The recent report Closing the Void: Can We Reconnect Politics with Associational Life? published by Power to Change, offers a timely and necessary exploration of the democratic malaise gripping the UK. With trust in political institutions at an all-time low, the authors rightly argue that reinvigorating civic life through associational organisations is essential to bridging the chasm between citizens and the political process. However, while the report provides valuable insight into face-to-face participation and in-person community life, it falls short in recognising a critical pillar of modern democratic life: community media.
The report outlines how decades of disconnection have led to a withering of participatory citizenship. Political parties, once deeply embedded in civil society through social clubs, trade unions and local associations, are now perceived as aloof, professionalised entities orbiting government machinery rather than communities. The void this creates, the report argues, may be filled by re-energising associational life—book clubs, parent-teacher associations, community businesses, and sports teams—as training grounds for democratic engagement.
Yet the model of association promoted is curiously analogue, if not nostalgic. It privileges the embodied, in-person, physical gathering of citizens in shared space, but overlooks the mediated environments in which modern life overwhelmingly unfolds. The few references to media are limited to a passing mention of a local newsletter, and a broadside against the corrosive effects of social media and big tech platforms. These concerns are legitimate—adversarial algorithms and platform capitalism do pose grave threats to civic cohesion—but the solution cannot be a retreat into pre-digital forms of association.
What the report misses is the essential infrastructure that connects associational life: media. Community media, in its many forms—radio, grassroots journalism, blogs, podcasts, community-run discussion forums, and local social media pages—is not just an accessory to civic life. It is the medium through which the relationships, debates, and recognition that sustain democratic culture are formed and maintained.
It is one thing to fund a community group, but without communication infrastructure—without storytelling, visibility, amplification, and accountability—such groups will remain atomised, struggling for reach, resonance, and sustainability. The report fails to account for this. It risks painting a portrait of associational life that is pre-mass media, pre-social media, and pre-globalised, as if civic life could be revitalised by restoring the routines of the 1950s working men’s club or rotary hall without engaging the platforms where people now find, follow, and interpret meaning.
The concern with big tech’s influence is noted, but the counterbalance proposed—more face-to-face contact—only addresses half the problem. The real challenge is to build a resilient, democratic media ecosystem, one that is locally produced, locally accountable, and socially embedded. This is where community media plays a central role. It isn’t just about broadcasting messages—it’s about cultivating dialogue, building trust, and anchoring civic imagination in shared experience.
As self-governing, non-profit, civic institutions, community media outlets already operate with the associational ethos the report valorises. They foster trust through transparency, inclusion through representation, and civic participation through accessible, non-professionalised content creation. As Raymond Williams reminded us, to democratise media, it must be de-professionalised. People must not only consume media—they must make it, share it, and shape it.
Moreover, the report’s authors miss an opportunity to connect associational life to broader Foundational Economy principles. Civic infrastructure—especially communications infrastructure—must be protected and nurtured, not left to market forces or centralised tech monopolies. A social market media model should support non-industrial, place-based media through devolved investment, digital sovereignty, and democratic content standards. If democracy is to be more than deliverism—if it is to be relational—then it must be built from the middle, not the top.
If the UK government is serious about rebuilding civic trust and social cohesion, it must recognise that where and how people interact is inseparable from what they do together. Communication is not a secondary issue. It is the primary mechanism of association in contemporary life. It shapes what we believe is possible, who we believe belongs, and how we act together in public.
Closing the Void sets out to reconnect politics with civil society. But it does so through a frame that is half-formed. Without addressing the hollowing out of the UK’s public interest media ecology, without investing in the civic infrastructures of meaning-making and shared storytelling, we will continue to drift. Trust—the essential currency in the exchange of social capital—does not circulate through silence. It circulates through shared narratives, participatory platforms, and open dialogue.
It is not enough to call for more associations. We must ensure they are interconnected, communicative, and culturally visible. An evidence-base that properly understands the centrality of media in people’s lives would view association differently—not merely as a gathering of bodies, but as an exchange of stories, an alignment of voices, and a shared shaping of the public realm.
That is the leap we need to make. And that is the leap community media enables.