Empowering Youth With Radio Power: "Anything Goes" on CKUT Campus-Community Radio

Abstract

Many forms of alternative media empower marginalized populations by providing the tools of media production as an outlet for their voices. Drawing on the experiences of youth collected from semi-structured ethnographic interviews, the preliminary research presented in this paper demonstrates how youth, in their own words, are empowered through their participation in the alternative media production process. Since the relationship between empowerment and radio production is currently unexplored, critical media literacy is applied to illustrate how production can enfranchise the creator. Although the production of the radio artifact initiates the process, it is the legitimacy of the discursive space that is truly empowering for youth.