The contemporary landscape for local and community media – press, radio, television and online – has been undergoing constant periods of unprecedented disruption due to the challenges and shifts triggered by digital technologies. Technology displays more than a neutral role; it affects the financial basis and sustainability, cultures and practices of production and consumption. Innovative channels, platforms, ongoing interaction with audiences have muddled media professionals.
As Bob Franklin (1998) put forward in his book Local Media, academic appraisals of the local and regional media typically emphasise the declining number of local papers, their diminishing readerships and circulations, constant monopolies that tend to centralise media productions in large regional centres. Globalization, funding models (commercial, public or independent/grassroots), the insufficiency of human resources are often regarded by academics in this area. In his iconic Local Radio, Going Global, Guy Starkey (2011) enthusiastically defined local radio as “the sleeping giant”, baffled with concentration models and repressions, but still resisting: “a world-wide phenomenon”, Starkey asserted.
The Digital News Report 2019 emphasized that several local news organisations across the globe have successfully implemented donation models as a way to interact with audiences and securing their existence. In doing so, audiences are considered as the ultimate solution to step in into this surviving process; they mean financial revenues, promote tensions in the public space, change society, as well as the ability to embrace social movements (Amicucci, 2017).
This special issue of The Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies (OJCMT) intends to contribute for a systematic review of worldwide experiences regarding the social, cultural, political impacts of local and community media within societies. In addition, it does not intend to romanticize these media, but rather a positive and empirical approach of experiences, examples of how local media engage with societies: what kind of experiences are being followed to involve local audiences? Is it possible to identify several key aspects to be define a valuable engagement with those communities?.
Taking this context as an inspiration, editors welcome all articles focusing the following range set of topics, not excluding other suitable ones:
- Citizens’ participation in the local/community media
- Economic models and audiences
- Journalism and audiences
- Community representations in local/community media
- Heritage/historical preservation
- Memory and local media
- Politics in a local/community media framework
- Rural ramifications of local media
- Hyperlocal media
- Local/community audiences and social networks.
Important dates:
Manuscript Due: September 30, 2020
Double blind reviewing process: from October 1, 2020 to November 30, 2020
Authors’ notification towards decision: December 1, 2020
Authors’ final versions: until December 31, 2020
Editor’s final checks: from January 2021 to February 2021
Publication: March 2021
Submissions:
Submissions:
To submit your manuscripts, go to the pagesite and select special issue "Discussing local and community media: positive experiences and impacts on societies".
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