Posting has been light here over the past month as I’m working to finish up my thesis. I hope to have a final draft completed for my committee to review by early April. In the meantime, please visit the websites and blogs listed in my links section (right hand column) for updates from folks who have been great sources of inspiration for this project.

Seungahn Nah’s 2003 paper, “Bridging Offline and Online Community: Toward A Networked Community Communication Model” (see Works Cited) the author surveys literature on community studies from the Chicago School of sociology to social network analysis. He develops a holistic approach to community studies across both online and offline spaces. The author weaves together a range of physical and virtual communication environments to provide a way to study the “community phenomena” (24). In the Introduction, Nah writes

Given that community in virtual space is also based on the community in physical space, and the two types of community are closely related to each other, we need to review the existing community studies comprehensively in order to understand the “online” community as well as the “offline” community. (4)

In his Networked Community Communication Model, Nah explains that from this approach “linkage among structure, agent, and computer network can create and expand the concept of community from local based community to global community and integrates them into networked communication environment” (24).

Nah’s model is particularly helpful in looking at the community media center as a specific geographic location within which to study community in a way “in which all kinds of communication pattern are integrated and coexisted” (24).

For those interested in learning more about the intersection of Public Access Television and free and open source software, Jason Daniels (medfield.tv) forwarded along a link to audio & meeting minutes from a gathering of public broadcasting and public access media folks during the recent Drupal conference held in Boston, this year. Here’s a bit from the description:

“This is the breakout discussion held during the Drupalcon 2008 Boston conference on March 5, 2008. This discussion tracks the progress of anumber of concurrent Drupal development projects focusing on enabling PEG (public, educational and government) Access centers to utilize Drupal for their organization.

The video was not so good, so we just have the audio. Below are some notes from the conversation. Hopefully, this provides some context, history and direction for those in the Access community who are wondering what Drupal is, why it is something they should care about and also for those in the Drupal community who would like to know about a very exciting project. Please add, clarify or correct.”

Thanks, Jason.

For another perspective from the community media and technology community on open source software, visit MediaMix.

Somerville Community Access Television Executive Director Wendy Blom produced this short video (12 min 11 sec) above from the February 25 FCC hearing on Broadband Network Management Practices at the Harvard Law School.

The video, found online at SCAT’s Vlog!, includes some of the voices not heard by the FCC during the hearing on the controversial issue of network neutrality. To learn more, visit some of the perspectives from groups for and against the issue.

I just returned from a lively debate this evening during one of my classes at Emerson College on the controversial issue of Wikipedia and its credibility. Instead of going into details, I thought I’d take a minute to share my views on some of the ideas found here on this blog. The purpose, I hope is to help promote transparency in my intentions.

This blog is a learning process for me. One that I hope others will find to be useful in some way. In no way do I claim to be an authority on the ideas shared on this site. The purpose is to draw from previous literature and examples on the topic of community media in general and in particular within studies of community television in the U.S. Through sharing my views here my hope is to learn from others and their experiences working in community television and beyond.

So please, visit my works cited page and read what others have spent a lot more time researching on the topics discussed here. I simply hope that this blog can be a starting point for some to help raise awareness about the existing contributions of community media studies to the larger field of academic scholarship.

If none of this means anything to you, that’s OK too.

At last week’s FCC hearing at Harvard Law School, the issue of network neutrality once again took center stage. As the Internet giant Google describes the issue

“Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet.”

Therefore, proponents of network neutrality believe that Internet service providers should not be in the business of deciding what content users get to view and what applications they get to use. To read more about Net Neutrality (from the advocates’ perspective) visit The Open Internet Coalition and Save The Internet.com.

As many advocates of public access television are already aware, the Internet is essential to their work in cable television. Not only is the Internet a vital platform for accessing the programming and organizational information of community media centers, it is also becoming the next generation distribution platform for local and diverse voices in community media production.

More importantly, I would add that community media advocates should look beyond using the Internet as simply a new video distribution platform to be used in combination with public, educational and government access channels. It should be considered as a platform for community communications to augment the physical interactions of people collaborating within community media centers.

For example, at Cambridge Community Television (where I work) several community groups are using our Drupal-based groups to collaborate online in between face-to-face meetings. These Internet tools can enhance community connections through enabling extended interest- and learning-based opportunities.

If Internet service providers gave preference to commercial websites over non-commercial websites, such as those operated by community media centers, this action would be in direct violation of the principles of network neutrality. Principles that former FCC chairman Michael Powell described in the following:

“(1) Freedom to Access Content: Consumers should have access to their choice of legal content;

(2) Freedom to Use Applications: Consumers should be able to run applications of their choice;

(3) Freedom to Attach Personal Devices: Consumers should be permitted to attach any devices they choose to the connection in their homes; and

(4) Freedom to Obtain Service Plan Information: Consumers should receive meaningful information regarding their service plans.”

The issue of community control over local communications has been an essential concern for community media advocates over the past thirty years, as noted in Linda K. Fuller’s important work on Community Television in the United States and in other sources. The issue of network neutrality is just another stage in this political process. As Fuller writes

As individuals and community groups begin to consider television not just passively but also as an outlet for their artistic and/or informational interests, they need to develop a whole new mind-set toward media in general and television in particular. Next, they must actively participate in media policymaking and stop defering to policies in place, theoretically, to protect their interests. What is being presented here is a control issue, and until we personally and professionally consider the implications of where we want the locus of control, we are no where. (191)