by the state or state agencies, or by a donor–civil society partnership
involving existing community media associations. I discuss two implemented solutions to the
sustainability problem in step 3, looking at Brazil and the UK.
Infrastructure and spectrum allocation
When it comes to infrastructure, community-media requests mainly concern spectrum allo-
cation. CMFE asks that ‘the radio-frequency spectrum is recognized as a natural resource
belonging to all humanity and that should be managed in the public interest as a publicly
owned asset’. The reservation of a portion of the spectrum for community media is a way to
ensure access for those small-scale media not able to compete with commercial broadcasters
602 Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 and 5, June 2009
Stefania Milan

in allocation bids. Digitalisation, about to be implemented in many countries, will pose new, yet
similar, problems.
In public-policy jargon, airwaves can be considered a ‘club’ good, defined by rival consump-
tion and limited access: access is controlled by national regulators, and broadcasters compete
for frequency allocation. If airwaves were a public good, characterised by no exclusion and
no rivalry, they would be equally enjoyed by all citizens, and not reserved to public or commer-
cial broadcasters. In other words, piracy would not exist. Redefining airwaves as a public good
could open doors to earmark some frequencies for community media.
Step 3: in search of good practices – learning from others
A policy environment supportive of community media can contribute to full development of
the citizenry. This section provides two examples of how community media can be integrated
into national media systems and how they can be sustained financially by institutions. The
first example comes from Brazil, where not-for-profit community broadcasting is recognised
in law as a distinct sector from commercial media, but the regulatory provisions are too
restrictive and thousands of community radio stations are facing severe repression. Despite
the fact that civil-society organisations have sat with government bodies to discuss a more
equitable regulation, which resulted in a fund to support community media (awaiting approval
by parliament), repression continues. The second case comes from the UK, where, thanks to
20 years of advocacy by the national Community Media Association (CMA),
8
a transparent
licensing process of community broadcasters started in 2004 and is awarding not-for-profit
radios with a licence to broadcast. A Community Radio Fund sustained by the Ministry of
Culture has been launched. These two examples differ in many aspects, even in the definition
of community broadcasting, but they provide an overview of implemented ways to allow
community expression through the media – reserving for community broadcasters a
portion of national airwaves and providing community-based groups with financial help to
start and maintain their channels. Both are to be considered cases of a legislation that still
needs to be improved, but that represents a first step towards a fair-minded media policy sup-
portive of freedom of expression.
Brazil: illegal but perhaps publicly financed?
There are between 5000 and 10,000 community radio stations in Brazil, but the regulator (Anatel)
recognises only 2620 active radio stations in total, including community radios, plus 1270
waiting for approval.
9
The rest are considered illegal and are harassed, their operators jailed,
often being accused of ‘conspiracy’ or interference with electromagnetic signals of airplanes
or police forces – allegations always rejected by the national association of community broad-
casters (Abrac¸o) and the World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC).
In Brazil, community channels are recognised by law as a sector distinct from commercial
broadcasters. The Community Radio Law (n. 9.612), created in 1998, fixes the maximum
strength of community radio transmitters at 25 watts, limiting stations to a reach of one
kilometre. These provisions are considered too restrictive by community groups. The law also
prevents community radio stations from belonging to a network or carrying advertising, depriving
radios of a significant source of funding. If a community broadcaster interferes in the operation
of a commercial station, it can be shut down, but the law cannot be applied in reverse. In March
2004, a federal resolution allocated only one frequency – from 87.4 to 87.8 MHz FM – for
community broadcasting in the entire country, the world’s fifth largest area with a population
of about 170 million people.
Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 and 5, June 2009 603
Four steps to community media as a development tool

Anatel, under pressure from the Brasilian Association of Radios and Televisions (Abert), has
enforced the law by closing ‘clandestine’ channels, by asking federal police to seize broadcasting
equipment, and by arresting station operators. About 12,900 community radio stations have been
shut down and equipment worth US$3 million from 117,755 operations confiscated between
1998 and 2003, according to police figures.
10
In the same period, prosecutors launched
10,142 trials against ‘illegal’ radio stations, and courts have convicted 3600 people. In 2004,
the number of radios closed down was 1807 (151 per month), while in the first semester of
2005 the number was already 1199, at a rate of 200 per month.
11
Surprisingly, those stations
whose requests for authorisation are pending – while the licensing process takes an average
of five years.
12
Paradoxically, the Brazilian Federal Constitution, signed in 1988, considers communication a
fundamental human right. Article 5 says ‘the expression of intellectual, artistic, scientific,
and communication activity is free and independent from censorship or licence’. Brazil is
currently implementing a progressive policy concerning access to knowledge and the use of
open-source software, by creating so-called ‘Pontos de Cultura’ (Culture Points) in many
communities.
There were hopes that positive moves would come along with the leftist government of Luis
Ignacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, who came into power at the end of 2002 and was re-elected in 2006.
However, harassment actually increased, with about 6000 radio stations closed down in the
period 2002– 2007 according to the advocacy network Red Viva Rı
´o, and an inter-ministerial
commission has been established to deal with the issue with the help of community activists.
In November 2004, a seminar on legislation organised by AMARC Brazil took place in Brasilia
with the participation of Anatel, members of Parliament, and the Ministry of Communications.
Issues discussed included excessive bureaucratisation of the process, the power limitations, and
the lack of a publicly financed community media fund.
The first result of the dialogue was the approval, in December 2005, by the Commission of
Science, Technology and Informatics of a Directive (Projeto de Lei 6348/05) allocating 2 per
cent of financial resources of the Telecommunication Fund (Fistel, Fundo de Fiscalizac¸a
˜o das
Telecomunicac¸o
˜es, created in 1997 to collect fees for concession of frequencies and the auth-
orisation to broadcast) to the financing of community and education-oriented broadcasters. A
new fund should be created thanks to those revenues, with the aim of financing station infra-
structure, skills-oriented grants for personnel training, production of cultural or educational
programmes, and assistance to community committees. Moreover, the Council of Social
Communication (which has a consulting role to the Ministry) will include representatives of
educational and community broadcasters, and associations of users. At the time of writing
(June 2008), the resolution is still awaiting approval by the Federal Parliament. Moreover,
little progress has been made concerning the excessive length of the licensing process and
the repression of pirate stations. In June 2008, a Parliamentarian Front for the Defence of
Community Radio was created within the Federal Parliament to advocate for community
radio within (the same) Parliament.
AMARC’s perspective on the repression of community radios is interesting: ‘Our point of
view is not on the illegality, but the unconstitutionality of the norms regulating community
broadcasting in Brazil, that do not comply with [or] fulfil the international agreements in this
regard and that produce a violation of the human right to communication (freedom of
expression, give and receive information, free association). Radios are repressed not because
[they are] illegal, but for exerting a right for which there is no constitutional law’ (Sofı
´a
Hammoe, AMARC Brazil, personal communication, 2004).
But new threats are looming along with digitalisation: Brazil adopted the Japanese system,
which seems to definitively cut off low-power stations.
604 Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 and 5, June 2009
Stefania Milan

United Kingdom: Ofcom and the Community Radio Fund
In 2004, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the UK communications regulator, opened a
call for applications to operate community radio services on the FM or AM wavebands as the
‘third tier of radio’ alongside the BBC and commercial broadcasters.
13
Ofcom received 194
applications from all over the UK. The first community radios were then licensed in spring
2005. By May 2008, over 200 radio stations had been awarded a licence to broadcast. Prospec-
tive community broadcasters should cover a small area, operate as not-for-profit entities, and
serve a local community or a community of interest. When applying, they should identify
the community they intend to serve, such as local constituencies or migrant communities.
The maximum range is set at 5 kilometres for urban areas, and 10 kilometres in rural zones,
but these limits are to be considered with some flexibility. Ofcom also awards short-term
‘restricted service licences’.
All community radio licensees must fulfil some ‘characteristics of service’ as specified in
Article 3 of the Community Radio Order (2004): they must be ‘local services provided primarily
for the good of members of the public, or of particular communities, and in order to deliver
social gain, rather than primarily for commercial reasons’; ‘the person providing the service
does not do so in order to make a financial profit by so doing, and uses any profit that is produced
in the provision of the service wholly and exclusively for securing or improving the future
provision of the service, or for the delivery of social gain to members’; ‘members of the com-
munity it is intended to serve are given opportunities to participate in the operation and manage-
ment of the service’; ‘the person providing the service makes himself accountable to the
community’ (Ofcom 2004). Content should be different from that offered by commercial broad-
casters and there should be evidence of a demand or support for the service. An annual report of
the achievements should be produced for Ofcom and sanctions will apply if the agreement is
breached.
Of particular relevance is the reference to the ‘social gain’ that stations should work for,
defined as ‘the achievement, in respect of individuals or groups of individuals in the community
that the service is intended to serve, or in respect of other members of the public, of the following
objectives: the provision of sound broadcasting services to individuals who are otherwise under-
served by such services, the facilitation of discussion and the expression of opinion; the provision
(whether by means of programmes included in the service or otherwise) of education or training
to individuals not employed by the person providing the service, and the better understanding of
the particular community and the strengthening of links within it’ (Ofcom 2004: 14).
Community radios can carry advertising, but to safeguard independence they cannot receive
more than 50 per cent of their annual budget from any single source. The licensing fee for FM
waves is £600 ($890), and the Wireless Telegraph Act fee is between £500 ($741) and £600
($890) annually. To enhance the sustainability of projects, a Community Radio Fund has
also been established under the Communications Act 2003 with funding from the national
Department for Culture, Media and Sport at the level of £500,000 ($741,360) per annum.
14
The Fund helps to cover the core costs of running a community channel, with a preference
for newly opened stations and training projects. Ofcom awarded the first grants in 2005 for a
total of £485,222.50 ($850,784) distributed among a first group of 17 stations – including
the Forest of Dean community radio in rural Gloucestershire, Sound Radio serving the
English-speaking community of the London suburb of Hackney, Desi Radio for the Punjabi
community in West London, and Radio Faza broadcasting in several South Asian languages
in Nottingham.
15
CMA members are part of the panel awarding grants and licences.
There is still room for improvement with the crucial help of community-radio practitioners.
In a workshop entitled ‘Community radio in the UK: can ad hoc regulation enhance an active
Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 and 5, June 2009 605
Four steps to community media as a development tool

public sphere?’ organised by the present author at the London-based Stanhope Centre of Com-
munications Policy Research (2005), the unwritten principle that ‘all Punjabis are covered, or
all black people are covered just because there’s a station in one part of London’ was criticised
and there were calls for more frequencies for community media. Proposals from the workshop
included setting apart a portion of the state-owned broadcasters’ (the BBC) licence fee for com-
munity radios, recognition of the public-service provision to community media, and the need to
pay more attention to community television, often neglected in favour of radio.
The next challenge for community radio in the UK is the forthcoming digitalisation: a public
consultation was launched by Ofcom in June 2007. The CMA proposed to substitute the concept
of ‘social gain’ with ‘community benefit’, and made concrete proposals regarding funding and
requirements for community media in a digitalised environment.
Step 4: from aspirations to policy
Drawing from the Brazilian and UK cases, this section presents some ideas on how an enabling
environment for the expression of the citizenry, for participation and empowerment, could be
created through a just media policy, shaped in cooperation with practitioners. Some concrete
suggestions are made for advocates and policy makers to implement measures in support of
community expression in national media laws and development projects.
Why community media? Imagining through practice
As discussed above, the cultural and social aspects of development should be taken into account
when designing development projects – the perception that ‘change is possible if we come
together’ emerges from day-to-day vibrant interaction between citizens, from the promotion
and strengthening of community ties, from the daily exercise of democracy at the grassroots,
which also passes through the practice of media democracy. My discourse tries to go beyond
the well-known ‘practical’ reasons why community media should be promoted (for instance,
for serving as education channels), concentrating on the symbolic and cultural dimension of
change on which community communication also impacts.
Drawing from Barber (1984), Stein (2002) makes explicit the link between the function of
democratic speech (agenda setting, exploring mutuality in feelings and experience, affiliation
and affection, maintaining autonomy, witness and self-expression, reformulation and recon-
ceptualisation, and community building) and direct access to communicative forums. Talking
about US-based cable community televisions, she says that ‘free from economic and editorial
constraint, access television provides ordinary citizens with the resources and facilities neces-
sary to participate in democratic talk’ (Stein 2002: 137). I would add that it is not only a matter
of democratic talking, but also of voice and expression broadly defined. Community media are
channels to voice concerns and to translate dreams and desires into narratives, music, and other
forms of expression: it is about exercising the ‘imagine that...’.
The local dimension is the frontline of the fight against poverty and underdevelopment.
Cultural poverty is both cause and consequence of material deprivation. A modest example from
Brazil shows how cultural and symbolic transformation are the first steps towards a process of
‘taking your life into your hands’. ‘We do not only teach them to write, but to imagine a
better life for themselves and their community,’ said a young teacher of literacy classes in a
Brazilian favela.
16
On the blackboard, large unsteady letters written by old female hands spoke
of dreams for a better future: ‘I would like a world where all children could go to school’, ‘I
would like a house with water pipes’. It is a process of consciousness raising, which usually
does not come from a top– down process, but only as individual and group experience at the
606 Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 and 5, June 2009
Stefania Milan

grassroots level. In this process, community media can play an important role: they are a way to
exercise and express the imagination, both as a means to deploy imagination and as a way to
translate imagination into practice. It is the empowerment function of community media:
acting by phrasing and expressing the possibility of change through a collective process.
On the process-related level, I believe that participation makes community, and that com-
munity ties are the network of and for local development. A community that can imagine a
better world by daily exercising ‘its local democracy’ is an empowered community, that is
a community equipped to change. It is only then that the community can effectively become
a driving force for development projects.
How community media? Ideas for community-friendly policies and projects
Community media as the media for the community, about the community, and by the community
need to be encouraged and fostered by a community-friendly policy environment. The first step is
the conceptualisation of what community media are and what aims they should serve, to avoid
misuses and misinterpretations. The distinction in scope with commercial broadcasters should
be clear: community media should be not-for-profit and considered a ‘third tier’ alongside
state-owned and commercial media. Community media should be classified as ‘public-interest
communication’ providing ‘community benefit’: a formulation that could substitute the ‘public
service’ definition and overcome the problem of ‘must carry’ obligations, imposed by the regu-
lator, which many community broadcasters find impossible to comply with. In this framework,
the adoption of a concept such as Ofcom’s definition of ‘social gain’ or even better of ‘community
benefit’ is crucial. It should be intended to define the aims and raison d’e
ˆtre of community media
and should be geographically, culturally, and contextually grounded. Community media are not
intrinsically good! They should be encouraged to define their purposes in the framework of the
promotion of human well-being, fair exchange of opinions, and reciprocal understanding; the
community of reference should not be defined in opposition or confrontation to other social
groups. Airwaves and other communication-related resources such as satellites and digital
systems (that is, the Digital Audio Broadcasting, DAB) should be considered a ‘public good’,
that is to say a natural resource belonging to humanity to be ‘managed in the public interest as
a publicly owned asset through transparent and accountable regulatory frameworks’ (CMFE).
2
Sources of funding should be regulated to avoid dependence on sponsors and founders, which
could clash with the community’s goals. At the same time, regulators should leave to each
station the possibility to accept or decline (a limited amount of) advertising, which is often a
relevant source of funding. Schemes to enhance sustainability are essential to favour a balanced
recourse to advertising: for example, a sustainability fund, financed by tax revenues from com-
mercial broadcasters or other sources, to which all community media could apply – radio, tele-
vision, printed bulletins, or mobile-phone information services – according to local needs and
habits. The provision of training could assist community media in offering a better service to
their communities. Training must be included in any sustainability scheme, since often there
is a demand at the grassroots level but skills are lacking. Courses could be run through a sort
of ‘pyramidal structure’: each of the trainees should then become the trainer for the community
itself and other groups. In this way, training would be managed at the local level right from the
start, and in complete autonomy. It would also have a long-term ‘domino’ effect. The provision
of equipment would be crucial: often a simple transmitter is far too expensive for local com-
munities. Start-up equipment could be supplied as part of the training to those community
groups showing a real intention to start a communication project. An effective system for feed-
back and monitoring should be put in place to make sure the licensing and funding schemes
work, and that beneficiary broadcasters comply with requirements.
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Four steps to community media as a development tool

At the institutional level, international donors should pressure beneficiary states to have
community media recognised as public-interest communication means, and a portion of the air-
waves earmarked to community expression. But most importantly, training for advocacy (on
campaigning, petitions, and awareness-raising actions) should be provided to practitioners
using both workshops and multimedia toolkits, as the only effective way to national media regu-
lation from the bottom – up. Finally, practitioners jailed and activists accused of freedom-of-
expression-related crimes connected to community communication should be assisted, and
international campaigns should be launched to raise attention to their cases.
To conclude, some notes on the process and participation of local community and citizens
both in designing development processes and in policy making. The starting point should
always be the community, and not the donors. The community should participate in the defi-
nition of its needs and in the development of strategies to achieve them. Also when it comes
to media regulation, an integration of civil-society organisations and associations in decision-
making processes is crucial to shape effective policies. The case of Ofcom and the involvement
of the CMA in designing community-media policy and the recent (limited) efforts of the
Brazilian regulator to be responsive to citizens’ concerns, can teach a lot to both contenders:
to policy makers and development agencies, that contribution of practitioners is essential to
consensus building; and to advocates and community-media networks, that their pressures
and protests should be coupled with constructive participation within the policy arenas.
Notes
1. Community is here understood as a group of people sharing common interests and/or living in a par-
ticular geographical area. While I acknowledge that not all communities are intrinsically ‘good’, as
many embody (often gender-based) disparities in power relations, for the purposes of this paper
‘community’ is treated as an ideal type of homogeneous entity guided by values of participation
and unity.
2. All CMFE documents quoted in this paper can be found on the CMFE website: www.cmfe.eu.
3. Podcasting is the uploading to a web server of a digital audio file, which is made available for free
download.
4. The UN Inter-Agency Roundtable on Communication for Development is a biannual event that aims
at developing a common framework for communication for development within the UN system. It was
established in 1988.
5. The IPDC specialises in promoting media development in developing countries. So far, the
programme has mobilised some $90 million for over 1000 projects in 139 developing countries.
(Quotes and figures from the IPDC/UNESCO website.)
6. In addressing what community media want from regulators, I focus on structural issues such as
funding and airwaves, while acknowledging that sustainability is first and foremost a social issue.
7. ‘Civil-society media’ is suggested by Hadl and Hintz (2009 forthcoming) as an alternative able to
empower community media in the international media policy arenas.
8. CMA has over 600 members and is very active in policy advocacy (www.commedia.org.uk).
9. Anatel official data, 2004 (www.anatel.gov.br).
10. Federal Police data, 2004. Information obtained by Federal Deputy Iara Bernardi.
11. Anatel data. According with the same agency, in 2004 there were 3887 illegal radio stations in Brazil,
which increased to 4479 in 2005. Anatel recorded 28,756 complaints in 2003 alone.
12. According to a report presented at the World Social Forum 2005 and entitled ‘A Repressa
˜o Contra as
Ra
´dios Comunita
´rias no Brasil’ (The repression against community radios in Brazil).
13. Back in 2002, Ofcom started a pilot scheme licensing some community radios, called ‘access radio’. A
public consultation was also launched.
14. The process involved a public consultation and the current policy statement is the result of the
implementation of the suggestions by stakeholders.
608 Development in Practice, Volume 19, Numbers 4 and 5, June 2009
Stefania Milan

15. See www.ofcom.org.uk/radio/ifi/rbl/formats/crra for a map of community radio stations awarded
by Ofcom (retrieved 18 June 2008).
16. Author’s conversation with M. (name omitted to protect the source), teacher of literacy classes within
the development project ‘Meninas e Meninos Vila do Progresso’, Sa
˜o Leopoldo, RS, Brazil, 2004.
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The author
Stefania Milan is currently writing her PhD dissertation on emancipatory communication practices,
including community radios and radical techies groups seen through the lenses of social-movement
theory. She graduated in Communication Science from the University of Padova, specialising in alterna-
tive media, participation issues, and media policy. Milan writes for the international news agency Inter
Press Service and collaborates with independent and alternative outlets, including radios. Contact
details: Department of Social and Political Sciences, European University Institute, via dei Roccettini
9, I-50016 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI), Italy. ,stefania.milan@eui.eu .
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Four steps to community media as a development tool