I’ve a new piece out, with Salvatore Scifo, in the International Journal of Communication, about community television. It focuses on what Hallin and Mancini call the ‘Liberal North Atlantic’ region – USA, Canada, Ireland, and the UK – and provides an overview of the state of the field, along with the various opportunities and challenges facing it. (Thanks to Karen Arriaza Ibarra of Complutense University in Madrid, and the IAMCR International Communication section, for the opportunity.)
I got to co-moderate a panel on community radio in the UK and Ireland this week, with my colleague Salvatore Scifo from Bournemouth University. The panel was organised by Prof Vinod Pavarala, UNESCO Chair in Community Media at the University of Hyderabad, as part of their Global Dialogues series. The video is now available for on-demand viewing.
Last week I made a submission to the Seanad consultation on Travellers, based on my mother’s work in this area.
Towards resilient community media
A conference at NUI Galway (Ireland), 13-15th June, 2019
The community media sector has been the focus of an increasing amount of scholarly attention as it has grown in size, from social movement theorists, to political economists, to those focused on governance and organisational communication.
Maintaining community media organizations poses a complex challenge, requiring ongoing attention to funding, to governance structures, to changing political and economic conditions, and to the task of building and consolidating relationships with communities. The challenge is exacerbated by the operation of community media within a capitalist system that is antithetical to the values of collaboration, non-commercialism, and inclusion that are at the core of work in this area. As Atton and Hamilton (2008: 26) note in their analysis of the political economy of alternative journalism, the “general political-economic dilemma for any critical project is that it needs resources with which to work, but those crucial resources are present only in the very society that it seeks to change or dissolve.”
This conference will provide an opportunity to reflect on questions of resilience and endurance as they arise in community media, and to explore the various interdependent factors that can impact the ongoing stability and health of community media projects. In addition to welcoming research grounded in particular case studies, we look forward to papers that will, in a holistic fashion, explore the role and operation of the sector in the context of broader socio-political concerns.
Contributions are invited from academics (including emerging and early-career scholars) exploring these issues, as well as from those working within the community and alternative media sectors.
Areas of focus might include (but are not limited to):
In the first instance, proposals should be sent to andrew.obaoill@nuigalway.ie, and should include:
The conference will open the evening of Thursday 13th, with academic sessions throughout the day on Friday 14th. Saturday 15th will include a field trip to the site of the Marconi transatlantic wireless telegraphy station in Connemara, supported by funding from the Broadcast Authority of Ireland, along with a visit to the studios of Connemara Community Radio.
Proposals are requested by 30 April, 2019. Proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
It is anticipated that selected papers from the conference will be published as a themed issue of a relevant academic journal.
This conference is made possible with the support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and of the NUI Galway College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies.
I’ve been appointed as a member of the Interim Steering Group of the Irish Media Literacy Network established by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
In late 2016, the BAI finalised and published its Media Literacy Policy. The policy arises from the BAI’s obligations under the Broadcasting Act 2009 to foster, develop and undertake media literacy activities. As part of the policy, the BAI committed to the development of a Media Literacy Network. The goal of the Irish Media Literacy Network is to help empower people with the skills and knowledge to make informed choices about the media content and services that they consume, create and disseminate.
The Network first met last July, and an Interim Steering Group has now been established. The Steering Group has 12 members, representative of a range of stakeholders, including audiovisual providers, online platforms, public entities/agencies, and academia. The first meeting will be in late October, with meetings of the larger group expected early next year.
I spoke today at the Crisis, Migration, and Performance symposium taking place at NUIG. It was a great opportunity to engage with scholars coming to these issues from a different perspective (performance studies and allied areas), and it made for a vibrant and useful encounter.
My presentation was centred around my experiences at the University of Illinois, where the struggle around ‘Chief Illiniwek’ (the problematic athletics mascot) and the the annual ‘Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day’ became entangled, both in terms of iconography and in how they demonstrated problematic cultural appropriation.
Many of my friends and colleagues will have been familiar with my own one-person campaign against Unofficial, and in this work I both reflect on that and seek to problematise some of the issues that arise, such as cultural authenticity/essentialism; the differing priorities and strategies of various institutional players (University of Illinois, Irish tourism and business interests, global drinks companies, Urbana-Champaign bar owners, etc.); intersectionality of privilege ethnic identity; my own attitude and position in the debate.
The Irish Times has published my letter on the need for regulation of social media advertising:
A chara, – Chris Connolly is, in a narrow, legalistic, sense correct when he lists regulation of social media advertising as a “risk” for sponsors (Business, January 16th, Business). The most striking lesson from his piece, however, is the great risk, at the societal level, if we do not have such regulations.
The tips Connolly provides for advertising done “right” – subtlety, avoiding “blatant” or “contrived” sales pitches – make it clear that what is envisaged is advertising that is not clearly identified as such, surreptitiously furthering the interests of sponsors and sports figures, at the expense of unsuspecting marks.
In broadcasting, we have particular concerns about advertising aimed at children because young children are unable to clearly distinguish between advertising and other content, because parents are not able to effectively moderate children’s viewing on a sufficiently granular basis, and because television, in particular, is seen as persuasive by virtue of the relationships children build with the characters they view. All these concerns also apply to social media. Given the focus in Chris Connolly’s piece on sports figures, who are so often held up as role models for children, standards that protect young fans seem appropriate.
More generally, a lack of transparency by sports figures about their connections to products and services they promote seems sleazy and unethical. Surely we can expect better? – Is mise,
Dr ANDREW Ó BAOILL,
Assistant Professor of
Communication Studies,
Division of Humanities
Natural Sciences,
Cazenovia College,
Sullivan Street,
Cazenovia, New York, US.
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