Alternative Media and The Politics of Re

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA
AND THE POLITICS

OF RESISTANCE
PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGES
EDITED BY MOJCA PAJNIK & JOHN D. H. DOWNING

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA AND THE POLITICS OF RESISTANCE:
PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGES
EDITED BY MOJCA PAJNIK & JOHN D. H. DOWNING
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ALTERNATIVE media and the politics of resistance : perspectives

and challenges / edited by Mojca Pajnik & John D. H. Downing. -
Ljubjana : Peace Institute, 2008. - (Book series Symposion)
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CONTENTS
7 MOJCA PAJNIK AND JOHN D. H. DOWNING

Introduction: The Challenges of “Nano-media”
17 HANNO HARDT
Talk, or the Decline of Conversation in the Age of Mass Communication
31 CHRIS ATTON
Bringing Alternative Media Practice to Theory: Media Power, Alternative
Journalism and Production
49 JOHN D. H. DOWNING
Social Movement Media and Democracy: Achievements and Issues
61 NATALIE FENTON
New Media, Politics and Resistance
81 GABRIELE HADL AND JO DONGWON

New Approaches to Our Media: General Challenges and the Korean Case
111 PANTELIS VATIKIOTIS

Challenges and Questions for Alternative Media
125 LARISA RANKOVIĆ

The Prospects for the Development of Alternative Media in Serbia
139 RUTH HERITAGE

Video Activist Citizenship & the Undercurrents Media Project: A British Case
Study in Alternative Media
163 Contributors
167 Index
INTRODUCTION:
THE CHALLENGES
OF “NANO-MEDIA”
MOJCA PA JNIK, JOHN D. H. DOWNING
As the 21st century’s first decade ripens toward its conclusion, the theme
of alternative media—whether identified as “grassroots,” “independent,”
“community,” “participatory,” “self-managed,” “autonomous,” “tactical,”
or “alternative”—has moved from the margins of political and academic
debate to the center. As often happens, technological shifts become the
topic of excited speculation, and over the past decade in particular, the
potential of the Internet and mobile telephony has been a fertile subject
of commentary by pundits and peons alike. Its relocation of the possi-
bilities of public communication from the one-to-many vertical model of
newspapers, broadcasting and cinema to some-to-many, some-to-some,
and even many-to-many models, is genuinely new.
However, the urgent need and desire to communicate publicly outside,
despite and against official and mainstream mass media, is in no way
new. Whether we consider the marketplace ribaldry and disrespect for
authority echoed in Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, the leaflets/fli-
ers (Flugblätter) of the Protestant Reformation or the English Civil War,
the long history of anti-war writing and popular song, the even longer
history of women’s self-assertion in writing, political satire in theatrical
history (e.g. Lysistrata), graffiti, defiant religious sermons, or many
other communicative forms, the evidence—and its amazing variety—is
not hard to find. The emergence in the 2000s of Internet avenues for pub-
lic expression such as MySpace, FaceBook and YouTube has opened up
fresh opportunities for a very ancient social drive.
This is a topic that began to engage some writers in the latter decades
of the previous century, for example Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1970),
Patricia Hollis (1970), James Aronson (1972), Armand and Michèle Mat-
telart (1974), Christopher Hill (1975), Pio Baldelli (1977), Frances Berri-
gan (1977), Seth Siegelaub and Armand Mattelart (1983), Marc Raboy
(1984), John Downing (1984), Jim Bushnell (1989), Timothy Ryback (1989),
Stephen Riggins (1992), Pilar Riaño (1994), Nancy Walker (1995). But
7
A LT E R N A T I V E MEDIA AND THE POLITICS OF RESISTANCE: PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGES
since 2000 there has been a growing river of case-studies and analyses,
which at the time of writing looks as though it might for a while become
a torrent.
This could be attributed to fads and fashions, and no doubt there is
something of that involved. But mostly it is a long overdue recognition of
the cultural and political significance of these “nano-media,” an acknowl-
edgment of their pervasiveness and potential power. In this context they
appear as modern pamphleteers, as sites for socially committed story-
tellers, or as settings for practicing marginalized discourses that remain
outside the dominant public sphere. They can furthermore be credited
with bringing forward opportunities for empowerment of communities,
possibilities for transnational activities by social movements and their
various challenges to contemporary borders and boundaries. In differ-
ent forms and practices, be it in the engagement of autonomous or inde-
pendent media centers, or engaged video production, social movement
media may appear as tellers of truth, as sites for fresh interpretations of
our realities, and as counter-parts to mainstream mediated production
that disrupt its rules and conventions. They may be seen as bringing for-
ward new values, inventing new frameworks of news gathering and jour-
nalistic work, and last but not least, new economies. An example under
the radar of most Western commentators, who see in the African conti-
nent only the series of disasters the Western media serve up to them (so
they can enjoy feeling virtuously shocked), is the Nigerian video-movie
movement, underway now for fifteen or more years and growing at in-
creasing speed. Finance, production and distribution are organized en-
tirely to date from within the unofficial economy, not by banks, the state
or foreign aid. It is wildly popular, because it addresses issues close to
everyday Nigerian life, although for mostly budgetary reasons, its tech-
nical production values often fall short of the lavish but empty products
of Hollywood. It is one of the very few successful sectors of indigenous
economic growth in Nigeria, drawing upon everyday skills all the way
from feeding the crew to DVD-sleeve design, and from posters and bill-
boards to costume-making. Its products are sold and imitated in many
other African nations but are also in demand in centers of Nigerian set-
tlement outside Africa, such as London, Washington DC and Houston.
Its messages are about many things, but often strongly imply a political
critique that would be risky if more direct. What do Nigerians and other
Africans call this video-movie movement? Nollywood.
On the other hand, alternative media might also be scrutinized for
their limited potential to create or trigger positive engagement. In this
8
MOJCA PA J N I K A N D JOHN D. H. DOWNING: INTRODUCTION ...
context the line dividing “old” from “new” media when used to promote
the participatory, democratic potential of new media, fails to explicitly
scrutinize the limitations of new media. From this perspective mecha-
nisms that are supposedly conducive to the democratization of society
are seen as those which can also function as mechanisms for the exclu-
sion of citizens, for example in the case of the spread of racism and xeno-
phobia via new media. The pervasiveness and potential power of “nano-
media” do not at all times necessarily emerge for good. Were the mass of
audio-cassette sermons of the Ayatollah Khomeini circulated in Iran in
the late 1970s, which helped his supporters rise to the leadership of the
diverse anti-Shah movement and establish a brutal theocracy, positive?
Were the fledgling Nazi party’s alternative media in the 1920s, which
helped it assume the leadership of extreme reaction and eventually con-
vulse the planet into slaughter of scores of million human beings, posi-
tive? Are the extreme right alliances’ web production spreading racism
and xenophobia, positive? We need, nonetheless, to recognize that these
too are indices of the potential impact of small-scale media.
In the essays in this collection, a series of writers endeavor to get to
grips with the multiple facets of “nano-media.” Some of their observa-
tions are very much at the conceptual level, others specific to a place
and a time, while others blend both approaches. We hope that readers
will find their perceptions deepened and their questions sharpened as
a result.
Hanno Hardt considers the decline of conversation and argues that,
with the introduction of new technologies that separated the functions
of seeing and hearing, new relations between people and the world were
established, and the technology of today, like the Internet, mobile phone
or the computer, further emphasize that effect. The latter, in contrast
to radio or television, are not reaching a mass audience but are meant
to serve the individual—although it is worth remembering that listservs
and blogs, for example, especially when used for mobilizing social move-
ments, are a kind of some-to-many or even many-to-many, as distinct
from one-source-to-many technology. The consequence is that barriers
are built around subjects, and the space which should be filled with dif-
ferent voices and cultural diversity is emptied out. The new form of con-
versation is nothing like what we know from the past. It is not a path
to the truth where differences are negotiated and different voices are
given ways to be heard; it is dangerously close to a set of monologues
whose emancipatory potential is just an illusion. It is the fundamental
notion of dialogue that Hardt raises. He goes back to Aristotle’s Rhetoric,
9
and he further illustrates the importance of conversation and its crucial

role in life from Marx, Dewey, Blumer and Mead.
Hardt, in a contribution that poses fundamental issues of social com-
munication and its ultimate potential for distortion, theorizes conversa-
tion as a dialogical practice that shapes reality and creates interactions
between communicating people. But in the contemporary world it is
not uncommon that being heard is more important than what is being
said. The result is a cacophony of simultaneous monologues leading ul-
timately to uniformity and standardization, rather than an exchange of
ideas between equals. Nowadays “reality emerges from an interaction
between the self-interest of the media and the desire of the individual to
remain in touch with the world, while mutuality is redefined as an eco-
nomic or political operating condition rather than a social or cultural
process of understanding.” Hardt claims that what really matters here
is the realization that some form of conversation as human activity re-
mains irreplaceable, since it is solely through conversation that people
can confirm their own subjectivity and their own relation to the world.
Chris Atton’s chapter examines relations between alternative and
mass media, where the argument is put forward that alternative media
scholars should give more consideration to the nature of alternative me-
dia practice as known to us from studies of the mass media. Atton pro-
poses that it is only possible to bridge the gaps created by “celebratory
and uncritical academic discourse” adopted by alternative media studies
by linking theories that take into account news framing, representation,
discourse, ethics and norms, together with those of journalism studies.
Arguing that alternative media news production should be theorized as
journalism practice, the chapter discusses three arenas of practice and/
or ethical issues in alternative journalism: sourcing, representation and
objectivity. While mainstream media employ experts for sourcing, alter-
native media engage story-telling by ordinary people, who set the terms
of reference for readers as well as pose challenges to “expert” journal-
ists and by doing so suggest new ways of thinking about and producing
journalism.
Alternative media also pose challenges to the dominant representa-
tional practices of mainstream news. Atton underscores how alternative
media news delivery practices disrupt the professional ideal of objectiv-
ity. By recognizing the political dimensions of objectivity, practitioners
of alternative journalism challenge central assumptions: that it is pos-
sible in the first place to separate facts from values, and secondly that
it is morally and politically preferable to do so. He also argues, perhaps
10
over-optimistically, that representation of, for example, ethnic minorities

and of gays and lesbians is rarely an ethical challenge to alternative
journalists, since they are already operating from within a progressive
environment where discriminatory practices largely do not arise. (None-
theless, we need to exercise caution in presuming that alternative media
are automatically a progressive “safe zone” where social class, racism
and the patriarchy have been successfully expelled—Independent Media
Centers in the USA, for example, are quite often white, male and univer-
sity-educated, not because of active discrimination, but rather because
their organizational practices represent a subculture of free time for
endless argument that excludes tired, busy working people and also can
be implicitly masculinist in style.)
John Downing starts by addressing the achievements and issues of
social movement media and gives his vote for Barber’s “strong democ-
racy.” Social movements as contemporary agents of change, which give
us actual alternatives to formal corporate democracy, are the nearest to
the notion of democratic global power that currently exists, he argues.
And much of a social movement’s potential depends upon social move-
ment media: from the simplest techniques, such as graffiti and popular
song, all the way through to technically complex formats such as video.
The chapter also deals with ideas expressed in Hardt and Negri’s
Multitude, and various essays by Lovink in which he deploys the term
“tactical media,” that have recently become iconic among a number of
democracy and global justice movement activists. Downing argues that
their analyses “largely offer an unproductive dead end to the search for
global justice and democracy.” Hardt and Negri are far too loose, almost
mystical, when using the notion of communication, for example failing
even to register “the significance of the planet’s multiple languages in
the global communication process they claim to be underway.” Following
Hardt and Negri might mean overlooking one crucial thing: the commu-
nication process is central, but the language issue is critical. If there is
no information in an understandable language, that does not mean that
there is no information at all. The argument furthermore explores dif-
ferent issues that are important for developing strong media as integral
to strong democracies: the relationship between movements to reform
mainstream media, and social movement media; the relation between
information and imagination; the relation between Internet and cell
phone mobilization tactics, and social movement media; the centrality
of popularising science and technology; and the issue of scale. If we take
just the last one, “judging social movement media achievements solely by
11
measuring their small audience or their ephemeral lives,” says Downing,

“is akin to judging nanotechnologies by their size and finding them to be
failures.”
Discussing the experience of neo-liberalism and the lack of political
community, Natalie Fenton explores how media have become a central
arena where definitions of reality are posed by privileged elites. New
technologies set aside the values of professional journalism, and com-
mercial pressure gives preference to spectacle over journalistic respon-
sibility and integrity. Resistance is a commonly used term, but it is rarely
extended “into the actual development and deliberation of a new politics
and the world of the political public sphere.” Fenton brings into focus the
notion of resistance, or of a political project that requires “a collective
social and political imaginary that can offer a vision of a future worth
aiming for.” But political hope in mediated political mobilization needs to
be examined beyond the confines of media and communication studies.
Fenton bases her approach to a reconsideration of the concept on the
work of four theorists: Harvey, Bauman, Hardt and Negri.
Basically, Harvey believes in the necessity of utopian imagining against
all who say there is no alternative. With Bauman, the focus is shifted
from a better tomorrow to the happiness of today, while Hardt and Negri
call for a concept of absolute democracy, the rule of everyone by every-
one. Fenton opts for a political project where the notion of resistance
in media and communication studies would engage not only in cultural
studies but with the struggle to change the terms of political economy.
Through a critical appraisal of these theorists, Fenton looks at ways in
which new media may allow a re-imagining of hope for a constructive
collective politics, so that a collective consciousness can be maintained
and developed in this complex, confusing and contradictory tangle of
mediation, politics, culture and community.
Taking a historical, comparative and theoretical approach, the chap-
ter of Gabriele Hadl and Jo Dongwon traces the development of frames
such as community, alternative, tactical, and autonomous media, and
meta-frameworks such as democratization of communication, and com-
munication rights for media by, for and of the people. Special attention
is given to the “ideological baggage” of concepts currently used in policy
and network practice in U.S., Korean and Japanese contexts. The analy-
sis addresses the following questions: What is the difference between dif-
ferent approaches such as alternative and community media? In which
contexts have they evolved? How do they account for the practices’ limi-
tations, and how can they help bring out their democratic potential? Can
12
these frames respond to new challenges posed by evolving communica-

tion technologies and practices, the shifting notion of publicness in com-
munication, and the encroachment of commercial and governmental
interests? Gabriele Hadl and Jo Dongwon propose that much can be
learned from existing attempts to formulate frameworks for media by,
for and of the people, their successes as well as their conflicts and limita-
tions.
To provide a map and a critical evaluation of conceptual framings
for media activism, the author reviews research primarily in English,
but takes into account the historical contributions of Latin American
research in the 1970s–80s and 1990s–2005 Korean media activism. The
analysis shows that there have been important developments towards
formulating coherent alternatives to commercially or governmentally
controlled media systems. However, too few of these have been docu-
mented and disseminated. In addition, these debates have been pursued
among relatively disconnected and ghettoized groups of researchers
and practitioners. This has resulted in a large number of “reinvented
wheels” and a blurring of discourses that largely benefits more powerful
interests bent on co-option of genuine alternatives. Urgent needs identi-
fied include creating a sustained discussion on theoretical issues and a
publicly shared history of media by, for and of the people.
The chapter by Pantelis Vatikiotis proposes the conceptualization of a
democratic public-mediated space, and evaluates theoretical discourses
regarding vital aspects of such a space, and across various moments
and agents of its constitution. Specifically, it draws on a line of approach
that evaluates the interplay between public sphere and civil society as a
discursive space for the realization of democratic processes. This pro-
cess is addressed in terms of a pluralistic and active understanding of
citizenship as a form of identity. From this perspective, the interplay be-
tween public sphere and civil society is evaluated along with the roles of
difference and agency in enhancing and enriching the full potential of
citizenship. While Fenton’s contribution to the discussion emphasizes the
urgency of hope in constructing a collective political program, Vatikiotis’
chapter emphasizes the symbiosis between “invisible” quotidian actions,
including in play, and potential expansion of the public sphere.
In regards to media, the article draws on various perspectives that
have evaluated their role as enablers of the public sphere, helping to ful-
fill the principles of public/democratic communication. Addressing the
dynamic interface between public sphere and civil society in terms of
the representation and participation of different publics both through
13
and within the media, the chapter argues that we must engage with the
plurality of media practices that are activated in the realm of civil soci-
ety. Vatikiotis urges here an understanding of these media in relation to
their contribution to, and intervention in, the quotidian, lived experience
of alternative media’s practices. These constitute significant sites for
subjects to negotiate and renegotiate identities, cultures and lifestyles.
The chapter proposes that such practices provide the space for new ex-
pressions of citizenship.
In Serbia, during the Milošević regime, media outside the control of the
government were considered alternative or independent. Their influence
and circulation were growing during the 1990s, and in the period preced-
ing the political changes in the country in 2000, they were among the
main pillars of the democratization processes. Larisa Ranković shows
how these media are now trying to become commercially successful. Her
chapter shows how the notion of the alternative in Serbia has mainly ac-
companied the development of the Internet, of different forms of online
media with the lowest publishing costs and the easiest accessibility to
the public. With the spread of content-related advertising provided by
Google and other companies, it is possible to attract revenue and thus
potentially support publication. While there are individual bloggers who
deal in a skilled and attractive way with social and political issues, me-
dia, IT, and other buzz topics dominant in alternative media around the
world, Ranković argues that it is still impossible to talk of any significant
alternative media, as such, in Serbia. Web sites that provide a constant
flow of information are usually the projects of youth groups or NGOs,
which either fail to promote their ideas successfully or are short-lived. Of
particular importance would be the coverage of topics that are poorly
covered in the mainstream media: issues of culture, environmentalism,
local communities and marginal groups. This has, however, still to hap-
pen in Serbia, and hopes for the future lie with the development of civic
journalism related to alternative media in the country.
Ruth Heritage’s chapter explores Undercurrents, a British video-activ-
ist collective that has been producing and distributing politically engaged
direct action and alter-globalization videos since 1994. The alter-globali-
zation movement, thrust into the public eye during the battle of Seattle
(1999), marked a shift from local to global environmentalist actions. Part
of this shift was an opening up of the Internet to organizational use by
direct action groups, creating networks of political action. In the UK, dur-
ing the 1990s, motorway protests, anti-Criminal Justice Act demonstra-
tions, and other direct action projects similarly joined forces for the 18
14
June “carnival against capitalism” demonstrations in 2000. This period

saw a mass emergence of video activism. Over the same period, British
television saw a rise in the number of programs—docusoaps, reality TV,
and first person filming—which placed individual citizens at the center
of the schedules, a process facilitated by integration and mobilization of
new technologies. New ICTs offer different forms of production and dis-
tribution, each contributing to a changing notion of citizenship.
However, activist video continues to comment—albeit in different forms
and on different platforms—on activism, actions, and activist identity.
Undercurrents provides us with one narrative or story about how one
organization sought to construct a model of citizenship with a “strong
democracy” content. Undercurrents negotiated mainstream television as
an alternative public sphere, through the use of documentary, actuality,
and reality TV tropes. Comparing video footage from BBC’s Video Dia-
ries and Crimewatch with Undercurrents, Heritage notes how the latter
project helped create an “Undercurrents” citizen, with a shared collective
identity and boundaries. She also observes the potential limitations of
such citizenship, through a discussion of video distribution and activist
screenings, illustrated by Undercurrents footage.
We dedicate this introduction and this collection of essays to the mem-
ory of the late Andrej Pinter, who did a great deal to set up the confer-
ence “Alternative Media and New Public Settings” (13–14 October 2006,
Ljubljana, Slovenia) at which they were first presented. His formidable
intelligence and analytical insights were badly missed both in the confer-
ence itself and in putting this volume together. His very untimely death
has robbed us all of an outstanding media researcher, and friend to
many of us.
References
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Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. 1970. Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien/Con-

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Riggins, Stephen, ed. 1992. Ethnic Minority Media. Thousand Oaks, California:
Sage Publications Inc.
Ryback, Timothy. 1989. Rock Around the Bloc. New York: Oxford University
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16
TALK, OR THE DECLINE OF
CONVERSATION IN THE AGE
OF MASS COMMUNICATION
HANNO HARDT
While technological innovation continues to produce more sophisticated

and versatile new electronic media faster and more cheaply for mass
markets, growing demand for alternative media suggests the declining
popularity of reception as a form of participation. The notion of a pas-
sive audience has become increasingly inadequate. Instead, it seems that
the introduction of new media promotes rather than replaces older com-
munication practices, like talk. Its rediscovery accompanies a renewed
appreciation of what it means to be an individual.
Thus, people are beginning to find themselves engaged in talk as a
new form of postmodern conversation. The latter is understood in lieu
of conversation as a use of words for the sake of communication rather
than for an involvement in specific topics, such as politics or literature,
for instance.
The art of conversation has a distinguished history, rooted in philoso-
phy and social theory. At its center has been knowledge and education
as well as the social benefits of being in the company of others with the
desired result of enlightenment and a secure place among those intel-
lectually creative or informed enough to participate in this particular
process of social communication.
Conversation as a process of persuasive communication became the
first subject of investigation in the history of media studies, invigorat-
ed by propaganda analyses and the work of Harold D. Lasswell during
World War Two. But the idea of conversation had been a topic of a philo-
sophical discourse since the dawn of Western civilization, particularly
after the importance of speech and oratory, reinforced by Aristotle’s
Rhetoric, became a popular concern of writers, politicians and orators.
Beyond issues of perfection or effect, there is a more basic human
need to share in communication, as expressed, for instance, by Michel
de Montaigne (cited in Cooley [1902] 1964, 92), who remarks in one of his
essays that there “is no pleasure for me without communication: there is
17
not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not
grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.” In
the Holy Family Karl Marx (Marx and Engels 1956, 52–53) talks about
the presence of a receiving consciousness in conversation (or communi-
cation) with others. And John Dewey ([1934] 1958, 244) suggests that the
“conveyance of meaning (which) gives body and definiteness to the expe-
rience of the one who utters as well as to that of those who listen.”
Indeed, this is the process through which self arises and projects itself
into the world. Throughout these sociological or philosophical delibera-
tions regarding spoken interaction, the implicit idea is about communi-
cation as the sine qua non of the social; it is the central process through
which individuals become and, therefore, the starting point for any dis-
cussion of culture and society. Indeed, if as Duncan asserts, “the self is
born in discourse with others” (1962, 297), the issue becomes one of the
form and quality of the discourse as well as of its accessibility. Differ-
ently expressed, if discourse is shaped by contemporary media, what are
the consequences for the birth of the self?
Contemporary practices resemble the exchange of words rather than
a sustained conversation, resulting in a predominance of what Martin
Heidegger has called chatter or idle talk, which characterizes mod-
ern societies. Here conversation is construed as the expression of total
subjectivity, meaning that the individual, seen as a measure of every-
thing, identifies not with spiritual or intellectual ideas, but with a mate-
rial world, which defines personal goals and rules language. The latter
becomes idle talk, with no relevance beyond noise and recognition of
one’s own voice in the company of chatter. In other words, to be heard
becomes more important or relevant than what is being said or how it
is expressed. The art of listening, a vital and most difficult element of
conversation or dialogue, is overpowered by the desire to prevail with
one’s utterances. The result is a cacophony of simultaneous monologues
designed to control, but also to reinforce the importance of immediacy.
The contemporary significance of conversation as crucial for intellec-
tual development or psychological well-being is supported by a number
of recent books (Tannen 1998; Eadie and Nelson 2001; Rodin 2003; Miller
2006). Their collective concerns regarding the state of conversation in
contemporary society—especially the United States—focus on the need
to rethink the practice of conversation, whose condition has become a
topic of social and cultural criticism.
Sociological concerns regarding conversation in modern times have
dealt with the notion of social (or dyadic) interaction as a reciprocal re-
18
HANNO HARDT: TALK, OR THE DECLINE OF CONVERSATION ...
lationship or exchange of influences through communication. The work

of Herbert Blumer (1969) and the earlier contributions by George Her-
bert Mead ([1934] 1962), in particular, have established a socially and cul-
turally imbedded self as the product of social (or symbolic) interaction.
In response to developing communication technologies, more recently,
Walter Ong (1982) has describe the rise of a “secondary orality” in the
age of technology, when orality is tied to the notion of a print culture
used in the design and manufacture of a reproductive technology. He
establishes the qualitative differences between primary and secondary
orality as functions of social and cultural developments. Mere talk, as
addressed here, is grounded in the existential conditions of contempo-
rary life; it is culturally determined and only reproduced by a technology
of communication, which accommodates the practice.
Interestingly enough, all of these scholarly considerations coincide
with the rise of “mass” media (in American society)—like radio, film, and
mass circulation magazines in the 1930s and television by the 1960s. In
fact, the emergence of new communication technologies effectively de-
stroyed traditional forms of communication, while replacing knowledge
of the local by acquaintance with the national or global, when traditional
media as potential sources of conversation lost mutual contact (or part-
ners in dialogue). Increasing media exposure to a centralized source of
information turned public conversation into a monologue, resulting in
earlier concerns about the consequences of a passive audience, owing to
a lack of knowledge, interest, or perhaps control over the conditions of
conversation. Instead of conversation, there is the expression of opinion
accompanied by the construction of an adversarial relationship. As Re-
becca West once suggested, commenting on these modern trends, “there
is no such thing as conversation. It is all an illusion. There are interesting
monologues, that’s all” (Miller 2006, x).
Indeed, as a form of alienation, passivity eliminates the intellectual or
emotional risks that arise with active encounters and becomes a con-
tinual threat to the one initiating spoken interaction. Erving Goffman’s
work on interaction rituals argues that accessibility of the other for an
exchange may have serious consequences. He suggests that when “one
person volunteers a message, thereby contributing what might easily be
a threat to the ritual equilibrium, someone else present is obliged to show
that the message has been received and that its content is acceptable to
all concerned or can be acceptably countered” (1967, 38). Similarly, Hugh
Dalziel Duncan developed a dramaturgy of dialogue, maintaining that
“dialogue is never abstract or monologic. It is dramatic dialogue, a think-
19
ing in relationship, in the give and take of address to others. For as we

speak in dialogue we must stand our ground and wait to be spoken to. In
such difference, the real difference of the other in dialogue, in all the op-
positions of the other, lies the meaning of conversation as a social event.
As we speak together we enter in a mutual agreement not to silence our
differences, but to express them” (1962, 299).
Moreover, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1961, 152) argue that
conversation is “the most important vehicle of reality-maintenance,”
meaning that a significant disruption or discontinuity of conversation
becomes a threat to a subjective reality. Being deprived of dialogue,
therefore, means isolation, alienation, and a condition of nothingness.
Thus, the substance or quality of topics or content remain inconsequen-
tial prerequisites for dialogue as an existential practice, which may be
constituted by an exchange of mere words. In fact, as Ogden and Rich-
ards (1923, 316) observed some time ago, “there need not or perhaps even
there must not be anything to communicate. As long as there are words
to exchange, phatic communion brings savage and civilized alike into
the pleasant atmosphere of polite, social intercourse.”
Indeed, conversation relates directly to the notion of communion, or
communication, which John Dewey ([1934] 1958, 335) calls the “the foun-
dation and source of all activities and relations that are distinctive of
internal union of human beings with one another.” The original idea of
being in conversation with others as an expression of freedom and in-
dividual empowerment appeared when journalism was in its infancy.
One is reminded of Machiavelli’s remark ([1513] 1965) that culture must
be learned through conversation among equals, or of Walt Whitman’s
notion of democracy as a society of “free readers,” whose creation of
a “daily communion” with writers or editors confirms mutual interests
and sympathies, which contain the seeds of conversation (1996, 167). It
is, however, the notion of equality, which makes conversation what it is,
namely a social event and a method of arriving at some kind of truth
through responding to the other, exposing rather than hiding differenc-
es, instructing as well as being instructed, often without a clear goal or
a particular purpose. But this never occurs in an adversarial fashion,
which, according to Tannen (1998), has very effectively become the prev-
alent American mode of communication.
These observations reinforce the fact that conversation has been un-
der siege since the times when new communication technologies—like
photography and film or television—were a perceived threat to the sur-
vival of the printed word, until today, when mass communication sets
20
the agenda for public discourse, directs its content, and determines its
ideological thrust, while also setting agendas for private discourse.
These new technologies, for instance, separated the functions of see-
ing and hearing with the introduction of the camera and the telephone.
Their presence made new demands on how people related to the world.
In addition, popular literature and the press, in particular, supplied a
new vocabulary and ways of expression that served the speed of tech-
nologies of communication, eased comprehension and, thus, created
and sustained a sense of commonality. Today, the mobile phone and the
computer, together with the iPod, only underscore the separation of eye
and ear as technical extensions of the individual.
In the meantime, however, two generations of a media-saturated exist-
ence have taken their toll on the progress of mass communication as a
modern site of public conversations. Once considered the source of a
democratic existence, and, according to Gabriel Tarde (1969, 312), the
most important force governing modern conversation, the media en-
counter a decreasing trust in journalism and commercial propaganda
in an atmosphere of fading credibility among the public. The book, or lit-
erature in general, declined in importance as a source of information or
opinions regarding the ways of the world, while celebrity chatter crowds
public media, rules opinions, and defines destinies.
What emerges is the realization, if ever so vague, that an ideological-
ly constructed democratic system of communication rests on concrete
ideas of individual control over what is being said, or where and how, as
well as to whom. In the face of dominant theories of mass society and the
dire consequences of globalization, conversation is being reconstituted
in the practice of talk as another confirmation of communal life and an
expression of an individual’s right. While conversation remains one of
the major distinctions between the richness of traditional oral cultures
and the poverty of mass mediated life in modern societies, talk recog-
nizes the individual as an actor in the process of communication, which
is the process of life itself.
Furthermore, support for talk comes from the introduction of the lat-
est technological gadgets, like the Internet or mobile phones. These are
not designed and marketed to reach mass audiences, like the traditional
intent of press, radio or television, but meant to serve the individual, not
unlike the telephone, two generations ago, to reach beyond the imme-
diacy of home or work. The newest media are enabling technologies,
which have brought about a new understanding of communication as a
social process and of talk as the heart of communal life. In fact, they have
21
changed the notion of conversation to promote mere talk or chatter as a

form of participation.
In fact, the resurgence of talk as participation has resulted in new ap-
peals by traditional media, like the recent promotion of the citizen-jour-
nalist as an example of a new approach to journalism as a participatory
activity. This development is reminiscent of the theoretical concept of
the peasant-journalist in the Soviet Union or China a generation ago, or
of the county correspondent in the tradition of American weekly news-
paper practices. Both are creatures of an institutional desire to involve
individuals in the information process, when media aspire to legitimize
journalism as a form of public conversation (and governments use the
practice for collecting information, as in the Soviet Union and China).
However, as an institutional concern, given its journalistic values and
professional commitments, the results vary significantly from the proc-
ess of conversing with others in a social setting, although its credibility
and persuasive power are desirable qualities of any medium.
On the other hand, America’s “age of conversation,” identified with
the generation of Oliver Wendell Holmes during the latter part of the
nineteenth century, constituted a rarified, if not elitist atmosphere of in-
tellectual intercourse that included the finest minds of the republic. It
reflected the practices of salons and reading societies in Europe, which
relied on the importance of the word, the art of expression, and the pro-
motion of ideas in specific social settings associated with agenda setters
or opinion leaders of the times. Determined by conditions of class and
education, conversation not only provided authentication and reinforce-
ment of world views, but contained the seeds of resistance.
The democratization of conversation occurred over a hundred years
later, in the “age of mass communication,” which provided access to in-
formation and formed agendas for public discourse, while dominating
the public sphere. This period also shaped a new way of expressing the
desire for verbal intervention. Such a desire is stimulated by the flood of
industrially constructed narratives and the inability of the individual to
respond directly, or to “get a word in.” Thus, a glut of words and a lack
of personal fulfillment characterize the co-existence with media and sys-
tems of mass communication, in general. They demonstrate the demise
of expressive practices in an age of industrialization, when instruction
replaced education, or monologue prevailed over dialogue, while partici-
pation was reduced to spectatorship.
Genuine conversation also creates a conspiratorial atmosphere re-
garding topics or areas of expert knowledge. Because, not unlike read-
22
ing, conversation is a private affair in an atmosphere of equal oppor-

tunity beyond external control and, therefore, free to be exercised by
anyone for the expression and circulation of ideas. Also, conversation
occurs between individuals who have knowledge of each other and who
realize that real living is meeting, to quote Martin Buber (1956), and au-
thentic meeting produces an exchange of ideas. Consequently, conversa-
tion also has the potential to undermine the power of (state) authority
and to become a threat to security, as recognized in recent attempts by
the U.S. administration to extend its surveillance policies by legitimizing
arbitrary acts of wiretapping and eavesdropping on citizens caught in
the act of talking or even conversing.
It is a characteristic of any authority—individuals or institutions—to
mistrust private conversations and to attempt to control their potential
power. Thus, censorship has been an age-old remedy, while the chronicle
of printing—and the publication of texts in general—is also a chronicle of
suppression. For instance, in the United States, the principles of democ-
racy have clashed throughout its history with the goals of corporate cap-
italism. That is, full participation (by a majority of citizens) in society has
been replaced by decision-making processes involving unrepresentative
minorities engaged in a profit-oriented exercise of power. In this process,
conversation emerges as the practice of talking to people as consumers
of information rather than as partners in a public conversation over a
range of pertinent topics.
In fact, Walter Lippmann ([1922] 1967) despaired in the 1920s over the
incompetence of individuals to participate in the conversation of society.
He called for the involvement of experts in the decision-making process
instead, thus removing the individual from dialogue in the political are-
na and reducing democracy to a system of proxy conversations. The re-
ferral to authority—from journalists to lobbyists—has produced a closed
system of expert conversations and decision-making practices, which
have alienated individuals from the political process while redefining
the idea of democracy. In the United States lobbyists have always been
considered a legitimate part of the political process, thus problematizing
the role of ordinary individuals as participants in decision-making proc-
esses of society. Recent developments regarding the U.S. government’s
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the impotence of the electorate vis-à-
vis specific political interests, provide an excellent example of the role of
the media and the function of the majority. The latter is alienated from
political conversation by being assigned to a ghetto of private talk. Nev-
ertheless, the reach of authority has always been rather limited, despite
23
its threat to democratic principles through a variety of (even unconsti-

tutional) practices; conversation will continue to help overthrow govern-
ments and create new utopias as it becomes an attractive alternative for
the weary consumer of media fare and government propaganda.
Furthermore, conversation means dialogue, and dialogue is the path
to the self. To become human relies on being made human by others, and
to recognize the self means being in the presence of others. Thus com-
munication constitutes relatedness, and relatedness ultimately consti-
tutes society. This process of becoming selves is based on a commitment
to communication; thus conversation as a method of knowing oneself
and knowing oneself to be understood by others is a fundamental prac-
tice, that shapes reality. It is a reality of relations between individuals,
individuals and nature, or individuals and society, in which communica-
tion plays a decisive role.
This development also reflects a shift in modernism to the notion of
immediacy, or to the relevance of proximity. Paul Virilio (1995, 23) has
commented on the development of communication as a biography of
speed. He speaks of the art of the motor “capable of orchestrating the
perpetual shift of appearances.” The former fueled the development of
media technologies, from the speed of the rotary press to the high-speed
transmission of Internet services, and raised the expectations of subse-
quent generations of being in the immediate presence of information or
entertainment, but also of being instantaneously in the presence of oth-
ers. Thus talk becomes but a reference point of contact, the authentica-
tion of immediacy and, therefore, the confirmation of being.
In the absence of conversation, on the other hand, mass media provide
immediacy as a form of reality-maintenance. They offer the specter of
a pseudo-dialogue to the anxious individual, but the result is an asser-
tion of “facts” or “truths,” which produces uniformity or standardization,
while an exchange of ideas between equals celebrates difference and
ultimately breeds individuality.
Once agents of public conversation, the media have undergone signifi-
cant changes: from editors acting with personal knowledge and an inter-
est in readers, to media managers constructing audiences as consumers
or collective recipients of a one-way flow of information. Conversation
as an expression of mutual interest in knowing and learning from the
other has been replaced by a hierarchical process of talking to rather
than conferring with audiences. Consequently, reality emerges from an
interaction between the self-interest of the media and the desire of the
individual to remain in touch with the world, while mutuality is redefined
24
as an economic or political operating condition rather than a social or

cultural process of understanding.
When media become indifferent or insensitive to the desire for conver-
sation, however, people feel abandoned and will turn from the use of tra-
ditional media to engaging more creatively in talk. Encouraged by older
traditions and newer technologies, individuals will seek recognition and
distinction in the practice of talk as a form of re-invented conversation,
which conforms to the conditions of contemporary social communica-
tion.
The success of mobile telephones, which cater to the desire to commu-
nicate and satisfy the urge to be heard, and therefore to be recognized, is
but one indication of a search for new forms of communication that cher-
ish privacy and reinforce independence from the public discourse. An-
other one is the return to face-to-face conversational activities in public
places, like pubs or coffee houses, for instance, where television screens
have often been reduced to decorating walls with moving images.
Not since the invention of the telephone over one hundred years ago
have so many people enjoyed almost unlimited access to partners in talk.
However, it is not the technology itself, from mass transport, which speeds
people to desired destinations, to the mobile telephone, which overcomes
any distance, but individual action that becomes significant. Since the
invention of the telephone, which resulted initially in long-distance talk
and became a prestige household object, people have extended talk to
overcome distances. The mobile telephone and the Internet, however, ap-
peared at a time, when television, in particular, had produced audiences
rather than partners in conversation, resulting in a newly discovered mo-
bility—at least for those who can afford it—and with it a new confidence
in the search for facts and explanations. Both offer tools to explore the
world and roam the airwaves and combined to promote self-confidence
in the search for information—and ultimately for the development of the
self.
In The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) the authors describe the rise of the In-
ternet, suggesting that the “attraction was in speech, however mediated.
In people talking, however slowly. And mostly, the attraction lay in the
kinds of things they were saying. Never in history had so many had the
chance to know what so many others were thinking on such a wide range
of subjects. Slowly at first, a new kind of conversation was beginning to
emerge, but it would achieve global reach with astonishing speed.”1 Al-
1
<http://www.cluetrain.com/apocalypso.html>.
25
though the Internet was by no means a universally global means of com-

munication, nevertheless, individuals in technologically more advanced
countries were able to articulate their thoughts and share ideas with the
aid of the Internet across borders and with a new understanding or ap-
preciation of other cultures.
Even in domestic situations, however, the Internet has replaced letter-
writing, or correspondence in the traditional sense, as a medium with fast
and inexpensive access to family and friends. In its wake, a new vocabu-
lary has evolved, reflecting the playfulness with which people travel on
the new electronic highways. The presence of the new technology, com-
bined with the mobile phone, has forged a new alliance between people
and their social environment. Accessibility and immediacy have become
the rule and make talk possible at the shortest notice or without delay.
This feature contributes to spontaneity and results in a sense of playful-
ness, but also suggests power or control over the time, place or content
of talk. It differs from earlier telephone technology, which was limited
to stationary services and could not offer the capacity for acquiring in-
formation, as with Internet searches. Thus, “googling” is not only a new
verb, but it also suggests the freedom to roam the libraries of the world
in search of topics or sources of potential conversation. Individuals are
no longer bound to the content of media, but are being equipped to in-
vent or construct future conversations based on a multitude of different
sources. The problem arises when individuals lack serious interest in or
the intellectual capacity to make use of these resources, since their weak
educational background and their media-infested environment produce
a feeling of utter complacency. It is an indifference created by a lack of
critical confrontation, or conversation.
In the meantime, traditional media of social communication have lost
their claims to accuracy, truth, or relevance. Audiences, instead, have
begun to look for alternative sources of self-knowledge and means of
identification with the social, economic, or political environment. In this
process, they discover the degradation of talk into pseudo-conversation
and rediscover the power of initiating and sustaining the ritual of au-
thentic talk. Breaking the silence becomes a liberating act of reclaiming
one’s identity in mass society rather than establishing one’s role in con-
versation. After all, talk reduces distances and re-establishes a sense of
community, which becomes more relevant than societal issues or institu-
tional demands, including national politics or global considerations.
Several examples of using talk as a means of persuasion to serve com-
mercial or political interests have been emerging in the United States,
26
where the idea of freedom of expression persists as an ideological cor-

nerstone of democracy as much as the subjugation to consumption as a
way of life.
The claims for actual conversation as a powerful medium occur in dif-
ferent ways. For instance, the culture of conversation is being taught at
Conversation Cafés on the Internet, as “a culture of intelligence, peace,
and political awareness” with slogans like “We are the media. We are
the talk shows. We are America, waking up and tuning in,” which sug-
gest empowerment in the process of social communication. People are
oriented to the café process by hosts, who are “a cross between a flight
attendant, a coach, a mother, an old philosopher and an innocent child,”
according to the organizers, who also offer telephone training to pro-
spective conversationalists.2
Another example is provided by mass media theoreticians, who, after
recognizing the diminishing trust in media conduct, have introduced the
notion of “public” journalism, which addresses audiences and promotes
meaningful journalistic work. Here the public engages in conversations
with journalists for the benefit of maintaining a reality that relates to the
community of readers. In an apparent reversal of contemporary media
practices, this mode of “public” journalism signals a return to a tradi-
tional understanding of the relation between the press and its public,
supposedly based on equality and shared interests in the welfare of the
community. The real purpose, however, is to serve specific economic in-
terests.
Also, while millions of dollars are being poured into political television
advertising, in particular, it is hardly a secret that face-to-face encoun-
ters between candidates and their constituencies have proven to be more
effective and are the people’s preferred method of meeting politicians.
Thus, walking across the state of Iowa, for instance, has helped presiden-
tial candidates in the past make lasting impressions and win primary
campaigns after engaging individuals in conversation along the way.
Meeting and conversing are still considered meaningful activities by in-
dividuals, tired of media hype, who typically are too far removed in their
daily lives from the national political scene.
What is more, alternative public realms, including alternative media,
NGOs, and other special interests, are typically environments that de-
pend on sustained conversations among their participants to maintain
and strengthen their particular causes.
2
<http://www.conversationcafe.org>.
27
And finally, a recent meeting of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Associa-

tion in Florida concluded that advertising is obsolete. Instead, attendees
learned about the power of word of mouth, or the revival of a traditional
form of communication that has been updated with the aid of new tech-
nologies, like blogs, podcasting and online message boards. Touted as
the most honest advertising medium, word of mouth exploits the notion
of sharing knowledge about new products through private talk or con-
versation with equals, like friends, family or colleagues. While making
specific information meaningful to the individual, the force of attention
and personal trust advance commercial goals and reinforce the climate
of consumption.
In every instance, talk is the critical medium, and the individual an
active participant in the process of exchanging words. Whether these
strategies of communication to capture or recapture individuals as audi-
ence, voters or consumers will be successful may be in doubt, since the
market continues to determine the manner of communication. What is
important, however, is a growing public realization that some form of
conversation as a fundamental human activity remains irreplaceable
and essential to understanding and confirming one’s own subjectivity
and one’s relations to the world.
Differently expressed, underlying the process of conversation or dia-
logue is the issue of privacy, turning from the world of media and rou-
tine participation in acts of publicity, “going public,” or betraying confi-
dences to a private world of trusted relationships and communication
that escapes the scrutiny of the public eye. Thus, communication as a
private practice may help restore the belief in the worth of one’s own
subjectivity and the expression of one’s ideas. The ease and accessibility
of new technologies offer strategies for realizing the construction of the
self through access to knowledge and the use of words and images in a
closed or intimate setting that defines the realm of conversation.
These considerations of conversation as a return to communication
have not included issues typically related to the idea of conversation as
a high-brow, elitist activity. In fact, conversation has been understood
here as an exchange of words, the act of connecting to others and, in this
process, as a means of establishing oneself. Conversation, in this sense,
is therefore not a privilege of the educated classes, but becomes a right
to communicate for everyone, aided and promoted by the advent of a
new generation of personal communication technologies. At the same
time, these technologies enable the ease of talk and with it reinforce the
promotion of a total subjectivity, which has serious consequences for the
28
quality of culture and politics as social environments. But it also affects

the advancement of social knowledge, including the use of language as a
vehicle for meaning, if not truth. Talk for talk’s sake fills the air, meeting
the immediate needs of those engaged in this exercise of freedom and
the long-range goals of those providing the services. Yet the outcome is
problematic for the betterment of society.
References
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Rodin, Judith. 2003. Public Discourse in America. Conversation and Community

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30
BRINGING ALTERNATIVE MEDIA PRACTICE TO
THEORY: MEDIA POWER, ALTERNATIVE
JOURNALISM AND PRODUCTION
CHRIS ATTON
Media Power and its Tensions

The study of alternative media has already established a significant
body of work which has sought to make sense of practice through theo-
retical work that is both specific to alternative media and that draws
on a range of prior theoretical models (Atton 2001, 2004; Downing et
al. 2001; Rodríguez 2001). Couldry and Curran (2003) have argued that
the term “alternative” emphasises the relationship between alterna-
tive media and mass media, and have placed an emphasis on media
power. It is this relationship and, in particular, how it might inform
our understanding of norms and means in the production of alterna-
tive media, which earlier theorisations of such media seem to miss.
Whilst, for example, social movement theories might explain the role
of alternative media in mobilizing resources or in constructing collec-
tive identity (Melucci 1996), they do little to help us explain the increas-
ingly numerous (and contested) claims made about alternative media
as journalism.
Nick Couldry argues that such projects result in the “de-naturalization”
of media spaces, encouraging audiences—as amateur media producers—
to rebalance the differential power of the media and to consider how
“the media themselves are a social process organized in space” (Couldry
2000, 25). Such participatory media production contests the concentra-
tion of institutional and professional media power and challenges the
media monopoly on producing symbolic forms. Pierre Bourdieu (1991)
argues that symbolic power is the power to construct reality. Alternative
media and, in what is arguably its most current form, citizen journalism,
construct a reality that appears to oppose the conventions and repre-
sentations of the mainstream media. Citizen journalists engage in self-
representation, community empowerment and dialogic self-education
(Rodríguez 2001). Citizens’ media aim primarily not at state-promoted
citizenship but at media practice in constructing citizenship and politi-
31
cal identity along with everyday life. To link the practice of citizen jour-
nalism with the practice of citizenship might be an attempt to offset the
democratic deficit and to counter the shrinking interest in political life.
The media help define the boundaries of political life (Dahlgren 2000),
and alternative media spaces can become important to the development
of critical citizens (Norris 1999).
Therefore, to speak of alternative media and alternative journalism is
to recognize the relationship between dominant, professionalized media
practices and marginal, amateur practices. The struggle between them
is for “the place of media power” (Couldry 2000). Alternative journalis-
tic practices present ways of re-imagining journalism and not only of
adapting media practices for purposes of self-education and community
empowerment. They offer a challenge to professional practices through
their very recognition of those practices. We need to bring the news
practices of alternative media into alternative media theory and to take
into account news framing, representation, discourse, ethics and norms
in these practices. This is an important step if we are to develop a criti-
cal approach to our studies, to take account of how alternative media
practices connect to audiences and to produce work that is relevant to
alternative media projects and their audiences.
These claims and challenges are rarely examined by alternative media
scholars; more often they are treated as givens. There is little considera-
tion given to the nature of alternative media practice in terms familiar
to us from studies of the mass media. There is hardly any attempt to
develop theories that take into account news framing, representation,
discourse, ethics and norms in alternative media. This chapter proposes
that it is only by linking these theories with those of journalism studies
and of cultural production in general that we can develop models of al-
ternative media that are adequate to deal with norms and means as well
as with ideology and identity. The dominant theoretical positions within
the study of alternative media have been achieved through what is often,
or so it seems to me, a celebratory and uncritical academic discourse (I
include my own early work here, for example, Atton 1996 and 1999). It is
as if, in order to stake our claim for the significance of these media in the
academy, we have tended, paradoxically, to present them as Other, as
exotic, as special. But it seems that we are still missing important parts of
the puzzle. Perhaps we need to be rather more critical now; after all, the
21st century has seen our studies established (if that is the right word), or
at least normalised (for example, the International Encyclopedia of Com-
munication (Donsbach 2008) has entries on alternative media, citizens’
32
C H R I S A T T O N : B R I N G I N G A LT E R NAT I V E M E D I A P R AC T I C E TO THEORY ...
media, citizen journalism and the underground press, amongst others).

Yet there remain gaps.
A major gap, as John Downing (2003) has noted, is the study of audi-
ences. It is too easy to consider audiences simply as producers of alter-
native media, for this not only conflates two categories, it prevents us
from understanding how the two are realized within the same person.
There is also the longstanding issue of “external” audiences for alterna-
tive media. This is not to go down the road of Comedia (1984) and to ar-
gue that only by adopting the methods of the mainstream will alternative
media ever have any impact on a general audience. I have never been
convinced by their arguments in toto (not least because they suggest that
in order to have any circulation, alternative media must change not only
their modus operandi but also their very nature). That said, Comedia’s
observations on the sclerotic nature of communal decision-making are
still relevant today. Yet, as those who study the cognate area of commu-
nity media know well enough, audiences do matter, and efforts to reach
out to others not “in the know” are important: how does a local, commu-
nity-run TV or radio station compete—for that is what it must do—against
the well-funded, professionalized infrastructure of commercial and pub-
lic-service broadcasting organizations?
There are two issues at work here. Firstly, we might argue that Come-
dia’s position has become irrelevant in a world of citizen journalism ap-
parently dominated by blogs. Questions of circulation and promotion, of
visibility and publicity, are different now: we are moving towards individ-
ualized models of production and reception. Secondly, and apparently
contradictorily, what our studies still lack (though this is less the case
in studies of community media) are examinations of practice—I hesitate
to use the term “industrial practice” because of its connotations from
studies of the mass media, but perhaps it is useful, if only to force us to
consider alternative media practices as “work.” It is surely this that is
being lost—or at least marginalized—in our studies: the question of how
alternative media come to be produced. This might be achieved not sim-
ply through a study of their decision-making processes, the structures
of their editorial meetings, their ideological disputes (their social and
political processes), but through identifying and analyzing sets of prac-
tices (the sociology of work, the cultures of news production). We seem to
know why (or think we know why) many practitioners do what they do,
but what is it that they do, and why do they do it in particular ways?
I do not wish, however, to perpetuate a binary opposition between al-
ternative and mainstream media. Studies of alternative media have il-
33
luminated the complex, hybrid nature of alternative media in relation to

its mainstream counterparts (Atton 2001; Downing et al. 2001; Hamilton
2003; Hamilton and Atton 2001). Conspicuous features of alternative me-
dia practices have not simply broken with mainstream practices; they
have often sought to radically redefine them. These studies emphasize
the central role of individuals and groups normally considered to lie
outside the professionalized media in terms of contributors, editors and
owners. Hybridity can also be found in the form and content of alterna-
tive media reporting. It can be argued that, far from alternative media
establishing ways of doing journalism that are radical to the extent that
they mark dramatic departures from existing practices of journalism,
their work may draw on existing forms (such as tabloid journalism) and
methods (such as investigative journalism). This argument requires us
to place the practices of alternative journalism in a wider setting, as
practices of cultural production within society. Bourdieu’s field theory
is useful here. As Benson notes, the production of a cultural discourse
(such as alternative journalism) is “marked by the struggle for distinc-
tion. In order to exist in a field, one must mark one’s difference” (Benson
2003, 122). This difference is achieved by interactions, borrowings and
struggles between agents across related fields or sub-fields (for example,
across mainstream and alternative journalism) as well as within a single
field or sub-field. Bourdieu’s concept of the field can help us account
for and understand the differential struggles for distinction between
the mainstream and the alternative, and within the alternative itself.
Further, field theory offers more precise terms than “alternative” and
“mainstream” with which to examine difference. Before applying field
theory to alternative journalism, we will first set out the broad principles
of Bourdieu’s theory.
Alternative Journalism
in the Field of Production
Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production (as laid out in Bourdieu 1993
and 1996) presents a method of understanding culture in society, one
that neither mystifies the creative process (as ineffable) nor reduces
its genesis to social context alone (as some Marxian perspectives have
done). Instead, Bourdieu provides a framework upon which may be built
a complex understanding of cultural production in social life, one that
takes into account structural determinants such as economics and poli-
tics (power), interactions between individuals and institutions, and the
development of taste, social and cultural value, and esteem.
34
The theory comprises three “structuring structures” (Toynbee 2001, 8),

which together clarify how producers create in social settings. These are
the field of works, the habitus of individual producers and the field of cul-
tural production itself. The field of works comprises the store of “histori-
cally accumulated symbolic resources” (Toynbee 2001, 8) from which cre-
ators within a particular cultural activity or genre draw to produce their
work. The choices they make and what they do with those resources—the
ways in which they combine and adapt them (or privilege some over oth-
ers)—is explained by the creator’s habitus, the personal social history
and context of each producer (such as class, educational background,
professional values or training). Cultural production is therefore to be
considered as a set of social processes, one that is at once determined
by these structuring structures at the same time as those structures are
contested and struggled over.
The field of production contains both the field of works and the con-
stellation of producers. But this field is divided and subject to economic
and political constraints (a greater field of power within which Bourdieu
places the field of production). Bourdieu divides the field of cultural pro-
duction into two sub-fields: large-scale (mass) production and small-scale
(restricted) production. The former is primarily concerned with the pro-
duction of commercial cultural products on a mass scale. Its depend-
ence on outside forces (primarily economic, but also legal and political)
renders it “heteronomous”: it is never fully independent, for example, of
market forces. By contrast, the latter sub-field is more autonomous. It is
not concerned with a mass audience, nor with economic status (Bourdieu
gives avant-garde art as an exemplar). Instead, it is distinguished less
by economic capital and more by cultural capital (education, expertise,
knowledge and so on).
Bourdieu has applied the principles of field theory to develop the no-
tion of a field of journalism (Bourdieu 1997). In its original formulation,
his proposal has been criticized as undifferentiated and too monolithic
“to provide a realistic account of a plural and heterogeneous reality” of
dominant journalistic practices, let alone alternatives to these (Marliere
1998, 223). More recent work, however, has shown useful ways forward.
Benson argues that economic capital “is expressed via circulation, or ad-
vertising revenue, or audience ratings” (2006, 190). Cultural capital can
therefore be seen to lie in journalism that is respected more for its pro-
fessionalism, its erudition, and its originality.
If we try to understand alternative journalism in these terms, its gen-
eral disinterest in economic capital (as well as its general lack of mass-
35
popular success or recognition) suggests that it is located in the sub-field

of small-scale (restricted) production, while mainstream journalism is lo-
cated in the sub-field of large-scale (mass) production. Bourdieu’s terms
(small scale and large scale) have an analytical precision that the terms
alternative and mainstream lack (Hesmondhalgh 2006). This is an im-
portant point: the imprecision of a term like alternative has resulted in
much dispute, whether polemic (Abel 1997) or rational (Atton 2001; Coul-
dry and Curran 2003). Bourdieu’s terms are far more explanatory in
terms of the social location of cultural production.
It is important to make further distinctions within each sub-field.
Bourdieu posits two poles in each sub-field where he places cultural pro-
duction according to its level of symbolic capital (defined by Thompson
(1991, 14) as “accumulated prestige or honour”). This is an especially use-
ful distinction to make in the case of alternative journalism. As we have
seen, the sub-field of small-scale production is generally uninterested in
economic capital. Bourdieu argues that high levels of symbolic capital
are to be found in what he calls the “consecrated avant garde,” that is, at
the pole of small-scale cultural production that enjoys significant pres-
tige, critical (though not necessarily public) acclaim and some level of
institutional recognition (through awards and prizes). At the opposite
pole lies small-scale production that is less interested in seeking—and
might never achieve—a high level of symbolic capital.
Symbolic capital may have an ideological function. To show this, Hes-
mondhalgh uses the example of small-scale popular music production
(“alternative music”): “new entrants [into the field] would vigorously
attack the consecrated forms of the alternative” (Hesmondhalgh 2006,
217). In both cases, however, as Hesmondhalgh (2006, 214) puts it, cultur-
al producers in the restricted sub-field are left pretty much to “talk to
each other.” This is not to say that such conversations are irrelevant or
self-indulgent in the case of alternative journalism; after all, to create
spaces for conversation within social movements or local communities
can be, as we have seen, an essential ingredient in the lifeblood of social
groups.
We must remember, however, that Bourdieu developed his theory in or-
der to account for cultural production in the professionalized worlds of
art and literature. His emphasis on the individual professional creator,
therefore, leaves little room for democratized notions of production, such
as those found in alternative journalism, where we frequently find non-
professionals and amateurs, where professionals and non-professionals
might work together, and where collective methods of production occur
36
as frequently as individualized methods of production. We should also

take account of how alternative journalism may be differentiated by its
relation to the dominant culture. Raymond Williams identified two cul-
tural formations that respond to the dominant culture in different ways.
Alternative formations tend to work within existing cultures; they might
be reformist, but they are never revolutionary. Oppositional formations,
on the other hand, seek to replace existing cultures. For Williams, Mod-
ernism constitutes alternative, radically innovating experimental artists
and writers, while he sees avant-garde artists as “the militants of a crea-
tivity which would revive and liberate humanity” (Williams 1989, 51).
In applying field theory to alternative journalism we must therefore be
sensitive to the possibility of interaction between the individual and the
collective, between the professional and the non-professional, and the
relation and orientation of journalism projects to the dominant culture.
While Bourdieu’s framework is valuable in distinguishing the broad dif-
ferences between large-scale (mass) and small-scale (restricted) produc-
tion, it is harder to locate, for example, the Big Issue (a UK advocacy
magazine for the homeless), which relies on a mass audience for its suc-
cess, or a project such as South Korea’s online citizen journalism project
OhmyNews, which combines professional and non-professional writers
within professionalized, hierarchical organizational and editorial set-
tings. Both seem to sit astride the two sub-fields.
The place of non-professional producers is left largely unexamined by
Bourdieu. He does not seem to consider non-professional cultural pro-
duction as a field in its own right; non-professionals inhabit the field of
power, not the specific field of cultural production (Bourdieu 1996, 124).
Moreover, Bourdieu has little to say about what it means to be a profes-
sional; this also makes it difficult to identify the characteristics of the
non-professional. We do know that he ascribes to the non-professional a
low level of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1996, 124). This is confirmed empir-
ically by Klinenberg’s (2005) study of youth media activists in the US: “al-
though they occasionally break into minor media outlets, such as public
radio and television, they rarely obtain the levels of cultural capital that
are necessary to place work in or earn the respect of the most power-
ful organizational actors in the field” (Klinenberg 2005, 189). Klinenberg
argues that web-based media offer the means to bypass the professional-
ized and institutionalized large-scale media: the web “requires less eco-
nomic, social, and cultural capital” (Klinenberg 2005, 190).
Perhaps the answer lies within the specific practices of alternative
journalism itself. As Toynbee finds in popular music production, there ap-
37
pears a “greater openness of the field of production to variations in the

habitus of producers, plus the range and diversity of the field of works
[which lead to] greater instability than in consecrated art and a less
clear-cut distinction between heretical and orthodox positions” (Toynbee
2001, 9). The habitus and position of individual and collective producers
in alternative journalism might be modified as a result, for example, of
exposure to professional training, particularly where they hope to speak
to audiences wider than those already sympathetic. This means adopting
techniques, genres and styles that are dominant in the professionalized,
large-scale sub-field of journalism, and that have proven efficacy in at-
tracting larger audiences. Klinenberg is pessimistic about the possibility
of this strategy succeeding. For him, when activists adopt professional
journalistic techniques, they are hoping to “gain legitimacy inside the
journalistic field” (Klinenberg 2005, 189). But what if we consider these
activists to be within the journalistic field already, rather than in a puta-
tive activist field?
Duval (2005) identifies small-scale journalistic production with the
“paradigm [of the] ‘alternative’ press” (Duval 2005, 141), the sub-field
that is “least dependent on the economic field, but also the least ‘pro-
fessionalized’” (Duval 2005, 146). Duval, however, is studying not alter-
native journalism but the “subspace” of economic journalism in France:
his examples of an alternative press working in this space include the
left-wing weekly Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper Le Canard En-
chaine and Le Monde Diplomatique. As we find with Bourdieu, Duval
has little to say about what he means by “professionalized”; nor do any
of his examples include ideologies and practices that we might think of
as “deprofessionalized.” What is significant, though, is that Duval shows
that the sub-field of small-scale production is far from undifferentiated.
Moreover, he shows that it is possible to think of alternative journalism
as occupying many different positions within the sub-field: some of these
positions might be closer to the large-scale sub-field in terms, say, of their
cultural or economic capital (in the UK, for example, this could include
the Big Issue and Private Eye). Other positions might be closer to related
fields such as the activist field suggested by Klinenberg.
What is important here is not only to posit alternative journalism as oc-
cupying the sub-field of small-scale production, but to consider it as able
to occupy liminal positions: whether at the juncture of the two sub-fields
of journalism or between an activist (or other) field and the journalistic
field. Liminal positions are implied by Bourdieu’s field theory (after all,
field theory should not be understood as a congeries of discrete spaces),
38
but about which field theory itself has so far had little to say. The low
levels of cultural and economic capital Bourdieu assigns to non-profes-
sionals might explain the failure of amateur and activist journalists to
make any significant impact on large-scale journalistic production. Yet
cultural capital might well be achieved at the juncture of the fields of
journalism and activism in ways that Bourdieu does not specify.
Evidence of the liminal position that some alternative journalism
might occupy comes from Hesmondhalgh’s general account of cultural
production. He finds some common ground between sub-fields, arguing
that: “there is now a huge amount of cultural production taking place on
the boundaries between [the two] sub-fields . . . ; or, perhaps better still,
that restricted production has become introduced into the field of mass
production” (Hesmondhalgh 2006, 222, original emphasis). In the context
of alternative journalism, examples of these activities at the boundaries
include the professionalization and normalization of blogs in large-scale
journalism and, though perhaps less obviously, the fanzine-like produc-
tion taking place within large-scale, international social networking sites
such as MySpace.
The assessment of professional rock journalism by Gudmundsson et
al. (2002) as “semi-autonomous” seems to recognize both its liminal na-
ture and its movement into large-scale production from its roots in the
amateur, underground press and fanzines, accruing cultural capital as
it moves. We might also acknowledge movement in the opposite direc-
tion, though this is not to argue that large-scale cultural production will
move in its entirety into the restricted field. There are isolated exam-
ples of cultural producers making this transition, such as Everett True’s
movement from professional journalist writing for the UK commercial
weekly Melody Maker to fanzine writer (Atton 2006). In this case, though,
we need to bear in mind that such a movement has been achieved thanks
to—and not in spite of—the high levels of economic, cultural and symbolic
capital accrued by True in his professional work.
Examining sets of media practices from this perspective of hybridi-
zation is one way through the definitional and conceptual thickets that
guard the approaches to thinking about alternative media. Now it is time
to put some practical flesh on those theoretical bones. We might think of
this as a species of grounded theory—approaching the practice with the
intention of building and rebuilding theory. It is time to consider alterna-
tive media production as journalism practice. In what follows I present
three arenas of practice (there are more, of course) within alternative
and citizen journalism that challenge mainstream practices at the same
39
time as they derive their meaning from them. These three arenas may be
understood broadly as ethical issues in alternative journalism: sourcing,
representation and objectivity.
SOURCING
My own research (Atton and Wickenden 2005) shows that the British ac-
tivist newspaper SchNEWS, in an inversion of Hall et al.’s (1978) theory
of primary definition, offers “ordinary people” privileged media access.
This access does not depend upon the source’s remarkable status, be-
havior or actions, but on their ability to illustrate issues and perspec-
tives with which SchNEWS is sympathetic and which it wishes to pro-
mote. It is these people, and not official sources, who are considered
credible. Where the mainstream media employ the view of “experts,”
SchNEWS employs ordinary people to provide expert knowledge. Whilst
elite sources are given significant amounts of space in the paper, they
are more often talked about than accessed directly for their perspec-
tive. They tend to be treated with suspicion: interviews with media activ-
ists and discourse analyses of their texts illustrate that when elite views
are used directly it is to show the contradiction between their words and
their actions, or to demonstrate their apparent failings. It is the voices
of ordinary people that set the terms of reference by which readers are
encouraged to understand issues and events.
Langer (1998) has shown how a limited set of narratives and character-
types within mainstream narratives may produce a form of cultural clo-
sure that prevents other forms of story-telling and other representations
(whether oppositional or contradictory). The representation of ordinary
people in alternative journalism seeks not to set them apart as either
heroes or victims but to show them as voices that have as equal a right to
be heard as do the voices of elite groups. Story-telling by those who are
normally actors in other people’s stories challenges the expert culture of
both the news journalist and the “expert” columnist.
When reporting on other communities, SchNEWS does not take the ap-
proach of what David Spurr (1993) has called the “colonizing journalist,”
but employs members of that community to speak for themselves. This
approach to news construction appears to confirm Rodríguez’s (2001)
notion of citizens’ media, through which communities are able to rep-
resent themselves and tell their own stories. However, there is evidence
to suggest that such discourses might be used by SchNEWS to promote
its own ideology through seeking to fit “ordinary” discourse into the po-
40
liticized discourse of the paper. This raises the question of the degree to
which such media are unproblematically “in solidarity” with their ordi-
nary sources, and to what extent they employ these sources for ideologi-
cal ends that may not be shared by the sources themselves. The conven-
tional hierarchy of access might be inverted, yet in its place is a further
hierarchy, where the ideology of the media producers dominates the ex-
pression of their “ordinary” sources. This has an impact upon the ethics
of representation, one that is rarely broached in our studies.
THE ETHICS OF REPRESENTATION

I have argued elsewhere (Atton 2001) that the use of tabloid forms of ad-
dress in alternative media (colloquial language, humor, apparent trivi-
alization of subject matter, brevity of texts) presents radical opinions in a
populist manner that subverts the existing models of tabloid journalism
(normally employed to maintain conservative news agendas). Such radi-
cal forms connect historically with earlier, radical forms of journalism
that predate the commercialized and capitalized forms of journalism
that are normally considered as the originating sites of tabloid journal-
ism (Williams 1970). In the UK, the Radical press of the eighteenth and
the nineteenth centuries may be considered as a precursor of papers
such as SchNEWS. These styles of radical journalism developed from
social movements and thus represent social media that emphasize a
communicative democracy based on a media commons rather than on
a segregated, elitist and professionalized occupational activity. James
Hamilton (2003) has taken this argument still further, finding examples
of these participatory media as far back as early-modern England.
Where biased representation may arise is, ironically enough, as a
result of a politically progressive notion of free speech. Apparently in-
fluenced by Noam Chomsky’s dictum that “if you believe in freedom of
speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like” (cited
in Achbar 1994, 184), some alternative media projects have relinquished
what has been an abiding ideology of “no platform for fascists/racists/
homophobes” in favor of an “open platform” approach. However, Indy-
media provides an example where on some sites this freedom has been
withdrawn, resulting in an ethical dilemma about whose voices are per-
mitted to be heard (Platon and Deuze 2003). A consequence of such a
practice is the question it raises about impartiality and objectivity in al-
ternative media.
41
OBJECTIVITY AND IMPARTIALITY: REJECTION OR REDEFINITION?
The professional ideal of objectivity, understood as the separation of

facts from values, may be considered as the key ethical dimension of
journalistic practice. Practitioners of alternative journalism have recog-
nized the moral and political assumptions of objectivity and have direct-
ed their work to revealing its premises in their work, the better through
practice to challenge its central tenets: that it is possible in the first place
to separate facts from values and that it is morally and politically pref-
erable to do so. Such challenges are not the sole province of alternative
journalists, nor are they new. The Glasgow University Media Group’s
work stands as a significant project exploring the concatenation of facts
and values in television news reporting that still considers itself objective
and impartial (Eldridge 2000). Workers within alternative media, how-
ever, seek to challenge objectivity and impartiality from both an ethical
and a political standpoint in their own journalistic practices. These jour-
nalists have sought to expose the moral claims of their mainstream coun-
terparts. We may consider this stance as a supremely ethically-focused
one, for it seeks to present through radical journalistic practices moral
and political correctives to the fact-centered techniques that have been
found to be just as value-laden as the pre-objectivity era journalism they,
in turn, sought to replace.
Alternative media are characterized by their explicitly partisan char-
acter. In the language of ethics, they exhibit clear biases, yet they pro-
claim their selectivity and their bias, and generally have little interest
in balanced reporting. Alternative media projects tend to be set up in
order to provide a counter to what alternative journalists consider an
already-biased set of reports. Sceptical of what counts as balance in the
mainstream media, they seek to set up their own counter-balance. Hence,
the argument runs, the viewpoints already dominant in the mainstream
media do not need repeating. What appears as bias and the absence of
balance in the alternative media is to be considered not as a set of ab-
solute truths; instead it comprises a set of accounts told from different
perspectives. The practice of alternative journalism thus enacts Edgar’s
claim that “journalism cannot be objective, for that presupposes that an
inviolable interpretation of the event as action exists prior to the report”
(Edgar 1992, 120).
Amongst bloggers, however, this challenge is not only the preserve
of citizen journalists. Matheson and Allan (2007) find that even profes-
sional reporters tend to eschew the established standards of objectiv-
42
ity and impartiality in their blogs, preferring instead a style of address

that has more in common with “native reporting” (Atton 2001). That is to
say, they write from direct, personal experience about those experiences
and emphasize their independence from organizational or administra-
tive constraints. From their interviews with professional journalists who
maintained blogs during the last Gulf war, Matheson and Allan find that
it is these aspects of their writing that the reporters believe resonated
with their readers: it was the direct, “authentic” account of personal ex-
perience that “counted” in the midst of mainstream coverage that was
dominated by the carefully controlled output of “embedded” journalists.
Matheson and Allan argue that it is the transparency of such methods
that establishes trust between writer and reader. This relationship, devel-
oped from subjective modes of address and coupled with disillusionment
and scepticism towards the mass media, makes the blog a valuable site
for re-imagining news practices. For the weblog, trustworthiness springs
from the setting-up of a subjective position from which to write about
one’s own experiences—it is less to do with the facticity of the reporting. It
is, as Matheson and Allan show, the connectedness that a sharing of per-
sonal experience between writer and reader can bring that is emblem-
atic of this “new” journalism. This journalism is less focused on the jour-
nalist as professional; instead it proposes a relationship between writer
and reader where epistemological claims may be made about the status
of journalism and its practitioners. This also has less to do with the nov-
elty of the knowledge being produced (a focus on uncovering “hidden”
stories); instead, it suggests new ways of thinking about and producing
journalism (a focus on what kinds of knowledge are produced and how
readers and writers may come together to make sense of them).
What I earlier termed “external” audiences often come to learn of citi-
zen journalism such as blogs through the industrial arrangements of the
publishing industry or media corporations and, inevitably, some blog-
gers come to be considered as “celebrities.” This is only a problem, how-
ever, if we insist on some kind of “purity” (isolationism) for the field of
alternative journalism. If the most powerful outcome of these new prac-
tices is to challenge an existing epistemology of news production, then
it is of less significance how we come to learn about such challenges.
Whilst the structural modes of publicizing such reports might endure,
there is reason to believe that such publicity, rather than diluting the
nature of such practices, may even contribute to a normalization of such
practices through their power as publicizers.
43
Commercial media organizations also make practical use of amateur

reporters; breaking television news relies increasingly on camcorder
footage. Numerous examples appeared in 2005, for instance, including the
effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, the fire at the Buncefield
Fuel Depot in England and the terrorist bombings in London (Sampedro
2005). Newspapers and broadcasters routinely incorporate blogs into
their web sites; some solicit advice and recommendations for stories and
programs from audiences. Alternative media might also come to depend
on commercial interests for economic and organizational survival. Some
citizen journalism projects fail for want of long-term commitment or for
a lack of capital and have developed hybrid models for organizing their
reporting. OhmyNews sustains itself through commercial advertising
and has established a hierarchy in which professional journalists report
hard news and citizen journalists report on their immediate communi-
ties, with the professional staff retaining overall control (Kim and Ham-
ilton 2006). In this case, limiting citizen journalists to what they do best is
one way to address doubts about their subjectivity, bias and expertise.
Conclusion
We have seen how alternative media have been characterized by their
potential for participation. Rather than media production being the
province of elite, centralized organizations and institutions, alternative
journalism offers the potential for individuals and groups to create their
own media “from the periphery.” Studies such as those by Downing et
al. and Rodríguez show how radical and citizens’ media may be used to
develop identity and solidarity within social movements and local com-
munities. To think about alternative journalism in this way is to consider
it as far more than a mere cultural aberration or marginal practice. At
a theoretical level, such thinking encourages critiques of media produc-
tion in general, challenging what Nick Couldry (2002, n.p.) has termed
“the myth of the mediated center.”
At an epistemological level, to consider the practices of alterna-
tive media producers as alternative journalism is to critique the ethics,
norms and routines of professionalized journalism. Alternative journal-
ism will tend, through its very practices, to examine notions of truth, real-
ity, objectivity, expertise, authority and credibility. Hamilton argues for
a “‘multidimensional’ [view that] is meant to emphasize . . . a conception
of media participation as varied, hybrid and, in many cases, not identifi-
able at all from within an evaluative framework that allows only produc-
44
ers and consumers” (Hamilton 2003, 297). We need to consider alterna-

tive journalism practices as socially and culturally situated work, as well
as processes of political empowerment. These practices might be drawn
from mainstream practices, from history and from ideology; they might
also challenge those practices or effect new forms of communication.
The field theory of Bourdieu offers a sophisticated and nuanced meth-
odology for exploring alternative journalism in relation to professional-
ized ideologies and practices, as well as to the activism that is so often its
wellspring.
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48
SOCIAL MOVEMENT MEDIA AND
DEMOCRACY: ACHIEVEMENTS
AND ISSUES
JOHN D. H. DOWNING
Introduction: Some Definitions

Let me begin by making some comments to help define “democracy” and
“social movement media.”1 Democracy is a word with multiple senses.
Tragically, it has recently been dragged through the mud by a U.S. Ad-
ministration and corporate class who have claimed democracy as their
#1 global export, especially to Iraq. They continue to do so, despite hav-
ing generated a civil war that permits them to maintain their military
presence in the region for the foreseeable future, because, they now
claim, it would be irresponsible to leave while civil war is raging, and
also unfair to the U.S. troops who have died there in the Administration’s
noble cause.
Since I come from the United States, I feel obliged to insist up front that
whatever democracy means, in my view it is not THAT. It is not export-
able, it is not a uniquely American product, and indeed the American
version, where such a relatively small proportion of the public votes and
where the two major parties stand for office, not principle, is as flawed
as any.
My vote is for what Benjamin Barber some twenty years ago (Barber
1984) called “strong democracy,” as opposed to the notion of “the strong
[authoritarian] state,” the state that luminaries such as J. Edgar Hoover
and Dick Cheney, Franjo Tuđman and Slobodan Milošević, would like to
dance in. Formal democratic procedures only go part way to enabling a
strong democracy, a democracy responsive to, embedded in the general
public. I am not discounting the importance of democratic procedures,
despite the fact they will always be flawed in one way or another. Gov-
ernance must proceed by some agreed rules. But the widespread decay
of traditional political parties and the decline of labor unions in many
countries, points us ever more in the direction of social movements as
1
Elements of this chapter are also to be found in Downing (2007).
49
agents of constructive change, as expressions of democracy in action, a

democracy that is not just a slogan.
We live, of course, in the real world, a deeply flawed one. There is noth-
ing magical about social movements, nothing even automatically pro-
gressive. Nazism began as a social movement. The reactionary version
of Islam espoused by the Iranian regime since 1979 began as a social
movement. In some parts of the USA at present, there are movements to
deny undocumented workers any rights, not just state laws. Nonetheless,
the global social justice movements, the environmentalist movements,
the feminist movements, the labor movements, the movements for civil
rights and for human rights, from Burma to Bolivia and from Iran to Is-
rael, constitute—whether they are weak or strong—the nearest to a demo-
cratic global force that currently exists. Yes, there are divisions within
and between them, not to mention disorganization and debacles. This is
Earth, not Mercury. But if the hunt is on for actually existing democracy,
as opposed to its calcified official versions, I know of nowhere else to
look other than social movements.
Naturally, there are groups and individuals within traditional political
parties, labor unions, local and national government, international bod-
ies, and still other organizational formats, who are movement-oriented
and can play helpful, even crucial roles. I am not arguing a Manichean/
White Hats-Black Hats position. But the independent energy and initia-
tive of progressive social movements is the nub of the matter (as it is also
with reactionary social movements).
Social movements themselves, I recognize, are a hugely complicated
phenomenon, and there is now a vast research literature concerning
them, but one with which I cannot engage in the space of this chapter.2
Social movement media I can define much more briefly, in line with my
existing work (Downing 2001): I have an expansive definition, which cov-
ers the simplest or at least cheapest techniques, such as graffiti, dance,
political jokes, street theatre and popular song, all the way through to
technologically complex formats such as video and the Internet. In oth-
er words, I have no patience with the limitations conventionally placed
upon the term “media” to denote merely broadcasting, print and cinema,
or with the artificial division between arts and media.3
2
Some reflections on these topics are to be found in Downing (2005, 2008).
3
Since 2000 the research literature on social movement media has grown rapidly. As
well as the sources cited below, see, for example, Gumucio Dagron (2001), Granjon
(2001), Atton (2001, 2005), Meikle (2002), Couldry and Curran (2003), Opel and Pompper
(2003), Geerts, van Oeyen, and Villamayor (2004), Vitelli and Rodríguez Esperón (2004),
50
J O H N D . H . D OW N I N G : S O C I A L M OV E M E N T M E D I A AND DEMOCRACY ...
Some Current Approaches to Social Movement

Media and Democracy: a Critique
I wish to pass now to a critique of some prominent writers on these mat-

ters. They are Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, and Geert Lovink. I will
focus on the most recent book by Hardt and Negri, Multitude: War and
Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004),4 and on various essays by Lovink
(2002) in which he deploys the term “tactical media.” I have selected them
precisely because they have recently become somewhat iconic among
democracy and global justice movement activists, but I shall argue that
their analyses largely offer an unproductive dead end to the search for
global social justice and democracy.
In their Preface to Multitude, Hardt and Negri repeatedly emphasize
the centrality of the communication process. They write of “new circuits
of cooperation and collaboration that stretch across nations and conti-
nents and allow an unlimited number of encounters . . . [permitting us
to] discover the commonality that enables us to communicate and act to-
gether . . . an open and expansive network in which all differences can be
expressed freely and equally . . . so that we can work and live in common”
(Hardt and Negri 2004, xiii–xiv). A little further on they write that “the
challenge posed by the concept of multitude is for a social multiplicity to
manage to communicate and act in common while remaining internally
different” (Hardt and Negri 2004, xiv).
On the next page they argue as follows: (1) “Our communication, col-
laboration, and cooperation are not only based on the common, but they
in turn produce the common in an expanding spiral relationship” (Hardt
and Negri 2004, xv); and (2) “The multitude, in contrast to the bourgeoisie
and all other exclusive, limited class formations, is capable of forming
society autonomously; this, we will see, is central to its democratic pos-
sibilities” (Hardt and Negri 2004, xvii–xviii).
What does all this mean? Now granted, they present their book as a
work of philosophy (Hardt and Negri 2004, xvi), so detailed analysis of
strategies and tactics is not its purpose. Nonetheless, if philosophy is to
achieve its proper goal, then a term such as “communication” should not
be something they allow to float freely in the breeze without exploration
or definition.
O’Connor (2004), van de Donk et al. (2004), De Jong, Shaw, and Stammers (2005) and
Rennie (2006).
4
For a critique of their book Empire, see Downing (2004).
51
However, this is precisely what they do. Media are referenced for a
couple of pages (Hardt and Negri 2004, 286–287), but solely in relation
to mainstream media coverage of the Seattle confrontations of late 1999
and of subsequent challenges to capitalist globalization summits.
More generally, “communication” and what they term “the common”
are jointly referenced just a handful of times. On page 204 they assert
. . . singularity rights . . . are produced by the common, in social communication, and

in turn they produce the common. . . . The common . . . is based on the communica-
tion among singularities and emerges through the collaborative social processes of
production. (Their emphasis.)
On pages 213–214, they assert that
Extensively, the common is mobilized in communication from one local struggle to

another . . . the geographical expansion of movements takes the form of an interna-
tional cycle of struggles in which revolts spread from one local context to another
like a contagious disease through the communication of common practices and
desires. . . . In each of these . . . the common that is mobilized extensively and com-
municates across the globe is not only the commonly recognized enemy—such as
slavery, industrial capital, or colonial regimes—but also common methods of combat,
common ways of living, and common desires for a better world. (Their emphasis.)
And finally on pages 349–350 they argue that
Production based on cooperation and communication makes perfectly clear

how . . . communication cannot take place without a common basis, and the result
of communication is a new common expression. The production of the multitude
launches the common in an expanding, virtuous spiral.
This is, frankly, a 21st century rendition of Marx’s distinction, when

writing of French farmers 150 years ago in his 18th Brumaire, between
eine Klasse in sich (a class in itself), and eine Klasse für sich (a class for
itself). Furthermore, Hardt and Negri are as opaque as Marx himself in
analyzing the actual processes of the transformation of collective con-
sciousness beyond the inexorable force of economic process. They argue
that the “multitude” is not the proletariat, but the resonance between
Marx’s formulation and theirs is overwhelming. Moreover, their mode of
“doing philosophy” in these quotations is somewhere between rhetorical
and tautological: communication and the common are locked together
in a mystical parthenogenesis that would leave even the Virgin Mary
stunned and speechless.
52
One final index of their terminal vagueness on this crucial issue that
demands comment is their failure to register the significance of the
planet’s multiple languages in the global communication process they
claim to be underway. “Communication” for them appears to be a magi-
cal emergent process. The ever-increasing research literature on social
movement media of all kinds is simply not referenced. And their blithe
unconcern with language in the communication process is splendidly
illustrated by their claim (Hardt and Negri 2004, 83) that “Reliable infor-
mation about the Intifada is scarce,” upon which they cite two English-
language sources. Because they, and I, do not read Arabic, Hebrew, and
quite possibly Turkish or Farsi, does not automatically mean that reliable
information is scarce! The language issue is critical.
I have spent time on this critique precisely because their books Empire
and Multitude have been massively translated and in some global social
justice circles have achieved an almost sacral status. Yet there is a deaf-
ening silence at the heart of their argument which risks robbing social
movements of what they most need, namely very careful reflection on all
forms of media communication, movement and mainstream, by skating
at warp speed right past them.
Geert Lovink’s An insider’s guide to tactical media (Lovink 2002,
254–274) at first sight looks as though it might be one way of writing the
chapter I have argued is conspicuously missing from Hardt and Negri’s
Multitude. Lovink, by contrast, is buried in communication practice and
analysis, though mostly in the forms of net activism. His work is also fre-
quently referenced among media and net activists, though perhaps not
quite so much as Hardt and Negri.
How does he define “tactical media”? He writes that the
notion of tactical media is inclusive. It is a delicate coalition, a living experiment, not

a recipe . . . a deliberately slippery term, a tool for creating “temporary consensus
zones” based on unexpected alliances . . . hackers, artists, critics, journalists and
activists. . . . Tactical media retain mobility and velocity (Lovink 2002, 268, 271).
What circulates are models and rumors, arguments and experiences of how to organize
cultural and political activities, get projects financed, infrastructure up and running and
create informal networks of trust which makes living in Babylon bearable (Lovink 2002,
254).
Lovink writes in a very motile, breathless style, which makes summa-

rization of his argument quite difficult. Overall, however, his essay is a
pitch for getting away from reliance on what he terms a mainstream me-
53
dia model and also away from the “counter-information” media model
popular in social movements of the 1970s and 1980s. He argues that we
need to leave behind the empty certainties of the Soviet era, to “break out
from the sub-cultural ghetto,” and to reclaim “imagination and fantasy”
(Lovink 2002, 254, 264, 271). Rather than stable forms of organization or
any form of doctrinal purity, both of which he regards as being globally
in crisis, he envisages a constantly shifting set of networked media activi-
ties, characterized by
playful negativism, a nihilism on the run, never self-satisfied . . . an ever-changing strat-

egy game of building infrastructures and then leaving them when the time has come to
leave the self-built castles and move onwards (Lovink 2002, 259–260).
If I had to characterize Lovink’s essay, it would be to say that he al-

ternates unpredictably—and unprofitably—between being grounded and
living in a rhetorical miasma. For example, when grounded he acknowl-
edges the importance of the specific situation of the city of Amsterdam
in forming his experience (Lovink 2002, 256), with its “local TV, pirate
radios, digital cities and fortresses for new and old media.” In an adjoin-
ing essay on the Adilkno media project, he describes the city as “this
self-willed free state, international home and operations base of hippies,
queers, the unemployed, arts and tourists . . . [with] no noteworthy indus-
try . . . home to neither the government nor the national media . . . [and
with] enough space to experiment without anyone breathing down one’s
neck” (Lovink 2002, 276). He plainly acknowledges therefore the extent
to which his proposals for alternative media activism are significantly
based on one particular location, an important caution which should
rein in his generalizations. His categorization (Lovink 2002, 266–267) of
net activism into internal networking, external networking, and inter-
ventions based upon Internet activity, is also perfectly sober.
When ungrounded, however, there is little or no holding him, as the
quotations above indicate. One final one may serve to clinch my point:
“With history in overdrive, narratives can be picked up from every street
corner. Postmodernity is no longer a strategy or style, it is the natural
condition of today’s network society” (Lovink 2002, 259).
So where should we look for Insight?

In the final part of this chapter, I shall comment briefly on a number of
issues that face us as we seek to understand our options for developing
strong media as integral to strong democracies—and please note that I
54
say “democracies” in the plural! In order, the issues are as follows: (a) the
relation between movements to reform mainstream media, and social
movement media; (b) the relation between information and imagination;
(c) the relation between Internet and cell phone mobilization tactics, and
social movement media; (d) the centrality of popularizing science and
technology; and (e) the issue of scale.
MEDIA REFORM AND MOVEMENT MEDIA
This is the self-assigned title of a growing body of domestic activism whose

purpose is to check, and if possible reverse, a number of accelerating
trends in media industry practice and government policy. There are simi-
lar movements in evidence in other nations, including Taiwan, Thailand
and the Philippines. Often included among leading campaigners are sea-
soned professional journalists who have been gravely alienated over their
careers by the restrictions and distortions imposed by media owners.
The first national Media Reform conference in the USA was held at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 2004, and attracted one thousand
eight hundred people. The second, in St. Louis, Missouri, in May 2005 at-
tracted over two thousand. The third took place in Memphis, Tennessee,
in mid-January 2007, and drew over three thousand.5
The strength of this movement was established in part by the 2003
“Prometheus” Ruling of the 3rd Circuit Federal Appeals Court in Phila-
delphia.6 Founded in 1998, the Prometheus Radio Project is a small low
power FM radio activist organization in the city, dedicated to making me-
dia communication affordable and accessible to communities—and con-
sequently highly suspicious of the trend toward the concentration of me-
dia ownership. When in 2003 the Federal Communications Commission
announced yet another relaxation in controls over concentrated media
ownership, the Project, supported by the Media Access Project (another
nonprofit), appealed the FCC decision. It should be noted that two out of
the five Commissioners were also entirely opposed, and worked closely
with grassroots groups, including the Free Press group, in order to ven-
tilate the issues around the USA. A great deal of energy was expended
on the Internet in publicizing and lobbying against these changes. A
number of members of Congress also began to take up the issue.
5
For more information on these conferences, see <www.freepress.net/conference>.
6
<http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/staymotion/033388p.pdf#search=%22prometheus%20dec
ision%22>.
55
The court found against the FCC majority, at least on certain grounds.
How the case would eventually be settled was unclear, as the FCC majority
was trying hard to get the decision reviewed by the Washington DC Ap-
peals Court, which it anticipated would be favorable to its position. None-
theless, this was the first time that media reform issues had stirred public
interest to anything like this extent, and this court victory was undoubt-
edly a great encouragement to media reform activists in the short term.
As well as media ownership concentration issues, the Media Reform
movement engages with many other contemporary topics, from Net-
work Neutrality issues regarding the next phase of development of the
Internet, to copyright and intellectual property issues, to surveillance
and privacy issues. Detailed histories are no doubt already in the proc-
ess of being written, such is its degree of visibility, and certainly public
relations releases from all sides have constituted quite a snowstorm. It
has taken nearly twenty years from the first communication industry de-
regulation decisions by the Reagan Administration FCC for this ground-
swell to emerge, but as of the time of writing, there is considerable ener-
gy, and cross-generational energy at that, visible in this movement. It is a
critical moment, given the variety of interests anxious to re-legislate the
monumental 1996 Telecommunications Act, which means that new legis-
lation in this area is likely to be a constant scene of activity. It is crucial
for much of the rest of the world too, given the entirely disproportionate
weight that the U.S. corporate class wields in the global communication
policy arena.
The relation between this type of movement and social movement me-
dia is sometimes pointlessly dismissive on both sides. For some main-
stream media reformers, social movement media only divert energies
away from where the action really is; and social movement media activ-
ists can easily be found who simply reverse that optic.
In response, I would urge two considerations. Firstly, the media scene is
practically nowhere so bright and encouraging, whether in mainstream
or alternative media, that we can afford to dismiss any attempts on any
level to improve it. Both kinds of pressure and activism are valid and valu-
able, and jointly serve to stimulate a more insistent and media-savvy pub-
lic. The media literacy movement, especially strong in Germany, but also
in some other nations, is a further important push in that direction.
Secondly, though, it is important to recall that there are standard dan-
gers for both camps. Mainstream media reformers always risk putting so
much energy into saving or extending existing public service sector me-
dia that they lose sight of their steady deterioration into timidity and com-
56
mercialism (especially visible in the cases of PBS in the USA and of the
BBC). Social movement media activism, by contrast, always risks becom-
ing satisfied with a copacetic ghetto, and precisely because it typically
relies on volunteer energy, of excluding large bodies of citizens who have
little spare time on their hands—especially not for endless meetings.
The four remaining topics can be rapidly dealt with.
INFORMATION AND IMAGINATION
Much of the energy in all the wings of these movements, media literacy
included, often arises from activists’ frustration with mainstream news
services, with the poverty of journalism as practiced. Unfortunately this
often leads to a “counter-information” philosophy among social move-
ment media, where the solution to political impasse is defined as simply
getting the “right” information out in response to mainstream media de-
ceptions and failings. While there is value and even necessity in this kind
of media activism, it not only suffers from being overly reactive, taking
its priorities from the agents of disinformation, but it presumes that eve-
ryone is a “news-junkie,” only waiting for the truth in order to explode
into political activism. Not only is this a fantasy, but it veers towards ex-
cluding the imaginative and emotive dimensions of culture, rendering us
as reasoning machines rather than as reasoning-and-feeling-and imag-
ining-humans.
MOBILIZATION, INTERNET AND MOVEMENT MEDIA
There has been considerable commentary over the past three to four
years, beginning to some degree with Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs
(2002), and continuing through to Yochai Benkler’s recent The Wealth of
Networks (2006), on the mobilizing potential of Internet communication
options. Move-On’s successes in mobilization against the war in Iraq late
in 2002, and before that the meteoric ascendancy of Democratic Party
U.S. presidential candidate Howard Dean in 2004, were only some of the
indices that seemed to some to suggest we were in a radically new era.
My suggestion is that this is only partly so, and that those two cases,
and others, probably indicate the problem of what I might term, riffing
off Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardiner character in the film Being There
(dir. Hal Ashby, 1979), shallow roots and easy gardening. That is to say,
both those campaigns had astonishingly quick results but also astonish-
ingly temporary ones. It is all too easy to sign an Internet petition. No
57
reason for not doing so, but to continue wearing my Farmer Downing
hat, a sudden spurt of mushrooms likely will not survive the midday sun.
The steady operations of social movement media and of face-to-face ex-
change have in no way been rendered vapid by the listserv or the cell
phone “swarm” or 35 million—or 60 million—bloggers.
POPULARIZING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
From pharmaceuticals to fertilizers, from pesticides to petroleum, and

from genetic engineering to ubiquitous computing, the public’s need for
digestible, reliable explanation and advice on technology dilemmas and
issues has never been greater. This is a whole dimension of the failure
of most mainstream media—in the anglophone world The Economist and
The Christian Science Monitor are exceptions—as well as movement me-
dia. Some environmentalist movement media are also exceptions, but
the centrality of these matters to our basic ability to evaluate masses
of public policies is beyond dispute. Yet we are mostly left intellectually
disenfranchised—and once more, imaginative methods of conveying the
subject-matter are urgently required.
SCALE AND TIME-FRAME
So, lastly, to scale and time-frame. One of the enduring shibboleths re-
garding social movement media is that they are irrelevant because so
often ephemeral and small of circulation. This is a clumsy conceptual
error, presuming that the only modes in which media play a social role
are to be found where there are huge media like TimeWarner or Disney.
To take the most obvious counter-example, social movement media are
usually critical to the focus of the movement in question. Their audience/
readership is not composed of couch-potatoes, but of energized activists,
a radically different social formation.
Conclusion
In riposte to this, I would then direct attention to Clemencia Rodríguez’

splendid book Fissures in the Mediascape (2001), where among her case-
studies is one of a group of women in a poor neighborhood in Bogotá.
They developed a local video project, and in the process developed a
greatly expanded alertness to their own capabilities, in Amartya Sen’s
58
sense of that word (Sen 1999). They gained a sense of self-worth and self-
confidence through finding out that they could successfully use the tech-
nology of video, that their accent and dialect “worked” even though it
was not “pure” Castilian Spanish, and that their lives and experiences
were validated by being recorded and then screened for the neighbor-
hood. They never wished to broadcast to all of Bogotá, let alone the whole
of Colombia. Their goal was local and entirely valid in those terms. Fur-
thermore, a number of them became community activists in part due to
this experience of self-empowerment.
In other words, judging social movement media achievements solely by
measuring their small audiences or their ephemeral lives, is akin to judg-
ing nanotechnologies by their size and finding them to be failures. The
research question is wrongly framed. The issues of scale and time-frame
are often vital to organizing sensible research into social movement me-
dia. The local and small-scale and the fleeting do not equal the irrelevant.
Samizdat and magnitizdat media in former Soviet Russia, Ukraine, Po-
land, and elsewhere in the former Soviet zone, abolitionist and suffragist
media in the USA and elsewhere, are only some cases in point.
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60
NEW MEDIA, POLITICS
AND RESISTANCE
NATALIE FENTON
Introduction
In the field of media, communication and cultural studies, being opposi-
tional or active social agents has invariably come under the banner of
“resistance.” The active audience resists the hegemonic representation
in the text. Subcultures form acts of resistance displaying their profound
aversion to particular socio-political conditions in various ways. Journal-
ists resist owner and editorial preferences through the sharing of collec-
tive professional values. Alternative media resist the frames, codes and
practice of mainstream media through forms of organization, the means
of production and modes of distribution.1 We look for resistance in every
form of mediation and every act of consumption to satisfy ourselves that
we are not cultural dupes beholden to the edicts of the market and the
state. We rarely, however, extend the identification of resistance (which
is itself often contested) into the actual development and deliberation of
a new politics and the world of the political public sphere.2
There are instances, such as when a new technology enters the public
domain, where the possibility for harnessing it for progressive political
ends is claimed as the next site of hope. The Internet, as with many new
technologies before it, has been imbued with a sense of optimism that it
can somehow transcend the trends of market politics. This new media, it
is claimed, has re-invented transnational activism. The Internet with its
networked, additive, interactive and polycentric form can accommodate
radically different types of political praxis from different places at dif-
ferent times offering a new type of political engagement—a new medi-
1
This is a rough overview of a variety of work that is far more nuanced and sophisti-
cated than this summary implies. But the point remains the same—research that rec-
ognises resistance usually stops at the point of identification of the act of resistance by
an individual and falls short of a consideration of the potential for collective political
projects to emerge.
2
The political public sphere refers to the distinction made by Habermas (1989) between
the literary/cultural public sphere and the political public sphere—the public sphere of
the political realm.
61
ated politics of the 21st century. But is it any different from any other
forms of resistance or politically utopian sentiment identified previously
in other forms of “new” media?
If it is to be conceived of as any different, then we have to examine
it with different criteria than have often been used to think about re-
sistance in the field to date. In an attempt to re-position the concept of
resistance in media studies, this chapter attaches it firmly to a quest for
political mobilization. In other words, what happens to the act of resist-
ance? Does it remain a personal fantasy that allows us to imagine a bet-
ter world, but with no realistic prospects of ever achieving it? Does it
survive to become a daily necessity, making a life of oppression more
bearable (thereby inadvertently upholding the status quo)? Or does the
act of resistance translate into a political project with both a vision and
a means of material realization? For a viable political project to emerge
requires a collective social and political imaginary that can offer a vision
of a future worth aiming for. A reconsideration of mediated political mo-
bilization should take us beyond a focus on resistance to one of political
project(s).
This chapter considers ways in which new media may allow a re-imag-
ining of resistance so that a collective consciousness can be maintained
and developed in this complex, contradictory and confusing tangle of
mediation, politics, culture and community. In doing so I suggest that if,
as scholars, we wish to enhance our political traction, then the notion of
resistance in media and communication studies should be made to en-
gage with the struggle to change the very terms of the polity.
Popular Mobilization and the Internet

In the age of the Internet, as more and more New Social Movements
(NSMs) seek to organize and campaign online, the question arises as to
whether or not the Internet can bring about a new form of political ac-
tivism with consequences for the way we conceive of and carry out our
political citizenship. The Internet is now home to a multitude of groups
dedicated to objecting to and campaigning against particular issues and
politics. Public communications online are part of the process of real-
izing the public sphere—a space where democracy can be enacted—al-
lowing us to analyze how shared democratic values and identification
as democratic citizens are achieved and maintained; how political/civic
cultures are generated—essentially, to imagine how civil society can or-
ganize democratically for politically progressive ends (Habermas 1989).
62
NATALIE FENTON: NEW MEDIA, POLITICS AND RESISTANCE
The Internet has become home to mediated activity that seeks to raise
peoples’ awareness, give a voice to those who do not have one, offer so-
cial empowerment, allow disparate people and causes to organize them-
selves and form alliances, and ultimately be used as a tool for social
change.
The characteristics that have been claimed to mark out the Internet
as particularly suited to contemporary transnational political activism
can be expressed by the linked dual themes of multiplicity and polycen-
trality; interactivity and cross-border participation. These themes relate
directly to online protest and cut across and connect with the themes
of particularity and universality; commonality and difference—central
issues that frame prevailing dilemmas in building political mobilization
and establishing political projects.
MULTIPLICITY AND POLYCENTRALITY
Klein (2000) argues that the Internet facilitates international communica-

tion among non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and allows protest-
ers to respond on an international level to local events, while requiring
minimal resources and bureaucracy. This occurs through the sharing of
experience and tactics on a transnational basis to inform and increase
the capacity of local campaigns. According to Klein, the Internet is more
than an organizing tool. It is also an organizing model for a new form
of political protest that is international and decentralized, with diverse
interests but common targets.
Salter (2003) claims that the Internet is a novel technological asset for
democratic communications because of its decentred, textual communi-
cations system with content most often provided by users. On this basis,
it accords with the requisite features of new social movements that have
grown out of a decrease in Party allegiances and class alliances. NSMs
are more fluid and informal networks of action than the class and party
politics of old. They are based in but spread beyond localities; they are
usually non-hierarchical, with open protocols, open communication and
self generating identities. Such networks are often staunchly anti-bureau-
cratic and anti-centralist, suspicious of large organized, formal and in-
stitutional politics. NSMs share common characteristics with web based
communication—they lack membership forms, statutes and other formal
means of organizing; they may have phases of visibility and phases of
relative invisibility; NSMs may have significant overlaps with each other
and are liable to rapid change in form, approach and mission. Further-
63
more, the ability of new communication technologies to operate globally

and so respond to global economic agendas is key to their contemporary
capacity to mobilize against the vagaries of global capital.3
One much quoted example is the anti-globalization (also referred to
as the alter-globalization or global social justice) movement that gained
public recognition at what is now commonly referred to as “The Battle of
Seattle.” On 30 November 1999 an alliance of labor and environmental
activists congregated in Seattle in an attempt to make it impossible for
delegates to the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference to meet.
They were joined by consumer advocates, anti-capitalists and a variety of
other grassroots movements. Simultaneously, it is claimed, nearly 1,200
NGOs in 87 countries called for the wholesale reform of the WTO, many
staging their own protests in their own countries (The Guardian Online,
25 November 1999). Groups integrated the Internet into their strategies.
The International Civil Society website provided hourly updates about
the major demonstrations in Seattle to a network of almost 700 NGOs
in some 80 countries (Norris 2002). The demonstration was heralded as
a success for transnational Internet activism in terms of the reach and
scope of the mobilization, the obstruction to the WTO conference and
the networks for political activism that emerged as a result.
INTERACTIVITY AND PARTICIPATION
Facilitation of participation is a crucial factor in transnational Internet

activism. But the interactivity of the Internet can also impact upon the
social movement organizations through forging alliances and coalitions
across different movements, sharing best practice and most effective
campaign techniques that can change the way groups organize and op-
erate. Similarly, the protest activity and alliances of social movements
on the ground can affect the way in which the Internet is used and struc-
tured on the various and multiple websites. For example, the People’s Glo-
bal Action (PGA) organization, formed in 1998 by activists protesting in
Geneva against the second Ministerial Conference of the WTO, and to
celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the multilateral trade system (GATT
3
There is a need to differentiate between the “old” New Social Movements such as femi-
nist, peace and ecological movements from the more recent New Social Movements
epitomized in the global social justice movement. The former have been argued to be
characterized by identity politics rather than objective demands for reform, whereas
the latter are characterized by a multiplicity of identities and multiple objectives for
state and corporate change.
64
and WTO), is an attempt to create a worldwide alliance against neo-liber-

al globalization on an anti-capitalist platform. It is defined as “an instru-
ment for communication and coordination for all those fighting against
the destruction of humanity and the planet by capitalism, and for build-
ing alternatives.”4 So far, PGA’s major activity has been coordinating de-
centralized Global Action Days around the world to highlight the global
resistance of popular movements to capitalist globalization. The first Glo-
bal Action Days during the 2nd WTO ministerial conference in Geneva in
May 1998 involved tens of thousands in more than 60 demonstrations and
street parties on five continents. Subsequent Global Action Days have in-
cluded those against the G8 (18 June 1999), the 3rd WTO summit in Seat-
tle (30 November 1999), the World Bank meeting in Prague (26 September
2000) and the 4th WTO summit in Qatar (November 2001). PGA describes
itself as an instrument for co-ordination, not an organization.
The capability of the Internet to speed up and increase the circula-
tion of struggle, the raison d’être of PGA, has been argued as key to the
success of some campaigns such as the anti-globalization movement
(Cleaver 1999). This circulation benefits from the decentralization and
autonomy of individual groups/campaigns that are at once inclusive and
diverse but produce a high degree of identification among citizens of the
web. Another site, established in 1990 by various NGO and civil society
networks, The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), de-
scribes itself as “the first globally interconnected community of ICT us-
ers and service providers working for social and environmental justice”
(APC Website). They state:
The Association for Progressive Communications is a global network of non-govern-

mental organizations whose mission is to empower and support organizations, social
movements and individuals in and through the use of information and communication
technologies to build strategic communities and initiatives for the purpose of making
meaningful contributions to equitable human development, social justice, participatory
political processes and environmental sustainability.5
APC currently (October 2008) has 51 member networks serving more

than 50,000 activists, non-profit organizations, charities and NGOs in
over 133 countries, with a strong mix of Southern and Northern organi-
zations. These large, decentralized and often leaderless networks facili-
tated by new communication technologies operate a form of politics that
4
<http://www.agp.org> (March 2007).
5
<http://www.apc.org/english/about/index.shtml> (2005).
65
is based on the participation of all citizens rather than the hierarchi-

cal model of traditional politics (Fenton and Downey 2003). “Moreover,
the essence of politics is considered the elaboration of ‘demands and
responses’—constructing identities rather than ‘occupying power’” (della
Porta 2005, 201). The act of participation itself and engagement with a
particular issue is the political purpose rather than social reform or di-
rect policy impact. Participation can be both online and offline. But the
online participation is often about moving people to action offline. It is
about building relationships and forging community rather than simply
providing information (Diani 2001).
Participation in new social movements has also been linked to disen-
gagement with traditional party politics. In her interviews with and ques-
tionnaires to activists, della Porta (2005) discovers a correlation between
mistrust for parties and representative institutions, and very high trust
and participation in NSMs. The distinction between institutional politics
and social movements rests upon the former acting as bureaucracies
founded upon delegation of representation and the latter being founded
on participation and direct engagement. This encourages us to move
away from the notion of participative, deliberative democracy being re-
alizable only through the traditional political structures of the nation
state. If we think in terms of a decentred, polycentric democracy and re-
ject the modernist version of a political project with a single coherent aim
of social reform, then “a more fluid and negotiable order might emerge,
with plural authority structures along a number of different dimensions
rather than a single location for public authority and power” (Bohman
2004, 148) for governance. The Internet in Benkler’s (2006) analysis has
the potential to change the practice of democracy radically because of
its participatory and interactive attributes. It allows all citizens to alter
their relationship to the public sphere, to become creators and primary
subjects and to become engaged in social production. In this sense the
Internet is ascribed the powers of democratization.
Maximizing connectivity and interaction is the political act. Local or-
ganizations hitherto confined to localized action realize that similar
types of activity are taking place in locality after locality, and that by
their participation they can contribute to reshaping these global net-
works for communication into global zones for interactivity (Sassen
2004). As Melucci (1989, 173–174) reminds us, participation has a double
meaning—it means both taking part “to promote the interests and needs
of an actor as well as belonging to a system, identifying with the ‘general
interests’ of the community.”
66
The largely optimistic perspective presented above can, of course, be

contested. For Castells (1996), the globalization of the capitalist system
does not open up the possibility of a labor-led emancipatory project. In
his view, the network society results in labor becoming localized, disag-
gregated, and divided in its collective identity. Taking Castells’ position,
the fragmented nature of new media limits the capacity of new social
movements to create coherent strategies, owing to the increasing indi-
vidualization of labor. Problems of quantity and the chaos of informa-
tion challenge the way analysis and action are integrated into decision-
making processes as well as existing configurations of power and collec-
tive identity in social movement organizations. Non-hierarchical forms
of disorganization make decisions on the basis of collective consensus
harder to achieve the larger and more disparate the collective is.
Furthermore, the Internet may contribute just as much to the frag-
mentation of civil society, as to political mobilization and participation.
Habermas registers his ambivalence towards new information and com-
munication technologies as a potential source of participatory political
communication:
Whereas the growth of systems and networks multiplies possible contacts and
exchanges of information, it does not lead per se to the expansion of an intersubjective-
ly shared world and to the discursive interweaving of conceptions of relevance, themes,
and contradictions from which political public spheres arise. The consciousness of
planning, communicating and acting subjects seems to have simultaneously expanded
and fragmented. The publics produced by the Internet remain closed off from one
another like global villages. For the present it remains unclear whether an expanding
public consciousness, though centered in the lifeworld, nevertheless has the ability to
span systematically differentiated contexts, or whether the systemic processes, having
become independent, have long since severed their ties with all contexts produced by
political communication (Habermas 1998, 120–121).
Greater pluralism is regarded by Habermas as a risk for deliberative

democracy rather than its saviour. This concern is echoed by Sunstein,
who argues that the Internet has spawned large numbers of radical web-
sites and discussion groups, allowing the public to bypass more moder-
ate and balanced expressions of opinion in the mass media (which are
also, he argues, subject to fragmentation for essentially technological
reasons). Moreover, these sites tend to link only to sites that have similar
views (Sunstein 2001, 59). This is supported by other empirical work, such
as Hill and Hughes (1998). Sunstein argues that a consequence of this
is that we witness group polarization (2001, 65) that is likely to become
67
more extreme with time. Sunstein contends that two preconditions for a
well-functioning, deliberative democracy are threatened by the growth
of the Internet and the advent of multi-channel broadcasting. First, peo-
ple should be exposed to materials that they have not chosen in advance.
This results in a reconsideration of the issues and often recognition of
the partial validity of opposing points of view. Second, people should
have a range of common experiences, in order that they may come to
an understanding with respect to particular issues (Downey and Fenton
2003).
Although it may facilitate mobilization, the democratic potential of the
Internet is not dependent on its primary features of interactivity, multi-
plicity and polycentrality, which are often celebrated and heralded as
offering intrinsic democratic benefits. Democratic potential is realized
only through the agents who engage in reflexive and democratic activity.
It is an enabling device that is as susceptible to the structuring forces of
power as any other technology. “It is false to say that individuals possess
immediate control; they have control only through assenting to an asym-
metrical relationship to various agents who structure the choices in the
communicative environment of cyberspace” (Bohman 2004, 142). Atton
(2004, 24) notes,
[T]o consider the internet as an unproblematic force for social change is to ignore the
political and economic determinants that shape the technology; it is to pay little atten-
tion to how technological “advances” may be shaped or determined by particular social
and cultural elites (corporations, governments); and it is to ignore the obstacles to
empowerment that legislation, inequalities of access, limits on media literacy and the
real world situation of disempowerment necessarily place on groups and individuals.
Claims for the extension and re-invention of activism must be consid-

ered in the context of the material social and political world of inequal-
ity, injustice and corporate dominance. If it is true that a global civil so-
ciety is developing on the web, it is one that is segmented by interest
and structured by inequality. The preeminent uses of global communica-
tion networks remain the efforts of corporations and governments to
strengthen the dominant economic regime. Issues of cultural and eco-
nomic capital are ever prevalent. The ability to define and shape the
nature of any movement often falls to those with the necessary social
and educational resources. Many of the high profile protests take place
at distant locations—only those protestors with funds for travel can get
to them. And as these protests are often organized on the Internet, the
economic and cultural resources involved in the use of this technology
68
also exclude many potential participants, probably those suffering the

most impact from the very thing being protested against (Crossley 2002).
Nonetheless, impressive numbers of activists who use the Internet have
found creative ways to communicate their concerns and to contest the
power of corporations and transnational economic arrangements.
Constructing Global Solidarity

and Re-imagining Resistance
The problem, however we approach it, is how fragmented and multiple

oppositional groupings can function together for political ends. Can
loose, multi-issue networks progress from a resistance identity to a po-
litical project that is democratic, sustainable and likely to produce social
change? The danger in constructing global solidarity online, as Tarrow
(1998) points out, is that the speed at which social movement actors can
respond and the short term and rapidly shifting issues that are their
focus rather than fully fledged ideologies do not lend themselves to long
standing commitments or deeply held loyalties, but create a following
that is also fleeting and momentary. This sort of issue drift whereby indi-
viduals or groups can shift focus from one issue to another or one web-
site to another raises the question of whether global civil society has a
memory that can retain a collective political project. The ultimate prob-
lem that arises is how to ensure that non-hierarchical, open and par-
ticipatory movements are also effective in influencing public policies.
Habermas has argued that solidarity at this level cannot simply be based
on shared moral conceptions of human rights but only on a shared politi-
cal culture (Habermas 2001, 126); that political culture is constituted not
only of social agents who can enable the mediation of dialogue across
borders and publics but also institutions that can translate those claims
into reality.
As feminist theorists have noted (Fenton 2000; Spivak 1992; Braidotti
1991), for political efficacy there must be more than the apparent free-
dom that comes with embracing difference and diversity, more than just
an increase of instances of mediated protest or opposition. Even if we
accept the possibility for fragmented and multiple oppositional group-
ings that can create their own political interventions via the Internet,
we still have to broach the next stage: how will a politics of solidarity in
difference be realized? Social solidarity can be described as a moral-
ity of cooperation, the ability of individuals to identify with each other
in a spirit of mutuality and reciprocity without individual advantage or
69
compulsion, leading to a network of individuals or secondary institutions

that are bound to a political project involving the creation of social and
political bonds. There must be a commitment to the value of difference
that goes beyond simple respect and involves an inclusive politics of voice
and representation. It also requires a non-essentialist conceptualization
of the political subject as made up of manifold, fluid identities that mir-
ror the multiple differentiations of groups.
Such mediated solidarity is evident in the research of social movement
theorists. Tarrow and della Porta (2005, 237) refer to the interconnec-
tions between online and offline participation as “rooted cosmopolitans”
(people and groups rooted in specific national contexts but involved in
transnational networks of contacts and conflicts); “multiple belongings”
(activists with overlapping memberships linked to polycentric networks);
and “flexible identities” (characterized by inclusiveness and a positive
emphasis on diversity and cross-fertilization). Participants in these move-
ments are drawn together by common elements in their value systems
and political understandings, and hence by a shared belief in narratives
that problematize particular social phenomena (Keck and Sikkink 1998;
della Porta and Diani 1999).
If multiplicity and polycentrality, interactivity and participation are
the central organizing themes of new media, the central organizing
themes of discussions around new politics and resistance rest on the
twin axes of particularity and universality, commonality and difference.
Although these terms are often used interchangeably (particularity with
difference; universality with commonality) it is helpful analytically to
understand the distinction between them. Particularity and universal-
ity refer to the space and reach of new media and politics—whether an
oppositional politics can operate outside of a particular location, tran-
scend spatial (and often economic, social and political) boundaries and
be conceived of or perceived as universal. Commonality and difference
refer to political subjects—though we may each have different political
identities, can we have a politics in common?
PARTICULARITY AND UNIVERSALITY
To extend our understanding of new media, politics and resistance, we

need a critical appreciation of time and space. Time provides us with
historical context that helps us to trace the development of politics and
political identities and how they are contingent upon social and political
context. Space reminds us of concerns of geographical materialism and
70
brings to the fore issues of distance and proximity—the space between us

that establishes difference and generates particular and local political
concerns and the space that brings us together on common ground with
universal concerns.
Hardt and Negri (2000, 2004) deal with the dilemma between universal-
ity and particularism through the notions of the Multitude and “the com-
mon.” Calling on us to reclaim the concept of democracy in its radical,
utopian sense: the absolute democracy of “the rule of everyone by eve-
ryone” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 307) the Multitude, they argue, is the first
and only social subject capable of realizing such a project. They propose
a description of the Multitude as “an open network of singularities that
links together on the basis of the common they share and the common
they produce”—a union which does not in any way subordinate or erase
the radical differences among those singularities. Their work is felt to
valorize and provide the road map for the very activism this chapter
seeks to consider.
Brought together in multinodal forms of resistance, different groups
combine and recombine in fluid networks expressive of “life in common”
(Hardt and Negri 2004, 202)—they form a multitude. The Multitude is a
heterogeneous web of workers, migrants, social movements, and non-
governmental organizations—“potentially . . . all the diverse figures of
social production” (Hardt and Negri 2004, xv), “the living alternative that
grows within Empire” (Hardt and Negri 2004, xiii). The Multitude is not
the people per se, but rather many peoples acting in networked concert.
Because of both its plurality and the sharing of life in common control-
led by capital, it is claimed that the Multitude contains the composition
of true democracy. This is a network analysis well suited to the webbed
communication of the Internet.
Hardt and Negri argue that the shift from industrial to post-industrial
societies has been accompanied by a shift in the dominant form of labor,
from industrial labor to more “immaterial” forms of work—the produc-
tion of social relations, communication, affects, relationships and ideas.
It produces and touches on all aspects of social, economic, cultural and
political life and is profoundly reorganizing many aspects of our lives,
including the very ways we interact and organize ourselves. They pro-
pose that this labor increasingly produces “the common”—the basis upon
which any democratic project will be built. The Multitude’s ability to com-
municate, form alliances and forge solidarity—often through the very
capitalist networks that oppress it—allows it to produce a common body
71
of knowledge and ideas that can serve as a platform for democratic re-
sistance to Empire.
The shrinkage of the state through initiatives such as privatization,
marketization and deregulation means that decision making has flowed
away from public bodies and official government agencies that were di-
rectly accountable to elected representatives, devolving to a complex va-
riety of nonprofit and private agencies operating at local, national and
international levels. It is claimed that it has become more difficult for
citizens to use conventional state-oriented channels of participation, ex-
emplified by national elections, as a way of challenging those in power,
reinforcing the need for alternative avenues and targets of political ex-
pression and mobilization. Hardt and Negri point to anti-globalization
and anti-war protests as exercises in democracy motivated by people’s
desire to have a say in decisions that impact upon the world in which they
live—operating at a transnational level. However, their call for a “new sci-
ence of democracy” (2004, 348) is difficult to pin down. Exactly how the
multitude can stand up and be counted is never set out. This is utopia
without architecture and universality without meaning.
Much as in the debate on the radical political potential of the Internet,
this optimistic interpretation can be challenged. The economic, the politi-
cal and the cultural may feed off each other to the extent that they be-
come symbiotic relationships. These relationships may be interdepend-
ent, but they are not equally mutually beneficial. It can be argued that
markets and politics become intertwined so that what appears to be po-
litical may be no more than market-based activism. In other words, new
forms of social militancy are allowed to arise within capitalism, but with
no possibility of transcending it. Outward signs of protest can project an
illusion of civility and democratic practice that ultimately has a civiliz-
ing influence on market and state rather than creating a genuinely free
space where political agency might be articulated and lead to a political
project.
Taking this more critical view, Bauman (2003) argues that we are living
in a world dominated by fear: fear of collective disaster (bird flu, terror-
ism etc.) and fear of personal disaster—the humiliating fear of falling
among the worst off or otherwise ostracized, that creates alienation and
individualization. As liquid moderns (Bauman 2003), we have lost faith in
the future, cannot commit to relationships and have few kinship ties. We
incessantly have to use our skills, wits and dedication to create provision-
al bonds that are loose enough to stop suffocation, but tight enough to
72
give a needed sense of security now that the traditional sources of solace
(family, career, loving relationships) are less reliable than ever.
Bauman has consistently highlighted the decline of traditional political
institutions and class politics, the rise of neo-liberalism and identity poli-
tics, and the fluid and fragmentary nature of social bonds and individual
identity. These pressures contribute to “individualization” and narrow
communitarianism, which Bauman perceives as eroding our capacity to
think in terms of common interests and fates.
Central to Bauman’s analysis is the notion that today’s societies are
integrated around consumption rather than production. Freedom is
modeled on freedom to choose how one satisfies individual desires
and constructs one’s identity via the medium of the consumer mar-
ket. As a consequence, freedom and individual fate have increasingly
become “privatized.” Yet an “increasingly privatized life feeds disin-
terest in politics,” whether one can afford to partake of consumer
freedom or not. Moreover, politics freed from constraints deepens the
extent of privatization, thus breeding “moral indifference” (Bauman
1994, 27).
At the same time, we live increasingly under conditions of globally
and systemically engendered insecurity and uncertainty, which belie
the promise of assertive individuality not only for the “excluded” but for
many of the “included.” Even where politicians speak the progressive
language of community and social regeneration, the ideal end point is
modeled on consumer freedom and “individual empowerment,” which
may in fact perpetuate insecurity and uncertainty rather than address-
ing its root causes.
In promoting and idealizing the model of consumer freedom and indi-
vidual responsibility, the Government replicates the logic of consumer-
ism, which promotes “biographical solutions to socially produced afflic-
tions.” Hence, for Bauman, the “main obstacles that urgently need to be
examined relate to the rising difficulties in translating private problems
into public issues . . . in re-collectivizing the privatized utopias of ‘life poli-
tics’ so that that they can acquire once more the shape of the visions of
the ‘good society’ and ‘just society’” (Bauman 2000, 51).
In this argument, universality becomes based on consumption alone
and particularity reduced to individualism. But this need not deny that
politics can be (or become) a vehicle for the translation of private trou-
bles into public concerns and the democratically generated search for
collective solutions. The challenge now is to bring “politics” and “power”
back together again (Bauman 1999, 2002). This is something the anti-glo-
73
balization movement has sought to tackle, but it has done so through a

politics of protest often bereft of a political program.
The growing “civic disengagement” from state politics—the kind of poli-
tics that has been developed through modern history to fit and serve
political integration into “nation-states”—has shifted political interests
and oppositional politics to new terrains that are borderless and global.
They are also sorely under-regulated and ethically and politically uncon-
trolled. The problem then becomes—can ethically under-regulated and
politically uncontrolled global counter-politics produce a universal eth-
ics with particular relevance and material realization within and across
borders?
Commonality and Difference

For Bauman, political renewal would be forged through a shared life
of continuous and multi-faceted relationships that would reinvigorate
moral responsibilities and awaken the urge to shoulder the task of man-
aging common affairs. In this approach, caring for the preservation of
diversity is the very purpose of shared politics. If separate identities
refuse exclusivity, they abandon the tendency to suppress other identi-
ties in the name of the self-assertion of their own, while accepting that it
is precisely the guarding of other identities that maintains the diversity
in which their own uniqueness can thrive. Universality always exists in
relation to particularity; commonality always exists in relation to differ-
ence. For example, the notion of justice gains universality in abstraction
from particular circumstances but becomes particular again as soon
as it is realized in social practice. This is a constant tension in politics.
Learning to deal with spatial difference (in a cultural geographic sense)
and co-ordinate contradictory politics (at the local and national, national
and cross-border, national and global levels) is crucial to the articulation
of socialist politics.
But how do we move from micro-politics to macro-politics? As noted
above, NSMs have been criticized for being too narrow and fragmen-
tary in their practice and in their purpose, for dealing with short term
issues with short term fixes and for not being agencies of long-term, fun-
damental transformation. Because of their insistence on particularity
and a politics of localism that is often exclusionary and sometimes popu-
list-nationalist, they are easy to deride and ignore (Harvey 2000). They
are seen as non-cumulative and non-integrative and based on individual
suffering and grievance:
74
. . . it is fleeting, one-off, thin, single issue sentiments of justice, not full-blooded, com-
prehensive, solid models of justice. They exacerbate the fragmentation of the political
scene. But they are the last soldiers on the battlefield (Bauman cited in Smith 1999,
196).
The exacerbation referred to above can be argued to increase with

reliance on the Internet. As noted earlier, the Internet can be viewed as
encouraging loose bonds and fleeting connections. In this view, the sheer
mass of information and counter-politics online threatens to drown the
causes they stand for—quantity outstrips quality at every successive click.
This is in sharp contrast to the position of Hardt and Negri, who see net-
works of commonality round every corner and attribute to their distinc-
tive nature a particular power: the dynamism of networked pluralism.
But I have also argued that relying on networks to coalesce spontane-
ously into political projects is implausible, since it denies organization
and structure. Unger notes how
. . . faith in the spontaneous creative powers of revolutionary action have disarmed the
constructive political imagination of the left . . . the few who try to work out alternatives
more considered than those found in the party platforms of the mainstream of leftist
literature are quickly dismissed as utopian dreamers or reformist tinkerers . . . nothing
worth fighting for seems practicable, and the changes that can be readily imagined
often hardly seem to deserve the sacrifice of programmatic campaigns . . . the would-
be program-writer . . . will be accused . . . of dogmatically anticipating the future and
trying to steal a march on unpredictable circumstance, as if there were no force to
Montaigne’s warning that “no wind helps him who does not know to what port he sails”
(Unger 1987, 443).
However, despite this negative assessment, there is at least the poten-

tial for multiplicity to be interpreted as diversity and translated into po-
litical inclusiveness. NSMs, with the help of the Internet, are attempting
to build a new moral fabric that seeks to break free from the shackles of
privatization. But for this to happen, and for a new politics that goes be-
yond resistance to emerge, requires a coherent expression and organi-
zation that will involve a degree of universality and the generation of a
common vision. The anti-authoritarianism of liberatory political thought
is endlessly limiting and fails to recognize that the materialization of an-
ything requires closure around a particular set of institutional arrange-
ments and a particular spatial form. This has left the concept of political
hope as a pure signifier without any meaningful referent in the material
world. Without the hope that can be invested in a vision of utopia, there
75
is no way to define the port to which we might want to sail. The utopian
vision of Hardt and Negri rarely identifies agencies and processes of
change. While they may be thought-provoking, they do no more than
move hope for a better world further into the realms of fantasy. This may
have the advantage of liberating the imagination from the constraint of
what it is possible to imagine and encouraging a politics of opposition in
demanding the supposedly impossible, but it also severs politics from the
practical means of social change (Levitas 1993).
Conclusion
New social movements do offer a form of politics and resistance that
is unprecedented and facilitated by new media. However, a politics that
is predicated purely on the ability to resist or possibility of resistance
is short-lived. Online activism runs the risk of raising our levels of re-
sistance without the likelihood of political deliverance. We need to en-
courage the flicker of hope raised by multiple acts of resistance into the
flame of a political program. To do so requires letting go of particular-
ism. Realizing political vision—translating resistance into practical politi-
cal realities—inevitably results in something or someone being excluded.
To “materialize a space is to engage with closure (however temporary)
which is an authoritarian act” (Harvey 2000, 183). We have to find ways
of living with this as a political act. This is inevitable even if it brings with
it disillusionment. Political protest and political progress on a local scale
are crucial. Small projects that relate to a particular situation and cir-
cumstance are necessary for localized progress. Small steps are critical
to social progress. Renouncing particularism does not mean either giv-
ing up on the local or consigning oppositional politics to the ephemeral-
ity of placelessness. Nevertheless, a politics that insists on particularism
will not create commonality or solidarity on the global scale required
to contest the social and economic forces of global capitalism. If power
is now played out in under-institutionalized global space but politics re-
mains local, the prospects for contesting that power will remain weak.
The new politics of resistance presumes that power/knowledge can be
dispersed and fragmented into spaces of difference. Multiple and differ-
ent sites of resistance can exist simultaneously, yet we still have no idea
what this heterogenous utopia might look like or be described as other
than a morass of discrete, particular struggles. Without a common soli-
darity and a sustaining political program, multiplicity may result in no
more than fragmentation and dispersal.
76
While we are busy relinquishing particularism and foregoing multi-

plicity, we must also be able to embrace and account for difference. As
Brown (1995) and Riley (2000) suggest, the imagined communities of po-
litical speech are frequently deeply problematic. A progressive opposi-
tional politics that ignores difference is impossible to uphold and is more
likely to implode and fragment still further. The aspiration for these
oppositional networks that communicate their struggle on the Internet
must be to develop common values, understandings, organizational and
solidaristic bonds. The difficulty of this process cannot be over-estimat-
ed, but as Wainwright suggests,
. . . at least amongst those able to communicate online and occasionally to travel, there
are in principle new possibilities of forms of co-ordination that work without a central-
ized leadership and that involve consensus decision-making or processes of swarming
and convergence without a single plan. . . . It is movements and conflicts based in
such a sphere that potentially have the capacity from their autonomous base and with
their social and cultural rather than conventional institutional sources of power, to chal-
lenge the structures that constrain and limit even the most radical political representa-
tives (Wainwright 2007).
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79
NEW APPROACHES TO OUR MEDIA:
GENERAL CHALLENGES
AND THE KOREAN CASE
GABRIELE HADL AND JO DONGWON*
Introduction
Historically, socially engaged people have been the first to appropriate
media to make meaning. The British radical press predates the commer-
cial yellow press. Early radio makers challenged the US navy’s use of
airwaves (Kidd 1998, 68). Before OhmyNews, there were social movement
journalism sites like Jinbonet and Chamsaesang; before CNN i-report,
Indymedia. Our media, “media by for and of the people,” made princi-
pally for social benefit, are not the “third” media sector, but rather the
original forms of most media genres (Kidd 1998). Despite this, such me-
dia have not been studied in a consistent and timely way.
The oldest strands of media research (on “the press” and “mass me-
dia”) focus on the role of professional journalists, governments and cor-
porations. Latin American researchers in the 1970s and 80s considered
experiments in communiación alternativa as important contributions to
the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), but
eventually abandoned their research.1 Critical media studies criticized
the “consciousness industry,” but neither examined existing alternative
practices, nor considered such practices in developing new theories (Ro-
dríguez 2001). In the 1990s, a “cultural turn” in media studies promised
attention to people making meaning, but delivered research on creative
consumption (Huesca and Dervin 1994). Twentieth century corporate
and governmental media (“their media”) could rely on research to sup-
port them with analyses, discourses and theories. Telecommunication
and computer industries conducted research and development for mili-
tary uses and individualized (“my media”) applications. People making
our media were on their own.
*
Korean family names appear first, given names second. Korean words are rendered in
official Revised Romanization. Translations from Korean are by Jo Dongwon. “Korea”
refers to the Republic of Korea (South Korea).
1
Reasons included economic pressures in the region, the crisis of Marxism following the
collapse of the USSR, lack of funding and unsuitable analytical frameworks (Huesca
and Dervin 1994; Rodríguez 2001).
81
In the early 1990s, media activists and researchers saw the lack of “co-
herent alternatives” in thinking about media as a factor in the emer-
gence of the economic neoliberal/cultural neoconservative paradigm.
Such alternatives would require theorizing “a recognizable identity” (Ó
Siochrú 1999, 144) for the communication practices of socially engaged
people, minorities, communities and social movements. Yet the 1960s–90s
offered only a handful of relevant books, mostly case studies on commu-
nity radio in the UK (Lewis and Booth 1989), public access TV in the first
world (Berrigan 1977), popular communication in Nicaragua (Mattelart
1986), and the social movement media of the 1970s (Downing 1984). Scat-
tered articles also appeared, for example on US public access TV, the
South African anti-apartheid press (Tomaselli and Louw 1989), the media
of the European left (Mattelart and Piemme 1980), and community media
in Québec (Raboy 1992). There were also a few relevant translations, for
example of Martín-Barbero’s (1993), Freire’s (1970), Brecht’s ([1932] 1983)
and Enzensberger’s (1970) work. Theoretical approaches to our media,
however, were rare. Practitioners had to rely on their own ingenuity in
framing, reflecting, explaining and evaluating their experiences.
Those times seem behind us. Since the 1990s, the wave of social move-
ments against transnational neoliberalism has gone global, while tech-
nologies better suited to participatory communication have become
widespread. “Their media” have become increasingly centralized, ho-
mogenized and concentrated. Even the Internet, the supposed antidote
to media malaise, is going the way of print, radio and television—enclosed
by commercial, narrowly individualized “my media” and governmental
interests. These factors have created a groundswell of interest in our
media. New literature has increased dramatically, while conferences,
networks, mailing lists and publications have been booming. A field is
emerging as colorful and diverse as the practices it studies. Yet its ter-
minologies and general theories remain inchoate. How shall we char-
acterize the subjects of our research? “Alternative media,” “community
media,” “citizens’ media”? What kinds of practices are included? What
theories are available? Can we answer such questions only for specific
contexts, or can we build a more universal set of answers?
This chapter focuses on the last two questions. It traces the development
of theoretical approaches to our media, first in international English-lan-
guage literature, then in the specific national context of Korea. Major
approaches to the older terms “community media” and “alternative me-
dia” have been surveyed elsewhere (Hadl 2007; Rennie 2006; Huesca and
Dervin 1994), so this chapter focuses on emergent approaches of the last
82
GABRIELE HADL AND J O D O N GWO N : N E W A P P R OAC H E S TO OUR MEDIA ...
ten years: tactical, autonomous and civil society media. We then consider
how various English language discourses have affected the debate with-
in Korea. Korea has successful media movements and highly visible our
media practices, yet academia has hardly taken notice—a challenge to
the usual contention that theory is necessary to support practice. Close
inspection of the Korean case will reveal the successes and limitations of
a situation where media activists do their own theorizing.
Our method combines “theoretical meta-analysis” with institutional
and historical comparisons of strands of research (cf. Dervin and Hues-
ca 1997). We also distinguish orthographically between objects of study
(alternative media practices), umbrella terms for them (“alternative me-
dia”) and approaches (e.g. alternative media studies). This distinction,
though somewhat inorganic, is essential to piercing the fog built up by
recent research. Is our field formulating coherent alternatives? Is there,
or can there be, an overarching theory for our media?
Approaches in the English

Language Literature
OLDER APPROACHES USING “COMMUNITY MEDIA”

AND “ALTERNATIVE MEDIA”
There are many labels for our media practices. In recent research,
“community media” and “alternative media” have emerged as the most
popular. They are considered largely synonymous (and somewhat inter-
changeable with “grassroots media,” “citizens’ media,” “media activism”
and others). However, these two terms are used in different approaches
having little in common but an interest in non-mainstream media.2
Approaches Using “Community Media”
Case studies make up most of the research on “community media.” With-

in communication and media studies, only development communication3
and community communication4 have evolved full-fledged theoretical
2
This section is based on Hadl (2007).
3
Development communication has many variants and incarnations, including commu-
nication for development, participatory communication and communication for social
change. See Servaes and Malikhao (2005) for an overview, Huesca (2003) for a critical
perspective.
4
See Jankowski (2003) for an overview of community media theory.
83
traditions. These approaches and their sub-strands differ in ideologies,5

technologies,6 geography7 and definitions of community.8 They emerge
from radically different contexts, with distinct institutions, networks and
sources of funding. In Europe and North America, community commu-
nication emerged in the battle for access to the airwaves by non-state ac-
tors. It uses theories of public space, local democracy and speech rights,
and refers to national policy discourses. Development communication
focuses on third world contexts and addresses governmental or private
donor organizations. “Community media” projects within development
communication are usually initiated by governmental or donor organ-
izations, and are thus not considered our media. “Community media”
projects within community communication often include local commer-
cial and governmental practices. Some sub-strands are more directly
relevant: Community radio studies, a sub-strand of community commu-
nication, defines “community media” as non-commercial and non-gov-
ernmental (Lewis 2006; Girard 1992). Certain variants of development
communication focus on projects “appropriated by the community” (Gu-
mucio Dagron 2001, 7).
Approaches using “community media” do share some characteristics.
They question the relationship between media and identity formation
(individual and collective) and emphasize process over product (espe-
cially community participation in media organization and content pro-
duction). They also share criticism for focusing on disconnected local
practices, romanticizing “community,” overlooking intra-community so-
cial inequalities and accounting inadequately for relations between pub-
lic spheres (between different community’s spheres and between com-
munity and macro-spheres).
Approaches Using “Alternative Media”
Research around the term “alternative media” is also uneven, and not
necessarily focused on our media. In approaches from journalism, “alter-
native media” includes all media with a “different message” (cf. Couldry
2002); from cultural studies, all subcultural communication (cf. Atton 2004).
5
Developmentalism, feminism, left/right communitarianism, “public sphere” liberalism,
multi-culturalism, commercial/subcultural orientation.
6
Public access TV, folk media, community video, community radio, community press, or
online communities.
7
Urban, rural, first world or third world.
8
Communities of locality, ethnicity, culture, or common fate.
84
Scholars in John Downing’s radical alternative media tradition define it

as the media of social movements, as political, with alternative content,
organizational structures and social functions. Radical alternative me-
dia shares many features with the older Latin American communicatión
alternativa (cf. Huesca and Dervin 1994). Though they developed inde-
pendently, both come from a leftist analysis: in Downing’s case, anarchist
socialism; in communicatión alternativa’s, Marxism/liberation theology.
They also shared a binary framework (alternative-mainstream, horizon-
tal-vertical) and concerns about international information flows, justice
and equality. However, the binary tools proved too crude; more nuance
was needed. 2001 was a watershed year: Downing’s revision of his classic
Radical Media (1984) provided a wider definition of alternative media and
a broad-based (if disorganized) theoretical “tool kit.” Clemencia Rodrígu-
ez (2001) suggested replacing “alternative media” with “citizens’ media,” a
concept grounded in Chantal Mouffe’s notion of complex citizenship. She
argued for considering how such practices transform participants, and
for a theory emerging organically from practice, not imposed top-down.
The same year, Clemencia Rodríguez, John Downing and Nick Couldry
co-founded the OURmedia/NUESTROSMedios network, converging a
range of alternative and community media approaches.
However, new problems have emerged. First, the radical alternative
media approach now covers practices for which it was not designed: rad-
ical rightist media and extreme leftist propaganda (cf. Downing 2001).9
Second, in the focus on the micro-level, the larger, unifying picture of
democratization has faded, leaving the practices ghettoized and discon-
nected. For all the efforts to do the practices justice, this approach is in
danger of becoming research for its own sake. The old theories have
been deconstructed, but new ones have not yet been designed.
Currently, approaches to “community” and “alternative” are merging
and expanding to include the others’ objects of research and theoreti-
cal tools. Some see community media studies rising to prominence (cf.
Rennie 2006), others alternative media studies (cf. Rodríguez 2002). Such
expansion has helped overcome ghettoization and narrow analyses. This
long-marginalized field is rising, and new avenues of funding, networking
and publishing have opened up. Yet, this merging threatens to obscure
important differences.10 It is easier to broaden definitions and adopt
9
Rodríguez offers only a “personal and idiosyncratic conceptual tool” for this problem
(2002, 86).
10
Huesca (2003) shows development communication reinventing itself by adopting its
critics’ rhetoric and colonizing their fields of research.
85
new analytical tools than to understand and respect other approaches.

Coherence first requires recognition of difference. In the following, we
will look at three lesser-known approaches in an English-language con-
text, before considering the situation in Korea.
NEWCOMERS: AUTONOMOUS, TACTICAL

AND CIVIL SOCIETY MEDIA APPROACHES
Introduction
A new wave of the alter-globalization movement rose in the late 1990s,

influencing media practices and their philosophies, especially in organ-
izing around political summits. Three new approaches emerged: autono-
mous, tactical and civil society media.
Autonomous and tactical media approaches (often conflated with rad-
ical alternative media approaches) are critical of the concept “alterna-
tive,” and have developed their own models. Their theories share several
concepts, e.g. “temporary autonomous zones” (Bey 1991) and “rhizomes.”
The latter, from Deleuze and Guattari (1987), conceives information as
spreading through nodes in networks leading to joint labeling as “rhi-
zomic” approaches. However, the rhizome idea is hardly a distinguishing
feature, being common in cultural studies (especially in critiques of the
transmission model of communication). The approaches are applied to
many of the same practices, such as micro radio, media activism around
summits, Indymedia and culture jamming. Complicating matters fur-
ther, many practitioners belong to both autonomous and tactical media
networks. Yet, as theoretical approaches, the differences between auton-
omous and tactical media are profound.
Autonomous Media Approach
Autonomous media borrows binaries from the radical alternative media

approach to radicalize them further. The social movement media stud-
ied by the autonomous media approach tend to be recent and leftist, ex-
cluding rightist media. Philosophically, the autonomous media approach
draws on anarchist socialist (Downing 2003), Marxist-autonomist, femi-
nist-autonomist, Zapatista and other alter-globalization11 thought, move-
ments and practices (Kidd 2002).
11
Also called the “global justice movement” or, more controversially, the “anti-globaliza-
tion movement.”
86
History: Rooted in the 1970s, Flowering in the 2000s
This approach has long developed in informal networks with little writ-
ten about it (Langlois and Dubois 2005b). Downing (1984) ended Radi-
cal Media with an appeal for focus on autonomous media—without ever
elaborating. Dorothy Kidd (1998), in her doctoral dissertation, gets the
closest to providing a theoretical framework and an intellectual history
of this approach, though without using the term “autonomous media.”
Autonomism began as a political movement in late nineteen-sixties Italy,
represented by Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Félix Guattari, Antonio Negri
and others, many of whom were involved in free radio. In contrast with
orthodox Marxists, they did not see technology/electronic media as a
neutral tool that the working class could simply seize to transmit its own
messages. They saw capitalism, in the course of industrialization, intro-
duce successive technologies to diffuse the challenges of social move-
ments, e.g. replacing strike-prone workers with machines and creating
new markets for machine-produced goods. This required giving workers/
consumers training and access to new information technologies—which
in turn became important resources for social movements, sparking a
cycle of co-optation and re-appropriation. The Italian autonomist move-
ment was soon in tatters, yet provided inspiration for numerous others
(Kidd 1998, 31).
Nineteen-seventies feminist-Marxist autonomism held that various
autonomous movements attacking capital from different angles could
and should be loosely connected (Kidd 1998, 29), a difficult proposition
because of the lack of “stable . . . mechanisms for distribution; the craft
separation into specific media technologies and practices; and rivalries
for resources” (Kidd 2003, 61). This changed in the late 1990s, with new
net-based technologies supporting networks like Indymedia, which in
turn inspired research.12
Of the approaches used to study Indymedia, autonomous media is per-
haps the most “native” to the network, i.e. the one commonly used by
participants themselves. Such an approach is spelled out in a collection
of recent research projects by Indymedia and associated Canadian ac-
tivists. Andrea Langlois and Frédéric Dubois, the editors of Autonomous
Media define the practices they cover:
Autonomous media are the vehicles of social movements. They are attempts to sub-
vert the social order by reclaiming the means of communication. They . . . amplify the
12
See IMC-research listserv Archive <http//lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-research>.
87
voices of people and groups normally without access to media . . . [and] seek to work
autonomously from dominant institutions . . . and they encourage participation of audi-
ences within their projects. Autonomous media therefore produce communication that
is not one-way, from media producers to consumers, but instead involves the bilateral
participation of people as producers and recipients of information (Langlois and Dubois
2005b, 9).
Langlois and Dubois appear to have assimilated lessons from previous

research on alternative media: horizontal organization, ideological in-
frastructure, and emphasis on the social uses of technology. Their com-
pact collection balances case studies from Indymedia, culture jamming,
street newspapers and micro radio with theoretical discussions of alter-
native media approaches.
Contributions to Theory: Autonomy,

Anti-hierarchy, Commons vs. Enclosure
Autonomous media does not reject the “alternative-mainstream” dichot-

omy, but amplifies it. “Autonomous” refers to freedom from influence of
state or market. Langlois and Dubois add independence from church, mili-
tary and corporatist labor unions (2005b, 9). Autonomous media are not
only non-commercial and non-governmental, but often anti-commercial
and anti-governmental practices. While appearing merely to preach to
the converted, such practices actually deepen producers’/audiences’ anal-
yses, help them form identities and empower them to act on shared beliefs.
From this perspective, autonomous media actors are not a fringe sub-cul-
ture or a “research and development” laboratory for the “mainstream”
culture. They comprise their own “mainstream” (Noguchi 2003). The con-
cept “autonomous media” thus reframes the marginal as essential.
Autonomous media research and practice aim for media organiza-
tions with democratic internal structures, which are “open, transparent
and non-hierarchical” (Langlois and Dubois 2005b, 9). In contrast to or-
thodox Marxist approaches, the aim is to support social struggle, not to
replace existing hierarchies (Langlois and Dubois 2005b, 9).
A key concept in autonomous media theory is the communication com-
mons, a resource for “neither private nor public use” (Kidd 1998, 214). Kidd
(2003, 52–53) identifies three contemporary perspectives on the commons.
The “privatization” approach holds that free public access to any re-
source—be it the Internet, air or health care systems—encourages overuse:
“the tragedy of the commons.” Resources are best divided and traded on
the market. The “public” management approach encourages oversight by
88
state or other formal institutions. The “autonomist” approach conceives

the commons as a space best managed by those who use it.
Applying this framework to media history, Kidd challenges the concept
of radio as a state and commercial medium, showing early users treat-
ing the radio spectrum as a commons (Kidd 1998, 214). However, since the
1920–30s a series of political and technical decisions has excluded people
from making their own broadcasts. These enclosures privilege commer-
cial, military and governmental uses of the spectrum.13 Kidd interprets
the self-organized radio practices of indigenous peoples, feminists, Italian
pirate radios and Indymedia as efforts to reclaim the airwaves as a com-
mons from the enclosing forces of market and state (Kidd 1998, 217; 2003).
Critiques: Internalized Oppression,

Disconnected from Other Movements
Autonomous media practice has been criticized for overlooking a cen-

tral element of autonomy: freedom from internalized, cultural forms of
oppression. For example, research on the Indymedia network found that
patriarchal structures from the wider culture “do not stop at the door-
step” of media organizations (Brooten and Hadl 2008). Is this merely a
problem of putting theory into practice? It could indicate a conceptual
flaw: defining autonomy primarily as independence from state and mar-
ket. Interactive autonomy theory (Kidd 2002, 16), feminist work on inter-
nalized oppression, and, as some contributions to Langlois and Dubois
(2005a) suggest, revisiting Freire’s work on conscientization could help
address this.
Another critique notes that overconcern with autonomy can obstruct
solidarity. Uzelman argues that media policy reform aims to “clothe . . .
the emperor” by addressing claims to illegitimate “powerful institutions”
(2005, 25). While autonomous media actors understandably want to de-
lay the cycle of co-optation, such a narrow focus retards theorizing and
practical engagement in the wider struggles for media democratization.
These actors, often out of touch with organizations that monitor danger-
ous policy developments, usually spring into action only when their own
commons is threatened, e.g. in server seizures. Thus autonomous media
theory and practice risk isolation, rendering them politically irrelevant.
13
A lesson to remember in the current struggle over the future of the Internet.
89
Tactical Media Approach
Autonomous media rejects the mainstream. Tactical media engages it,

to “disrupt and . . . [go] beyond the rigid dichotomies that have so long
restricted thinking in this area,” including “alternative vs. mainstream”
(Garcia and Lovink 1997, para. 9). Tactical media theory and practice
aim to infiltrate, appropriate and pervert dominant messages and tech-
nologies (Richardson 2003).
History: Beyond the Wall, Beyond the West, Into Cyberspace
Emerging from heady post-wall Europe, tactical media discourse was

baptized in 1996 (Garcia 2004). The venue was the second Next 5 Minutes
festival in Amsterdam, an event born when the “pragmatic, militant, is-
sue-based politics of the Dutch squatting movement” (Garcia 2004, 422)
clashed with the “saturated media culture” and “glittering hardware
spectacles, which constituted the video and media art festivals at the
time” (Garcia 2004, 422). Held four times from 1993–2003, the festivals
brought together practices at the nexus of art, politics, technology and
culture. Theoretical discussion and organizing were supported by the
Nettime listservs.14
In 1997, key actors from Next 5 Minutes founded the De Waag Soci-
ety, an NGO housed in an old fortress in Amsterdam. Organizers David
Garcia and Geert Lovink “happily embraced” the irony of a permanent
home for temporary and migratory interventions: “As flexible media tac-
ticians, [we] are not afraid of power” (1997, para. 14). The same year, a
workshop and an online forum at New York University furthered the the-
oretical discussion.15 Around 2000, the Indian organization Sarai joined
the network.16 Sarai, based in Delhi, had emerged in the late 1990s from
“unease about the stagnation that underlay the absence of a critical
public culture” (Sarai Reader 2001, 240). This coincided with the “quiet
rebirth of an independent arts and media scene” and “new forms of pro-
test . . . tried out in the streets” (Sarai Reader 2001, 240). Sarai brought a
needed non-European perspective and provided infrastructure through
its publications, events and mailing lists, which continue.
14
Established in 1995 <http://nettime.org>.
15
See collaborative definition project <http//www.nyu.edu/fas/projects/vcb/definingTM.
html>.
16
<http://www.sarai.net/>.
90
Judging from Nettime and the Sarai Reader, the theoretical debate has
shifted since the last Next 5 Minutes festival in 2003. The hot issues now
transcend “media” frames, “tactical” or otherwise: biotechnology, digital
culture, intellectual property rights, migration and surveillance. The fes-
tivals have ended, but the theoretical proposals they generated continue
to resonate.
Contributions to Theory: Theory from Networks,

Strategic vs. Tactical, the Technical is Political
“Tactical media” was once defined as a “contentious umbrella of a term

under which can be found critical, antagonistic, parasitic, heterogene-
ous, dissenting media practice and theory” (Garcia 2004, 421). “Almost
canonical” examples of tactical media include (Richardson 2003, 347):
hacktivism, culture jamming, billboard liberation, mock websites for
George W. Bush and the WTO, Nikeplatz,17 the Yes Men18 and the inter-
ventions of Critical Art Ensemble.19
The term “tactical media” was always under review and construction
by network participants. When the network began to “transcend its ori-
gins,” its practices moved beyond a “primarily ‘western’ idea of tactical
media” (Richardson 2003, 349). However, some of those projects were de-
cidedly strategic, either as political propaganda or as development com-
munication. Some participants worried that stretching “tactical media”
to include any practices represented at Next 5 Minutes (e.g. projects pro-
viding information communication technology (ICT) training to Third
World rural communities), would render the term analytically meaning-
less, “papering over” important ideological and cultural differences (Ri-
chardson 2003, 350). All this underscores the challenges to the organic
evolution of a theory from a network of practices.
A unique analytical tool developed by this approach is a sharp distinc-
tion between tactical and strategic modes of communication. “Tactical”
implies a lack of concern for purity and clarity, appropriating money,
17
An elaborate hoax in which the Austrian organization Public Netbase and the Italian
artist duo 0100101110101101.org convinced the public that one of Vienna’s main squares
had been sold and was going to be renamed Nikeplatz.
18
A group posing as representatives of institutions like the right-wing think-tank Heri-
tage Foundation, delivering neoliberal rhetoric so perfectly that it unmasks its absur-
dity <http://www.theyesmen.org/>.
19
See Giannachi (2007) for descriptions of these practices, though not using a tactical
media approach.
91
technology and content from the powerful institutions. Tactical media

combat narrow views of what should be considered politically “relevant”
and the ghettoization of dissent with entertainment, humor and irony.
Its approach is critical of the counter-information model of many social
movement media, which it considers “as strategic and dogmatic as main-
stream media” (Richardson 2003, 347) and condescending toward its
audience. The messages created by tactical media are co-created with
audiences, while texts are designed to be open to a variety of readings
and responses, including dismissal, shock and laughter.
Tactical media is also critical of the instrumental view of technology
still implicit in most social movement media (cf. Baudrillard [1972] 1981
vs. Enzensberger 1970), pointing to the “deeply political nature of (me-
dia) technology, and the role that the development of new media tools
plays in defining, enabling and constraining its tactical use” (Next 5 Min-
utes 2003, para. 3). Building on Michel de Certeau’s work on the culture
of everyday life and the Situationist movement’s critique of “the society
of the spectacle,” tactical media focuses on the role of entertainment
and the politics embedded in apparently trivial actions and popular cul-
ture.
Critiques: Politically Ambiguous, Masculinist, Militarist
Tactical media has been criticized for being politically ambiguous, Euro-
centric, technology-obsessed, elitist and easily co-opted by commercial
and governmental actors. Indeed, the practices of culture jamming and
the rhetoric of tactical media theory have been eagerly absorbed by mar-
keters. Whereas the autonomous media approach retains socialist ideas
about revolution, utopia, resistance to capital and solidarity with the
oppressed, tactical media draws on post-left and post-modern thought,
which considers such ideas dangerously naïve, especially in light of the
East European experience. Tactical media tends to be amoral, individu-
alistic and more focused on cultural than on political change. Yet tactics
cannot be an end in themselves, and tactical media is beset by two old
questions: How shall we go beyond identifying a problem (the society of
spectacle in this case) or disrupting its causes? How shall we shape vi-
able replacements?
Another critique of tactical media is the disregard of hierarchies, es-
pecially those of class and gender. Autonomous media theory considers
internally democratic organization essential to its practices, while tacti-
cal media virtually ignores that dimension. Its “typical heroes” (not hero-
92
ines) are individuals: “the activist, . . . the prankster, the hacker, the street
rapper, the camcorder kamikaze” (Garcia and Lovink 1997, para. 3).
A particularly insightful critique comes from tactical media’s own
ranks. Joanne Richardson (2003) takes issue with the pervasive war met-
aphor. Playful use of military philosophy (allusions to Sun Tzu and Carl
von Clausewitz) and Situationist détournement (the “hijacking of mean-
ings”), show the logic of war as central to the theory of tactical media. Not
only is it masculinist, but it wears the same binary blinders as alternative
media: an obsession with the enemy. Richardson suggests “think[ing] be-
yond the obvious—of a third, fourth or fifth alternative to the apocalyptic
or utopian sense of . . . media” (2003, 350). One such attempt is the civil
society media approach.
The Civil Society Media Approach
Civil society media attempts to bridge and largely encompass the alter-
native and community media traditions. It emerged from experiences
around the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS, 2003, 2005).
A group of young media studies and political science researchers in-
volved in a range of our media projects found each other in the process
of organizing for the Geneva summit and began reflecting on what they
experienced.20
History: WSIS Geneva and Graduate Research
This group was inspired by the controversies around “civil society” at the
summit, the radical politics of the WSIS?WeSeize! alternative/counter
event and the older generations of activists and researchers in the Com-
munication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign21 and the
Community Media Working Group.22
They also observed unproductive schisms between participants in-

volved in media making. Questions on practical issues such as lack of
funding, organizing know-how and political approach could not be ef-
20
The original group included Arne Hintz, Stefania Milan and Gabriele Hadl, who have
been active in community radio, alternative print media, independent journalism, vi-
deo activism, culture jamming and Indymedia. Jo Dongwon has also been involved in
developing and discussing this approach.
21
Including Marc Raboy, Seán Ó Siochrú, Claudia Padovani and Midori Suzuki.
22
Including Dorothy Kidd, Clemencia Rodríguez, Kim Myoungjoon, Alfonso Gumucio
Dagron and Deedee Halleck.
93
fectively resolved. Protest outside, or negotiate inside? Fight the main-

stream media or join them? Yet conceptual issues were also at play: The
disconnects between different types of our media people on closer in-
vestigation showed parallels to different kinds of community, alterna-
tive, tactical and autonomous approaches. Practitioners seemed not to
know or understand and/or respect each other’s backgrounds, and at-
tempts to forge a common discourse under the banner of “community
media” failed, for reasons both practical and ideological. For example,
the Community Media Forum event and the Community Media Working
Group relied on a small pool of development and radio related groups.
Apart from such logistical issues, analysis of the problems indicated that
a major difficulty lay in the narrowness of the rhetoric of “community
media” in a development communication tradition that dominated civil
society discourse inside the summit, even in discussions of communica-
tion rights and civil society participation in governance (Hadl and Hintz
2008). Alternative, autonomous and tactical groups did not adequately
articulate themselves. There was still no “recognizable identity” for a
range of organizations dedicated to producing and distributing media
for, by and of the people.
At first in parallel, then collaboratively, these young researchers ex-
plored the concept of “civil society media” in their graduate research.
Initially used as an umbrella term for a type of policy action at the sum-
mit (Hintz 2003; Hintz and Milan 2004), eventually its potential for theo-
rizing became apparent. A theoretical framework could be construct-
ed by bringing together media theory, media education and political
science with the work on different types of our media discussed above
(Hadl 2004). Some researchers had suggested a civil society media ap-
proach (cf. Carpentier, Lie, and Servaes 2003), but so far no one had at-
tempted to develop it. Research grants and discussions in a wide range
of forums, including OURMedia, the Community Communication Sec-
tion of IAMCR, and a seminar in Korea at MEDIACT, supported the first
steps towards developing this framework.23
23
This work continues in the context of the Civil Society Media Policy Consortium
(<http://homepage.mac.com/ellenycx/CSMPolicy>).
94
Definition of the Key Term
“Civil society media” was defined to cover most “community media” and
“alternative media” as used in all the aforementioned traditions, while
framing out (a) the “radical repressive” media of communities and move-
ments aimed at usurping civil society, and (b) projects initiated and car-
ried out by commercial interests, donor organizations and government.
Figure 1 shows the range of practices encompassed by the civil society
media approach.
‘civil society media’
‘community media’ (DevCom) ‘alternative media’ (RadAlt)
their media un-civil society media
‘community media’ (ComCom) my media ‘citizens media’ (post-ComAlt)
Figure 1. Practices covered by different approaches
Based on existing definitions of “alternative,” “community” and “tacti-

cal” media, Hadl and Hintz (2005, 84–86) compiled a “multi-level defini-
tion”—a list of characteristics on the levels of audience, texts, production
(including technological and policy infrastructure) and social purpose.
Accepting Downing’s dictum that radical media always “break some-
body’s rules, although rarely all of them in every respect” (2001, ix), they
suggested that to be considered “civil society media,” an organization or
project should display a majority of “civil society media” characteristics
overall, and at least some on each level. For example, a user-created con-
tent platform like YouTube that allows audiences to become producers
for the ultimate purpose of corporate profit would not be “civil society
media” as a whole, though it has certain “civil society media” character-
istics on the text and audience levels. This analytical model, without re-
sorting to rigid binary schemes, allows a qualified answer as to in which
respects, and to what degree a project possesses civil society media char-
acteristics. The model still remains to be elaborated, and its applicability
tested.
95
Contributions to Theory: Beyond Public/Private, Decolonization

of the Lifeworld, Frameworks and Meta-frameworks
The concept “civil society” remains controversial, and rightly so, since it
comes from a tradition of liberalism replete with Western ideas about the
common good, modernity, gender, governance and identity. Also, many
theorists working on civil society in general have surprisingly crude no-
tions regarding media. Still, this approach is worth exploring because
“new theories of civil society” (Shinohara 2004) could help clarify the role
of our media in society. Such theories distinguish between civil society,
corporate market and government. These spheres overlap with each
other, with the intimate sphere of everyday life, and their own “shadow
selves”—the spheres of governmental corruption, black market/organ-
ized crime and repressive “un-civil society.” Unfortunately, most thinking
about media systems retains the old liberal “public-private” framing, at
best with “community” or “alternative media” as an add-on. It would be
more consistent with new theories of civil society to conceptualize the
mediascape with different overlapping media spheres as “governmen-
tal,” “corporate market” and “civil society media.”24
Parallel to the autonomist framework of commons and enclosure,
“new theories of civil society” use the Habermasian concept of the “colo-
nization of the lifeworld” by market and government (Shinohara 2004).
Reframing our media as “civil society media,” renders them not as dis-
connected experiments, but as a revival force for civil society and the de-
colonization of the lifeworld. It further places our media into the bigger
context of democratization of communication.25 Taking Rodríguez’ lead,
it encourages reflection on the relationship between our media and no-
tions of citizenship, democracy, human rights, identity and diversity.
In constructing and critiquing the approach, there emerged a need for
differentiating between theoretical approaches (frameworks) for different
purposes and different contexts: e.g. frameworks for talking to ourselves
(self-analysis), talking to each other (networking, awareness raising) and
talking to others (funders, governmental institutions, etc.) (Hadl and Hintz
2008). For example, “civil society media” may be valuable in policy lobby-
ing and as part of an academic approach, but perhaps less so for network-
ing and self-reflection. Developed in the context of transnational network-
24
As well as friends and family media, un-civil society media, black market media etc.
25
Which also includes strategies for governmental and corporate media (their media)
and individualized media (my media) (cf. Kim 2003; Suzuki 2004; Hackett and Carroll
2006).
96
ing around policy,26 it may have limited usefulness for other contexts. To
prevent unproductive gaps, different theoretical frameworks can be con-
nected with each other horizontally, but also through meta-frameworks
such as communication rights or media justice.
Critiques: Western-centered, Romanticized,

Papering over Differences
The key critique of the civil society media approach has centered on
the concept “civil society” and its baggage. Like “community,” it tends to
paper over power inequalities between people and organizations, and
like “citizen,” it needs radical redefinition to account for the experiences
of women, indigenous peoples and other people traditionally excluded
from rights (cf. Rodríguez 2001). Its applicability needs to be tested for
societies where the analysis of social spheres does not so easily apply.
People from an autonomous media background hold that the only
meaningful way to affect socio-political change is to be decidedly uncivil
(here in the sense of impolite) and to refuse to clothe the emperor of
a corrupt system (including that of media studies). There is definitely
space for autonomous practice and theory in the civil society media ap-
proach. However, based on what we have heard so far from autonomist
media colleagues, it may be as unethical to try to subsume “autonomous
media” under the heading of “civil society media” as are the attempts of
development communication scholars to recruit “alternative media” into
their service (cf. Carpentier, Lie, and Servaes 2003).
Ideological differences should be respected, and it may be best to keep
specific positions as they are, agreeing to disagree. One can also seek
common ground, of which there is a fair amount. Autonomous, tactical
and civil society media are all efforts to overcome some of the limita-
tions of previous approaches, though none of them can offer answers
without raising new questions. Also, they represent the emergence of the
researcher-activist. These developments are not limited to the English-
speaking context, as the following will show.
Approaches in the Korean Literature

Korea recently emerged from thirty-plus years of US-backed authori-
tarianism, largely through a series of powerful social movements. Korea
26
Note that transnational networks (e.g. around global summits) are specific arenas with
their own languages, cultures, institutions and denizens.
97
today is, on the one hand, a formal democracy with a lively public culture
of social movements, protest and debate, and a commercialized media
society under a neo-liberal regime on the other. Korean media move-
ments are among the most successful in the world. They have gained
an independent broadcast regulator, a public access channel (nation-
wide satellite broadcast), publicly funded, independently managed in-
stitutions (that support independent film making by professionals and
media making by citizens), and a public access broadcast window on
national free-to-air public television. More recently, a community radio
program has been launched. Hundreds of organizations work on issues
of media, information and culture, help citizens (including marginalized
communities) to produce and distribute their own media, and serve the
communication needs of social movements. Korean participatory online
journalism (pioneered by Jinbonet and other social-movement oriented
organizations, and later commercialized by OhmyNews) predates Indy-
media and continues to be influential. However, the study of our media is
surprisingly thin, especially in the area of theory.
HISTORY OF MEDIA MOVEMENTS IN KOREA
Since the 1980s, several types of media movements have contributed to

the democratization of Korean society, roughly divided along technologi-
cal lines. The media reform movement (eonron undong)27 emerged from
a movement of journalists against the authoritarian government in the
1970s. This movement was suppressed, but gave birth to a tradition of
underground publishing and to legal organizations working on media
reform. The 1980s saw the establishment of Hangkyoreh, an independent
newspaper based on a citizen-shareholder system (1988), and a nation-
wide campaign to refuse payment of TV reception fees (boycott of the na-
tional public broadcaster, 1986). Starting in the early 1990s, people’s and
workers’ video movements emerged, and computer networks were used
for social movements, all of which became widespread by the end of the
decade. With the introduction of satellite and cable TV, some research-
ers and public institutions began to look at public access and community
broadcasting models abroad, and both eonron and video activists be-
gan to lobby for such structures. From 2000 onward, they succeeded in
getting legislation implemented supporting viewers’ rights, independent
27
There are two terms roughly equivalent to the English “media”– a Chinese-root Korean
word (“eonron”) and (“midieo”), a transliteration of the English “media.”
Eonron emphasizes journalism and print, similar to the English word “the press.”
98
film, public access TV, media education and community radio. However,
these were small, democratic concessions within neoliberal reforms de-
signed to benefit the media and ICT corporations. Currently, net-activist
organizations like Jinbonet are involved in uphill battles against surveil-
lance, privacy infringement and restrictive copyrights, especially in the
context of the US-Korea Free Trade agreement.
APPROACHES TO OUR MEDIA BY ACADEMICS
The eonron movement has significant clout in academic circles, since

media research in Korea has traditionally focused on “the press” in the
style of functional structuralism and journalism research. Many Marx-
ist and other socialist writings were banned up to the 1980s, and with
the cold war continuing on the Korean peninsula, some remain so even
today. Nonetheless, they have been widely read among activists and
scholars since the mid-1980s, while critical theory and cultural studies
were introduced in the later years of the decade. John Downing’s Radi-
cal Media (1984) was translated by one of the chief figures of the eonron
movement as “Revolution and People’s Press” (Byeonhyeokgwa Minjung
Eonron). However, leftist intellectuals associated with the eonron move-
ment tended to be technophobes and stuck to print media, not unlike the
1960s German left in Enzensberger’s (1970) famous critique. In contrast,
social movement activists and intellectuals were interested in the uses of
video, and a number of revolution-based theories were in vogue.
Marxist theories lost their appeal following formal democratization,
the ensuing commercialization/liberalization of the media system and
the parallel collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. More recently,
some texts on alternative and community media have been translated,28
and activists continue to review case studies from abroad. The echo in
academia, however, remains faint. As in the English-speaking context,
both critical and conservative researchers have ignored our media.
Recently, there have been two academic attempts to grapple with the
concepts—if not the theories—of “alternative media” (daean midieo) and
“civic media” (simin midieo).29
In Hangukui Daean Midieo (“Alternative media of Korea”), media cul-
tural studies scholar Yoo Sunyoung defines “alternative media” broadly
28
Including Atton (2004), which is appropriate in its journalism/cultural studies approach
to the local research landscape.
29
Simin midieo also translates as “citizens media.”
99
as “alternative to the current system and mainstream media in terms of

content and form in any way” (Yoo 2005, 4). Drawing on English scholar-
ship (Downing 2001; Rodríguez 2001; Atton 2001), she suggests that the
concept “alternative media” could help overcome historically limited no-
tions of “counter-media” (daehang midieo) that emerged in the context of
the democratization movement. It could also help theorize post-authori-
tarian era practices. In looking at the Korean situation, she unfortunate-
ly relies on a small pool of professional alternative news media in Korea
on the one hand, and on poorly digested notions of IMCs and Infoshops
taken from English-language research (Downing 2001; Atton 2001) on the
other. The result is a rather incongruous case for institutional support
for autonomous media practices.
In Simin Midieo Ron (“Civic Media Theory”), Choi Young Mook, a pro-
fessor of media studies involved with many media movement organiza-
tions, attempts to theorize the last ten years of the eonron movement. He
defines the term “civic media” broadly as “civic media that are partici-
patory in diverse ways like management, production and programming
regardless of who owns them” (Choi 2005, 62). Choi sees civic media as
part of the struggle for media reform—including viewer rights, reform
of mainstream journalism and Internet newspapers—and tries to con-
textualize these struggles within theories of freedom of expression, the
public sphere, the right to know, viewer’s sovereignty and public journal-
ism (Choi 2005, Chapter 2). His case studies (Chapters 3–7) consist of
Korean and international profiles of media centers, public access chan-
nels, community radio, alternative satellite broadcasting and independ-
ent Internet press.
Choi, tying into theories of participatory democracy and civil society
from John Keane and Jürgen Habermas, underlines the need to revital-
ize the public sphere and democratize society. He conceives of a strong
civic media sector as an alternative to power and to corporate-owned/
managed media and as enabling people’s participation in media (Choi
2005, 62–63).
Choi’s book chronicles the struggle to establish a democratic media
system, and the key role of our media within it. However, its theoretical
value is limited. First, his concept “civic media” remains too vague as
an umbrella for a variety of practices past and present, domestic and
abroad and under authoritarian and democratic governments, and de-
fined mono-dimensionally as “participatory.” This may have been appro-
priate in the 1990s, when the model was developed (cf. Choi, Kim, and
Seo 1999). At that time, our media offered the only possibilities for partic-
100
ipatory communication. Since then, however, commercial, user-created

content platforms and corporate media have integrated people’s voices
into business models, and commercial news services like OhmyNews tout
themselves as the pioneers of “citizens’ journalism.” Choi includes them
in the same “civic media” category as local grassroots-based community
media and leftist Internet news like Chamsaesang.30 Second, Choi’s eon-
ron movement perspective is narrowly concerned with news media and
institutionalization (cf. Choi 2005, 63). Media practices that seek auton-
omy from a (neo)liberal democratic media system are excluded, as are
tactical media-type temporary and cultural interventions. Third, Choi
gives a detailed account of past experiments, but offers neither a critical
analysis, nor suggestions for shaping the future.
RESEARCH BY MEDIA ACTIVISTS
These two books underscore the limited perspective of journalism and

cultural studies (Yoo 2005) and reform-oriented media studies (Choi
2005). Aside from the eonron movement, there have been a number of
movements more directly supporting media by for and of the people. La-
bor video and autonomous filmmaking emerged in the 1980s and origi-
nally focused on setting up autonomous systems of production, training
and distribution. However, some activists recognized the need for policy
advocacy, which required research. These movements began to set up
study groups, collaborated with sympathetic researchers (such as Choi)
and initiated exchanges with activists abroad, especially from the US
and Canada.
The first media access center, MEDIACT,31 opened in 2002, with sup-
port from the Korean Film Commission and the Association of Inde-
pendent Film Makers. It set out early on to establish a policy research
department.32 This department practices lobbying, monitoring, research
and awareness raising. It publishes four to six research papers a year, a
monthly webzine for media activists and collections of staff writings on
media activism, and holds research meetings. MEDIACT also organizes
30
Jo (2007) notes that commercial participatory platforms may increase distribution of
civil society media type content, but decrease support for civil society media, infra-
structure and organizing structures.
31
<http://mediact.org/>.
32
One of the present authors (Jo Dongwon) headed this department 2002–2006. Its main
activities include training and production support for independent videomakers, the
general public and marginalized groups.
101
regular lectures and symposia, inviting researchers and activists from

abroad and around the country.
The theoretical assumptions behind these actions have rarely been
formulated, and even less often scrutinized. Kim Myoungjoon, president
of MEDIACT, developed an agenda of mainstream media reform and a
strong alternative media sector (Kim 2003). Jo Dongwon further distin-
guished between a publicly funded alternative sector (with actors like
MEDIACT) and an independent alternative sector. He noted the impor-
tance of nourishing “the buds for democratic change inside the media
system” (Jo 2005, 7). He analyzed state, market and civil society actors in
shaping the public sphere, the establishment of counter-public spheres
and the role of media activism and education in these processes (Jo
2005).33
The political philosophies behind media activist strategies for media
democratization include classic Marxism, new theories of civil society
and autonomist analyses of commons and enclosure.34 While MEDI-
ACT comes from the audio-visual sector, net-based media activists have
developed frameworks like “human rights in the information society.”
Other social movement-related media groups (especially those involved
in struggles against neoliberal globalization) continue to establish re-
search groups, most recently around the concept of “publicness.”
However, activist research is short on time, money and capacity. It can
rarely go beyond agenda making and the needs of the moment. Thus
terms and concepts for our media (“alternative,” “independent,” “com-
munity” and “civic media”) are used without much effort to define them,
explain their relationship to each other or to bigger concepts such as
“communication rights,” “cultural diversity” or “publicness.” Accordingly,
the outcomes lack theoretical grounding and coherence.
Conclusion
The Korean case shows that the relationship between theory and prac-
tice is shaped by the given socio-political, academic and institutional
context. Korean media movements seem successful, but they are in fact
vulnerable and marginalized. The Roh administration offered opportu-
33
This chapter, and one paper by Hadl were discussed at the MEDIACT seminar (23 Jan-
uary 2005) with Kim, Kidd and a local research group, leading to the foundation of the
Gwanghamun Group for Media Theory, with the slogan “Don’t hate media theory, be
media theory.” However, this project has fizzled, owing to lack of resources.
34
Presented by Kidd in presentations at MEDIACT 14 May 2004 and 25 January 2005.
102
nities for lobbying, but this was done with a small pool of researchers
and ideas (many from Western democracies), and tailored for institu-
tional ends. Theory should serve practice, but theory too close to policy
advocacy limits imagination within—and exacerbates inequalities be-
tween—different kinds of movements. Activists do not have the resources
to develop theory, while academics misunderstand practice. Such lack of
academic support translates into weak recognition in the wider culture
and political discourse. People with feet in both worlds are best equipped
to help, but they battle both activist skepticism of academic theories and
academic ignorance of activism.
Theoretical research must tackle the unequal development of research
and practice, reconcile differences in approaches, and account for dif-
ferences in cultural and linguistic contexts. Internationally, the OURMe-
dia/NUESTROSMedios network is an excellent example of a forum for
dialogue across traditional separations.35 Our media theories owe much
to international exchanges: English translations of Freire, Brecht and
Enzensberger in the 1970s, critical reflection on communicatión alterna-
tiva in the 1990s, and active networks of practitioners like AMARC36 have
contributed greatly. In Korea, exchanges facilitated by MEDIACT and
others, and translations of works from English have deepened the de-
bate. While cultural specificities remain, the globalization of economic
neoliberalism/cultural conservatism creates a greater need for sharing
our experiences as our media actors. However, Anglo-centrism is deeply
entrenched. OURMedia/NUESTROSMedios finds it hard to raise funds
for the translation and interpretation of conferences and mailing lists,
with English remaining the default language.
A field is emerging, but does it move towards “coherent alternatives?”
In the English-speaking context, there are heated debates as to whether
to call the new field “community media studies” or “alternative media
studies.” Our analysis indicates that both terms already conflate diver-
gent approaches and that their expansion would only add confusion.
Theories have developed from the coherent but simplistic (classic com-
municatión alternativa, eonron movement thought) to the nuanced but
piecemeal (cf. Downing 2001; Rodríguez 2001) and the unintentionally
iconoclastic (cf. Carpentier, Lie, and Servaes 2003; Yoo 2005). Recent
theoretical approaches advance by going back to the roots (autonomous
35
<http://ourmedianet.org>.
36
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters <http://www.amarc.org>.
103
media), cutting them off (tactical media), or growing new ones (civil soci-
ety media, Rodríguez 2001; Choi 2005).
An overarching theory may be neither possible nor desirable, yet a
nexus of approaches is emerging that may yet evolve a coherent picture.
We should not hope for panaceas: French feminism reminds us that all
language and therefore all theorizing are inscribed with the history of
power relations pertaining to gender, colonization, race, class, nature
and culture (Irigaray 1993). We must evolve a new language, be bold in
testing and shifting existing boundaries. We often claim that our media
are a necessary (if not sufficient) condition for addressing war, injustice
and ecocide. Yet our thinking so far excludes communication between
humans, other species and the biosphere. Our media theories must co-
develop appropriate meta-perspectives, or support the unsustainable
status quo.
The to-do list for our media theory researchers is long, but important
tasks include:
– discussing and disseminating widely our findings so far,
– exploring relationships between “our media,” “my media,” education,
policy, ICTs and culture (Rodríguez 2004),
– organizing and expanding Rodríguez’ and Downing’s tool kits, espe-
cially pertaining to gender, ecology and indigenous peoples,
– developing existing theories, while tracking emerging ones,
– explaining, in accessible language, the pros and cons of different ap-
proaches in different contexts,
– clarifying the relationships of various theoretical approaches to each
other,
– connecting those approaches on different levels, envisioning the in-
terweaving of frameworks and meta-frameworks, and
– deepening the connections between research and practice.
Our media practice needs support from our media research, which
involves not only case studies, but theories, recognizable objects of re-
search and historical memory (of both practice and research)—in short,
a vibrant field.37 So far, our media practices have survived with little re-
search, and that conducted with scant theory. We have to make better
use of our time and resources.
We call for a new paradigm in media studies. After the cultural turn, it
is our media’s turn.
37
Which in turn has institutions, networks, sources of funding, publications and forums.
104
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109
CHALLENGES AND QUESTIONS FOR
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA
PANTELIS VATIKIOTIS
Introduction: A Colourful Tapestry

A variety of different terms have been employed in order to describe me-
dia practices implemented on the margins of the mainstream communi-
cation system. Diverse small-scale media have provided, historically and
normatively, examples of a fresh perspective on mediated communica-
tion. Every parameter of this process—objectives, context, content, proce-
dure, and the agents—has literally been a ground for the articulation of
a variety of assertions.
On the macro level, these media projects were initially a critical re-
sponse to mass communication processes. From a politically engaged
point of view, “radical” media constitute practices of resistance to the
dominant hegemony, questioning its ideological frameworks together
with advancing social change (Downing 1984). From the perspective of
the decentralization of mass communication structure, “participatory”
media struggle for the redistribution of communication resources and
the revaluation of cultural identity in the developing world (Servaes
1999), while “community” media enrich the terrain of public service with-
in the communication systems of the developed countries (Jankowski,
Prehn, and Stappers 1992). In terms of the development of an opposi-
tional culture, “alternative” media set counter-zones for radical debate
and mobilization (Downing 2001), they generate counter-forms of media
operation (Atton 2002), and they reflect inequalities in the possession of
symbolic power (Couldry 2001b). When it comes to an evaluation of the
wide spectrum of social, cultural and power spheres of everyday life,
“citizens’ media” constitute, on a day-to-day basis, significant sites for the
negotiation of identities, cultures, and lifestyles (Rodríguez 2001).
On the micro level, unconventional modes of appropriation of com-
munication means reflect a range of priorities. “Dissident” media ac-
count for counter-information sources that disrupt political silence and
defy stereotypical truths. “Grassroots” media push forward the issues
of access and participation by enabling various publics to reflect and
111
promote common interests, as well as to defend and develop specific

(sub)cultures. “Self-managed” media convey a wide range of challeng-
ing positions, asserting their institutional freedom in general, contesting
dominant structures of media organization, production and distribution
in particular, and signifying people’s empowerment on the symbolic
level. Correspondingly, these positions endorse drastic changes for me-
diated communication: they negate its principal structural components
(institutionalization and capitalization); they undermine the necessity of
professional training; they reverse traditional hierarchical norms and
transform social roles and communication processes. Additionally, “citi-
zen-led” media account for diverse collective attempts at self expression,
moulded in the actual field of the lived experience of media practice,
regarding both production and reception. In this order, the social and
cultural meanings developed and/or negotiated alongside media prac-
tice are intrinsic aspects of people’s intervention in public affairs.
Various social actors/agents—movements, communities, minorities,
groups, and citizens—figure prominently in the genesis of such communi-
cation/media projects. Social movements have constituted a strong field
for such practices, since the social activism they enact is enmeshed with
forms of media activism. This kind of activist synergy is forged through-
out the pursuit of common/shared interests, wherein media practices
work as vehicles for the mobilization of collective action in the strug-
gle to construct new forms of collective identity and action, which also
involve media practices. Communities of geographic association added
to communities of interest, ethnic/minority groupings, and cultural al-
legiances, have been fertile ground for demanding the restructuring of
the media system in a more inclusive way.
Nonetheless, liberating media practices are not exclusively the privi-
lege of collective initiatives that are expressed in terms of traditional
subject positions (class, culture, and so forth). Individual and fragmented
media expressions (fanzines, personal websites, cultural jamming) rep-
resent another type of mediated cultural resistance practice; while, on
another level, ordinary people’s attempts to communicate their griev-
ances may entail the disruption of the very mediation process itself.
Overall, what is more or less under discussion across the colourful tap-
estry of media practices on the margins is a call for the reformation
of mediated communication. In normative terms, the proposed changes
place emphasis on process, implying the necessity of a grassroots act
of mediation, which is clearly reflected in a kind of discursive media ac-
tivism facilitated by “the connection between processes of progressive
112
PANTELIS VATIKIOTIS: CHALLENGES AND QUESTIONS FOR A LT E R NAT I V E M E D I A
change in the media and those in other social forces” (Carroll and Hack-
ett 2006). In literal terms, the immersion of ordinary people within the
mediation procedure demonstrates empowerment, symbolically (Coul-
dry 1999, 2001a) and reflexively (Atton 2002, 2004). Thus, crucial issues
for the capturing and understanding of the democratization of commu-
nication are raised when it comes to “address[ing] the full range of medi-
ating practices in society (and the struggles that underlie them), not just
those which pass for the mainstream” (Couldry 2001b, 21).
To be more specific, the expression and reflection of quotidian experi-
ence through mediating practices incorporates potential energy for the
enhancement and enrichment of the realm of public-mediated space and
the evaluation of what citizenship actually means. After all, it is the term
“alternative” that is employed here when referring to these mediating
practises. This is done not with the purpose of locating them within the
already existing mediascape, but with the aim of recognizing their im-
plications for an overall democratic communication space. Nonetheless,
when we relate alternative media to the democratization of communica-
tion, multiple controversial aspects of this process emerge.
Commonality, Diversity and Identity

The theoretical discussion concerning a broad and dynamic account of
the democratization of communication has been primarily articulated
in terms of the (re)evaluation of the categories of public sphere, civil so-
ciety, and citizenship. Habermas’s ([1962] 1989) concept of public sphere
has provided an ideal type for sketching the field of public communi-
cation normatively. One of the strengths of the public sphere, that of
universalism, which is reflected here in the principle of general accessi-
bility of information, has been prominently illustrated by public service
broadcasting (Garnham 1990, 1996). However, a single, overarching pub-
lic sphere fails to accommodate the contestation among a plurality of
competing publics within the society; this is a case of subordinate social
groups that respond to their marginalization by setting up alternative
public spheres (Fraser 1996). This perspective questions the universal
character of a unique public sphere, re-constituting it in plural terms as
an arena for the articulation of a range of ideological and cultural differ-
ences among various publics. For this reason, the evaluation of the realm
of civil society, and the practices implemented therein, is catalytic to a
far-reaching understanding of the aspects of representation and partici-
pation in public life.
113
Accordingly, the broadening of the category of public sphere in ac-

cordance with the reassessment of civil society has stimulated proposals
for a “democratic media system,” where the principles of pluralism and
diversity are the foremost characteristics of its structure. In this context,
a differentiated media system, consisting of general and specialized me-
dia sectors, and its varied functions and services respectively, provides
a platform for the representation of divergent interests and the facilita-
tion of a reciprocal debate among different social groups (Curran 1991,
2000). Moreover, the relationship between public sphere and civil society
has also been evaluated in terms of civil society’s own practices and their
competing interventions in publicly mediated space. From this perspec-
tive, Dahlgren (1995) conceptualizes a forceful interplay between the “ad-
vocacy domain,” which implies the participation and representation of
inputs from civil society in the mediascape, and the “common domain,”
which connotes the lowest common denominator of public communica-
tion. The roots of the mediating practices of groups, associations, and
movements within civil society promote the ideal of democratic com-
munication to a greater degree than the mainstream ones, allowing for
marginalized discourses to be communicated, and thus advancing the
expansion of the public sphere.
Hence, the constitution of democratic, publicly mediated space encom-
passes practices and processes operating not within the formal polity,
but throughout the nooks and crannies of civil society. Moreover, in this
dialectical relationship between public sphere and civil society emerges
the broadening of the compass of active citizenship. Specifically, issues
of difference and agency are significant parameters within which citi-
zenship is woven into the discursive terrain of sociocultural interaction.
On the one hand, citizenship is addressed as an “articulating principle,”
leaving space for its constant negotiation. On the other hand, citizen-
ship is performed as an identity, reflected in different subject positions
(Mouffe 1992, 1993). From this point of view, multiple bottom-up small
scale locales where social agents experience social definitions, identities,
cultures and lifestyles, are vital sites for the expression and enactment
of citizenship.
Overall, the reconfiguration of the realms of public sphere, civil soci-
ety, and citizenship advances a non-essentialist, radical understanding
of the constitution of a democratic public space. Alternative mediating
practices running through the quotidian field are instrumental in this
process. In this context, they should be viewed in the very field of their re-
alization, in relation to social subjects’ appropriation of communication
114
means within their own socio-cultural environment, and in reference to

their engagement in actual practice. What follows is an attempt to ad-
dress challenges and questions raised by these considerations.
Challenges
From the perspective of the democratization of communication, concep-
tualized as a nonlinear, discursive process, alternative media practice
incorporates dynamic aspects of intervention in public and political re-
ality. First of all, alternative media empower collectives and individuals
to represent themselves, and to do so on their own terms. Their practice,
as a whole, also constitutes a “meeting point” of various marginalized
social actors, groups and publics, of their concerns, interests and views.
Not only do alternative media pave the way for a further understanding
of the act of representation, but they also denote that asserting differ-
ence is an everyday struggle, which also pervades our overwhelmingly
mediated reality. “These submerged networks . . . constitute the labora-
tories in which new experiences are invented and popularized. . . . [They]
function as public spaces in which the elements of everyday life are
mixed, remixed, developed and tested” (Keane 1998, 171–172). Moreover,
diverse instances of self-expression occur discursively through the vari-
ous ways people participate in the practice of alternative media, on an
individual as well as on a collective level. In terms of a dynamic reali-
zation of citizenship—as “something to be constructed, not empirically
given” (Mouffe 1992, 231)—alternative media echo negotiations and re-
negotiations of social identities, codes and relationships that take place
through their practice. They are prolific conveyors of quotidian politics;
“a politics which extends the terrain of political contestation to the every-
day enactment of social practices and the routine reiteration of cultural
representations” (McClure 1992, 123). The line demarcating the political
and the non-political becomes blurry here; in quotidian politics “every
dimension of everyday life becomes a potential site for social contesta-
tion” (Rodríguez 2001, 21).
In alternative media both aspects of representation and participation
have further implications in the symbolic realm, challenging the concen-
tration of symbolic power in mainstream media practices. To begin with,
marginalized segments of the society occupy a limited, though vital for
them, communication space, registering their presence in public life.
That is to say, alternative media practice promotes “in its direct form the
principle of resisting media power: the idea that ‘we,’ not media institu-
115
tions, should be the source of information. This is, in a sense, the outer
limit of alternative media practice, whose importance is not in its suc-
cess as alternative media—which is highly debatable—but simply in its
showing the fact that it was possible, imaginable” (Couldry 2001b, 12).
In addition, despite the fact that alternative media often have short life
spans, they still leave their mark. Through these practices, various so-
cial groups register their struggles and discourses, thus expanding the
domain for new claims to be made in the public sphere. So, what we
find in the long run is, using Rodríguez’s (2001, 22) words, “a multitude of
small forces that surface and burst like bubbles in a swamp”; in any case,
“these bubbles are a clear sign that the swamp is alive.” In addition, the
engagement of ordinary people in alternative media practice has educa-
tional value. “[P]eople are learning to participate in the media to a point
where it has been normalized. . . . This has been described as the era of
‘read-write’ media, where people don’t consume media, they also create
it” (Rennie 2006, 187). On the whole, this kind of media activism advances
the historicization of alternative media practice itself; “practices become
traditions, and experience becomes collective memory” (Dahlgren 2002,
4). In view of the fact that most of our experience of social reality is now
mediated by means of communications, active engagement in them is
fundamental for “being in the world,” in a critical and compelling way.
In addition, when addressing alternative media as valuable parameters
of the constitution of a democratic, publicly mediated space, the issue of
their relationship with mainstream media is posed. An agonistic structure
of the mediascape has been conceptualized in terms of their “continual
and dynamic interface,” facilitated by the “dialogic and contesting voices”
that alternative media provide for the mainstream ones (Dahlgren 1995,
195–197). Here, complex relations articulated between alternative and
mainstream media can also be identified. A binary approach to main-
stream and alternative media suggests that alternative projects have
been treated as an independent, unitary field, constituting in this way an
oppositional form of public sphere, counter to the dominant one of the
mass media. As a result, “[l]ittle attention has been paid to how these prac-
tices might be employed by mainstream media, or indeed how radical
media might borrow practices from the mainstream . . . to examine them
not as discrete fields of symbolic production, but as inhabiting a shared,
negotiated field of relations, subject to ‘contradictory pressures and ten-
dencies’” (Atton 2004, 9, quoting Bennett [1986] 1995, 350). These hybrid
practices have been noticeably advanced in the context of an evolving
media milieu qualified by the connection between online and offline re-
116
lationships on the intersection of social and Internet practices. Via the

coordination of action and communication, as developed through the
interrelation between activist and media networking, advanced forms
of self-expression and mobilization have been developed, whose influ-
ence at times penetrates the global arena; new identities have flourished
across lifestyle issues and values; and, new forms of collective construc-
tion of knowledge have been promoted, questioning the conventional un-
derstanding of a traditionally privileged element upon which citizenship
has been structured, that of property rights.
In general, the democratization of communication has been promi-
nently evaluated in terms of a dynamic interplay between public sphere
and civil society, in tandem with a pluralistic conceptualization of citi-
zenship, reassessing both aspects of representation and participation
in public and political life. A “new understanding of the social subject as
a kaleidoscopic encounter of identities and differentiated ‘portions-of-
power’ is a necessary condition for understanding the richness of every-
day political struggles. When applying this concept to alternative media,
the richness of experiencing the reappropriation of mediated communi-
cation comes to life in all its exuberance” (Rodríguez 2001, 18). From this
perspective, alternative media, incorporating instances of change and
transformation, constitute social practices through which social actors
“become members and potential participants in societal development.”
Most of all, this process is situated within features of the lived everyday
culture.
[I]n our daily lives we operate in a multitude of different “worlds” or realities; we carry
within us different sets of knowledge, assumptions, rules and roles for different circum-
stances. All of us are to varying degrees composite people. For democracy to work,
people need to see themselves at least in some ways as citizens, though it should
be clear that few people find that the actual world “citizen” gets their adrenaline flow-
ing—what is at stake is not a label, but the subjectivity of membership and efficacy.
Citizenship is central to the issues of social belonging and social participation. . . .
There are many ways of being a citizen and of doing democracy. Identities of member-
ship are not just subjectively produced by individuals, but evolve in relation to social
milieus and institutional mechanisms (Dahlgren 2002, 4–5, emphasis in the original).
Further Questions Concerning

Alternative Media
Conceiving alternative media within the deepest process of democratiz-

ing communication raises new questions as to how far a variety of dis-
117
courses acquire a place in public debate where they may communicate

their experiences; the ways these practices are framed within the public
and political sphere; their positioning in relation to the wider communi-
cation system and the form of their agency.
Both media and cultural perspectives on alternative practices, imple-
mented by a variety of social actors (communities, social movements,
protest groups and dissidents, fun cultures, and re-activate audiences)
have been conceptualized as arenas for the realization of egalitarian
forms of communication, on the basis of the open, non-hierarchical, non-
professional nature and the engaging potential of their organizational
processes. Yet, another issue is the extent to which these practices cre-
ate and sustain a “community without closure” (Couldry 2000), meaning
enabling dialogue over representations of reality as it is experienced by
different social subjects/actors. “After all, to interact discursively as a
member of public, subaltern or otherwise, is to aspire to disseminate
one’s discourse to ever widening arenas. Habermas captures well this
aspect of the meaning of publicity when he notes that, however limited
a public may be in its empirical manifestation at any time, its members
understand themselves as part of a potentially wider public, that inde-
terminate, empirically counterfactual body we call ‘the public at large’”
(Fraser 1996, 124).
Drawing on the everyday enactment and experience of alternative me-
dia, the way these projects are addressed and communicated is crucial
for assessing the room they leave for mutual recognition. The case of far-
right media, in any possible consideration of them as alternative ones
(practices run by marginalized political groups), can be easily exempted
from this argument. Even though ethical reasons are not sufficiently
valid to excuse in principle the exclusion of what John Downing (2001,
89) defines as “repressive radical media,” their hierarchical methods of
organization and control set them apart in practice from the progres-
sive processes of alternative media (Atton 2004). Yet, alternative media
are not also a priori independent of the ideological framework of the
socio-cultural context within which they are formed and implemented.
Drawing on Indymedia’s coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath, Atton (2003)
highlights aspects of hierarchical control over symbolic resources run-
ning through democratized communication process, too; characteristic
here is the privileging of a particular version of events at the expense of
other relevant counter-discourses.
Thinking about alternative media in relation to the constitution of a
democratic, publicly mediated space raises further questions about the
118
ideological framework within which these practices operate, not only in

principle but in their very process. Probing into examples of differing sets
of alternative media projects in terms of their lived experience cannot
but uncover issues concerning the extent to which these practices create
and sustain a process without closure (Vatikiotis 2005). Do alternative
media projects succeed in envisaging a broader societal dialogue across
the full spectrum of adversarial interpretations and cultural practices,
thus stimulating a dialectical communication process?
On the other hand, the evaluation of global, Internet-based social net-
works—in terms of the social and cultural implications of globalization
processes, across an increasing mobility of products and information,
and fluidity of identities—has raised interesting questions concerning
how and how far a shift of the social conflict field has taken place, from
modernist ideological foundations of political identification to the “col-
lective individualism” of lifestyle politics (Bennett 2003a, 2003b, 2003c).
Apart from an account of the networking patterns and strategies in
which global activism engages, a close look at the way such processes
are experienced by social subjects involved in them is necessary in order
to fully understand the implications of citizenship’s realization. In this
discursive terrain of sociocultural interaction, both intimate and pub-
lic contexts denote moments of identity formation, suggesting we should
reassess the production of citizenship in tandem with a politics of differ-
ence (Young 1990) and presence (Phillips 1996).
In any case, processes of identity formation are detached neither from
public life nor from the subject’s relation to the public context. The fa-
cilitation of these processes within the technical network of the Internet
and across the new spaces it creates (cyberspace), must be approached
in line with the ways new technological forces are being received and as-
similated within the specific settings of their use. Further issues are thus
raised for alternative practices that are implemented under circum-
stance of a transforming communication environment in regard to, re-
phrasing Miller and Slater (2000, 1), the ways in which social actors find
themselves in this environment while at the same time trying to mould it
according to their own culture.
These questions become more complicated once we broaden the dis-
cussion about the democratization of communication, probing into nor-
mative, procedural aspects of its realization. The decentralizing thrust
of alternative media has diachronically provided a strong foundation
for challenging the understanding of public interest (Rennie 2006), ei-
ther questioning its monopolization by public service broadcasting, or
119
encouraging amateur and ordinary contributions to its configuration,

or even shifting its content from a fixed notion of the common good to
a negotiated one. The democratic potential of alternative media practic-
es—in terms of promoting the principles of accessibility, diversity, and in-
teractivity—opens the spectrum for the development of a media reform
movement in response to globalization and new technology forces. Nev-
ertheless, reform activity issues are numerous and different across the
world; a productive way for the media reform movement to transcend
its current rhetoric is to develop a mutual understanding of its different
applications (Downing 2007).
Last but not least, the very essence of the democratic conceptualization
of the communication process, namely the nature of the subject’s com-
mitment to it, demands rigorous reflection. The implementation of alter-
native media practices has principally been attributed to social activism
conceived in Habermasian deliberative terms. Collective and individual
forms of activism, and their distinctive action repertoire, moulded by an
instrumental rationale, have routinely framed alternative media prac-
tices, to the extent that the distinction between social and media activism
has been blurred. However, less attention has been paid to non-strategi-
cally determined initiatives. In his account of artistic and aesthetic input
as another form of alternative communication practice, Downing (2001)
breaks down the conventional categorizations of the means of communi-
cation, for example conceiving the body as a communication instrument
(in dance, street theatre, public art, etc.). What about the goals? Could
less deliberative modes of engagement in alternative media practice—
hobbies and features of play in general—also be included in our evalua-
tion of the democratization of communication?
Overall, reflection on alternative media practices and other active
forces within the space of communication which contribute to its democ-
ratization sets a demanding agenda for researching their application in
action-oriented terms. Issues regarding alternative media’s contexts and
situations, the spatial and activist implications of their practices, their
relation to many facets of the wider mediascape, and the remarkable
advances of people’s lived experience, are critical for conceptualizing an
advanced understanding of the democratization of communication and
its most profound processes.
120
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123
THE PROSPECTS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA IN SERBIA
LARISA RANKOVIĆ
Introduction
According to Dan Gillmor, founder of the Center for Citizen Media and
author of the book We the Media (Gillmor 2004), “the democratization of
the tools and the distribution of journalism—the idea that anyone can do
it” are defining features of the media for the times to come.
In Serbia, in the period of the Milošević regime, the media outside the
control of the government were considered “alternative” or “independ-
ent.” Their influence and circulation grew during the 1990s, and in the
period preceding the political changes in the country, they were among
the main pillars of the democratization processes. These media are now
trying to become commercially successful, with varied success. At the
same time, there are certain attempts, still modest, to strengthen the al-
ternative media scene in the country, primarily in the domain of online
media. Obstacles include the low level of Internet penetration, the early
phase of development of mainstream commercial media, and unsatisfac-
tory journalistic standards and professionalism. That is why I propose
that the media in Serbia are at present caught between their alternative
past and the future.
The media in Serbia had a rather specific history in the period from
1990 to the mid-2000s. With the rise of Slobodan Milošević’s regime at the
beginning of the 1990s, the media split into two groups: Those that sup-
ported it, and those that fervently opposed it. This situation intensified
during the last decade. Media outlets that were called “oppositional,”
“independent” or “alternative” tried, with varying skill and success, to
counterbalance the official propaganda. Their profiles were different,
and so were the interests and professional levels of those who owned or
managed them. There were Belgrade-based dailies established by well-
known journalists who had left their earlier jobs in search of freedom
of expression. There were also private radio stations and papers run by
businesspeople of different kinds in small towns, or local public radio
and TV stations in towns where the opposition was in power and whose
125
editorial policies were anti-regime. Finally, there were monthly publica-

tions targeted at arts or youth subcultures.
There follows now a brief account of their common features and prac-
tices as independent media outlets in the unusual context of the Serbian
political, social and economic situation in the 1990s. Attention will also be
paid to their development since the year 2000, when the old regime lost
power. The most emphasis will be put on the growth of B92, which has
evolved from the famous alternative, semi-legal radio station to a media
company with several branches of activities and a national frequency.
Through the example of B92, I intend to show how the role and position
of the media may change in a different political and social environment.
Additionally, since the vast majority of the previously alternative media
are now developing into commercial media, I will deal with the prospects
of strengthening Internet-based alternative media. My initial thesis is
that Serbian media at present operate in a period in between their alter-
native past and a (putative) alternative future for some of them.
Media under Milošević

In Serbia, during Milošević’s regime, media which were outside govern-
ment control were called “alternative” or “independent.” Their influence
and circulation had been rising throughout the previous decade, despite
obstacles and threats from the regime. In the period preceding the col-
lapse of his regime, they were considered among the main pillars of de-
mocratization. These media are now trying to become commercially suc-
cessful, with varied success. Those media which had been under the re-
gime’s control (mainly state-controlled) resembled bulletins of some con-
spiracy theory group more than real media outlets. The information they
presented was to preserve the regime and its interpretation of events.
These media outlets were clear examples of authoritarian propaganda,
which found its way into every segment and section of media content.
The former and the latter group of media had different interpretations
of events in every sector, above all in domestic affairs, but also in cultur-
al, social and international affairs. This is illustrated by an example from
1999, devoted to the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. An in-
dependent Serbian daily, Danas, published an article on 19 October 1999,
written by its correspondent from Bonn, with the title: “Decade without
the symbol of the Cold War” and the headline: “Germany and Europe cel-
ebrate ten years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.” A state-controlled daily,
Politika, ran a Reuters article on the following day. Its title was: “Berlin
126
L A R I S A R A N KOV I Ć : T H E P R O S P E C T S FOR THE DEVELOPMENT ...
still divided” and the heading: “Euphoria after the Berlin Wall’s demoli-
tion did not last long.” The article in Danas mainly focused on reminding
readers what had happened in Eastern Germany ten years earlier, how
the political changes had started with the resignation of East Germany’s
political leaders, how events had developed with citizens’ protests, and
how everything ended with a big street party in Berlin, followed by, a
year later, unification of Germany. The consequence for the city is the
“bubbling life” in this “grandiose capital.” The whole article has an op-
timistic tone; the only dissonant remark is made in the last sentence: in
redrawing the map of Europe, “on the altar of the new times there was
placed a sacrifice whose name was SFRY [i.e. Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia].” Politika published a text whose focus was life nowadays
in Berlin, specifically differences between its Eastern and Western parts,
as well as the discrepancy in political attitudes, habits and mentalities of
the people from the two parts of the city. This article pictures the situa-
tion as rather sombre: “sharp divisions poison the country . . . while the
distressing East-West gap floats beneath the surface” and “Germans in
the East and West weep over mutual deficiencies: Western arrogance
and Eastern ignorance.”
What is implied in these two articles? According to Danas, the end of
the Cold War meant an end of the old tensions; it brought unification to
some nations (like Germany) and liberation to others (former members
of the USSR), both mainly considered as positive processes. Ten years
later “Germany, Europe and the USA” celebrate the anniversary of the
event, previously divided Berlin is now a capital, prospering and living
life to the full. Politika, however, presents a different picture: what was
meant to be a new union for Germany and for Berlin, turned out to be,
in a different form, the continuation of the old division; ten years is too
short a period to overcome fifty years of separation, of different politi-
cal, economic and life styles. For some, this paper writes, the period when
the city of Berlin was divided was better, more comfortable, and safer.
One can also read the message: the end of the Cold War was not such a
positive event after all; many problems have outlived the Berlin Wall and
new ones have appeared; what Yugoslavia missed in the nineties may not
have been such a mistake—others have great difficulties in adjusting to
life in new circumstances, after the end of the bipolar world.
The Independent daily Danas published in October and November
2000 a dossier about the tribulations of the media profession in Serbia
during the 1990s. There are numerous examples of the regime’s media
propaganda, including the electoral campaign in August and Septem-
127
ber of 2000. For example, the main news program of the state TV Ra-
dio Television of Serbia (RTS) had been regularly quoting unnamed or
irrelevant sources, claiming that the popularity of Slobodan Milošević
was higher than that of opposition leaders and that his victory was the
expected outcome of upcoming elections. At the same time, there were
frequent reports about alleged achievements in rebuilding the country
after the 1999 bombing. Thus, the highway interchange near Belgrade
had been ceremonially put into use three times and broadcast by RTS
between 6 and 11 July 2000. In another report, the same medical ambu-
lance was first reconstructed and then newly built. Independent media
were at the same time providing reports on the devastating consequenc-
es of Milošević’s politics on the social, economic and political life and
international relations of the country.
Serbia’s Media Post-Milošević

After the fall of Milošević (5 October 2000), the situation changed com-
pletely. That development in part resembled the media changes in other
countries in transition (see, for example, Gross 2004; Gulyas 2003), and
partly was specific to Serbia. Things started to change literally from the
day after. As many B92 journalists and editors recall in Mašić’s (2006)
book, all other media started reporting the same news, in the same way.
One such example was Politika. On 7 October 2000, just two days after the
revolutionary events that brought the change of regime, Politika wrote
about the changes it had gone through in the meantime. This paper, the
oldest in the Balkans, established in 1904, had during the time of socialist
Yugoslavia (1945–1990) the reputation of being a rather liberal, high-qual-
ity daily. However, in the 1990s it became completely controlled by the
government. Yet on 6 October 2000, it was already an ardent supporter of
the new coalition. The title of the text is: “New Politika is the old one.”
Since yesterday, it has been difficult to buy Politika in kiosks. Yesterday, just after mid-
night, people gathered in front of the Politika palace waiting for it to be printed. They
waited in a queue to buy it. The same happened yesterday morning. They realized
that the new Politika is the old one, the one fighting for truthful information that was
announced in the first issues in 1904.
After the October 2000 events, all media supported the newly elected
DOS coalition, and with optimism covered both the reforms enacted and
the future of the country in general. However, this situation lasted for a
rather short period, just like the short-lived unity of the winning coalition
128
DOS. After its split, the media split their support between the groups (that
of Đinđić, then Serbian Prime Minister, or Koštunica, the president of
then existing Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). Certainly, there were ex-
ceptions—those who tried to remain objective. However, generally speak-
ing, after the negative experience from the period of the Milošević gov-
ernment and its control of the media, in the new circumstances the media
were overtly critical toward reforms initiated by the Đinđić government.
There are also fairly clear indications that some media were under the
influence of some political and even criminal circles whose agenda ran
contrary to the Đinđić government and its activities, which showed con-
siderable bravery in some areas (economic reform, cooperation with the
Hague Tribunal, and arresting Milošević). The new government, for its
part, did not accomplish much by way of regulating the chaotic inherited
media situation. Analyst Vladan Radosavljević wrote: “There is no doubt
that what characterises in the clearest way the state of the media sphere
in Serbia this year and last year is the fact that the authorities have con-
spicuously avoided conducting any clear media policy and that the me-
dia and the public have been tolerating the status quo” (Radosavljević
2002). In the meantime laws to regulate the media domain were passed,
among them the Law on Access to Information of Public Importance.
However, there are problems in their enforcement. The Report of the
IREX Media Sustainability Index for 2005 notes:
Media sectors will not be reformed overnight. This is the lesson from the Rose and
Orange Revolutions and the overthrow of President Milošević in Serbia. Expectations
were high that the new reformist governments would move rapidly on media law revi-
sions after the previous government had used or misused laws to keep independent
media down. Serbia, five years from the overthrow of Milošević, still has not gone
through a broadcast licensing process, and hundreds of outlets continue to operate in
limbo (Introduction, x–xi).
And concludes:
“Color” revolutions cannot be relied on to change the media landscape. While they cer-
tainly can bring positive changes, their main effect seems to be a temporary unleashing
of the media and media advocates. But deeper professionalization, legal and regulatory
reform, and development of media businesses, take dedicated specialists.
In the meantime, the process of licensing broadcasting media was

completed, but it caused a number of serious controversies concerning
decisions of the agency in charge. Additionally, the Government decided
to pass changes to the Information Law, which would give it more power
129
to regulate the media sphere. The President of Serbia, however, refused

to sign this Law.
Insiders’ reactions were even more critical.
Serbian journalists interviewed in 2005, using almost the same words as in the 2003
research, and with lots of negative emotions, described the situation in the media as
bad, catastrophic, degraded, humiliated, and never worse. Burdened by an appalling
financial situation and unsatisfactory social status, our respondents are mainly seem-
ingly indifferent, but in essence view all perceived negative media trends in transitional
Serbia with indignation.
This quotation is just part of the assessment of the situation regarding

media and journalists in Serbia, taken from the study Ethics and Jour-
nalism in Southeastern Europe, initiated by the Media Center (2005) in
Belgrade, in cooperation with similar institutions in the region and the
South-East European Network for the Professionalization of the Media
(SEENP).
In the post-2000 period in Serbia, tabloid newspapers spread rapid-
ly. Nacional, the first political tabloid in Serbia, was banned during the
State of Emergency, which was introduced after the assassination of
Prime Minister Đinđić in 2003. The explanation given was that the paper
“disrespected information regulations during the State of Emergency,
and suspicions that its contributors or publishers were in contact with
the criminals” (Politika, 20 March 2003). Nevertheless, since the State of
Emergency, numerous new tabloids have emerged, some of them with a
large circulation. Such papers mainly speak to the losers from the tran-
sition, those who are dissatisfied and disappointed. Their content is polit-
ical, but presented in a very superficial way, aimed at dramatizing social
and political events. Their rhetoric is aggressive, and they use language
and photographs that go beyond public decency. An IREX (2005) report
assessed the situation in Serbia in this regard in 2005 as compared to
2004:
The tabloidization of the media, considered by the Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
panel in 2004 to be the most distressing phenomenon of that year, may be even worse
in 2005, with growing use of intolerant and racially abusive content. Tabloids are heav-
ily engaged not only in sensationalist, unfair, and unbalanced reporting, but also in
actively and knowingly fabricating lurid political scandals, character assassinations, and
witch hunts against selected individuals.
One well-known columnist wrote (Ivan Torov, Politika, 25 January 2004)

that the “new media system” in Serbia is being created, either in a chaot-
130
ic way or with the support of various informal, yet very powerful groups.
The diversity and the content of such a system resemble more a jungle
than a democratic mechanism to inform, analyze, investigate, and keep
watch over the government. This, however, is not entirely surprising: “If
it is natural that politicians here . . . simulate a State, it is even more
natural that numerous media imitate democracy, journalistic freedom,
ethics, professionalism, facts and truth, in a way that, mildly speaking,
provokes the feeling of—disgust.” This analyst believes that, in a society
where catharsis has failed, it is almost normal that there are no social
or political actors to set up precise, democratic rules of the game in all
sectors, including the media. Only in that way, would it be possible, Torov
writes, to avoid the situation that developed after the 5 October 2000 and
especially after the assassination of Zoran Đinđić, in which media looked
like a gladiators’ circus.
As far as readership of the press is concerned, according to data from
a Strategic Marketing poll from late 2005, only a little more than 40 per-
cent of people in Serbia read a daily paper. Those who do not, say that
the reason is that they are not interested. The economy-oriented weekly
Ekonomist wrote on 6 November 2006 that there are between 570 and
620 thousand copies of dailies, weeklies and magazines sold in Serbia
per day. To compare: In Croatia, whose population is half the size, 1–1.2
million copies are sold daily.
Alternative Media: Definitions

There have been numerous attempts to define the scope that defines
alternative media and to give at least an approximate definition of them.
Different authors usually agree that there is a diverse and sometimes
even chaotic range of voices that speak in alternative sites, and that
therefore it is difficult to organize alternative media into a recogniza-
ble or orderly structure. It is also said, and sounds convincing, that it is
important to look at the national and political context of each country
where the media is produced.
In an endeavor to be more precise, it is claimed that the distinctiveness
of alternative media could lie in the radical nature of their opinions, their
opposition to mainstream beliefs, or the originality of their content.
Atton (2001) tries to make clear the distinction between the scope of
“radical” and “alternative” media and looks for a model “that privileges
the transformatory potential of the media as reflexive instruments of
communication practices in social networks,” in other words “there is a
131
focus on process and relation.” As for the distinction between the “alter-
native” and “radical”:
Whilst “radical” encourages a definition that is primarily concerned with (often revolu-
tionary) social change (and “radical” the same for a specific period of English history),
“alternative” offers a much looser purchase. Custom and practice within alternative
media of the past decade appears to have settled on “alternative” as the preferred
term. As a blanket term its strength lies in that it can encompass far more than radical,
or “social change publishing” can; it can also include alternative lifestyle magazines, an
extremely diverse range of zine publishing and the small presses of poetry and fiction
publishers. To deploy “alternative” as an analytical term, however, might afford us little
more specificity than saying “non-mainstream.” Some commentators appear to confuse
the two terms (Atton 2001, 9–10).
There have been numerous discussions during the last decade in Ser-
bia on what “independent journalism” actually is and whether such a
category exists at all, let alone in Serbia. Those who clearly supported
the regime’s policies denied that there were any independent media,
since the media outside of state control were mainly supported by for-
eign foundations. However, even those in oppositional media circles had
problems defining their real profile.
One possible answer was proposed by Rade Veljanovski, the Danas
editor (Sekulić 1997), saying that for him “the deciding criteria . . . of inde-
pendent journalism are the civilized postulates of the profession, which
in this case means that a distinction must be made between victims and
criminals regardless of their ethnic affiliation; an assessment must be
made as to who is right regardless of the political party involved.” This is
quite obviously a definition created within concrete circumstances, and
he also acknowledged that this concept is quite different in comparison
with other parts of the world where “things have been running smoothly
for decades.”
B92 and its Development

since 2000
Radio B92, established as a youth radio station in Belgrade in 1989, was
one of the most prominent alternative media in Serbia throughout the
succeeding decade. Funded mainly by international foundations, and op-
erating in the repressive political environment of the Slobodan Milošević
government, it was a reliable source of information for those who could
132
listen to it. During the first several years, they were few—just inhabitants
of Belgrade city center, who could get a weak signal from the B92 anten-
na. In the second half of the 1990s, they created a network of independent
local radio stations across Serbia (ANEM). These stations broadcast the
main news programs produced by B92, alongside their own programs.
In the periods (1999 and 2000) when B92 was closed by the regime, it still
made news programs for these stations. Its news program was the most
notable part of B92 for those in small towns and villages who did not
have any other reliable source of information. These programs are also
what earned B92 its reputation and prizes in professional circles and
internationally. These news programs were not only the facts and opin-
ions that could not be heard in regime-controlled media, but also a quest
to build a society and polity different from the one created in Serbia
after the bloody dissolution of former socialist Yugoslavia. B92 news pro-
grams had a mission, and in that sense, they were partisan. Changing
the Milošević government was the precondition for other changes: aban-
doning a politics which was creating military conflicts, ethnic cleansing
and war crimes, spreading nationalistic feelings, hate speech and regime
control of most of the economy and the media. In addition, B92 called for
adhesion to the European Union, reconciliation with the former Yugo-
slav republics, and economic and social renewal. In its work, B92 was
alternative in other ways as well: by the quite radical choice of mainly
underground music, events it covered in the fringe cultural scene, and
personalities and lifestyles it promoted. In sum, all segments of the B92
programming presented a coherent alternative profile different from
that of all other radio stations. As Collin (2001, 22–28) described it: “They
were going for total social pluralism, not simply democracy.”
Collin put his attempt to define the status of B92 during the 1990s in an
international perspective:
At its inception, B92 was neither a public-service broadcaster in the BBC tradition nor
a commercial radio driven by financial imperatives. Instead it was closer to non-profit
community radio stations like those clustered around America’s Pacifica foundation, a
coalition which grew out of left-wing, pacifist currents in California in the forties with a
remit to defend human rights and oppose discrimination, or to the ultra-radical social-
ist/surrealist “free radio” stations of Italy in the seventies.
Milivoje Čalija, now head of the marketing department, says in the in-
terview for the book: “After 5 October, there was some sort of disorienta-
tion in the whole society.” He explains (Mašić 2006, 490–522):
133
The system in which everything had been clear was broken. In it, there had been an
evil man that everybody was fighting against, and there were we, some sort of resist-
ance movement. When Milošević was overthrown, many people were confused as
to what they should have been doing. . . . As a listener, I saw B92 as a social move-
ment that had had a goal to promote general values, not only to generate energy for a
change of regime. A moment such as 5 October is something I had been waiting for,
and the period after that, the one in which we have had to prove that we were some-
thing more than a movement.
Saša Mirković, one of the leading people in the current B92 system
(which now also has a TV channel, a very successful web site, and a pub-
lishing company), says: “B92 is no longer on the margins. It is now grow-
ing into a serious system. Like in football. If you managed to grow from
a small third league player into a first league player and compete for a
leading position, why would you leave that team?”
However, not everybody is happy with such a vision. Some people left
the operation because of that, others because they had better options,
or were dissatisfied with some other aspect of B92’s functioning. In the
audience, there are many who think that B92 somehow betrayed its mis-
sion and became too commercial. Some still see it as a sort of a leader in
an alternative movement. Others think it should definitely keep its “non-
mainstream approach” to topics. There are media professionals who
believe it should have created several programs with diverse programs
and profiles. Teofil Pančić wrote (Vreme, No. 577, 2001) that B92 used to
be “something much more and broader than a simple informational and
political injection/alternative: it was a catalyst of a different, in a high-
er sense fundamentally ‘oppositional’ lifestyle.” What happened when
the transition started? “You can’t say B92 ceased to be what it was, but
the (sub)culturally more prominent non-conformist contents are being
pushed back into the more hidden programming ‘pockets,’ often evening
and night slots, while the daytime is being silently dominated by the com-
pletely unlistenable pseudo-pop and quasi-R&B meow you already have
a shovelful-till-you-puke on endless other colourless DJ-station-lets of the
local ether.”
Aside from political pressures that create the need to establish alter-
native media voices, nowadays corporate businesses and their influence
on the media are what, in developed countries, alternative media (and
alternative movements) try to counterbalance. In Serbia, the process of
forming the operating framework for such media (completing the proc-
ess of privatization, distributing license fees, forming international ad-
vertising agencies and their operations with the media companies at an
134
advanced level) is still underway. Thus, neither the media professionals

nor the public have yet fully understood the setbacks of this breed of
media functioning.
Since the general situation in Serbian media will not improve that fast,
it is worth thinking about new ways of reporting. Or about “new” media.
In recent years, the largest growth of alternative media has been online.
According to Dan Gillmor, considered one of the most influential tech-
nology journalists and new media advocates, “the democratization of the
tools and the distribution of journalism—the idea that anyone can do it,”
could be a defining feature of the media for the time to come. This kind
of media is still rare in Serbia, as a real Internet presence by print and
broadcasting media is still underdeveloped. In addition, the percentage
of citizens with Internet access is low—approximately 25 percent, accord-
ing to various surveys.
Globally, at a time of continuous strengthening of alternative online
media, traditional and commercial media of all types cannot forego pre-
senting their content on the Internet in increasingly efficient, effective
and innovative ways, increasingly too creating content and services ex-
clusively for the Internet. They are experimenting more and more with
the integration of user-created content, inviting readers to contribute
their own eye-witness reports or footage, and using opportunities for in-
teractivity through blogs, portals and forums. Many of those services
are created for their own purposes, but through and in addition to these
platforms, connections to alternative media sites, blogs and services are
also multiplying.
One of the interviewees in Talasanje Srbije (Waving Serbia) (Mašić
2006, 531–532), put it this way, explaining his relation to B92 in the post-
2000 period: “My B92 has moved to the Internet. In the past, we used to
gather with friends and discuss the news, and now it is sufficient to click
and see diverse comments in online news. . . . The future of B92 has al-
ready started, and radio is not yet aware of that.”
However, the case of the B92 Internet presence is not representative of
the general situation in the media. This media outlet has the most visited
web site in Serbia (a hundred thousand visitors a day on average) and
among the highest visit rates in the Balkans. Other media are far behind
B92 in the attention they pay to their web presence.
135
Alternative Internet News

Opportunities in Serbia
Concerning alternative web media in Serbia, it would be useful to devel-

op in the near future interestingly presented content related to culture,
environment, local communities, marginal groups, new technologies and
anything in which people are interested, but which is underrepresented
in traditional and commercial media. While there are individual blog-
gers who deal in a skilled and attractive way with social and political is-
sues, media, IT, and other buzz topics dominant in the alternative media
around the world, it is still impossible to speak of any well-known alter-
native media, as such, in Serbia. Web sites that provide a constant flow
of information (related to specific topics or of general type) are usually
projects of youth groups or NGOs that either fail to promote themselves
or are short-lived. However, it seems that recently there is a growing in-
terest in these kinds of media and in Internet presence overall, which
promises possible changes in the near future. In addition, it was expected
that by 2007 Internet penetration would rise by about 20 percent, which
is a necessary precondition for the rising influence of online media.
This would offer an opportunity to present views and information that
are missing in the mainstream and commercial media. Through the new
media, which are easier to establish and run than print and broadcast-
ing media and require relatively little start-up capital, it would be possi-
ble to promote other concepts of community, responsibility, professional
ethics, and journalistic styles. In these new media, journalists and editors
could be freer to report critically and ethically and explore alternative
angles than they are in the big media outlets, burdened as those are by
political and financial debts, loyalties and investments. The new media
endeavours could prove a useful impulse for all branches of the media,
the body politic and the public itself.
References
Atton, Chris. 2001. Approaching Alternative Media: Theory and Methodology.
Our Media, Not Theirs. <http://www.ourmedianet.org/papers/om2001/Atton.
om2001.pdf> (23 October 2007).
Collin, Matthew. 2001. Guerrilla Radio: Rock’n’Roll Radio and Serbia’s Under-
ground Resistance. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Gillmor, Dan. 2004. We the Media. O’Reilly Media. <http://www.oreilly.com/cata-
log/wemedia/book/index.csp> (23 October 2007).
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Gross, Peter. 2004. Between Reality and Dream: Eastern European Media Transi-
tion, Transformation, Consolidation, and Integration. East European Politics
and Societies 18 (1): 110–131.
Gulyas, Agnes. 2003. Print Media in Post-Communist East Central Europe. Euro-
pean Journal of Communication 18 (1): 81–106.
IREX (International Research & Education Board). 2005. Media Sustainability
Index. Washington, D.C.: International Research & Education Board.
Mašić, Dušan. 2006. Talasanje Srbije – Knjiga o radiju B92 (Waving Serbia—Book
on Radio B92). Belgrade: Samizdat B92.
Media Center. 2005. Ethics and Journalism in Southeastern Europe. Belgrade:
Media Center.
Radosavljević, Vladan. 2002. Pressure on Media in Serbia: Between Black and
White. Southeast European Media Journal. <http://mediaonline.ba/en/?ID=194>
(1 October 2008).
Sekulić, Isidora. 1997. “Media Resistance Movement of the 1990s” (an interview
with Rade Veljanovski, the editor of the daily Danas), Media – Pravo na Sliku i
Reč (Media—The right to Pictures and Words) (bilingual monthly), No. 27, Bel-
grade, December.
137
VIDEO ACTIVIST CITIZENSHIP &
THE UNDERCURRENTS MEDIA PROJECT:
A BRITISH CASE STUDY IN ALTERNATIVE MEDIA
RUTH HERITAGE
Introduction
Undercurrents, on the back covers of their self-produced video maga-
zines, let their audience know the agenda: “Undercurrents is shot on do-
mestic camcorders, mostly by campaigners themselves. . . . If you have a
news story you want others to hear about, grab a camcorder, film it, and
send the footage to Undercurrents” (Undercurrents 5 1996).
Throughout the 1990s, Undercurrents directly requested that their audi-
ence/consumers provide content for inclusion in future video magazines.
This was both a call to video action for the campaigning community and
an offer of space to publicise their cause, the potential of gaining a place
on Undercurrents’ news agenda and rolling out to fellow campaigners
and activists. Undercurrents’ users or audience created the content for
the videos: they set the direct action news (non-)agenda by grabbing a
camera and highlighting the protests on their doorstep.
Brecht, writing in the 1920s about radio, then the most accessible non-
print communications network, tells us that it should become a commu-
nication rather than distribution system: it should make the audience
“not only hear but speak,” connected rather than isolated (Brecht 2001,
42; Downing 1995, 241), with “exchange possible.” Furthermore, the audi-
ence must instruct rather than only be instructed: this will enable a new
“social order” (Brecht 2001, 42–45). The future of public communications
should be dialogic, run on multi-channels, enabling an interaction be-
tween the listener and technologies. Not only that, but the listener/citi-
zen should join a network of connected participants through discussion
in the public sphere.
Brecht’s idea of a future communication system turns the top-down
media distribution system (producer to audience) into two-way produc-
tion traffic. Seventy years on, Downing suggests active audiences are
“one step away from being media creators and producers themselves”
(Downing 1995, 241). He proposes that Brecht outlines alternative media,
139
“the creation of horizontal linkages for the public’s own communications

network, to assist in its empowerment,” in contrast to the top down, verti-
cal systems of mainstream media (Downing 1995, 241).
This chapter explores Undercurrents’ 1990s video magazines as an
alternative media product and production, exploring their use of video
as a democratic technology and their claim—through intersection with
broadcast TV—of an active audience as media citizens, creators and pro-
ducers. In this chapter I discuss the question of how the Undercurrents’
video project modifies, challenges, or expands currently conventional
notions of mediated activist citizenship. The objective is to inform cur-
rent debates concerning user-generated content by exploring the inter-
section between the citizen action of Undercurrents’ political and media
agenda, and the concurrent participatory media spaces offered in the
mainstream. I outline the Undercurrents project and its relationship with
Castells’ concept of network society, placing Undercurrents’ emergence
prior to the shift in mainstream media towards using user-generated
content/citizen reportage. I explore how Undercurrents negotiated UK
broadcast TV shows Video Nation and Crimewatch in the 1990s as an
alternative public sphere, through the use of documentary, actuality,
and reality TV motifs. I note how this establishes Undercurrents’ users as
citizens, with shared collective identities and boundaries, seeking ideo-
logical affinity. I conclude by observing the potential limitations of such
citizenship through a discussion of footage sales and activist screenings.
However, I will firstly sketch out Undercurrents’ relationship with the
user-generated content debate.
The Rise of User-Generated Content

The request for moving-image user-generated content (UGC) has recent-
ly become a familiar appeal throughout the UK’s mainstream broadcast
television. Mainly telecommunications based, opportunities for techno-
logically equipped members of the general public to contribute have
spread across the media milieu. Furthermore, major broadcasters can
fulfill the public-service broadcast remit of citizen inclusion. While there
is not space here to fully expand these links to alternative media, it must
be noted that this has provoked debate in academic and public arenas
around democratic potential and participation through citizen journal-
ism/reportage. Coyer, Dowmunt, and Fountain (2008) note that, while the
use of the word “access” to signify active participation had mainly been
dropped from broadcast media discourse, UGC has widely replaced it.
140
R U T H H E R I TAG E : V I D E O A C T I V I S T C I T I Z E N S H I P & THE U N D E R C U R R E N T S M E D I A P R O J E C T ...
The current UGC debate expresses concerns about the democratiza-

tion of the media, citizens’ unequal access to technology and training (or
the digital divide), and the potential narrowing of the distinction between
the media professional and the audience. Academic debate1 has also
continued around citizen participation and shifts in citizen/consumer
identity in the mass media marketplace related to new forms of real-
ity TV and format-based documentary, which have spread through the
schedules since the early 1990s. These utilised affordable and portable
media technology2 to bring access, actuality/reality, or docusoap foot-
age to documentary. Reality TV as an encompassing term has unstable
borders: below I focus on both the audience-as-producer Video Nation,
and the half-hour format, emergency service based, family-oriented pro-
grammes (Hill 2000) “characterised by camcorder, surveillance, or ob-
servational actuality footage” (Dovey 2000, 80), seeking high ratings in
prime-time slots (Winston 1998, 154–155).
Undercurrents as a text is used here to contrast this type of main-
stream/broadcast media citizen participation with the domain of alter-
native media, or media outside the mainstream: the use of non-profes-
sional or audience-created footage as a news and media resource. As
noted by Brecht and Downing, active, participatory audiences are also
media creators: Undercurrents’ plea for media content allows us to ex-
amine UGC prior to widespread promotion across mainstream media.
I now turn to Undercurrents’ relationship with Castells’ concept of net-
work society.
Undercurrents’ Alternative Media Project

and Castells’ Network Society
The Undercurrents video project was formed in 1993 by “a couple of frus-

trated TV producers and a handful of environmental activists.”3 Under-
currents produced a series of 10 video magazines between 1994 and 1999.
The compilations focused on the (mainly UK) direct action movement
of that period. They drew initially from raw footage filmed “mostly by
campaigners themselves” (Undercurrents 2 1994) and edited into films
by campaigners working collectively and being trained alongside ex-me-
1
Including Dovey (2000), Corner (1996), Bruzzi (2000), Palmer (2003), Hill (2000), Kilborn
and Izod (1997) and Izod, Kilborn, and Hibberd (2000).
2
Mirroring the neo-liberal shift towards deregulation of broadcast media.
3
<http://www.Undercurrents.org/history/index.htm>.
141
dia professionals (O’Connor 2005). Later in the series, some short films
were sent by activists/collectives to Undercurrents as finished pieces and
included in the finished videos. The videos were described by Time Out in
1995 as “the news you don’t see on the news.”4
Atton, in Alternative Media, aligns Undercurrents with the “use of al-
ternative media by new social movements, in particular by the various
alliances and pressure groups that comprise the contemporary, radical
environmentalist movement in the Britain of the 1990’s” (Atton 2002, 80).
Undercurrents users identified the project as video activism; their media
professionalism was deployed in radical environmentalist action. Un-
dercurrents provided training, archiving, and distribution: it was run as
a media organization. Grassroots action was documented, then edited
into programmes with a more “professional” or recognised framework
of documentary or news—albeit with an activist agenda—before distri-
bution. Atton’s view can be extended: Undercurrents was both a social
movement and an alternative media project.
Environmental campaigning and direct action provided the content
for the work of Undercurrents. Undercurrents’ search for content, noted
above, framed UGC within 1990s environmental and direct action, be-
fore the “war on terror,” and just at the outset of the alter-globalisation5
movement’s Internet use for mobilization in the late 1990s. 1999 saw both
the J18 global demonstrations and the WTO demonstration in Seattle.6
Downing (2003b, 243) has noted these as the starting point for the Inde-
pendent Media Centre (Indymedia) movement of activist reportage, and
also as crucial for the use of the Internet as an organisational tool for ac-
tion. This shift towards Internet communications enabled the practical
communication of local issues to a global forum.
Events such as the WTO demonstrations in Seattle and the global dem-
onstrations on 18 June 1999 (J18) were reported through both the main-
stream and the alternative press, and further transmitted into the public
imaginary through their appearance on television screens. Deluca and
Peeples place the media, specifically television, as part of the project of
4
<http://www.Undercurrents.org/history/index.htm>.
5
“Anti-globalization” is a contested term. Jordan and Taylor (2004) suggest that the ag-
glomeration of movements and groups under the umbrella anti-globalization are not
against all forms of globalization; it is in fact anti- a globalization-complex of ideology,
culture, imperialism, economics, and technology.
6
The J18 London protest (which took over the City of London, marking the Köln G8
(Group of Eight)) has been documented as a pivotal point by the UK activist communi-
ty, a political shift “from ‘anti-roads’ to ‘anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation’” (Anony-
mous 2004, 13): a shift from local to global protest agendas.
142
citizen action: “global democratisation and fair trade activists recognise

the TV screen as the contemporary shape of the public sphere, and the
image event designed for mass media dissemination as an important
contemporary form of citizen participation” (Deluca and Peeples 2002,
126–127).
By creating image events, intentionally organized to gain coverage in
the public sphere—whether understood as “carnival,” “protest,” or “bat-
tle”—the activists are wresting the public gaze away from the media
spotlight on summit meetings onto the diversity of movements operat-
ing under the banner of global resistance. Similarly, in Power of Identity
Castells states that:
Although much of the movement relies on grassroots organisation, environmental action
works on the basis of media events. By creating events that call media attention, envi-
ronmentalists are able to reach a much broader audience than their direct constituency
(Castells 1997, 128).
Recognition of the media as a major force in dissemination of informa-

tion enables the inclusion of both the activists present at the sites of pro-
test, and those not directly participating in them. This, according to Delu-
ca and Peeples, further allows the “employ[ment of] consequent publicity
as a social medium for forming public opinion and holding corporations
and states accountable” (Deluca and Peeples 2002, 134). The image event
is a grassroots production on the world stage, claiming global publicity
for an anti-neo-liberal agenda. This holds inherent contradictions, which
I address below.
For the London J18, for example, out of twelve organised groups, seven
were directly focused on communication (Anonymous 2004, 13). Castells
offers useful comments here. Firstly, a network society, he suggests, is
characterized by: “Globalisation, capitalist restructuring, organisational
networking, the culture of real virtuality, and the primacy of technology
for the sake of technology, the key features of social structure in the In-
formation Age” (Castells 1997, 358).
The “culture of real virtuality” became an ongoing trans-national
space for alter-globalization resistance. Organizational networking built
an alter-globalization campaign. There is, however, a technological and
agenda paradox central to J18’s intersection with Castells’ idea of net-
work society. He explores environmentalism as an identity project, incor-
porating action, stating that it,
[e]merge[s] from communal resistance rather than the reconstruction of civil society,
because the crisis of these institutions, and the emergence of resistance identities,
143
originate precisely from the new characteristics of the network society that undermine
the former and induce the latter (Castells 1997, 358).
Castells’ shift from late modernity’s civil society, which he represents

through Gramscian notions of apparatuses of the state, institutions, sub-
altern opposition to hegemony, to a network society, suggests how resist-
ance and action are reconstituted through the incorporation of these
“new characteristics.” The J18 mobilization engaged with the network
society in order to communicate protest image-events:
For the first time, reports of global events were transmitted over the internet. Street
reporters on bikes and motorbikes roved the City, taking footage and couriering it back
to be put straight out on the net, using innovative software that later became the back-
bone of the Indymedia network (Anonymous 2004, 15).
Taking into consideration the position argued by Deluca and Peeples,

this is a form of networked, active citizen participation that reaches Cas-
tells’ “wider constituency”—a global use of video-activism technologies to
report resistance.
As we have seen, mainstream media groups now encourage and in-
corporate audiences’—or the general public’s—images/footage into their
news stories. However, there is a major gap between the rhetoric of news
producers and their end use of the material, whose saleability correlates
to news values in a competitive marketplace. Curran and Seaton state
that:
News values are becoming more sensationalised, local, and personal. They are becom-
ing less about news—in the sense of things that citizens in a democracy need to know
to exercise informed choices, and more about scandals and attracting audience atten-
tion (Curran and Seaton 2003, 317).
Thus, while communications structures are global, they frequently fo-

cus on personalized, sensationalized local stories. This is as applicable
to the use of UCG in mainstream news features as it is to the use of the
political action stories or image-events I am exploring here. Sensational
or personal news frameworks arguably redefine how—through medium
and message—citizens make “informed choices” in a democracy. Under-
currents, through both news values and a longer format, personalized
and localized documentary narrative structures, and negotiated new
informed choices. It is important to consider Undercurrents’ place here
prior to the global “explosion” of video-activism and the “alter-globali-
zation” movement. I argue that the small-scale image-events document-
ed through the Undercurrents’ project offered a media-skills training
144
ground for activist citizens as well as a distribution platform for their

discourse of community activism. Let me turn now, however, to explore
how citizenship was transferred to Undercurrents from Video Nation.
Video Nation’s Documentary Citizens:

Participation in the Media Public Sphere
Dahlgren delineates the public sphere as: “the various dimensions of

citizenship—civic, political, and social—without which citizens are ham-
pered in their membership and potential participation.” Civil society, an
“institutionalised lifeworld,” becomes the setting for interaction and dis-
cussion between, and mobilisation of citizens (Dahlgren 1995, 151). Hab-
ermas posits mass media as one such institutional form due to “the scale
of modern society.” However, the real locus of the public sphere is “the
active reasoning of the public,” which is eroded through the commercial
logic and reach of mass media (Dahlgren 1995, 7, 8). Dahlgren further
suggests that the concept of citizen should be developed “as an identity-
in-process forged out of sets of contradictory social and discursive forc-
es” (Dahlgren 1995, 122). He outlines citizenship as inclusion in or mem-
bership of a community (Dahlgren 1995, 136). However, the concept of
modern community and the narratives of citizenship are problematized
through these contradictory forces, suggesting pluralized notions of citi-
zenship. He observes that “citizenship must also be seen as a feature of
culture, operative as a dimension of individual and collective identity”
(Dahlgren 1995, 135): alone or in a group, participation in both political
and cultural public spheres is a key component in citizenship.
John Grierson, the documentarist, linked citizenship to the documen-
tary movement, in a political landscape reshaped through the Second
World War. When suggesting that democracy’s instability and potential
for collapse were due to citizens’ inability to suitably employ democracy
as a system, he suggested that stability could be shored up through the
deployment of the mass media for citizenship education (Grierson 1946,
in Chanan 2000, 221). Here, the democratic state would provide an um-
brella for civil society, in which the citizen could be formed or moulded
into an active agent. An educational social project directed at developing
a unifying, state-based citizenship is linked with documentary practice
historically, and through Grierson as a documentarist.
However, today the commercial logic of the mass media is in the proc-
ess of reformulating citizenship identities. The rise of a new consumerist
mentality is directly involved. The programmes that we see on TV and on
145
the computer screen are increasingly made with this changing concep-
tion of “the citizen-consumer” in mind, problematic in terms of the BBC’s
public service tradition. Video Nation was developed and commissioned
in 1992 from the BBC’s Community Programme Unit, and first broadcast
in 1994.7 It is currently absorbed into the BBC website8 and still runs as a
participatory strand, with core pages and peripheral links to geographi-
cal locations, for example BBC Manchester, or theme-based links such as
birth. It provides “(relatively) cheap and copyright-free video content ide-
al for broadband to demonstrate its potential” (Carpentier 2003, 428).
While the broadcast Video Nation worked under a PSB remit rather
than as grassroots media, it correlates with Carpentier’s notion of com-
munity media: it “emphasised the role that it can play in a democratic soci-
ety by offering citizens and communities the tools for self-representation
and participation” (Carpentier 2003, 426),9 although unlike community
media, it was mainly defined by content rather than organisational ac-
cess. Constituting short, self-filmed sequences, it offers an intimate por-
trayal of what series producer Rose notes as a “wide range of views, atti-
tudes and lifestyles” (Rose 2000, 177). Often filmed “in the intimate space of
the home” (Rose 2000, 176), the project presents citizens with a method of
self-representation at the crossroads of public and private. Video Nation
posits itself as a mediated reflection of the culture through the subjective
story-telling and mundane daily rituals of UK society. It is an educational,
sense-making tool for an audience watching people like themselves.
This project needs to be framed within the institutional structures of
the BBC. Producers scouted for the relevant diversity in societal groups
represented (Carpentier 2003, 436); they trained contributors, guided
content, and limited editing collaboration (Rose 2000, 175); they also
needed to work within a “cost-effective” BBC climate (Palmer 1998, 165).
Through the documentary/diary form, Video Nation’s producers offered
the audience a national, yet individual, self-representation and identity
project, in which they could engage as consumers or participants and,
provided they fit the producer’s criteria, become part of an educational
citizenship project.
7
Evolving from Video Diaries to Video Nation, hour-long programmes around topics
such as money, and Video Nation Shorts, brief individual viewpoints. Rose cites the
Mass-Observation project, started in 1937 by Jennings, Harrison, and Madge, as an
anthropological documentary influence on the Video Nation project (Rose 2000, 175).
8
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation>.
9
He takes this from Downing et al. (2000), Fraser and Restrepo (2000), Gumucio (2001),
Rodríguez (2001).
146
Undercurrents Citizens as
a Video Nation: “The Hill”
Undercurrents’ “The Hill” (Undercurrents 2 1994) documented the public
and activist campaign to stop a bypass being built through Solsbury Hill.
It is constructed as a traditional (although notably subjective) documen-
tary, with address to camera from a range of participants, a narrative
arc telling the story of the campaign, and conventional shot-framing and
editing techniques. However, the film also borrows from the Video Dia-
ries/Nation format. The first shot shows a girl in her late teens/early 20’s,
subtitled with her name, Tania de la Croix. Bundled up in a sleeping bag,
in a tight, dark space, she tells the audience that she is an ex-inhabitant
of the houses due to be demolished to make way for the bypass. She gives
the audience a straight-to-camera synchronic personal insight into and
introduction to the campaign: “I had a treehouse in some trees, that I
built when I was about 12, it was falling to bits, I put a squatting notice up
and sat in my trees . . . and said ‘I’m squatting my trees’.” In an additional
moment she relays: “I never thought I’d be the sort of person to break the
law” (Undercurrents 2 1994).
Here we see a political film utilizing the domestic, personal format of
a diary. Palmer suggests that documentary’s legitimizing discourses and
authoring of order are imported into the personal through Video Diaries,
through the amateur’s representation of the real (Palmer 2003, 168). Fur-
thermore, this can be linked to Grierson’s vision of documentary’s con-
tribution to the stabilization of democracy. Through the use of Tania’s
straight-to-camera personal insight in the diary format, the audience
gains a personal “feel” that makes the political, law-defying, and instruc-
tional elements of the film more immediate. Tania is framed within docu-
mentary’s “discourse of sobriety”10 (Nichols 1991, 4): through utilizing this
mainstream media trope, her politicized activist identity and citizenship
are legitimized as both self-representation and mediated education.
The “Making of Undercurrents”

as an Alternative Public Sphere
Atton comments that “the alternative public sphere treats the constitu-
encies they serve and inform (and in turn are informed by) as insepara-
ble” (Atton 2002, 35). Dahlgren states that “self-conscious . . . activist ele-
ments . . . straddle the boundary between culture and politics. . . . We can
10
According to Nichols, “discourses of sobriety are sobering because they regard their
relation to the real as direct, immediate, transparent. Through them power exerts it-
self” (Nichols 1991, 4).
147
see social movements in part as constituting alternative public spheres”

(Dahlgren 1995, 154). As I have shown, Undercurrents constitutes both
an alternative media and a video activism movement: their resistance
is legitimized and forms part of an educational project through docu-
mentary work such as “The Hill.” This use of the intimate diary format
further suggests that the audience may be impelled to act in their own
communities: Tania is bedded down on screen awaiting eviction, and also
embedded as a native reporter.
In The Video Activist Handbook, author, video activist, and co-founder
of Undercurrents, Thomas Harding, notes the correlation between fall-
ing technology prices and the rise of video activism, through the three
areas of media process: production, text, and distribution. Harding—al-
though writing from a subjective, activist position—identifies a shift in
affordable media technology towards a domestic market that mirrors
the shift towards neo-liberal deregulation (Harding 1997, 9–10). As noted,
this is reflected in current broadcast TV’s trend towards UGC utilisation.
The activist community—for example, during the J18 mobilization—used
the affordable technology to create global protest networks. Undercur-
rents’ social movement media project creates a discursive space, through
which citizens participate in a wider network of social movements as
part of an alternative pulic sphere, both utilizing new technologies and
resisting neo-liberal developments.
Undercurrents 6 closes with a 7-minute film entitled “Making of Under-
currents,” a behind-the-scenes look at the production processes behind
Undercurrents 4 from paper edit to the finished product on videocas-
sette. Sequence two is introduced by an editor in front of his suite, who
announces: “the first day of the first edit of Undercurrents 4.” The film
then shows a shot of the edit screen, on which we see an interviewer and
his subject.11 The sound is cross-faded, and the subject states: “. . . need
people like you in the Labour Party.”
The interviewer then replies direct to the camera, microphone in hand:
“I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, there, that Labour’s behind us.
And I think that we’ve taken this a stage on, and Labour have a lot of
catching up to do.”
Cut to: The interviewer is seated on a couch in a home environment
for a one-shot, to-camera interview: “I might be making a little film for
Undercurrents, but really this is step one in my plan for world domina-
tion and the eco-friendly love revolution” (Undercurrents 6 1996).
11
The footage comes from “Look chum!,” by-line: “an activist’s view of the Labour Party
conference” (Undercurrents 4 1995).
148
The interviewer, in acknowledging his filmmaking in the wider frame

of his actions, tells the audience—albeit behind a sense of irony and a
mixture of both self-deprecation and big plans—that he sees his partici-
pation in the Undercurrents project as a method for him to reach his goal
of “eco-friendly love revolution,” an engagement with the global political
goals of an ecological agenda: both citizen interaction and the opening
of a political discussion. While the interview in itself contains an engage-
ment with national (UK) politics through comment on the Labour Party,
this is juxtaposed through this last shot with the activism and identity of
the interviewer. His activism becomes participatory public citizenship,
making national party politics relevant to Undercurrents’ alternative
public sphere audience.
Training Undercurrents’ Reporters

as a Video Nation
Training is outlined as a crucial part of the Undercurrents project. In

1998 they were joined by “qualified media educator” Helen Iles.12 This
followed the 1997 publication of the training manual, Harding’s Video
Activist Handbook. I will now consider the training and the production of
participatory citizens in Undercurrents.
Atton places Undercurrents in a context of embedded or “native re-
porting,” collaboratively working from within communities to report
relevant and pertinent news to those communities.13 In “Making of Un-
dercurrents,” alongside “Look Chum!,” we see not only the production
process, but the activist-as-observer, providing relevant information for
his community about the Labour Party conference. In this way, the self-
representation/identity project of the activist/reporter is located within
ordinary, outside professional journalism “much as [the] audience might
do in a similar situation: a little overawed, nervous, yet committed to criti-
cism and action” (Atton 2002, 114). By bearing witness to party politics,
Undercurrents as a social movement and as a social movement media
project engages with the audience in the framework of everyday life.
Undercurrents’ training has roots in the production process of the first
few compilations. The first film, “You’ve got to be choking”14 (Undercur-
12
Ensuring the inclusion of video activism on national examination boards (<www.Under-
currents.org/history/index/htm>, O’Connor (2005)).
13
A term related to colonialist discourses (Atton 2002, 112–113).
14
The title of this film is intended as a pun: “choking” refers to choking on pollution from
the intended motorway, and replaces “joking” (i.e.—you’ve got to be joking). This sug-
149
rents 1 1994) was made from footage shot on six camcorders, used as
anti-security measures, at the M11 road link campaign. Production skills
were shared (initially through Undercurrents’ ex-media professionals)
during the editing process; this continued as footage came into Under-
currents through their networks among direct action groups. They then
split the training into production, direction, and distribution, a process
that was put into practice when Iles joined (O’Connor 2005). Both the
footage and the training were supported through these horizontal ac-
tion networks.
This image of “non-professional” reportage can be read alongside
Harding’s “activist editing” perspective on content. Video activists are in
turn told to “give space to the diverse voices in the community,” rather
than to the “white, middle-aged men” (Harding 1997, 146) of mainstream
news and documentary; also, “don’t worry if it’s a bit wobbly; it will feel
more authentic” (Harding 1997, 147; Atton 2002, 114). Most importantly:
“Don’t shackle yourself with the restraints of mainstream television. If
something’s true, put it in. If it’s angry and passionate, put it in. If it’s criti-
cal and fingerpointing, put it in” (Harding 1997, 146).
This activist aesthetic is placed directly in opposition to the “mainstream
television quality” criterion (Harding 1997, 147). This creates a discursive
space—culturally diverse, non-commercial, and politically motivated—
away from mainstream media, where producers “have careers, advertis-
ing agreements, and government patronage to lose” (Harding 1997, 146). It
could also be argued that there are potentially activist careers or support
from anti-government networks to lose if the activist aesthetic is not ad-
hered to, reinforcing the boundaries of the alternative public sphere.
It can also be argued that the authenticity signified by the wobbly shots
discussed above naturalizes and legitimizes the content and the activist
citizenship of the contributors, through “documentary’s ordering princi-
ple” (Palmer 1998, 168). In that this is a formalized notion of activist edit-
ing, it goes some way towards constructing a video activist “professional”
through the validation received from networked communities.
The “Introduction to Video Activism” workshops run by Undercurrents,
aimed at inexperienced video camera users, offered shooting and edit-
ing skills akin to any introductory video course, but within an activist
context.15 The website’s training page notes that this enables activists to
gests that the protesters think that the proposed motorway and its planning team are
a bad joke, because it will lead to the public choking on pollution.
15
<http://www.Undercurrents.org/training/index.htm>.
150
gather evidence and produce empowerment videos, aimed at both web

and mainstream television distribution, a point which is equally under-
lined in Harding’s text. Here, participatory political citizenship intersects
with both the alternative and the public sphere. The aims of the training
project emphasize the necessity of working towards the production of
a finished video piece. Equally, Harding emphasizes the need for basic
filming principles and technical qualities to be adhered to and under-
stood (Harding 1997, 48–53). While on the one hand, this is necessary for
any video production, on the other, it accentuates the need for the video-
maker not only to participate in activism, but to potentially participate
in mainstream media by using the language and technical procedures
of television.
The Undercurrents website also states:
protests are now being swamped by camcorders used by people with little or no under-
standing of video activism. This is causing many problems, as inexperienced camera
operators are recording activists who wish to remain anonymous during covert actions
(Harding 1997, 219).
The necessity for training, then, is promoted by Undercurrents. There

is a disjuncture between video activism as a participatory method of en-
gaging with political issues and events, and activism as a social move-
ment. The workshops that Undercurrents provide cost money: a sliding
scale is provided depending on the funding status of campaign groups.16
Harding notes the problematic nature of training for money: “an issue
here is that video activists begin to support those with money rather
than those without, and, perhaps worse, ultimately drift away from activ-
ist work” (Harding 1997, 219). Undercurrents functions as an alternative
public sphere media organization to train a community of activist citi-
zens in the correct format for filming protest: however, the loss of activ-
ists through formalized training is always an issue.
Community Boundaries Under Surveillance:

Reality Police Shows and Actuality Activism
While Undercurrents were utilizing the new intimacy given by the in-
creasingly compact media technologies offered by handicams and Hi8 to
provoke their audience into becoming direct media activists on the roads
(or up trees), they were also engaging with the tightening constraints
16
<http://www.Undercurrents.org/training/index.htm>.
151
of civil liberties via surveillance arising from the 1994 Criminal Justice
Act. Policing—or the representation of the police—is a central concern to
Undercurrents. Films such as “Unreasonable Force” and “Off the Record”
(Undercurrents 2 1994), and “Bobby, Nick, and Sue” (Undercurrents 3 1995)
offer a subjective critique of the police. Often, direct action Undercurrents
videos partially feature actuality footage of struggles between the activists
and the police, national security forces such as the army or airforce, or
private security firms hired to guard sites targeted by activists.17
Here, I link Undercurrents’ concerns with the new hybrid factual/doc-
umentary UK television policing genre, including Crimewatch UK; 999;
Police, Camera, Action; Blues and Twos; and Mersey Beat. The blurring
of symbolic boundaries between fact, fiction, and entertainment genres
renegotiates representations of policing. Bondebjerg tells us that Crime-
watch UK “can be seen as a new way of restoring the eroded and crum-
bling relations between ordinary people and the state and official public
sphere” (Bondebjerg 1996, 30). With Crimewatch UK directly asking the
audience for information about the crimes shown, viewers/citizens are
implicated and included as a televisual police, an “imagined community”
of potential police informants. Undercurrents’ output may concentrate
on issues with less legitimacy for the general public than, for example,
Crimewatch UK’s concern with cctv footage of street crime, or recon-
structions of murder cases. However, while reality police shows rarely
focus on interaction between police and activists, their intention to legiti-
mise policing in the community can be linked to Undercurrents’ content,
a connection which I explore below.
Crimewatch UK allows citizens to engage in democratic society through
participating in the programme: this is complicated through the use of
footage of criminals recorded in shops, city streets, and private/domes-
tic CCTV cameras. The public, official discourse contains elements of the
private: the viewer is a voyeur into the private actions of the on-screen
public—and criminals—who are possibly active in public spaces. We see,
then, contradictory discourses at work complicating an overarching au-
thorized social citizenship. The representations of power and discourse
and the understanding of “public,” “criminals,” and “law enforcers” can
then be utilized in the examination of Undercurrents and citizenship.
17
Monbiot comments on a shift from Undercurrents’ “heroic images of peaceful cam-
paigners being dragged away and beaten up by police” to a violence fetish celebrating
the physical disruption of police work in activist video. This needs further exploration,
although the police are still central figures (The Guardian, 1 May 2001, and <www.mon-
biot.com>).
152
Palmer quotes Metropolitan Police Commissioner Stevens, who states

that in order to gain “good insight” into policing, he is “keen to see more
media being taken along on police operations,” and encourages media
as part of overall planning strategy (Stevens, in Palmer 1998, 53). In that
media play a part in operational strategy, questions should be raised
about police access to footage. While critical programmes such as Mac-
Intyre Uncovered and other undercover investigative documentaries may
defy this, the police effectively edit reality shows through access to both
CCTV footage and departments in shows such as Mersey Beat or Police,
Camera, Action. This can relate to Undercurrents’ media training for ac-
tivists. The activist image is crucial to representation; however, access to
the image is limited through the necessity of training, and editing. Thus
examples from Undercurrents provide an alternative representation of
the police, but are constructed in the PR/image battleground in which
law-defying action and conflict with the police (and security forces) are
legitimized.
Through reality images, including mugshots or surveillance footage,
which Corner calls “ultra-vérité,” “usually employed in a reality segment”
alongside interviews (Corner 1996, 183), the audience can identify crimi-
nals and their behaviour (e.g. running away from or confronting police
on Police, Camera, Action) as subverting the structures of policing (Mer-
sey Beat). Shaky footage suggests a legitimate truth-claim. In “Free Party
People,” there is a confusion of discourses, as activists are set up as non-
criminals even when contravening laws.18 The party-goers on their way
to a rave with their sound system are recognizable as “good” activist
citizens when confronted by police, who seize their sound system under
the CJA. The police are recognizable in the text (and so in the activist
community) as the criminals in the scenario: while they are law-enforc-
ers, they act outside the activist community.
In the use of surveillance technologies such as CCTV, shows such as
Crimewatch UK advance the viewing public’s ability to recognize offend-
ers in the street. Dovey tells us that it is the viewer’s responsibility to
maintain public surveillance, that “personal responsibility for risk avoid-
18
“Free Party People” depicts some party-goers on the way to a rave. They are travelling
in a van with a large sound-system which will provide the music for the rave. The police,
by taking the sound-system, are acting under the (then) recently passed Criminal Jus-
tice Act of 1994, which allows them to stop party-goers (Section 65 Raves: Power to stop
persons from proceeding) and confiscate sound systems (Section 65 Supplementary
powers of entry and seizure) (Office of Public Sector Information 1994). This Act was
a focus of direct actions by protestors, linked to other actions, and also key to stopping
the actions by police.
153
ance is structured as a model of citizenship” (Dovey 2000, 79). Inclusion

(as a criminal) on Crimewatch UK denotes exclusion in civil society, and
indicates who the audience should monitor on the street as a strategy to
avoid personal risk. The audience is shaped into a community through
governance via the screen, and is given boundaries for its members’ ac-
tions and responsibility for their personal risk.
If we read Undercurrents texts through this lens, the activist commu-
nity, as part of a mediated alternative public sphere, becomes both a
place of governance and of citizen action. Activists with cameras take
the place to some extent of patrolling, panopticon CCTV cameras: in
“Free Party People” the fortuitousness of a handy camera person at
the scene of action offers the community “standards and parameters”
through the possibility of distributing the act through video-production
to the community: the police, through seizing the sound system, act out-
side. Through the act of reportage, risk to the activists on-screen and also
to those watching can be avoided, or at least limited in future actions.
Alien Nation critiques surveillance through performance art tactics.
An activist in Bournemouth (the first town in the UK with CCTV) is sick
of a surveillance camera looking through his flat window. In defence, he
dresses as an eight-foot alien, and walks the streets under the cameras.
The footage shows both the alien and the cameras following the alien.
The activist directly engages with patrolling the community, re-establish-
ing the boundaries under cameras that are simultaneously part of police
operations and symbolic targets for the activist media project. The po-
lice’s intervention is framed as ultimately impotent and never breaches
the community’s integrity: the image of the activists and their identities
are re-created as that of playful, performative, “good” citizens.
Distributing Dissent: Individual Consumption

and Community Participation
Between parts one and two of Undercurrents 3, the films and idents stop.
Then there is a sequence that informs viewers about distribution: Text
overlaid on black reads: “Overloaded? Well rest your eyes, make some
tea before you watch Part II, or you can listen to a rant about distributing
Undercurrents” (Screen goes black for 10 seconds).
Then video footage of an unnamed, youngish white male appears
on screen. He is in medium close-up, seated in a plain room in front of
stacks of Undercurrents boxes. He speaks, in a North American accent,
directly to camera: “You’re halfway through Undercurrents and there’s
154
a lot more to go. The problem with alternative media is getting the word
out. So pass the video around, set up communal screenings, and get ac-
tive” (Undercurrents 3 1995).
The screen returns to black for another 10 seconds before Part ii be-
gins. This sequence presents three facets of Undercurrents, through
which I examine distribution issues. Firstly, the audience is urged to-
wards participatory citizenship through inclusion in the task of “getting
the word out”. This closely links to the second facet, networks and com-
munities as methods of distribution: circulation of the video from indi-
vidual to individual, or through communal screenings. While Undercur-
rents’ video compilations and more recent documentary output are also
currently sold through their website, historically this distribution came
directly from the Undercurrents mailing list,19 or direct contact with the
audience at screenings, festivals, or relevant events. This networking—
both through Internet and by the building of a database—is connected to
Downing’s “horizontal linkages” (Downing 1995, 241) as communication
structures as much as to Castells’ “new characteristics of the network
society” as a potential for “communal resistance” (Castells 1997, 358) in a
re-worked civil society.
“Justice in the Court” (Undercurrents 2 1994) shows a group of activists
in Brighton squatting in the disused courthouse and utilizing it as a com-
munity centre in protest against the 1993 Criminal Justice Bill. After a
title card with the text “tell all your friends,” a shot early in the film shows
a young woman on the telephone. She says: “we’re in the courthouse . . .
can you activate your part of the phone tree?” This highlights activist
strategy, citizen action as a networked mobilization that utilizes media.
The audience is included with the activist as “good,” participatory, active
citizens, potentially limiting a hostile reading. The film negotiates activist
image and representation in mainstream media, through editing report-
age of the activists’ actions from a local broadcast news programme,
Meridian News, on the ITV network, into “Justice in the Courts.” The film
shows Meridian’s newsroom, white female newsreader: “A group of up to
150 squatters have occupied a derelict courthouse in Brighton to protest
against the Criminal Justice Bill.”
Cut to—Meridian News: Local white male resident: “Not only have they
illegally squatted but they play reggae music till two, three, and even four
in the morning.”
19
Peaking at 6000 in 1999, but now growing again through email (O’Connor 2005); coin-
ciding with the shift from local direct action to anti-globalization demonstrations, but
also the lack of regular Undercurrents compilation output after 1999.
155
Cut to—activist footage: People looking at community noticeboard, ac-

tivist leaves the building with a stack of fliers in his hand.
Voiceover (Meridian News newsreader): “The squatters say that they
have actually improved the property since taking it over.”
The activists are initially framed as dissident: through editing, they con-
travene the “official” newsroom sound/image (as a stand-in for civil soci-
ety), cutting it with their “law-defying” action. The subsequent resident’s
negative statement syntagmatically becomes ironic through the use of
the “official” media re-contextualized voiceover and the synchronic im-
ages of community and action. The democratic discourse of citizenship
is re-created by the manipulation of mainstream reporting. This negoti-
ates the truth-claim of the sequence and highlights both the activist and
mainstream newsroom frameworks: “What we might have believed was
genuine and unmediated footage 15 years ago, we now see as a politi-
cally expedient construction” (Krzywinska 1998, 162).
The shots and montage of the courthouse community gathered together,
preparing food, with families at play, and taking part in activities, includes
shots of a film screening—possibly of an Undercurrents video—in the court-
house. In that this is the “enlightened”, already politically activist commu-
nity gathered together, this should be considered an identity affirmation
of the community rather than a distribution tool designed to bring new
viewers to activist media. Misrepresentation or misreading20 are limited
through the closeness of the audience to the filmmakers. Dahlgren com-
ments that: “We can see social movements in part as constituting alterna-
tive public spheres. In their function of providing collective identities for
their members, they are also defining and socializing their participants to
new understandings of citizenship” (Dahlgren 1995, 154).
This idea of “providing collective identities” can be seen as a conse-
quence if not an aim of public screenings of Undercurrents. Their inclu-
sion of—if not belief in—the audience (above) as active participants pro-
vides a method of socialization whereby the activists and audience take
on the task of “improving” their community through dissident action.
This is connected with the second facet of networks and communities as
methods of distribution. The audience is instructed that networked struc-
tures are key to action in general, as well as to the media organizational
structure.
20
Dovey comments that “the ‘degree of misrepresentation’ decreases as audience pro-
files become more and more specific, closer to many more sections of the community”
(Dovey 1993, 174).
156
This potentially causes problems when observing diversity of identity

and representation. These representations are edited into the whole to
provide a rosy, idealistic view of the community. Screenings as part of
community identity raise further questions: does Undercurrents reach
an audience outside those who are not already involved in these com-
munities? Downing states that “There is also typically a core-periphery
dimension to be taken into account in alternative-media user research
within oppositional cultures, with some super-committed and highly con-
scious and others more tangentially so” (Downing 2003a, 637). Although
web presence and screenings could introduce peripheral audience
members to the project, even they would have followed cultural clues—or
web links – through prior knowledge of these discourses, a factor which
potentially limits participation.
Undercurrents on TV: Potential further

Limitations of Undercurrents’ Citizenship
Footage comes into Undercurrents archives from the video activist com-
munity, some of which is sold on to news and broadcasters. O’Connor
gives an example of a webcast taking place from within an activist occu-
pation of the Shell Petroleum HQ, where “the footage from the cameras
inside the building was sold on to broadcasters, programmes, newspa-
pers and magazines” (O’Connor 2005).
Undercurrents as an organizational structure combats the monopoly
capitalist “market”; however, its political perspective does not stand out-
side the market when its footage is broadcast through mainstream news.
As a narrative discourse of citizenship, it is further complicated through
potential readings within news framing. Inclusion in news through an
image-event, or in order to reach a broader audience, may hinder the
cause itself, if the frame that the broadcaster adopts paints the activists
as dangerous. Furthermore, the viewers most likely to refuse the domi-
nant reading of activists as a threat that Undercurrents’ footage offers,
are potentially already engaged in the discourses of activism or environ-
mentalism.
Undercurrents as a media organization—albeit an alternative public
sphere activist project—contains structures of training, alongside par-
ticipation in licensing and financial agreements. Considering Plant’s un-
derstanding of the rights of citizenship as requiring “collective action
and politically guaranteed provision outside the market,” we also need to
acknowledge that “the economic market is a very useful and indeed cen-
157
tral instrument for securing socialist aims” (Plant 1994, 187). While the
paradoxical relation between environmental, anti-globalization activism
and the use of Internet and digital technologies is inherent and transpar-
ent, these transactions finance further video activism: “TV is only good
for money. As a way of social change or motivating people it is really
very limited” (O’Connor 2005). While unable to reconstruct activist citi-
zenship and identity, inclusion in the framework of television enables the
project to continue as a structure in its aim to document dissent.
Conclusion
This discussion has focussed on Undercurrents’ activist media just prior
to the uptake of the Internet by activists: in doing so, it sketches out a
point of departure towards more networked alternative media projects.
Training is crucial to Undercurrents: activists learn to use media tools to
disseminate their agendas in both alternative and mainstream public
spheres. Paradoxically, activists create (for example, through email lists)
and disseminate through mainstream and alternative media channels
“publicity” for protest against the neo-liberal agendas of globalization,
which enable new communication technologies. According to Castells,
notions of civil society are ruptured through this resistance, which origi-
nates in the new network society (Castells 1997, 128, 358). Brecht suggests
that democracy can be restructured through dialogic, participatory
(and instructional) media (Brecht 2001, 42–45). Undercurrents’ project
provides a backdrop for the current debates around UGC and citizen
participation, pointing towards methods by which Undercurrents con-
structed a video-active citizen through their project and its intersection
with broadcast TV.
In “Justice in the Courts” we see several sequences reminiscent of the
Video Nation format. The legitimizing forces of documentary reinforce
the activist notions of “fuck the politicians” (Undercurrents 2 1994). In
utilizing the self-representation formats of mainstream television docu-
mentary—themselves enabled by neo-liberal deregulation of broadcast-
ing and technologies, and limited through organizational structures—
Undercurrents ease the subversive, political, and educational content of
their project into the public sphere and public imaginary. This translates
into a form of alternative public sphere, where Undercurrents is both
the social movement itself—video activism—and the media organization
through which contemporaneous social, environmental movements dis-
seminate their media commentary.
158
The final sequence from “Justice in the Courts” shows a narrative of

idealized community, fractured by the denouement: eviction and dissolu-
tion. The courthouse is guarded by police officers, with the community
defended by rooftop protestors. As in 1990s Reality TV genres, commu-
nity boundaries are being patrolled by activists, police, and cameras:
here, the text offers a reading of the activist community, in which civil
society representatives (police) stand on the outside.
However, as we have seen, the Undercurrents project, as both social
movement and discursive space, is at this time limited through its proc-
esses of distribution. While the mainstream media framing of activist
identity and imagery—often captured by activists themselves—offers po-
tential misreading, it can also help finance the oppositional project.
The Undercurrents audience potentially becomes an active audience
through self and community representation. Video activism, according
to Undercurrents, is part of a larger project of activism as a democratic
critique of a complex web of global and local environmental, social, and
economic issues in society. However, although mediated networks enable
this project, they can also hinder it through the clash in circulation of
discourses apparent through the images on the screen. The audience
reach of the project limits the participation to those already engaged in
and conscious of the political issues it represents, potentially limiting the
expansion of the project. Although it communicates across some bound-
aries, Undercurrents cannot provide a truly dialogic form of media.
However, we can see Undercurrents working in and through local net-
works to connect to citizens’ potential, moving through shared discours-
es from community to community, and transcending local and poten-
tially national boundaries. Undercurrents provides us with one narrative
about how one organization, in one moment of time, sought to construct
a politically inspired model of citizenship.
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CONTRIBUTORS
CHRIS ATTON is Reader in Journalism at the School of Creative Industries,

Napier University, Edinburgh. His books include Alternative Literature (Gower,
1996), Alternative Media (Sage, 2002) and An Alternative Internet (Edinburgh
University Press, 2004). His latest book is Alternative Journalism (Sage, 2008 and
co-authored with James Hamilton). He has edited special issues on alternative
media for Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism and Media, Culture and
Society. His current research focuses on fanzine culture.
Address: School of Creative Industries, Napier University, Craighouse Road,
Edinburgh, Scotland, EH10 5LG
E-mail: C.Atton@napier.ac.uk
JOHN D. H. DOWNING is founding director of the Global Media Research Cent-

er in the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts, Southern Illinois Uni-
versity Carbondale, USA. He is author of Radical media: rebellious communica-
tion and social movements (Sage, 2001), and is currently editing a one-volume en-
cyclopedia of international social movement media for Sage. Other publications
have focused upon racism and media (Representing ‘race’: racisms, ethnicities
and media, 2005, with Charles Husband), and on media and transition in Russia,
Poland and Hungary in the period 1980–1995 (Internationalizing Media Theory,
1996). He teaches courses on media and cultural theory, and political cinema in
the global South.
Address: Global Media Research Center, College of Mass Communication &
Media Arts, Southern Illinois University 6606, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA
E-mail: jdowning@siu.edu
NATALIE FENTON is a Reader in Media and Communications in the Depart-

ment of Media and Communication, Goldsmiths, University of London where she
is also Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Media Research Centre: Spaces, Connec-
tions, Control, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and Co-Director of Goldsmiths
Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy.
Address: Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College,
University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW
E-mail: N.Fenton@gold.ac.uk
163
GABRIELE HADL is a media researcher and activist based in Japan. She earned
an MA and PhD in Sociology from Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto) under the late
media literacy educator Prof. Midori Suzuki, and was a Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellow from 2006-2008 under Prof. Junichi Hamada.
Her graduate research was supported by the citizens of Kyoto Prefecture through
an International Friendship Ambassador stipend. She is involved in the Buy Noth-
ing Day Japan Network and Indymedia Jp and in the national network, Japan
Council for Community, Citizens and Alternative Media (J-CAM). Since 2009, she
teaches Media and Information Policy at Kwansei Gakuin University (Kobe).
Address: 50 Shimoumenoki-cho, Shichiku, Kita-ku, Kyoto 603-8178, Japan
E-mail: mediactivejp@mac.com
HANNO HARDT, professor of communication and media studies, Faculty of So-

cial Sciences, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), professor emeritus, University
of Iowa (USA), author of numerous books and articles on communication and
media, most recently, Myths for the Masses (Blackwell, Malden, MA., 2004) and
Des Murs Éloquents (Klincksieck, Paris, 2008).
Address: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva pl. 5,
1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
E-mail: Hanno-hardt@uiowa.edu
RUTH HERITAGE has worked since 2004 as an Associate Lecturer at the Univer-
sity of Salford, in the Media Studies and Sociology subject areas. She is currently
a PhD student in the department of Media & Communications at Goldsmiths
College, University of London. Ruth also freelances as an independent documen-
tary filmmaker. Her latest film, A Rollercoaster Ride, looks through the eyes of
schoolchildren at the issue of teenage pregnancy in Blackpool, England.
Address: 164 Ribbleton Avenue, Preston, Lancashire, PR2 6DB, UK
E-mail: r.heritage@salford.ac.uk, ruth@revolvewire.co.uk
JO DONGWON is an independent researcher and media activist. He was the pol-

icy research director at MEDIACT (mediact.org), a South Korean public media
center from 2002 till 2006. His roles included researching the independent, alterna-
tive, and public media movements. He has been working as the coordinator of Me-
diaCultureAction against neoliberal globalization (gomediaction.net) from 2005 till
2008, while collaborating with KIFV(Korean Independent Film/Video Association),
Jinbonet (korean progressive network), Nodongnet(labornet), and Cutural Action
etc. From 2007, he is in PhD course in Cultural Studies, ChungAng University.
Address: 106, 257-74 Imun-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, 130 - 082, S. Korea
E-mail: jonair@riseup.net
164
CONTRIBUTORS
MOJCA PAJNIK, PhD in communication studies, is a scientific counselor at the

Peace Institute in Ljubljana and assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sci-
ences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has been a project coordinator to
several initiatives on migration, citizenship, gender and media and has pub-
lished widely in these areas.
Address: Peace Institute, Metelkova 6, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
E-mail: mojca.pajnik@mirovni-institut.si
LARISA RANKOVIĆ – Media analyst from Belgrade, Serbia. MA degree in so-

ciology from the Central European University in Poland (1998) and in cultural
policies from the LUMSA University in Italy (2000). Graduated philosophy in
Belgrade. Published papers related to the traditional and new media. Author of
media blog Media Mix: http://www.mediaserbia.blogspot.com
Address: ul. Knez Mihailova 20/16, Valjevo 14000, Serbia
E-mail: larisa.rankovic@gmail.com
PANTELIS VATIKIOTIS is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Panteion

University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens. He received his PhD in Soci-
ology of Alternative Media from the University of Westminster in 2004. His teach-
ing and research interests are in Social Theory and Media, Political Communica-
tion, Sociology of Cyberculture, New Media, Social Movements and Alternative,
Grassroots Media Practices.
Address: Department of Sociology, Panteion University of Social and Political
Sciences, 136 Syggrou Av., 176 71, Athens, Greece
E-mail: siletnap@panteion.gr
165
INDEX
A B
activism 15, 39, 45, 55, 56, 68, 71, 72, 93, B92 126, 128, 132–135
103, 120, 149, 151, 157, 159 Baldelli, Pio 7
anti-globalization 158 Barber, Benjamin 11, 49
community 145 Bauman, Zygmunt 12, 72–73, 74–75
environmental 158 BBC 15, 57, 133, 146
global 119 Benkler, Yochai 57, 66
media 13, 37, 54, 56, 57, 82, 83, 86, The Wealth of Networks 57
101–102, 112, 116, 120 Benson, Rodney 34–35
net 53, 54, 64 Berger, Peter 20
online 76 Berrigan, Frances 7
political 57, 62, 63, 64 blog 9, 14, 28, 33, 39, 42–44, 58, 135, 136
social 112, 120 Blumer, Herbert 10, 19
transnational 61, 64 Bondebjerg, I. 152
video 15, 93, 142, 144, 148–151, 158– Bourdieu, Pierre 31, 34–39, 45
159
Brecht, Berthold 82, 103, 139, 141, 158
Allan, Stuart 42–43
Brown, W. 77
Aristotle 9, 17
Bruzzi, S. 141
Rhetoric 9, 17
Buber, Martin 23
Aronson, James 7
Bushnell, Jim 7
Atton, Chris 10, 31, 50, 68, 99, 118, 131,
142, 147, 149
C
Alternative Media 142
Castells, M. 67, 140, 141–144, 155, 158
audience 9, 12, 17, 19, 21, 24–26, 27, 28,
Power of Identity 143
31–33, 35, 37–38, 43, 44, 58–59, 61, 88,
92, 95, 118, 134, 139–141, 143–144, 146– Certeau, Michel de 92
149, 151–157, 159 Chamsaesang 81, 101
Choi Young Mook 100–101
Chomsky, Noam 41
167
citizenship 13–14, 15, 31–32, 62, 85, 96, D

113–115, 117, 119, 139, 140, 145–147, Dahlgren, Peter 114, 145, 147, 156
149–152, 154–159
Dalla Costa, Mariarosa 87
civil society 13–14, 62, 64, 65, 67–69,
De Jong, Wilma 51
93–97, 100, 102, 113–114, 117, 143–145,
154–156, 158–159 Deleuze, Gilles 86
Collin, Matthew 133 della Porta, D. 66, 70
Comedia 33 Deluca, K. M. 142–144
Communication democracy 11, 12, 20, 23, 27, 49, 50, 51,
62, 66, 71, 72, 84, 96, 98, 100, 117, 131,
community 84, 94
133, 144, 145, 147, 158
democratic 14, 63, 113, 114, 118
absolute 12, 71
development 84, 86, 94
communicative 41
global 11, 53, 65, 68
deliberative 66–68
international 63
participatory 100, 158
mass 17, 20–21, 22, 111
polycentric 66
media 53
strong 11, 15, 49
mediated 111, 112, 117
Dewey, John 10, 18, 20
open 63
Dovey, J. 141, 153, 156
participatory 82–83, 100–101
Dowmunt, T. 140
personal 28
Downing, John D. H. 7, 11–12, 33, 44, 49,
persuasive 17 50, 51, 85, 87, 95, 99, 104, 118, 120, 139,
political 67 141, 142, 146, 155, 157
public 7, 14, 62, 113, 114, 139 Radical Media 85, 87, 99
social 10, 17, 25, 26, 27, 52 Dubois, Frédéric 88–89
communication technologies 13, 19, 20, Duncan, Hugh Dalziel 18–19
28, 64–67, 158 Duval, Julien 38
Corner, J. 141, 153
Couldry, Nick 31, 44, 50, 85 E
Coyer, K. 140 Edgar, Andrew 42
CRIS 93 empowerment 8, 20, 27, 31, 32, 45, 59,
Critical Art Ensemble 91 63, 68, 73, 112–113, 140, 151
culture jamming 86, 88, 91–93 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus 7, 82, 99,
Curran, James 31, 50, 144 103
cyberspace 68, 90, 119
168
INDEX
F Harvey, D. 12
FaceBook 7 Heidegger, Martin 18
Fenton, Natalie 12–13, 61 Heritage, Ruth 14–15, 139
Fountain, A. 140 Hesmondhalgh, David 36, 39
Fraser, C. 146 Hibberd, M. 141
Freire, Paulo 82, 89, 103 Hill, A. 141
Hill, Christopher 7
G
Hill, K. 68
Garcia, David 90
Hintz, Arne 93, 95
Geerts, A. 50
Hollis, Patricia 7
Geneva, demonstrations in 64–65, 93
Holmes, Oliver Wendell 22
Gillmor, Dan 125, 135
Huesca, Robert 83, 86
We the Media 125
Hughes, J. 68
Goffman, Erving 19
Google 14
I
googling 26
governance 49, 66, 94, 96, 154 Indymedia 41, 81, 86–89, 93, 98, 118, 142,
144
Granjon, Fabien 50
interactivity 63, 64, 66, 68, 70, 120, 135
Grierson, John 145, 147
Guattari, Felix 86, 87 International Encyclopedia of Commu-
nication 32
Gudmundsson, G. 39
Internet 7, 9, 11, 14, 21, 24, 25–27, 50, 54,
Gumucio Dagron, Alfonso 50, 93, 146
55, 56, 57–58, 61–69, 71, 72, 75, 77, 82,
89, 100, 101, 117, 119, 125, 126, 135, 136,
H 142, 144, 155, 158
Habermas, J. 61, 67, 69, 96, 100, 113, 118, iPod 21
120, 145
Izod, J. 141
Hadl, Gabriele 12–13, 81, 83, 93, 95, 102
Hall, S. 40
J
Hamilton, James 41, 44
J18 15, 142–144, 148
Harding, Thomas 148–151
Jankowski, Nick 84
Hardt, Hanno 9–10, 17
Hardt, Michael 11, 12, 51–53, 71–72, Jinbonet 81, 98–99
75–76 Jo Dongwon 12–13, 81, 93, 101–102
Empire 51, 53
Multitude 11, 51, 53
169
journalism 10, 12, 20–22, 31–32, 34–39, M

41–44, 57, 81, 84, 98, 100, 101, 125, 132, Machiavelli, N. 20
135, 149
Malikhao, Patchanee 83
alternative 10, 31–32, 34–40, 42–45
Martín-Barbero, Jesús 82
citizen 31–33, 37, 39, 43, 44, 101, 140
Marx, Karl 10, 18, 52
civic 14
18th Brumaire 52
economic 38
Holy Family 18
independent 93, 132
Mašić, Dušan 128
investigative 34
Matheson, Donald 42–43
mainstream 36, 100
Mattelart, Armand 7
professional 12, 44, 149
Mattelart, Michèle 7
public 27, 100
Mead, George Herbert 10, 19
radical 41
media
social movement 81
alternative 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17,
studies of 10, 32, 99, 101
27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 39, 41, 42, 44, 56, 61,
tabloid 34, 41 82, 83, 84, 85, 88, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100,
102, 111, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120,
K 125, 126, 131, 132, 134, 135, 136, 139,
140, 141, 142, 148, 155
Keane, John 100
autonomous 7, 8, 12, 83, 86–90, 92–93,
Kidd, Dorothy 87, 89, 93, 102
97, 100, 103–104
Kilborn, R. 141
citizens’ 31–33, 40, 44, 82, 83, 85, 111–
Kim Myoungjoon 93, 102 112
Klein, N. 63 civic 100–102
Klinenberg, Eric 37–38 civil society 83, 86, 93–97, 101, 104
community 7, 12–13, 33, 82–84, 85,
L 93–96, 98–100, 101, 102, 111, 146
Langer, John 40 counter 100
Langlois, Andrea 88–89 dissident 111
Lasswell, Harold D. 17 far-right 118
Lippmann, Walter 23 grassroots 7, 83, 101, 111, 146
listserv 9, 58, 90 independent 7, 8, 14, 98–100, 102, 125,
Lovink, Geert 11, 51, 53–54, 90 132
Luckmann, Thomas 20
170
INDEX
media cont. Montaigne, Michel de 17

mainstream 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 31, 33, 40, Mouffe, Chantal 85
42, 52, 53–54, 55–56, 57, 58, 61, 92, 94, multitude 51–52, 71, 72
100, 116, 125, 136, 140, 141, 144, 150, 151, MySpace 7, 39
155
mass 7, 10, 19, 24, 27, 31, 32, 33, 43, 67,
N
81, 116, 141, 143, 145
Negri, Toni 11, 12, 51–53, 71–72, 75–76,
nano 7–9
87
net-based 102 Empire 51, 53
new 9, 12, 17, 21, 62, 70, 76, 135, 136 Multitude 11, 51, 53
online 14, 125, 135, 136 network society 54, 67, 140–141, 143–
oppositional 125 144, 155, 158
our 81–84, 93, 94, 96, 98–105 Nichols, B. 147
participatory 111 Nollywood 8
radical 95, 111, 116 non-governmental organization 14, 27,
63–65, 71, 90, 136
repressive radical 118
NWICO 81
self-managed 7, 112
small-scale 9, 111
O
social movement 8, 11, 49–51, 53, 55–
O’Connor, Alan 51
59, 82, 85, 86, 88, 92, 102, 142, 148–149
O’Connor, P. 157
tactical 7, 11, 51, 53, 83, 86, 90–93, 95,
97, 104 Ogden, C. K. 20
traditional 19, 22, 25, 26, 135, 136 OhmyNews 37, 44, 81, 98, 101
web 37, 136 Ong, Walter 19

Opel, Andy 50
MEDIACT 94, 101–103
Ó Siochrú, Sean 93
media ownership 55–56
OURmedia/NUESTROSMedios 85, 94,
media reform 55–56, 98, 100, 102, 120
103
Meikle, Graham 50
Melucci, Alberto 66
P
Milan, Stephania 93
Pajnik, Mojca 7
Miller, Daniel 119 Palmer, G. 141, 147, 153
Milošević, Slobodan 14, 49, 125–129, participation 14, 17, 22–23, 28, 44, 63,
132–134 64, 66–67, 70, 72, 84, 88, 94, 100, 111,
mobilization 12, 15, 55, 57, 62–64, 67–68, 113–115, 117, 140–141, 143–146, 149, 154,
72, 111, 112, 117, 142, 144, 148, 155 157–159
171
Peeples, J. 142–144 S
People’s Global Action (PGA) 64–65 Salter, L. 63
Plant, R. 157 Sarai 90–91
Pompper, Donnalyn 50 SchNEWS 40–41
publicity 28, 33, 43, 118, 143, 158 Seaton, J. 144
public sphere 8, 12, 13–14, 15, 22, 61–62, Seattle, the battle of 14, 52, 64–65, 142
66, 67, 84, 100, 102, 113–114, 116–117, Sen, Amartya 59
139, 140, 143, 145, 147–151, 152, 154,
Servaes, Jan 83
156–158
Shaw, Martin 51
Siegelaub, Seth 7
R
Slater, Don 119
Rabelais, François 7
social movement 8, 9, 11, 31, 36, 41, 44,
Gargantua and Pantagruel 7 49–50, 53–54, 62–67, 69–71, 74–76, 82,
Raboy, Marc 7, 93 87, 88, 97–99, 112, 118, 134, 142, 148,
Ranković, Larisa 14, 125 149, 151, 156, 158–159
Rennie, Ellie 51 solidarity 41, 44, 69–71, 76, 89, 92
resistance 12, 22, 61–62, 65, 69–72, 75, Spurr, David 40

76, 92, 111–112, 134, 143–144, 148, 155, Stammers, Neil 51
158 Sunstein, C. 67–68
Restrepo, E. S. 146 Suzuki, Midori 93
Rheingold, Howard 57
Smart Mobs 57 T
Riańo, Pilar 7 Tannen, Deborah 20
Richards, I. A. 20 Tarde, Gabriel 21
Richardson, Joanne 93 Tarrow, S. 69–70
Riggins, Stephen 7 telephone 21, 25–26, 155
Riley, D. 77 mobile 7, 9, 11, 21, 25–26, 55, 58
Rodríguez, Clemencia 40, 44, 58, 85, 93, Thompson, John B. 36
96, 104, 116, 146 Toynbee, Jason 37
Fissures in the Mediascape 58
Rodríguez Esperón, C. 50 U
Rose, M. 146 Undercurrents 14–15, 139–159
Ryback, Timothy 7 Unger, R. 75
Uzelman, Scott 89
172
INDEX
V
van de Donk, Wim 51
van Oeyen, V. 50
Vatikiotis, Pantelis 13–14, 111
Villamayor, C. 50
Virilio, Paul 24
Vitelli, N. 50
W
Wainwright, H. 77
Walker, Nancy 7
West, Rebeca 19
Whitman, Walt 20
Williams, Raymond 37
WTO 64–65, 91, 142
Y
Yoo Sunyoung 99
YouTube 7, 95
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ALTERNATIVE MEDIA

AND THE POLITICS

EDITED BY MOJCA PAJNIK & JOHN D. H. DOWNING

EDITED BY MOJCA PAJNIK & JOHN D. H. DOWNING

DESIGN: IRENA WÖLLE

500 COPIES PRINTED, FIRST EDITION

© MIROVNI INŠTITUT, 2008

BOOK SERIES: POLITIKE SYMPOSION

PUBLISHER: PEACE INSTITUTE

COVER PHOTO: ALEŠ DROLC, GRAFFITI, TIRANA, ALBANIA (2007)

CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji

ALTERNATIVE media and the politics of resistance : perspectives

7 MOJCA PAJNIK AND JOHN D. H. DOWNING

81 GABRIELE HADL AND JO DONGWON

111 PANTELIS VATIKIOTIS

125 LARISA RANKOVIĆ

139 RUTH HERITAGE

and he further illustrates the importance of conversation and its crucial

over-optimistically, that representation of, for example, ethnic minorities

measuring their small audience or their ephemeral lives,” says Downing,

these frames respond to new challenges posed by evolving communica-

June “carnival against capitalism” demonstrations in 2000. This period

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. 1970. Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien/Con-

While technological innovation continues to produce more sophisticated

lationship or exchange of influences through communication. The work

ing in relationship, in the give and take of address to others. For as we

changed the notion of conversation to promote mere talk or chatter as a

ing, conversation is a private affair in an atmosphere of equal oppor-

its threat to democratic principles through a variety of (even unconsti-

as an economic or political operating condition rather than a social or

though the Internet was by no means a universally global means of com-

where the idea of freedom of expression persists as an ideological cor-

And finally, a recent meeting of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Associa-

quality of culture and politics as social environments. But it also affects

Rodin, Judith. 2003. Public Discourse in America. Conversation and Community

Media Power and its Tensions

media, citizen journalism and the underground press, amongst others).

luminated the complex, hybrid nature of alternative media in relation to

The theory comprises three “structuring structures” (Toynbee 2001, 8),

popular success or recognition) suggests that it is located in the sub-field

as frequently as individualized methods of production. We should also

pears a “greater openness of the field of production to variations in the

THE ETHICS OF REPRESENTATION

OBJECTIVITY AND IMPARTIALITY: REJECTION OR REDEFINITION?

The professional ideal of objectivity, understood as the separation of

ity and impartiality in their blogs, preferring instead a style of address

Commercial media organizations also make practical use of amateur

ers and consumers” (Hamilton 2003, 297). We need to consider alterna-

Hamilton, James, and Chris Atton. 2001. Theorizing Anglo-American Alternative

Williams, Raymond. 1970. Radical and/or Respectable. In The Press We Deserve,

Introduction: Some Definitions

agents of constructive change, as expressions of democracy in action, a

Some Current Approaches to Social Movement

I wish to pass now to a critique of some prominent writers on these mat-

. . . singularity rights . . . are produced by the common, in social communication, and

On pages 213–214, they assert that

Extensively, the common is mobilized in communication from one local struggle to

And finally on pages 349–350 they argue that

Production based on cooperation and communication makes perfectly clear

This is, frankly, a 21st century rendition of Marx’s distinction, when

notion of tactical media is inclusive. It is a delicate coalition, a living experiment, not

Lovink writes in a very motile, breathless style, which makes summa-

playful negativism, a nihilism on the run, never self-satisfied . . . an ever-changing strat-