The Role of the Center in Community Media Practice
As I’ve noted, I’m becoming increasingly interested in the role of the community media center in the practice of community media. Two arguments in particular have forced this interest. One is the claim that YouTube eliminates the need for public access television in the digital age and the second, from Dan Gillmor, sounds quite similar.
But as seen in the response to Dan’s post from ACM Chair, Mike Wassenaar
“GoogleVideo, YouTube, and other internet distribution vehicles don’t do that in my community. They provide a valuable distribution (and collaboration) medium, but they can’t replace a CMC.
Community Media Centers can increase educational training and build creative and economic value. Multiply out the value across U-S communities to look at the hidden benefit of access television, and don’t just concentrate on the channels and distribution.”
My involvement with the Board at Cambridge Community Television has focused on my participation with other community members at the access center there. It is the center that helps to enable meaningful connections and opportunities to communicate with others across both virtual and physical spaces. My participation on the website and my face-to-face meetings with others combine to create new opportunities to participate and build community in meaningful ways. But that’s only my experience.
Therefore, the study I have proposed seeks to investigate the importance of the community media center through the experiences of volunteer producers involved in both virtual and physical community media practice. In addition, I’m interested in learning from those who are not involved in the community center and instead only use participatory web spaces (blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc.) to produce “citizen media” relevant to members of their local physical community. In doing so, I hope to (1) get a better sense of how each participant understands their community through their practice and (2) how their “sense of community” is built across, and independent of, each space.
Quite simply, the purpose of this study is to question the idea that the community media center is no longer needed because of the existence of online participatory platforms. In learning directly from participants involved in both spaces, I hope to provide a more thorough analysis of the community media center’s role in the practice of community media, while building on previous studies in this area.
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