With the prospect of a change of government in the UK, it is increasingly clear that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) isn’t doing its job properly, and will soon be required to implement a more effective consultation and development framework for policy in relation to community and community-focused media. This new framework should fully recognise and incorporate the essential role and public purpose of community media and community-focused communications. This isn’t happening at present, with DCMS offering only fragmented and opaque glimpses into the minds of both ministers and the civil servants who are implementing their policies. Who knows what is going on behind the closed doors of Whitehall in relation to community media thinking and policy?
The unique value of community media and community-focused forms of communication is grossly undervalued in the UK. One would think that after fourteen years, a government that was once committed to Levelling-Up, Localism, Social Value and the Big Society, would have been able to facilitate an inclusive, participatory, and locally relevant media infrastructure, rather than the centralised, corporate and disengaged industrial media that we must now endure.
Community media is crucial for enabling different communities to engage in meaningful dialogue, share their stories, and voice their concerns. The lack of investment, leadership and challenge from DCMS, however, means there is a compelling case for rebooting the whole relationship between government and civic society grounded media. It should be noted that our current situation of economic stagnation, recession and endless fragmentation of the social realm hear in the UK, means that there is a compelling case for the establishment of a broad alliance of civic society organisations, public sector entities, community groups, and charities who may be willing to use media for a more strategic and purposeful social function.
Such an alliance would advocate for an equitable stake in the media infrastructure, aiming to enhance and streamline their public engagement efforts. This strategic collaboration seeks to ensure that all parts of society can contribute to and shape the media landscape, fostering a more democratic, informed, and cohesive public sphere.
The pivotal role of community media in fostering civic engagement, social cohesion, and empowerment within communities in the UK, has been underplayed for some time now. What we are missing is a government that advocates for the formation of alliances among civic society organisations, community groups, charities, and public sector bodies that can strengthen the impact that community media has in contributing towards change.
Key themes for consideration would include, for example, empowerment and social impact, networking and expertise sharing, advocacy and support for the community media sector, career development through media skills’ enhancement, community engagement, and advocacy for local information needs. None of which should be surprising to any government policy advocate if they have read and understood the Social Value and Levelling Up legislation and processes.
What we need from the government, then, are clear strategies for using community media to address social issues, promote community-led solutions, engage minority communities, enhance cultural understanding, utilise social media for community engagement, and implement social-economy type funding for all kinds of social policy projects. Essentially, the government should be bringing people together from across the broad spectrum of civic society and public authorities to discuss the importance of promoting civic engagement, advocating for social cohesion, enhancing media literacy, securing funding and operational autonomy for community media, and providing legislative recognition of community media as a distinct sector with its own role and sense of public purpose.
What are the strategies that central government might deploy that could make community media accessible to all community members through community ownership, recognised civic service and meaningful participation based on inclusive practices? What are the additional legal protections and policy recognition that will support that community media if it is to thrive as a counterweight to the corporate consolidation of media that has taken place recently? Civic society organisations have many compelling reasons to use and support community media in the UK, primarily because community media serves as an effective platform for achieving several critical objectives, which include:
- Empowerment and Social Impact: Community media empowers individuals and communities to improve their social, economic conditions, and fight against discrimination. It enables them to promote social change, which aligns with the goals of many civic society organisations seeking to foster societal improvement and empower marginalised groups.
- Networking and Expertise Sharing: By participating in community media networks, organisations gain access to a wealth of expertise, best practices, and advice. Networks of advocates, experienced practitioners and innovators can facilitate the exchange of knowledge and resources that can enhance the effectiveness of a wide range of initiatives.
- Advocacy and Support: Community media provides a channel through which civic society organisations can voice their concerns and advocate for change. Community media represents an amplification of voices that can speak with government, industry, and regulatory bodies, offering a collective voice that can influence policy and public opinion.
- Community Engagement: Engaging with and through community media enables organisations to connect more deeply with local communities. It provides a platform for dialogue, collaboration, and the promotion of local events, campaigns, and initiatives, thereby strengthening community bonds and enhancing the impact of their work.
- Advocacy for Local Information Needs: Community media alliances advocate for the needs of members and local communities, ensuring that media operations serve local information needs effectively. This advocacy is crucial in promoting media diversity and ensuring that local voices and issues are represented in the media landscape.
- Promoting Civic Engagement and Social Cohesion: Community media offers spaces for civic engagement, allowing citizens to participate actively in community life. This fosters diversity, participatory democracy, and social cohesion by providing a platform for diverse voices, promoting media literacy, and facilitating intercultural and cross-cultural dialogue.
- Enhancing Media Literacy: Supporting community media also contributes to developing media literacy skills among community members. This empowerment enables individuals to engage more effectively with media content and navigate the information landscape more critically and responsibly.
- Securing Funding and Operational Autonomy: Civic society organisations supporting community media advocate for sustainable funding models and operational autonomy. This support is crucial for the survival and independence of community media initiatives, allowing them to continue serving their communities without undue external influence.
- Legislative Recognition: Advocacy for formal recognition of community media as a legitimate third sector media in legislation is vital. This recognition helps provide legal status, protection, and acknowledgment of community media’s unique role and contributions to the media landscape.
Through these mechanisms, civic society organisations can impact community media to advance their objectives, support community development, and contribute to a more informed, engaged, and cohesive society. Moreover, civic society organisations, public sector bodies, charities, and community groups can significantly enhance their public purpose and social engagement by fostering and developing community-focused forms of communication. This approach contrasts with relying solely on mass-media and marketing-type forms of communication, offering several distinct advantages that align more closely with their goals of fostering community engagement, promoting social cohesion, and empowering individuals.
Here are some ways they can achieve this:
- Promoting Participatory Communication: Community-focused communication is inherently participatory, encouraging active involvement from community members. This can be achieved through interactive platforms such as community radio, forums, and social media groups, where members can share their stories, express concerns, and participate in discussions. By valuing and facilitating this two-way communication, organisations can create a sense of ownership and involvement among community members, leading to more meaningful engagement and empowerment.
- Focusing on Local Issues and Voices: Community-focused communication allows for a greater emphasis on local issues, stories, and voices that are often overlooked by mainstream media. By highlighting these local perspectives, organisations can address specific community needs, advocate for local causes, and foster a sense of identity and belonging among community members. This approach also helps to ensure that content is relevant and resonates with the audience’s lived experiences.
- Building Trust and Credibility: Unlike mass (industrial) media, which can be perceived as distant or influenced by commercial interests, community-focused communication is seen as more trustworthy and credible by local audiences. Organisations can build trust by consistently providing accurate, relevant, and timely information and by being transparent about their intentions and operations. This trust is crucial for effective social engagement and for mobilising community action.
- Empowering Marginalised Voices: Community media is particularly effective at giving a platform to marginalised groups and individuals, allowing them to share their stories and perspectives. This inclusivity is essential for promoting social justice, diversity, and equality. Civic society organisations can leverage community-focused communication to empower these voices, thereby contributing to a more equitable and inclusive public discourse.
- Facilitating Social Cohesion and Integration: By providing spaces for diverse community members to share their experiences and perspectives, community-focused communication can play a significant role in promoting understanding and empathy among different social groups. This can lead to stronger community bonds, reduced conflict, and a greater sense of unity, supporting the broader goal of social cohesion.
- Enhancing Media Literacy and Critical Engagement: Engaging with community-focused forms of communication can also serve an educational purpose, enhancing media literacy among participants. Organisations can use these platforms to teach critical thinking skills, how to discern reliable information, and the importance of engaging responsibly in public discourse. This educational aspect is fundamental for fostering informed and engaged citizens.
- Innovating with Digital and Social Media: While traditional community media like radio and newsletters remain valuable, digital and social media platforms offer new opportunities for engagement. These platforms can be used creatively to reach wider audiences, facilitate real-time interaction, and mobilise support for community initiatives. Organisations should explore innovative ways to use these tools to complement traditional community media approaches, ensuring they remain relevant and effective in a rapidly changing media landscape.
By prioritising community-focused forms of communication, organisations can deepen their engagement with the communities they serve, promote more equitable and inclusive public discourse, and more effectively achieve their social and public purpose goals.
So, by forming an alliance of civic society organisations, community groups, charities, and public sector bodies to enhance the role of community media in the UK offers several benefits:
- Empowerment and Social Impact: Community media plays a crucial role in empowering individuals to improve their social and economic conditions, fight against discrimination, and promote social change.
- Networking and Expertise: Promoting members-based, democratic communities of practice that can provide access to a network of expertise, best practices, and advice drawn from across the UK, would enhance the capability of community media to independently support itself.
- Advocacy and Support: Having open and transparent representative organisations that can represent the community and civic media sector to government, industry, and regulatory bodies, would enhance the ability to offer support, advice, and consultancy to anyone interested in the sector.
- Career Development: Membership in community media projects demonstrates an ability to support individuals looking to develop media skills, encourage emerging talent, and provide opportunities for those interested in pursuing a more engaged sense of community and participation in civic life.
- Community Engagement: Being part of an alliance enhances community engagement by connecting individuals with a supportive network of colleagues working together to advance the industry.
- Advocacy for Local Information Needs: A broad and inclusive community and civic media alliances would be able to advocate on behalf of members and communities to ensure that community media operations continue to serve local information needs effectively.
By forming such alliances, organisations and individuals can leverage collective expertise, resources, and advocacy efforts to strengthen community media’s role in promoting social change, empowering communities, and supporting local information needs in the UK.
The purpose of these alliances go beyond simply supporting the organisations involved, but would be driven by the need to address pressing social issues through various strategies and approaches, such as:
- Social Action and Community-Led Solutions: Social action in community media drives community-led solutions to local issues by mobilising resources and human capital to address societal challenges effectively.
- Encouraging Minority Communities to Engage: Community media can encourage engagement by providing training, participating in community events, and creating authentic alliances with minority communities. By encouraging diverse storytelling and participation in civic affairs, community media can foster stronger relationships with minority groups and create mutually beneficial alliances.
- Promoting Cultural Understanding: Community media platforms play a vital role in promoting cultural understanding by providing education, training, and a platform for diverse voices. By facilitating cross-cultural communication, challenging stereotypes, and fostering collaboration, community media can contribute to a more inclusive and respectful culture while addressing cultural disruption and conflict.
- Utilising Social Media for Engagement: Social media is a powerful tool for connecting with local communities. By sharing educational content about local issues, encouraging civic engagement in governance, interacting authentically with the audience, and utilising analytics tools to measure effectiveness, organisations can effectively engage with their local communities through social media platforms.
- Crowdfunding for Community Media Projects: Crowdfunding and collaborative interaction can be an effective strategy for developing community media projects. Social funding allows community communicators to post projects, engage enthusiastic community members, set clear objectives, and leverage community support to fund initiatives successfully.
By leveraging the power of community media, organisations can address social issues by promoting community-led solutions, encouraging minority engagement, fostering cultural understanding, utilising social media effectively for engagement, and implementing crowdfunding strategies for community projects. These approaches help strengthen relationships within communities, empower marginalised groups, promote inclusivity, and drive positive social change through collaborative efforts facilitated by community media platforms.
To support the work of an alliance of civic society organisations, public sector authorities, community groups, charities, and other socially driven service providers in the UK, community media can play a crucial role by:
- Promoting Civic Engagement: Community media platforms offer spaces for civic engagement, allowing citizens to actively participate in community life, advocate for social causes, and collaborate with activists, artists, and civil society organisations. They act as catalysts for diversity and participatory democracy.
- Advocating for Social Cohesion: Community media can advocate for social cohesion by providing a platform for diverse voices, promoting media literacy, and facilitating cross-cultural dialogue. By fostering openness, participation, and community involvement, these platforms contribute to social awareness and understanding.
- Enhancing Media Literacy: Recognising the contribution of community media to developing media literacy skills is essential. By establishing frameworks conducive to enhancing media literacy and supporting local anchorage of community media activities, these platforms can empower communities to engage effectively with media content and information.
- Securing Funding and Operational Autonomy: Ensuring reliable funding sources and operational autonomy for community media is crucial. This includes advocating for sustainable funding models, transparency in funding allocation, recognition of volunteer engagement, and impact evaluation methods to measure the public value provided by community media initiatives.
- Legislative Recognition: Formal recognition of community media as a legitimate third sector media in legislation is vital. Policymakers should develop appropriate legislative measures to provide legal status, protection, and recognition to community media as a distinct broadcasting sector with identifiable objectives and characteristics.
By recognising the unique role of community media in promoting civic engagement, advocating for social cohesion, enhancing media literacy, securing funding and autonomy, and seeking legislative recognition as a distinct sector of the media landscape, these platforms can effectively support the work of alliances aiming to address social issues and drive positive change within communities in the UK.
Community media can be effectively used to promote the work of civic society organisations through various strategies and approaches, such as:
- Catalyst for Civic Engagement: Community media platforms act as catalysts for a diversity of activists, artists, and civil society organisations, offering spaces for civic engagement and active participation in community life. They are recognised as a significant component of participatory democracy, providing opportunities for citizens to play an active role in their communities.
- Strategic Partnerships: Building and maintaining strategic partnerships with community organisations that align with the mission and goals of community media can enhance outreach and support for civic society organisations. These partnerships help in negotiating meaningful collaborations that benefit both parties.
- Effective Outreach Strategies: Enhancing relationships with community members provides a framework for developing outreach strategies that engage a broader audience. Clear communication that conveys the mission, goals, and strategy of community media is essential to attract and retain community support.
- Utilising Tech Tools: Leveraging tech tools like map-based commenting tools, online forums, crowdsourced research platforms, and communication systems can facilitate effective community outreach. These tools help in engaging community members, collecting feedback, and fostering dialogue within the community.
- Community Influence Communications: Community media can utilise social influence communications techniques by working with local community influencers to create or publish content, recruiting influencers through a wide variety of tools, aiming to create mutual value in relationships, and measuring the impact of social influence communication efforts.
By investing in community media as a platform for civic engagement, building strategic partnerships, implementing effective outreach strategies, utilising tech tools for outreach, and incorporating social influence marketing tactics, civic society organisations can effectively promote their work and engage with communities through community media platforms in the UK.
To ensure that community media is accessible to all members of the community, several strategies can be implemented based on the information from the search results:
- Community Ownership and Control: Community media should prioritise community ownership and control, ensuring that the content and operations reflect the needs and interests of the local population. This approach fosters a sense of belonging and inclusivity within the community.
- Community Service and Participation: Emphasising community service and participation is essential for making community media accessible to all members. By actively involving community members in the creation and management of programs, community media can better represent diverse voices and perspectives.
- Non-Profit Business Model: Adopting a non-profit business model helps maintain the focus on community service rather than profit-making. This model ensures that resources are directed towards serving the community effectively and promoting social gain.
- Inclusive Practices: Community media should commit to inclusive practices by engaging with marginalised groups, artists, journalism students, citizens, migrants, refugees, youth, elderly individuals, and other diverse segments of society. This inclusivity strengthens the fabric of democratic societies and promotes active citizenship for all.
- Empowering Communities: Empowering communities through media literacy programs, training initiatives, and opportunities for active participation can enhance accessibility to community media. By providing the necessary skills and resources, more members of the community can engage with and contribute to community media platforms.
- Legal Recognition and Support: Advocating for legal recognition, fair access to distribution platforms, sustainable funding, and structural support for community media organisations is crucial. Formal recognition and support from regulatory authorities can help ensure the longevity and effectiveness of community media initiatives.
By prioritising community ownership, service, and participation; adopting a non-profit business model; practising inclusivity; empowering communities through media literacy; seeking legal recognition and support; community media can effectively ensure accessibility to all members of the community. These strategies promote diversity, engagement, and representation within community media platforms, fostering a more inclusive and participatory media environment for local populations.
The document primarily discusses the imperative need for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in the UK to adopt a more effective policy consultation and development framework that duly acknowledges the vital role and public purpose of community media and community-focused communications. It highlights the underappreciation of community media’s unique value in the UK’s current media landscape, which remains dominated by centralized, corporate, and disengaged industrial media despite previous government commitments to localism and social value.
A reboot of the relationship between the government and civic society-grounded media, particularly in the face of economic stagnation and social fragmentation, is essential. We need to see an incoming government take the lead on the formation of a broad alliance of civic society organisations, public sector entities, community groups, and charities, all aiming to use media strategically for social functions. This alliance would advocate for an equitable stake in the media infrastructure to enhance public engagement and ensure diverse community voices are heard and represented.
There is a critical role and many social benefits to be gained from a functioning and well-supported community media sector, including empowerment and social impact, networking and expertise sharing, advocacy and support, community engagement, and advocacy for local information needs. It calls for government strategies that leverage community media to address social issues, engage minority communities, enhance cultural understanding, and implement social-economy type funding for social policy projects.
A new government must rapidly move to realise the benefit of promoting participatory communication, focusing on local issues and voices, building trust and credibility, empowering marginalised voices, facilitating social cohesion and integration, enhancing media literacy, and innovating with digital and social media to achieve these goals. We need systemic change in how the DCMS and the UK government as a whole view and interact with community media. We need a civic society movement that advocates for a media environment that is more inclusive, participatory, and reflective of the diverse society it serves, through the establishment of an alliance dedicated to promoting the value and potential of community media in fostering a democratic, informed, and cohesive public sphere.