Community Broadcasting Contexts

On the question of whether third sector media contribute to social cohesion or threaten it, the evidence points to the sector being an important factor in social cohesion and citizenship, particularly for minority ethnic communities and refugee and migrant communities (Lewis 2008: 7).

Audiences for community broadcasting in Australia identify it as the only media sector that is able to take account of the nation's social, political and cultural diversity. Community radio and television are playing an important cultural role in helping to draw together disparate elements of Australian society. At the same time, analysis of the processes involved in producing these media offers a powerful critique of mainstream media and their failure to contribute more actively to social cohesion. Nowhere is this dichotomy more apparent than amongst Australia's Indigenous (or First Nations) and ethnic community media audiences. It is one reason why we have focused on these particular segments of the community broadcasting sector in this book. The other, and perhaps more important reason, is to explore the processes which have empowered audiences for these multifarious minority media. Wherever Indigenous and ethnic community-based radio and television stations are active across the country, they provide a first level of service for their respective communities. They represent spaces where negotiation over the very nature of the audience-producer relationship has created new ways of conceptualizing 'community media' (Meadows et al. 2007).

Based on a long engagement with Native broadcasting developments and processes in Canada, Roth and Valaskakis have taken this idea further, arguing that the nature of Aboriginal community broadcasting, in particular, might provide a clue as to 'how to electronically recuperate public discourse and reconstitute public space in ways that will bear upon the future of ... society' (1989: 233). Albeit in a more journalistic context, Deuze (2006: 458) underlines the importance of multiculturalism as a defining element of the 'occupational ideology' of modern communication. If, as we suggest, mainstream media remain unable to accurately reflect Australia's cultural diversity, analysis of the community media sector – and broadcasting in particular – offers an insight into how this process might evolve.

Although we undertook the first national study of the Australian community radio sector (Forde et al. 2002), our work was built on various earlier, albeit smaller-scale investigations (Bear 1979; 1983; Moran 1995; Thornley 1995; Barlow 1997; 1999). But what this book is able to include for the first time are the voices of the audiences for community radio and television, completing the production-reception cycle. The bulk of the analysis we offer here is based on what is arguably the first-ever qualitative audience study of an entire national community media sector. It has offered us a privileged glimpse of the processes that 'make' community radio and television in Australia.

Another book on community media?

Australia's burgeoning community broadcasting sector – one of the first established globally – received scant academic or government attention in the first 25 years of its development (Bear 1979; 1983; Moran 1995; Thornley 1995; Barlow 1997; 1999). This situation was reflected globally until the dawn of the new millennium when an outpouring of academic research began to identify community media generally as sites of innovative and participatory practice (Forde 1999; Ewart 2000; Downing 2001; Rodriguez 2001; Forde et al. 2002; Atton 2002; Howley 2005; McCauley 2005; Coyer et al. 2007; Carpentier and de Cleen 2007; Fuller 2007; Wilson and Stewart 2008). But voices of the audiences for these multifarious media have largely remained silent – until now. The handful of audience surveys carried out in the Australian community media sector over the past ten years or so have focused on individual stations – and virtually all have sought quantitative data. While the empowering possibilities of local media production have been canvassed and acknowledged globally in the past ten years, analysis of local audience reception has not received similar attention. Work with Indigenous media in Australia and elsewhere has tended to focus on specific production and reception processes within communities and have been guided by anthropological frameworks with media – or media audiences – not the primary focus (Michaels 1986; Ginsburg 1991; Ginsburg 2000; Deger 2007). Studies that have looked specifically at Indigenous media in Australia and internationally have not involved systematic audience methods, rather relying on analyses of production processes with anecdotal evidence of reception (Roth and Valaskakis 1989; Valaskakis 1993; Meadows 1994; Molnar and Meadows 2001; 2002; Roth 2005; Daniels 2006).

Although there has been significant research into ethnic communities in Australia and elsewhere, audiences for ethnic media have not been a specific focus thus far. For example, Australian research has included an audience study of mainstream media use by ethnic communities (Coupe and Jakubowicz 1992; Ang et al. 2002), the impact of media representation on refugees (Brough et al. 2003), and the relationship between community radio and diasporas (Cohen 2003; Chand 2004). Internationally, there have been numerous studies of ethnic media and their impact but again, audiences have largely remained absent as a focus. These studies include a global examination of ethnic and Indigenous minority media (Riggins 1992; Browne 2005) and investigations of the impact of ethnic media in terms of their impact on diasporas and majority community cultures (Downing and Fenton 2003; Tsagarousianou 2004; Shi 2005). A special issue of the international journal, Journalism, considered ethnic media from the perspectives of various authors (Deuze 2006; Guzman 2006; Lin and Song 2006; Moran 2006; Ojo 2006; Wilkin and Ball-Rokeach 2006). Downing and Husband (2005) pooled their considerable research experiences in this area, identifying the importance of ethnic minority media in their global study of race and racisms. But apart from the audience analysis we offer in this book, there is virtually no other forthcoming audience research from international or local sources that might offer some sort of comparison. An emerging concentration in community radio studies at Sydney's Macquarie University has produced some encouraging new research, at this stage, confined to Thailand (Polnigongit 2005). But the 'absent issue of the virtually unknown' in community media – audience research – remains a challenge for scholars and practitioners alike (Downing 2003). The upshot of this body of research is essentially that 'minority', 'class' or 'progressive alternative' media play a...