Community media and the relationship between territorial proximity and content production: experiences from the North of Argentina

BELOTTI, FRANCESCA; DE GUIO, SUSANNA; SIARES, ESTER EMILSE

Praga

Conferencia; ECREA Pre-Conference 2016; 2016

European Communication Research and Education Association

Recent Latin American reforms in the field of communication strengthen the media diversity principle (McQuail & Van Cuilenburg, 1983; Rössler, 2007) by recognizing community media and the strategic role they play in making social demands visible in the public space (Mata, 2006). Their raison d?être relies on the relationship they establish with communities/audiences and in the bottom-up process which gives birth to them (Gumucio Dagron, 2001; Rennie, 2006). They are participatory for serving communities and being embedded in them (Deuze, 2006; Carpentier & Scifo, 2010), thus offering alternative contents (Atton, 2002; Rodríguez, 2009) and disputing the hegemonic discourse (Martín-Barbero, 1981; Mata, 2011). Therefore, community media ensure a cultural production that articulates communication and political struggle, thus addressing social change (Vinelli, 2014). The Argentinian Law 26.522 on Audiovisual Communication Services (2009) is exemplar as it is pioneering in Latin America. It aims at democratizing the media arena ?that had long been a prerogative of commercial media groups? by ensuring the presence of multiple and diverse actors: on the one hand, it reserves a radio spectrum quota to private nonprofit media (33%), including community broadcasters; on the other hand, it recognizes the right of universities, schools, Church and indigenous people to access to the radio spectrum as public law entities as well as State. Nevertheless, such a legal classification based on the ?private vs. public? binary logic does not take into due account the purposes, uses and functions of each kind of media. In fact, community media as ?private nonprofit media? are assimilated to others that are very different in terms of economic conditions, objectives, content and organization (Torres, 2011; Segura 2013; Vinelli, 2014). Conversely, some broadcasters acting as community media turn up in the category of ?public media?: we specifically refer to some school radios and to indigenous media. The formers may articulate participatory and local-rooted media projects where communication is used as a tool for teaching mediation (Prieto & Gutiérrez, 1994); the latters are spaces for organizing struggles (Basanta, 2013) and/or mediated communication practices through which native people build and maintain their cultural and political identities (Doyle, 2007; Salazar, 2009).The paper analyzes results arising from two researches carried out in the North of Argentina through in-depth interviews namely with two indigenous radios ?one in Jujuy and one in Salta? and with two school radios ?in Misiones. The most interesting data refers to the communities-media relationship unveiling the existence of mutual bonds between social fabric and content generation. Analysis shows that communities? participation in the foundation and/or management of media reverberates in the production of content related to their own interests and needs. Thus, results suggest that functions, uses and purposes count more than ownership in defining such broadcasters as community media.