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7.8.Findings and Discussion8.1ParticipantsThe demographic and organizational make-up of the country-specific samples provides a statistical profile of the respondents, and points to some interesting aspects of their composition. These categories also serve as variables for addressing the research questions in greater detail through the use of cross-tabulations. The categories for this section were chosen by the researcher to serve the aims of this research: to evaluate what values are important to participants, and to provide information applicable to the policy development and practice of community broadcasting. Categories with insufficient data for further statistical computations are shaded in grey in the accompanying tables. Table 6. Demographic / Organizational Tabulation (Austria)
In Austria the distribution of frequencies reveals an older, well-educated, and highly-employed sample of community broadcasting participants (table 6.1). The age distribution is heavily skewed to cohorts above 26 years old, and shows a lack of young people in the sample. The education levels reveal that nearly half of the survey respondents have a university degree. Considering that participation in community broadcasting is most often volunteer-based work, another noteworthy statistic is that 85% of the sample either attend school or have a job. Several pilot interviews of this project revealed a concern among Austrian stakeholders about the ageing population of participants, and what strategies they might employ to address the issue (Moser 2013, Schwarzwald 2014). Perhaps part of a worldwide trend, scholars and practitioners have debated whether young people and early adopters of new online platforms may not be utilizing the traditional terrestrial broadcasting model (Carlsson 2012, Jackson 2013). Community broadcasting recently marked its 15th anniversary in Austria, and the participation statistics reveal a significant cohort of long-time participants. Almost half of the sample (49%) has four or more years of experience, with an extraordinarily high percentage of participants at 8+ years experience, and nearly twice as many participants aged 60+ than in the 13-25 range combined (table 6.2). Table 6. Demographic / Organizational Tabulation by Age and Participation (Austria)
With only 15% of the overall sample having less than 1 year of experience, it also appears that newcomers to the medium are not well-represented by younger demographic groups. As shown in table 6.6 above, respondents younger than 25 years old comprise less than a quarter of the first-year participants group (23%). While this research is a snapshot and not a longitudinal picture, the findings in the survey do provide some evidence to support stakeholders’ concerns about the lack of adoption by younger participants of community broadcasting in Austria. Perhaps further reflecting the profile of an older group of participants is the other media platforms they choose to distribute their output, especially the low scores for social media shown in figure 6.1. The chart indicates the percentage of respondents who judged each variable as “important”. Figure 6. Importance of Other Media Platforms for Distribution of Output (Austria) In the Czech Republic, the diminutive size and specific contour of the community broadcasting sector presented challenges to the research methodology in acquiring sufficient data for performing valid and reliable statistical computations. While most categories of variables were sufficiently populated, others were deemed insufficient, thus disqualifying them from further examination. Those ineligible categories are indicated by shading in the table 6.3 below. Table 6. Demographic / Organizational Tabulation (Czech Republic)
Despite the lack of teenage respondents in the survey sample, participants in the Czech Republic are much younger and less experienced than their Austrian counterparts. The age range of 19-39 comprises 90% of the respondents, with 65% participating less than two years. Professional experience of the researcher and information from pilot interviews with stakeholders estimate the oldest currently-operating community broadcaster in the Czech Republic is the student-run Radio R in Brno, which was founded in 2008. Other significant contributors to the sample such as Streetculture Radio and Radio Up Air are both less than four years old, thus the small number of respondents in the sample groups of 4+ years of participation could simply reflect the brief history of the sector. The survey numbers for participation in Czech community broadcasting indicate that not only are young respondents adopting community broadcasting, many are continuing to participate beyond their first year. This strength in numbers among younger respondents, while reflecting the overall profile of the sample, also calls into question the prevailing narrative of young people migrating away from traditional linear, curated media towards new online social media platforms. The chart below (figure 6.2) indicates from the high percentages of respondents judging social media forms as “important”, that these young Czech participants are using social media to deliver their user-generated content. Notably, while use of legacy terrestrial media forms may be diminishing, these respondents also seem to embrace the online technology of community radios and televisions to deliver their content. Figure 6. Importance of Other Media Platforms for Distribution of Output (Czech Republic)
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