3CMedia, the Journal for Community, Citizen’s and Third Sector Media and Communication published an excellent article, entitled “Community Media in a Prosumer Era,” by Community Communication Scholar Ellie Rennie (author of Community Media: A Global Introduction) in their December 2007 issue.

In her article, Rennie discusses the impacts of convergent media on traditional forms of “broadcast-era” media through her research on SYN: Student Youth Network in Australia, “a media organization and community radio licensee based in Melbourne run by and for people under 26″ (25).

She makes important distinctions between “user-generated” content (found on commercial websites, such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube) and community media, such as public access television, community or “grassroots” radio, and other geographically-focused media.

The author adds, “digital divide aside,” what are characteristics that remain unique to community media as more individuals gain “access” to participatory media on the web? (26)

She explains that geographically-based community media enjoy added characteristics – beyond access – that allow individuals to participate in member-driven processes. These include, “open, participative” (25) functions that allow individuals in physical communities to take ownership within the organization and of developments regarding technology implementation and use (31).

Therefore, Rennie writes “a new research agenda for community media might include:

• The role it plays in supporting public information and engagement – in ways that are both similar and different from commercial and public media. (The Griffith University audience study is a useful starting point. See Meadows 2007).

• The contribution of community media training (and what theat means for the creative industries labour market)

• The changing status and role of third sector organizations” (27)

While the author recognizes a number of technological and structural challenges to implementing and sustaining convergence among broadcast-era community media, she writes, “community media provides a structure and method which can take amateur media to the next level” (31).

“Community media sector organisations are socially-responsive and proactive in that they cater for groups who are not otherwise adequately represented and develop technologies to serve identifiable needs rather than market gaps” (31).

In addition, Rennie finds “Convergence is encouraged within community media organizations which are open to people with different skills and interests, yet brings them into a shared culture and social world” (29).

Access the entire article online, available at the 3CMedia website. Thanks to Rob McCausland and Chuck Sherwood for the pointer.

I recently revisited the audio from the Alliance for Community Media 2006 conference panel, “PEG in a Shifting Media Landscape,” featuring Felicia Sullivan (moderator), Hans Klein (Georgia Tech), Susie Lindsay (Former Berkman Center for Internet and Society Fellow), Michael Eisenmenger (Manhattan Neighborhood Network) and Fred Johnson (Community Media & Technology Program, UMass Boston).

Listen to the audio (MP3)

The discussion is still quite relevant, particularly for access practitioners interested in moving into the online participatory media world but not sure exactly how to get started.

During the session, Susie Lindsay introduced a really interesting idea that I think is worth restating. She talked about how access centers with the resources to build community online around their work might consider moving into the role of online digital media moderators.

For example, a community media center with resources might designate staff time to find good locally relevant stuff online that may be of interest to others in their physical community. This could do two things:

First, it could highlight online content (Creative Commons or other open access licensed blog posts, audio, video, photos, etc.) from people who may not be involved with the access center – as an outreach tool.

Second, it could help transform a community media center into a trusted source (aggregator) online where individuals in a geographic community (or beyond) could go to find digital media of interest to others in their community.

An alternative might be to open source the model.

Meaning, that members within the community could volunteer their time – particularly younger or other web saavy folks – and submit ideas to a point person (staff) at the community media center. This might also create a scenario where individuals could take ownership of finding stuff online, that might even lead to content that could be aired on the cable channel. In many ways this is very similar to Denver Open Media’s model:

“YOU use the equipment, YOU create the shows, YOU provide feedback as viewers, and YOUR votes determine the broadcast schedule . . . “

The other really valuable point that Susie made was looking to youth to serve as digital media trainers at community media centers. Because youth are quite saavy online (See danah boyd’s “Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” PDF and her other work) this would be a great way to create training programs for others in the community, particularly adults, parents and others who may be less experienced in the online world.

There are lots of other great points mentioned by all of the panelists. That is why I definitely recommend that folks take another listen to the audio.

As a side note, it’s really unfortunate that the ACM Boston 2006 conference website is no longer up and running. It was such a wonderful resource. I hope there is a way that the website can find another home somewhere else online.

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).

“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)

In searching Radical Software for articles on public access television, I found Ann Arlen’s piece, entitled “Public access: the second coming of television?” from Vol. 1, no. 5 (1972) P. 81-85. In it, the author writes:

“Technology is really nothing – a piece of equipment lying around – until somebody picks it up and uses it. And it is what we choose to do with it, which is to say, WHO we are who use it, which determines the effect of our technology upon us.

Cable technology has within it the possibility to hasten along a day when ‘big brother’ is indeed ‘watching you’, aided by a total system of two-way, individual access cablevision – into our homes, our bank accounts, our business transactions, where every TV set cablecasting the football game in the local bar can be transmitting our conversations and actions as well.

It also has the capacity to let us talk to each other, people who, in an earlier time, might not have been able to understand each other or to care, who might have been too frightened to listen to each other face-to-face.

We have a chance to witness the excitement of our own beings, our own lives, REAL people, not plastic people, with words we really mean coming out of our real mouths.

Do we want it? We can have it. Of all the promises of cable television, it is the immediately realizable. It is here-but to grow it must have our commitment.”

In thinking about Arlen’s article, about the potential of public access television in its early days, much of it resonates with me as I think about the situation today as community media workers, producers and viewers confront the challenges and opportunities with a new medium, called the social web.

But what exactly is the promise of the public access television in an Internet age? It’s true that access to affordable video equipment, computer editing software, and broadband Internet access for publishing and distribution is increasing. But as more and more people (including public access television producers) publish video to online sharing sites, like YouTube, many questions remain about the future of producing, publishing, finding, viewing and archiving locally-produced and locally-oriented media on the web. For example:

1.) Where can people in local communities easily find and view media on demand produced from the perspective of residents in their community on local issues?

2.) Where can people connect to, work with and learn from others in their physical community to create their own media about issues of importance to them and others in their local community?

Community media centers provide people with the opportunity to do both things in a way that may be different than simply using video sharing websites alone. While it’s true that sites like YouTube’s Virtual Video Map is a great example of the possibilities of integrating “video location with Google Maps,” community media centers provide individuals with additional face-to-face opportunities, such as classes in video production and web distribution, with other residents in their local community.

Through the process of being involved in a community media production, people may meet, work with and learn from others in their community who they may not have known. These moments create connections and strengthen ties between people in a way that virtual interaction alone may not be able to facilitate. But, when this process of physical media making through community learning moves to the social web, there is enormous potential to extend these community connections to others within and beyond their physical locations.

In the second post, “Online Media: Community TV Comes Full Circle – Part II,” the author writes:

“A few months after I started volunteering, a job opportunity presented itself. At barely 20 years old, I was hired by Skyline Cablevision to be a Staff Producer, one of 5 paid producers who were hired to manage the productions and the volunteer crews. I had 7 different shows to produce. I was the youngest person on staff, I was in charge of building a community of people, developing their skills to produce good quality programming delivered to targeted audiences, and engaging people in an interactive way (something that mainstream TV networks did not do very well back then). It was social media delivered via television!”

Read more at suzemuse.wordpress.com.

“But what is community, anyway? A famous article, from 1955, listed 57 definitions – like ketchup. Just what kind of community are we talking about here today?

I usually say that communities are human webs that provide essential feelings of sharing, belonging, and meaning. Tom Bender, a historian at NYU, wrote that community is ‘a network of social relations marked by mutuality and emotional bonds.’ But I emailed Tom this week and he pointed out something else worth keeping in mind, that the ability to collaborate, to create a sense of community, with people who are different from us, might be the most important thing for companies to develop. That’s quite a different thing from cultivating communities where there are already strong ties.”

Virtual worlds (or the “Second-Generation Internet”), Noveck explains, puts place back into cyberspace. Virtual worlds make real-time, visual interaction and group formation possible. She writes that a user’s avatar “is akin to assuming the role of citizen.” They represent “public characters, personalities designed to function in a public and social capacity” (269). Further, when people see themselves through their avatars, and the avatars of others, this makes “it possible for people to see the groups to which they belong and participate in them more effectively by sharing tasks via a computer network” (276).

What does all this have to do with public access TV?

As I mentioned in a previous post, others have commented on how the “first-generation Internet” impacts physical group formation as individuals spend more time online, ultimately resulting in what Barry Wellman has called “networked individualism.”

What I am interested in exploring further in Noveck’s article is the following claim:

There is no substitution for the fellowship of the Kaffeehaus in cyberspace. Not only do people who want to sustain groups have to work harder to maintain their bonds, but also there is no way to cultivate allegiance or attachment to a place . . . There is another impediment to group life online. The absence of any connection to “real-world” institutions and power disconnects the social space of cyberspace from what we think of as the public sphere. (264)

Now if we consider that an increasing number of public access centers are implementing social media tools (e.g., Drupal websites, blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc.) to enable individual and group participation online, I believe this puts place back into cyberspace because it focuses group activity back towards a physical location–the community media center. Before jumping to virtual worlds to restore this missing element, I would argue that the promise of public access media for group activity (in the first-generation Internet) is the grounding nature that the community media center provides to its members in this way. As a result, public access media centers assist in enabling unique opportunities for individuals in local communities to join and sustain groups over time across both virtual and physical space.

While reading the article, I was struck by one comment in particular. In his chapter on the “The social affordances of computerized communication networks,” Wellman writes

The communication site as a meaningful place will diminish even more. The person — not place, household, or workgroup — will become even more of an autonomous communication node. (230)

I thought this was interesting to consider within my study of the community media center and its role in “building a better community through technology.” So far, I’ve found that the public access center, as “communication site,” has had the opposite effect — it connects the person to the place through its focus on localism.

For example, while a public access member may join a community media center because of her individual interest to learn video production or other related skills, she quickly connects — through the cable channel and/or the Internet — to others in her community. Because public access is mandated to serve the local-community, the community media center becomes meaningful for its individual members because of the person-to-place connectivity that it enables and, in fact, requires. And as public access TV moves to the Internet, the role of the community media center becomes increasingly relevant to this discussion of “networked individualism.”

Wenger writes

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

But he adds that “not everything called a community is a community of practice.” He says that while a neighborhood is often called a community, it is “usually not a community of practice.” Therefore, he provides three characteristics, which he calls “crucial,” in this definition:

1. The domain
2. The community
3. The practice

The domain is defined by people who share a common identity along with common interests. Wenger writes that “shared competence” is unique to this domain and it contributes to what “distinguishes [its] members from other people.” Furthermore,

They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.

The community is defined by members who “engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other and share information.” Wenger adds, “They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other.” And that, relevant to this project, “A website in itself is not a community of practice.”

The practice is defined by members of a community that

develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems–in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction.

I would assume that people who participate in public access TV, either on their cable channel or the web, would agree that these three characteristics apply to their work in community media. But what I am most interested in learning from my upcoming study is to test the hypothesis that the community media center plays a vital role in facilitating and sustaining this particular community of practice.

Wenger writes that the importance of understanding communities of practice is that it

allows us to see past more obvious format structures such as organizations, classrooms or nations, and perceive the structures defined by engagement in practice and the informal learning that comes with it.

An he adds,

New technologies, such as the Internet, have extended the reach of our interactions beyond the geographical limitations of traditional communities, but the increase in flow of information does not obviate the need for community.