[ecrea] CFP: Sustaining Community Media

Journal of Alternative and Community Media - Special Issue - Call for Papers

Guest Editors:

Andrew Ó Baoill, National University of Ireland, Ireland 
((andrew.obaoill /at/ nuigalway.ie) <mailto:(andrew.obaoill /at/ nuigalway.ie)>) 
Salvatore Scifo, Bournemouth University, United Kingdom 
((sscifo /at/ bournemouth.ac.uk) <mailto:(sscifo /at/ bournemouth.ac.uk)>)

Sustaining Community Media: Challenges and Strategies

Maintaining community media organisations requires ongoing attention to 
a number of factors. Radio and TV stations, as well as national and 
international community media organisations must consider funding, 
governance structures, changing political and economic conditions, while 
building, consolidating and extending relationships with their listening 
communities. The concept of sustainability has been widely used in the 
context of communication for development paradigms, as a lens for 
assessing the health and success of that sector. This special issue will 
provide an opportunity to reflect on questions of resilience and 
endurance as they arise in alternative, radical, oppositional, and 
community-grounded media, and to explore the various interdependent 
factors that can impact the ongoing stability and health of community 
media projects. Concurrently, the association of the term with questions 
of ecology prompts a reflective and ethical concern that extends beyond 
the immediate or parochial, and we expect papers that will, in a 
holistic fashion, explore the role and operation of the sector in the 
context of broader socio-political concerns.

Community media have been the focus of an increasing amount of scholarly 
attention as they have grown in size, from social movement theorists, to 
political economists, to those focused on governance and organisational 
communication. As Atton and Hamilton (2008: 26)1 note in their analysis 
of the political economy of alternative journalism, the “general 
political-economic dilemma for any critical project is that it needs 
resources with which to work, but those crucial resources are present 
only in the very society that it seeks to change or dissolve.” This 
special issue will build on existing knowledge, together with 
exploration of contemporary case studies, to explore the numerous 
challenges faced by community media activists and organisations in 
nurturing long-term projects, and identify strategies and best practices 
for building a sustainable sector.

Questions of sustainability have an immediate practical relevance to 
those working in the field of community communication - many projects 
that emerge from the context of short-term tactical media projects 
struggle with questions of funding and volunteer engagement as the focus 
of their horizon changes. Also, the workforce and paperwork required by 
some funding schemes might be a barrier to the search of medium and 
long-term support. Beyond this, we encourage submissions that tackle the 
ethical tensions that arise, for instance, for those looking to create 
media that is at once independent, critical, and financially stable. To 
what extent is it possible to have a media project that is both 
oppositional and institutionalised? What compromises or additional work 
is necessary? How to balance the possible conflict between aims of the 
stations and those of funding bodies?

In challenging contributors to focus on the interplay of practical 
considerations of funding and resources, together with questions of 
mission, key commitments, and values, we expect to foster a constructive 
debate that has the potential to draw on a range of historical examples, 
as well as explore some distinctive issues arising in the contemporary 
context. In what ways do the lower barriers to entry for digital 
publishing support and challenge the development of enduring 
oppositional projects? With neoliberalism prompting the expansion of 
commercial logic into ever more areas of human activity, what are the 
pressures faced by projects grounded in an opposition to commodification 
and capitalism more broadly?

1 Atton, Chris, and James F. Hamilton. Alternative Journalism. London, 
Sage, 2008.

Areas of focus might include the following, with projects that draw 
together a number of tensions in creative and challenging ways 
particularly welcome:

  *

    Capital and recurrent funding; building revenue streams

  *

    Regulatory challenges and solutions

  *

    Governance and organisation

  *

    Cooperation and health of the sector

  *

    Localism and defining community

  *

    Maintaining and refreshing relationships with communities

  *

    Pragmatism versus idealism

    Abstracts due: 15 November 2017 Notification of acceptance: 1
    December 2017 Publication: mid-to-late 2018

    Submission Guidelines:

    Please send an electronic copy of your 100-150 word abstract via
    e-mail text to both Guest Editors, Andrew Ó Baoill
    ((andrew.obaoill /at/ nuigalway.ie) <mailto:(andrew.obaoill /at/ nuigalway.ie)>)
    and Salvatore Scifo ((sscifo /at/ bournemouth.ac.uk)
    <mailto:(sscifo /at/ bournemouth.ac.uk)>), by Wednesday, 15 November 2017.

    Authors will be informed about the acceptance (or not) of their
    proposal by Friday 1 December 2017 and will be expected to submit
    their full paper according to JOACM guidelines (see
    https://joacm.org/index.php/JOACM/pages/view/authors) by 15 March
    2018. The issue is expected to be released in mid-to-late 2018.


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