Community radio’s amplification of communication for social change

Community radio’s capacity for mobilizing communication by providing voices that otherwise go unheard with an alternative outlet to commercial mass media has been explored in several texts, including William Barlow’s “Community radio in the US: The struggle for a democratic medium” (1988), Charles Fairchild’s Community radio and public culture: Being an examination of media access and equity in the nations of North America (Hampton Press, 2001), Colin Fraser and Sonia Restrepo-Estrada’s “Community radio for change and development” (2002), Susan Forde, Kerrie Foxwell, and Michael Meadows’ “Creating a community public sphere: Community radio as a cultural resource” (2002), Nick Couldry and Tanja Dreher’s “Globalization and the public sphere: Exploring the space of community media in Sydney” (2007), Janey Gordon’s Community radio in the twenty first century (Peter Lang, 2012), and Anne F. MacLennan’s “Cultural imperialism of the North? The expansion of the CBC Northern Service and community radio” (2011). Juliet Fox’s Community radio’s amplification of communication for social change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) raises similar themes, although diverges in its deep-dive into community radio using a critical Communication for Social Change (CfSC) framework, which promotes media democratization through community ownership, community knowledge promotion and dissemination, and community empowerment. Fox draws attention to the need to democratize media and communications in an era of neoliberalism, wherein ICTs are growing increasingly commodified in the pursuit of profit at the heart of global capitalism. Without claiming community radio is a technological panacea to the fractured relationship between democracy and neoliberal capitalism, Fox incisively argues that community radio, in the context of CfSC, is an influential, ubiquitous tool that affords unheard voices a chance to critically participate in the democratic process, at the local and national scale, enriching public debate and discussion. Furthermore, community radio can challenge neoliberal capitalist ideologies, irrespective of social and political variations from community to community. Hence, Fox asserts that community radio holds the potential to transform social and political knowledge and information through the utilization of voice as a manifestation of citizen-centered self-determination and agency. To evaluate how community radio amplifies economically, politically, and/or socially marginalized voices, consequently facilitating voice as a vessel for democratic power, Fox examines two community radio stations: 3CR Community JOURNAL OF RADIO & AUDIO MEDIA 2022, VOL. 29, NO. 2, 489–495