Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism (Inside Technology)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.36 (895 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0262028123 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-09-12 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
The United States ushered in a new era of small-scale broadcasting in 2000 when it began issuing low-power FM (LPFM) licenses for noncommercial radio stations around the country. These radio activists consciously cast radio as an alternative to digital utopianism, promoting an understanding of electronic media that emphasizes the local community rather than a global audience of Internet users.Dunbar-Hester focuses on how these radio activists impute emancipatory politics to the "old" medium of radio technology by promoting the idea that "microradio" broadcasting holds the potential to empower ordinary people at the local community level. In Low Power to the People, Christina Dunbar-Hester describes the practices of an activist organization focused on LPFM during this era. Over the next decade, several hundred of these newly created low-wattage stations took to the airwaves. It also offers insight into contemporary issues in media policy that is particu
(Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly)A captivating narrative that reproduces the passion, emotions, and tensions of the field. Dunbar-Hester demonstrates that in itself, technology is never enough for social change. In this clear-eyed, closely observed account, Christina Dunbar-Hester gives us a compelling glimpse of that generation and with it, a new way to see how technologies and people can make one another political. (Feminist Media Studies) . As activists fight for greater media democracy and access, they come up against issues of expertise, identity, and exclusion. (Fred Turner, Associate Professor of Communication, Stanford University; author of The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties)Christina Dunbar-Hester's Low Power to the People will challenge what
Todd Wolfson said Low Power to the People is a rich ethnographic account. Low Power to the People is a rich ethnographic account of media activism. In particular the book focuses on how activists embed emancipatory politics into an "old" media radio. The book also complicates romanticized accounts of media activism, as Dunbar-Hester details the intersections of technology, gender and expertise.. Computer User said Well-researched book on media activism. An interesting read about media activism, especially how radio is important even in light of digital media. The most thought-provoking chapters for me were chapter 7, about how old and new media are intertwined, and the chapter on gender, which is sympathetic to activists but shows how the relationship between technology and culture is complicated by history and social patterns.Note: I bought the book from Prometheus Radio Project, not Amazon. You can also get it there and support other media activists' work.. A very one-sided story and not an authoritative history of LPFM For those expecting this book to be a history about the creation of the Low Power FM (LPFM) service, you will be very disappointed. Nowhere in this book is Nicholaus Leggett, Donald Schellhardt or Rodger Skinner mentioned. These three individuals wrote the two petitions for rulemaking to the FCC that actually created the Low Power FM radio service and should have deserved some form of credit for the creation of the service. What this book does entail though, is a very well-written account of the Prometheus Radio Project, an organization that can be credited for championing the passage of the Local C
Christina Dunbar-Hester teaches in Journalism and Media Studies in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, where she is also affiliated faculty in Women's and Gender Studies.