Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Iranian radio in Los Angeles confounds traditional notions of community-based broadcasting. Practitioners and listeners see the stations as 'community radio' but each are advertiser-driven, commercial radio broadcasting. The stations broadcast in Farsi for Iranian Americans living in Los Angeles, utilising a variety of broadacst technologies. As this study indicates, these Persian stations operate on a traditional, hierarchical closed model and actual community participation is primarily limited to call-in programmes, events listing, and opportunities for promotion of small businesses and commercial services. While one station is on the AM dial, three others operate on closed networks of side-band, analogue radio, a little-known space for FM broadcasting that can only be heard on special receivers that are tuned to the side channels. Although Iranian radio in Los Angeles cannot technically be defined as community radio, it feels like community broadcasting for both listeners and station personnel precisely because it fulfils neighbourhood-based, community-oriented objectives beyond simply offering a niche-market format, and in turn, position commercial, ethnic radio as a means by which groups can contest the space of traditional media power. What is defined as community broadcasting is in many ways contingent on what community is being asked the question. For diasporic media and ethnic broadcasting, the traditionl distinctions between models of broadcasting are far less relevent than the role that the media serve for linguistic and ethnic minorities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Community radio is both a participatory form of communication – broadcasting that represents some kind of ideological understanding about community organizing and participatory media, and in many countries, a formal sector of licensing. The difficulty for researchers interested in community radio is this distinction is not always made clear. Practical concerns regarding the legislative process, policy-making, technical considerations of frequency allocation, power restrictions and antenna height are very different – although related – to issues of community organizing and social gain. In taking the example of Britain, and examining community radio in practice among the three London stations, we can see where these regulatory issues in practice converge with more theoretical issues around community media as a form of alternative media, and practical issues around community broadcasting as a participatory media, and broader social and political issues around the right to communicate and ‘citizen’s’ access to the airwaves.

This paper presents a framework for thinking about community media in a practical and regulatory context and thought a focused examination of community radio in London, unpacks the tensions around practice and theory. The study draws heavily on field research and first person interviews.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Historical studies can be powerful means for enhancing critical understanding of journalism. This study examines an acclaimed 1947 American radio documentary as an example of utopian journalism aligning with the interests of powerful individuals and institutions. CBS’s The Eagle’s Brood, written by Robert Lewis Shayon, advocated the grassroots-organizing philosophy of Saul Alinsky as a solution to juvenile delinquency. If in that way the documentary aimed at promoting the public interest, CBS also used radio research to promote and gauge interest in the documentary itself. Finally, the program promoted the image of CBS as serving the public interest at a time when the broadcasting industry faced increased regulatory scrutiny. CBS largely abandoned its radio documentaries soon afterward and Shayon was blacklisted. Still, The Eagle’s Brood provides a historical example of corporate media granting airtime to an alternative journalistic form and presenting an altruistic view of Americans confronting and solving their problems.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: The paper critically examines the empirical link between radio media effects and genocide mobilization. The paper finds that the existing evidence cannot support the null hypothesis that radio was the primary and independent determinant of genocide onset and participation. The paper presents an alternative model of limited, conditional media effects during the genocide, in particular that radio catalyzed key actors and tipped the balance of power to hardliners. The paper is based on original field research in Rwanda as well as the creation of three datasets of violence during the Rwandan genocide.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study focuses on one specific news event – the death by suicide of a hospital patient in Adelaide, South Australia. The patient, who was on detention, left the hospital and walked in front of a passing truck on nearby busy commuter highway. The incident provoked much discussion on Adelaide talkback radio. The paper, using this incident as an exemplar, investigates the discursive struggle that takes place in radio talkback programs between host, audiences, topics of conversation, radio’s institutional characteristics and routines, and phone-in participants. In particular, we examine the discursive devices used by phone-in-participants to legitimate or authenticate their opinions. We sought to assess whether there were characteristic ways people diagnosed with mental illness presented themselves and their illness, and what devices these people used to authenticate their self-portrait and positions. We also sought to examine relationships between host and participant, and the nature of these relationships, as expressed in the radio interactions.