- labour, working class papers, socialist phenomena, underground or dissenting press – mid. 18^th century onwards

- public sphere was being dominated by middle class – bourgeoisie so needed to find new space to air views

- radical social and democratic movements of the 1960s and 1970s with counterculture publications, ideas of sexual freedom, anti-censorship, openly partisan and anti-establishment on such issues as Vietnam and racial equality, with their cooperative, decentralist philosophies and practices

- social movement foundation of IMC’s: global justice, media activism, radical democracy and free software movements

- did not want to emulate mass media which masked its conservatism under a veil of objectivity

- counter-hegemonic critiques of domination

- mass/mainstream/corporate media ignores important issues and sections of the community

- mass media also distorts its reports of important social and political events in keeping with establishment views

- 2 opposing trends – 1) global technocapitalism (Kellner) synthesis of capitalism and technology, commercializing technoscience; 2) globalizing social movements, e.g. women’s movement, environmental organizations; these trends in transnational society are mirrored in centralized control of commercial news media and formation of alternative media networks

- global media industry has become a central battleground for social equality; essential moment of democratization is the diversification of media

- foundational motivation in Indymedia is a mission to create a global grassroots media democracy, e.g. Adbuster’s media carta, [where] every human being has the right to communicate to receive and impart information through any media

Historically but applicable today:

- a reliance on sales rather than a strong advertising base

- distribution difficulties (copies were often passed around or hawked in the street)

- dependence on volunteer labour, usually a small group of loyal supporters

- a shared belief system and a strong alternative world view (e.g. anti-capitalist) among writers and readers.

Counterculture publications also still applicable today:

- independent and left leaning

- using different news sources

- targeted at specialist and pro-minority groups (land rights, environmentalist, feminist).

- IMC- Zapatista movement: use of internet to build solidarity network

Also:  

- central aim of independent media is to provide authentic, true, undistorted reporting informed by critical reason

- a news voice: independent press or independent news media – media that is producing news

- subjective view, motivated view of what’s going on in world

- criticism of mass/mainstream media: alt. media is watchdog of mass media, anti-establishment as much the preserve of right wing publications as of the traditional left

- reaching out to broad non-elite audiences

- important outlet for social groups without a voice in the mainstream

- attractive to minority groups because of the relative low cost and production issues involved

- copyleft (as opposed to copyright) - IMC: co-ownership as public property

- raw news postings – IMC: live or nearly live from the streets – reported by cell phone, or by quickly uploaded audio and video at the nearby media centers, and even by text written sometimes mid-protest at cyber cafes

- liberated/free software: (public technocapital – democratic technology) volunteer programmers or techs adapt free software based on net hacker culture of both sharing source code and communally producing code (IMC takes the same approach to freedom of media that free software networks do to software), aka "active" software enables automated multimedia open publishing

- low technical and production values, long distance tech and editorial support

- use of visuals, in the form of comics and cartoons and other satirical devices.

- increasingly IMCs are formed to offer an a local alternative press outlet

- consensus processes – IMC, decentralized democracy, tolerance for diversity, mutual support

- open publishing and information flow - IMC

- public ownership – IMC: nonpropriety media economy of collective information goods

Relationship between mainstream and alt. media

- Being alternative can’t just mean that the institution’s editorial focus is on this or that topical area, isn’t just being left or right or different in editorial content; it must have to do with how the institution is organized and works.

- alt. media institution doesn’t try to maximize profits, doesn’t primarily sell audience to advertisers for revenues (and so seeks broad and non-elite audience), is structured to subvert society’s defining hierarchical social relationships, and is structurally profoundly different from and as independent of other major social institutions, particularly corporations, as it can be.

- alternative media institution sees itself as part of a project to establish new ways of organizing media and social activity and it is committed to furthering these as a whole, and not just its own preservation

- relationship of alternative media to the mainstream media was one of criticism and distrust

- "virtual public spheres" - internet: allows now a fourth type of alternative media: direct participation of citizens in making and sharing news via websites, newsgroups, listserves, blogs, informal email networking, etc…

- zines and ezines - zinsters

- community radio & tv

- old and new media-face-to-face communications, leafleting, and street art, along with radio, video, and websites

Audience: access is key issue: marginalized peoples, voices not heard on mainstream, non-elite audiences

Funding: underfunded, often poorly resources but low cost, donations, community groups, churches, political groups, unions; rejecting profits and surplus as a guiding goal; diminishing or eliminating advertising as a revenue source

Membership/workers:

- usually mostly volunteer, if salaries are paid have little income differential between positions or seek to reduce this

- involved for ideological and motivated reasons of wanting to change the world & making a difference

- working conditions are comparable for all workers

- reduction and elimination of gender and racial divisions of labour, embody feminist and multicultural aims,

- non-hierarchical

- collective consensus decision-making

- structure that challenges race, gender, and class hierarchies in work roles, norms of remuneration, and decision making

- developing and avoiding compromising corporate entanglements

- unity principle of IMCs states must be not-for-profit, restructuring the traditional news hierarchy… the relationship between the sources, journalists, and readers is all that matters; community, publishers, advertisers, and corporate interests are not of concern

- volume of info: overwhelming amount of commentary, some more informed than others

- open publishing – anyone can publish; Indymedia sites [are] a mixed bag of thoughtful analyses, activist dispatches, on-the-street news items, rants, and reprinted media from unknown publications or organizations

- not all are promoting an informed citizenry: need to be a critical reader, evaluating information, comparing it to other info

- how reliable and verifiable is alt. Media – same question of mainstream media

- writers and readers seeks scapegoats, not only in government but in racial and sexual minorities as well

- digital divide: pragmatics/logistics e.g. technological resources, capacity, access

- literacy

- movement leadership to develop activist careers or become elite leaders

- crackdown by the state authorities: arrests, legal challenges, confiscation of media materials and tools – solution: be very public about these situations

- adhoc decision-making, principles which are forming and adapting to suit needs of locations of alt. media

- global versus local pushes/pulls

- technology or media availability are not sufficient to ameliorate social inequality, need efforts in the political and economic realm

- most journalists and others producing news items are connected to communities, unlike those who work for mainstream media who get most of their news from press releases, PR firms, government, press conferences – media staged events

- those involved have a better understanding of their public role, their role in democracy and society, of the power of media to effect change

- freedom of speech much more alive in alt. media

- offer lower barriers to participation than mainstream media

- seek to instil a sense of ownership and independence among their readers

- use non-corporate modes of address

- are more inclined to be spontaneous rather than product orientated.

- developing into not only a diverse global media network, but also a committed network of journalists seasoned in the challenges of covering protests and activism

INDYMEDIA – Independent Media Center  (Morris)

Mission of the IMC network includes reporting on a wide variety of social injustices, covering social movement mobilizations, engaging in media activism, and embodying participatory democracy in its actions and media policies. Indymedia offers unique coverage of the GJM mobilizations and offers activists a space to voice their profound concerns. Indymedia is a forum for writers to express critical views about the severe consequences of economic globalization and constructive editorials about the globalization of social justice and grassroots democracy.

Some participants’ media philosophies:

• holding an objective journalistic stance

• seeing Indymedia as reporting on global justice movements as an activist press

• interpreting Indymedia as an experiment in confederating local press efforts

• envisioning Indymedia as a new online grassroots media experiment of participants with diverse political views

104 IMC locals

over 30 countries

By geographical region, the active IMCs include:

2 IMCs in Africa (with 8 more requested)

4 in Asia

6 in Australia and the Pacific

12 in Central and South America

21 in Europe, and

51 in Canada & US.

The locations of the 8 newly approved IMCs (with over 60 requested) illustrate the growing diversity of the network: Andorra, Croatia, Istanbul, Nice (France), Peru, Poland, Springfield (U.S.A.), Winnipeg (Canada).

Among the largest active "locals," geographically, are Brazil, India, Russia, and South Africa IMCs, with the smallest being city-based IMCs (the main type in Canada and the USA) such as Melbourne, Australia, Victoria, Canada, and Madison in the U.S.

A number of the large nation-level IMCs work through a number of local IMC groups. The Brazil IMC is a coalition of five locals within the country. IMC Aotearoa (New Zealand) has several locals, Otautahi and Wellington, generating print projects. The UK, German and Italian IMCs also use the model of numerous local IMCs media collectives working through one national IMC website. local, regional, national networks

globally organized

Directly antecedent to creating IMC is programming work to offer online coverage of the People’s Global Action protests in June 1999

Free software called ‘active’ that ran the original Indymedia website was written in Sydney by Community Activist Technology in the first half of 1999. We designed it for a mini-Indymedia-centre.

Idea was to cooperatively organize a media center that hosted many incoming media activists and supported the use of various types of media. Seattle IMC had a daily newspaper, thirty minutes of satellite TV every day, radio, miscellaneous other coverage, and the website.

Events covered: Major protests are mobilization and networking sites

- May Day protests,

- protests at the US presidential political party conventions in Los Angeles and Philadelphia

- European Union protests in Nice and other cities

- World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil

- events after September 11 and the War on Terrorism

- World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg

Indymedia works as:

• a network for individual media activists and the general public

• local media produced by local collectives

• a social movement media covering the alternative globalization movement

• an alternative media network, serving diverse movements and interests

In essence it is a :

- decentralized people’s media

- and works in part as a global justice movement press

- unlicensed radio operators, low power output – Low Power Radio Transmitters (LPRTs)

- began in 1960’s in small isolated Aboriginal communities in far North, using scavenged equipment from RCMP, DIA, used to communicate with those out on hunts or on traplines

- then Native communities in South

- Pincher Creek's Teen Radio, the first rural community radio in English Canada

- one of first urban community radio in Vancouver in 1970s, Wired World in Kitchener

- CBC Northern Service program in 1958 and Accelerated Coverage Plan (ACP) in 1973 to provide direct CBC services via satellite to any community with more than 500 residents: programs to enhance official gov’t policies aimed at assimilating Aboriginal population to mainstream Canadian society (assimilationist policies)

- Aboriginal peoples in North were not consulted, no possibility offered to provide programming by or for their communities until Native Communication Program created to provide funds for this purpose

- CBC showed same prgming as in South to communities who had no interest or were hostile to this pgming

- various radio and communication societies were created to represent the Aboriginal communities and their LPRT sites

- today more than 300 Aboriginal stations, also produce tv pgms and print newspapers, provide much needed communication services, distribute info in variety of media, produce pgming

- independence of stations stems from resolve of members not to sacrifice sovereignty and self-determination granted in treaties but ignored

- Major players: grassroots aboriginal groups, Francophones both inside and outside of Quebec, and student radio groups, and now also ethnic groups

- Community radio policy in Canada was designed to simultaneously accommodate and control community radio

- CRTC does not apply blanket prohibitions on types of radio broadcasting based on arbitrary considerations like their radiating power, but takes into account the social context and function of a particular radio station

- CRTC over 2 decades has drafted a carefully-designed regulatory policy which has both enhanced and protected community radio while simultaneously institutionalizing the form and incorporating it into the national broadcasting infrastructure, 1993 Licence Policy for Low Power Radio

- US: long-standing international agreements guarantee the U.S. control of the vast majority of continental and regional "clear-channel" frequencies; Canadian regulators have long had to account for the huge number of U.S. radio stations whose signals have extensive reach into Canada and which have constrained domestic development for decades

- US: claims by the FCC that low-power radio operations would cause unacceptable interference with existing broadcasters remain at best unsubstantiated, selectively applied, and in some cases entirely irrelevant

- spectrum scarcity, where it can be said to exist at all, is not a natural condition, but an imposed one, created by the spectrum management and use policies of the government regulators, not by the activities of 10 watt broadcasters

- Ability to contribute a new and diverse voice to the market is a prerequisite to obtain a low-power radio licence

- community radio in Canada has been largely immune from the encroachment or usurpation by hostile entities because the regulations clearly set out an unambiguous and enforceable definition of the structure and mandate of community radio while allowing these policy definitions to remain uniquely flexible and adaptable to the social function and context of particular stations – regulatory authority provides protection and is a burden at same time

- In 1975, CRTC required all cable operators to provide a universally accessible community channel to be programmed by average Canadians rather than professional broadcasters

- CRTC's vision of community television reflects the deep importance of such a service in maintaining the health of a democratic society, stressing the need for individual & community self expression as a means to promote diversity, the exploration of new ideas and Canadian content

- CRTC Public Notice 1991-59 states that the community channel and the cable licensees which operate such channels shall: 1) "facilitate ... self-expression through free and open access to members of the community" (3); 2) "engender a high level of citizen participation and community involvement in community programming" (3); and 3) "seek out innovative ideas and alternative views" (4).

- regulatory requirement that cable companies maintain control over community channel operations and programming has lead to over-commercialization and a distinct lack of challenging, truly "alternative" content; community channels are run by private companies who feel obliged to remove potentially offensive voices from their community channels

- state of community television is not the fault of individual licensees or even of large Multi-System Operators. Rather, it is a structural flaw of a system that puts responsibility for public self-expression into the hands of companies whose primary business is the re-selling of television signals

- Canadian community channels face the following problems: (Surman)

* Many individuals and groups who would like to produce programming, or who would like to air already produced programming of relevance to the community, are not given access to the community channel by cable licensees. While cable licensees do air a large quantity of original programming, this represents only a small portion of requests received, especially in large urban centres.

* There is no consistent, democratic system through which requests for access are assessed at Canadian community channels. Decisions about which programming requests will be accepted are made in an arbitrary manner based on the perspectives of community channel staff or the cable licensee.

* The majority of community channel programs in Canada are produced by the employees of cable licensees and not by average Canadians. Even where programs are logged as community produced for statistical purposes they are often produced with only token involvement from members of the community.

* Certain licensees will refuse access to program requests, or remove programs from a community channel schedule, based on their own moral or political convictions, or based on the complaints of a small number of community residents. These are not programs which are slanderous, libelous, or in breech of the licensee's obligations under the Broadcasting Act. Such behaviour is not acceptable in relation to a service intended to "...facilitate self-expression through free and open access."

* Certain licensees are well known to refuse program proposals that do not have sponsorship attached to them. This practice takes place despite its prohibition in the cable industry's own Community Channel Standards.

* Most cable licensees use airtime on the community channel to promote company goods and services. In many cases, the same cable licensees will turn down access requests based on "lack of airtime".

* Cable licensees will often use the community channel as a direct means of achieving their own political goals. Recently, a cable licensee in the Maritimes withdrew coverage of town council in protest of a municipal tax increase. Although this is an extreme example, it is common practice for licensees to use council coverage and elected representative programming as leverage in tax and municipal right-of-way negotiations.

* Some licensees, including one of Canada's largest MSO's, uses "freelancers" instead of community volunteers for programming which is considered too important for the hands of average Canadians. Such a practice would be more than acceptable in the context of a commercial local programming channel, but it is wholly unacceptable at community channels which have been given a mandate to "...engender a high level of citizen participation..." and "...provide and promote the availability of training programs..." by the Commission

- CRTC has established a new class of broadcasting licence for community programming that will provide opportunities for not-for -profit community groups to provide such pgming where the cable company chooses not to operate a channel in accordance with the policy

- CRTC requires Class 1 broadcast distribution licensees (cable companies) to contribute 5% of gross revenues to Canadian TV production removing the requirement for cable companies to provide a community channel. Originally that levy went entirely to community TV, though today it supports Canadian commercial television as well. In some cases it supports only commercial television; (there is no similar support from the broadcasting industry for community radio stations)

Electronic Commons: refers to a public lane on the information highway which exists to facilitate free and open public self-expression by all Canadians; Gatekeeper-free model of the Internet as opposed to the gatekeeper-oriented model of broadcasting and cable television