Conclusions 9.1Publics and Participants

9.Conclusions

9.1Publics and Participants

In Austria, thanks in large part to the work of activists from pirate broadcasting and academia, a long struggle for legalization resulted in the formation of the vibrant community broadcasting sector we see today. The 14 radio and three television organizations that comprise the Austrian community broadcasting landscape are licensed by the media regulator to deliver their programs via terrestrial and digital systems to cover a local city, town, or rural area, mandated to serve the communities identified within their geographic reach. Thus, they are generally mixed-model broadcasters that feature a wide range of programs about social, cultural, and political subjects important to the local community, produced by individuals and teams of mostly volunteer participants. These participants are tasked by organizational charters and regulatory guidelines to observe and promote the values and philosophies of community broadcasting, both in the programs they offer, and within the organizations in which they operate.

The research project surveyed a sample of the volunteer participant producers, and presented a picture of respondents in Austria who are mostly well-educated, employed, and have substantial experience in the production of community broadcasting. In fact, almost half of the sample has four or more years of experience, with nearly a third of participants at 8+ years of producing media content. In addition, even among those with a year or less experience, fewer than a quarter were under 25 years old. This so-called “greying” of Austrian community broadcasting is a significant issue among stakeholders in the sector. With nearly twice as many participants aged 60+ than in the 13-25 age range combined, stakeholders’ concerns about the lack of younger participants in community broadcasting in Austria appear to be well-founded.

The maturing population of terrestrial community broadcasting participants in Austria suggests some migration of younger individuals away from traditional radio and TV forms to internet-based delivery platforms and social media. These changes in technology pose a challenge to the future of Austrian community broadcasting, reflecting a similar dynamic currently unfolding in media landscapes across Europe and around the globe (O’Neill et al 2010). Though some scholars argue that the growth of social media usage has not adversely affected traditional media usage (Carlsson 2012), declines in young audiences for terrestrial broadcasting are well-documented (Richter 2015, Lukovitz 2016). In the case of young Austrian volunteer producers, the findings of this research project suggest that they too could be migrating to social media for distribution of their content, at the expense of traditional community broadcasting forms. Perhaps longitudinal research could further explore this trend, and predict what the net result will be for the organizations in which they operate. Notably, for decades before the arrival of new media options, community broadcasters’ principles of access and participation contributed greatly to the original development and distribution of “user-generated” content. This earlier experience might serve stakeholders, advocates and regulators well in developing an effective and sustainable model in the transition of terrestrial broadcasting into the digital realm.

Unlike Austria, in the Czech Republic there has been no substantial nationwide movement to establish a community broadcasting sector. While the media regulator has intervened to create individual cases of alternative broadcasting, the results have been limited at best. For example, the commercially-licensed Radio 1 in Prague succeeded in providing a sustainable source of alternative broadcasting, whereas the now defunct Radio Student in Brno failed to survive in the same commercial media environment. The current state of community broadcasting is a small assemblage of online radios at universities, cultural centers, and advocacy organizations. Active only since 2008, these organizations have evolved independently as autonomous broadcasters, developing their own values, philosophies and guidelines for operation.

The profile of volunteer participants in the Czech Republic reveal a distinctly different cohort than their older peers in Austria, as the age and length of participation tables trend in the opposite directions. Among young people aged 19-25, there appears to be no reluctance on the part of young people to join community broadcasting, as they comprise the bulk of Czech participants, mostly involved in student radio. Perhaps for these young “digital natives”, linear delivery for audio and video via online platforms fits with their usage patterns, and community broadcasting participation could be an extension of their social media activities.

9.2Values

From an overall perspective, it appears that both Austrian and Czech community broadcasting participants in this research assign high importance to a group of widely-recognized values in community broadcasting. These values such as non-discriminatory, access and participation, human rights, independent, and not-for-profit represent a range of philosophies in community broadcasting that are well-known to stakeholders, and are regularly found in theory, advocacy, and practice throughout the world. Additional widely-recognized values that scored well with participants in both countries are social/cultural representation, community development, and sustainability. The results emphasize the value participants place on the role of community broadcasting as a unique communicative space with a legitimate position in the public sphere. This positioning supports the matrix of theoretical approaches from Carpentier et al (2008) who contend that community broadcasters supplement mainstream media content, contest pre-conceived popular representations, and resist dominant paradigms.

A noteworthy term not generally found among the values of community broadcasting is “Experimental”, yet this term was judged important by more than 90% of both Austrian and Czech respondents. Perhaps community broadcasting stakeholders underestimate the interest participants have in the opportunities for experimentation and innovation that the medium provides, especially as a counter balance to the popular programming of mainstream media. Conversely, multilingualism is a widely-held community broadcasting value, and might also be expected to be important to participants in this research, but that was not necessarily the case. In the Czech Republic, fewer than half of respondents judged it as important, perhaps reflecting the homogenous nature of Czech society. More surprisingly, in the multicultural society of Austria, where stakeholders have especially prioritized multilingualism, the term “Multilingual” did not emerge in the top half of the rankings. In addition, only four percent of respondents in Austria utilized the foreign language options in the survey. From these findings, it’s possible to conclude that the value of multilingualism might be overstated in community broadcasting.

The issue of women’s rights and gender equality continues to reverberate in today’s society, prompting community broadcasting organizations to insist upon language mandating the equal representation and participation of women. Notably, the term “Gender Balanced” as a value in community broadcasting was ranked quite low in both the Austrian and Czech surveys. Upon closer examination however, while the Czech sample was too small for detailed breakouts, the low scores in the Austrian survey were directly related to the level of representation by females in the various cohorts. Where women were well-represented, gender balance was judged to be important, and where men dominated, it was not. It appears that similar to society as a whole, community broadcasting in these cases still struggles to reach more of a consensus on the issue of gender balance.

Social and cultural representation is sometimes seen by scholars as mutually exclusive to political representation (Chang and Komar 2010), while others argue that the two concepts mix well together (Staggenborg 2001). Some models of community broadcasting are singularly political in their orientation, whereas others are exclusively social and cultural. Similar to the sites of discourse in the public sphere of Jürgen Habermas (1989) where politics and culture were essential components, many community radios and televisions around the world are mixed-models, combining both philosophies into their programming. In Austria, where the mixed-model is prevalent, respondents to the survey ranked both the terms “Political Representation” and “Social/Cultural Representation” among the highest scoring group, showing strong support for the mixed-model philosophy.

In the Czech Republic however, the low score for “Political Representation” was indeed nearly the opposite of the high score for “Social/Cultural Representation”, perhaps reflecting respondents’ seeming aversion to political engagement. In a society like the Czech Republic dominated by powerful interests in media, community broadcasting would ostensibly be a logical site for political representation and action. However, the views of these respondents appear to reflect the prevailing perception of a Czech population generally uninterested in political participation, and to favor the primacy of culture over politics in community broadcasting.

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