Who you gonna call? 

Podcasters! 

Photo from the podcast.rs archive. 

Now, I am deeply sorry if I just ruined your favorite childhood movie soundtrack. But it had to be done.

The theme of this year's World Radio Day is Radio and Trust, which in my personal opinion is very inspiring given the circumstances we all live in the last few years. If however, there is a radio you can trust in the first place in your local community. Unfortunately, still in some parts of Europe, running a community radio, besides being a rather Sisyphus work can also get you in problems with the local government. Community radios are more than radio stations, more than a simple act of broadcasting via FM, DAB+, or internet live stream. They are contact points for civil society, places of networking, and creative cross-fertilization. As such, they are repeatedly perceived as inconvenient and attempts are made to obstruct them via displacement from their frequencies. In some countries, opportunities to get involved in community radio are practically non-existent.

So, what do you do when they force you off the FM specter into the online one? How do you continue? Do you maintain the business model and patterns from your FM era such as 24 hours a day program or do you adapt to the ecosystem you are now existing in? If your community is no longer limited by the reach of your antenna is the whole world your community? How to soundproof your bedroom?

These are just some of the questions that more and more radio journalists from Eastern Europe have been asking themselves in recent years. And many of them, after their local radio stations got shut down and turned into a wheel in the propaganda machine run by pro-government media networks decided that they should start a podcast.

“It’s just like radio.” they thought at first only to realize it only sounds like a radio, but the rules of the game have changed in their favor. Without pressure from editors, media buyers, limited time slots, and all the shenanigans that are part of the daily life at the radio station they could focus on the story and the quality of their content while interacting with their community personally over social networks. Out of the ashes of local radio stations, like mushrooms after the rain, podcasts started to pop up. Podcasts that provided the local community with a much-needed voice in the media.  The internet has opened up new spaces. Podcasts, on-demand radio programs without music, are becoming more popular and are easy and quick to produce. In Serbia, communities have formed around podcasts and are actively researching stories from the community to bring more people into the media.

When we started podcast.rs, now the biggest regional podcast aggregator in the Balkans we saw the potential in the local community and realized early that people trust these podcasters and are craving for quality content that once populated the FM airspace. “It’s just like running a community radio,” I thought only to realize that much higher things are at stake here. Podcasts are the last bastion of freedom in the media in our case. So why not nurture the community in such a way that they remain so?

In the last three years, while running a platform and a production we have been supporting the local civil societies and held many workshops, training, and seminars on the topic of podcasting which resulted in the rise of quality of production and an increase in the number of shows that deal with socio-economic issues and are being created by well-known local NGOs, investigative journalists, and former local radio employees.

Just a few days ago, I got back from Vršac, a small town on the border of Serbia and Rumania where over the course of a week we held a podcasting workshop with some amazing young people from Serbia, North Macedonia, Slovenia, India, and Rumania. There is so much potential in these kids and the atmosphere was amazing, just like some 5 years ago when I did workshops on community radio. Oh, wait…

Despite this brave new podcast world, there remains one question that concerns us as representatives of community media:
How can we reconcile the communities, the open and spontaneous collaboration, and the discussions between the editorial teams that we know from the locally based community radio stations with the decentralized working methods of podcast production?
Or to put it another way: Can we succeed in digitization without losing our personal and human cooperation, which makes community radio more than just another form of delivery for audio content?

Anyway, happy World Radio Day and don't forget to support your local podcasters!  

p.s.

Parts of this editorial text are from the discussion between my colleague and fellow CMFE board member Fabian Ekstedt and me. The discussion will continue...you guessed it right... in a podcast. 

Unfortunately, 54.6 percent of those who voted on Feb. 13 in Switzerland rejected the package of measures in favor of the media. A thorough analysis is provided in this piece (In German) by the independent online media Republik: https://www.republik.ch/2022/0... 

Swiss community radios lose hope of seeing their portion of the funding via the media license fee increased in the near future, and public service media now expects a new attack by the populists in the country.

copyright Marco António Ribeiro

Radio ARA has always reacted to reflect changes in Luxembourg, and new people arriving in the country are often recommended to listen to Radio ARA to find out about the country, or to hear their language on one of our community shows. With over 70% of the population of Luxembourg City non-nationals, the diversity is evident. How often however do we on a daily basis really think about what we do and why? At a small community radio station the days are often filled with pressing tasks and problems and solutions are necessary to ensure that “the show goes on”. It often takes a meeting with colleagues from another community media, or writing a pitch for a project to make us stop and think about the bigger picture and why we do what we do. So when we received an email in mid January asking us to meet with the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Teresa Ribeiro, we obviously said yes and then had a coffee to think what they would possibly want to know from us.

Ms Ribeiro met with several government representatives and other senior officials Minister of Justice Sam Tanson, representatives of the Ministry of State and with several members of Parliament and President of the Parliamentary Committee on Digitalisation, Media and Communications Guy Arendt and after a working lunch with Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean Asselborn headed to us….

We had the opportunity to present our radio station to the representative and discuss the work we do and how it has changed over the years. We discussed the issue of media pluralism, our covid news project that has continued as a general news source for minority groups, as well as the role of public service media in the country, and the struggles we have to be taken seriously by officials.

Ms Ribeiro and advisor showed great interest in the various projects we have running, as well as the media campaign and lobbying we had undertaken to stabilise the financial future for the next few years. We emphasised that all this is done against a background of extreme activity to do more and better for the communities in Luxembourg. Our station offers Luxembourg media pluralism in a way no other media source does, and with every community show we build and every young adult we train for our youth shows we are educating and practicing media literacy.

The day following the visit to Radio ARA, Ms Ribeiro addressed the Luxembourg government in parliament and spoke about her visit to Radio ARA and the value she identified in the work that we do. She also stated that the OSCE is specifically concerned with several topics, including access to government information, the increasing threats and violence against the media, including legal harassment, as well as media pluralism in the country and in the OSCE region.

According to an official statement after the Luxembourg visit Ms Ribeiro and her counterparts agreed on further co-operation as an important element of improving media freedom in the OSCE region.

Lisa McLean

TRUST in media has been a growing issue and challenge, where the space for freedom of speech and of the media has been narrowing along with the space for the exercise of other rights. The consequences for the state of democracy are clear: the world has become less free and less democratic every year for the past 15 years–and the negative development continues. In 2020, 75 percent of the global population had their basic rights restricted or limited in some way, to which the Covid-19 crisis has only contributed further, the Executive Director of International Media Support, Jesper Højberg reports. 

The search has been on for media and information sources you can trust, where the past US President's crazy rants about 'fake news and 'alternative facts' showcased the disorientation and the subsequent need for both fact-checking in the media and strengthened citizen Media Literacy levels. In our increasingly complex world, we need this to make sense of it all and make well-informed life choices. Also, this has been further underscored during the Covid pandemic, where mis-and disinformation has thrived. 

Over the years I have carried out quite a few impact assessments of community media in different parts of the world, and every time audiences and producers have stressed that they trust their community radio because it is theirs; because it speaks their language-even their local dialect, because the broadcasters are their community members and because they know each other. 

Trust in community radio is earned because of its community roots. Because of itis ours! Now that February 13, World Radio Day is behind us, it is time to live up to the celebratory talks and the vows for the next steps. With trust as the basis, the next step is action! 

Happy World Radio Day 2022–from me to you, 

Birgitte Jallov

How about tuning in to some online radio stations around Europe?

Broadcast Amsterdam radio brings you on-demand radio shows & podcasts in English. As they put it “Everyday radio, music, local stories. With love from Amsterdam xxx” 

Beware! is a “freeform, non-profit, non-commercial radio, intended to be the kind of station that we–and our friends–would want to listen to. You’ll find independent music from wax cylinders to chiptunes, samples to sonatas; and wide-ranging spoken word, including interviews, poetry, politics, comedy, and essays.”

D59B is a bar in both Belgrade and Berlin and in both places you'll find turntables. Their radio started as a passion project and grew to the international community. Amazing music. 

Photo credit Gábor Rusznák

Talking with Tamás Jamriskó, Editor-in-Chief of the small community radio EPER (Első Pesti Egyetemi Rádió) - the first university radio of the city of Pest in Hungary, the question is challenging, but easy: a child of the 90s he realised that the ‘community radio’ that the older generation of the 80s and 90s has venerated, focusing on the ‘community’ of producers, the togetherness, the solidarity and the shared social action agenda is, indeed, crumbling, in the pressured press freedom reality in Hungary.

“With a state radio focusing on ‘Hungary, family and religion’ – and with no public service media at all, a minimal commercial media sector, and with a community and alternative media sector being, uhm… individualised, there is not much in Hungary in terms of a ‘normal’ European media landscape with the three tiers of public service; commercial; and community/alternative broadcasting,” Tamás says. “In Eastern Europe many of the formats we inherited from the West are slowly disappearing!”

A 200-page application needed for a 1km radius licence

In this environment, EPER radio had to prepare – with paid assistance – a 200 pages application to get a licence. It took 4 weeks (and Tamás started smoking again!) but they got their licence, and with it around €11.000 per year in state support. This amount pays the station’s editor, the coordinators, and some freelance inputs. The rest of the work done in EPER radio is volunteer work.

Besides from the 200-page complex application, Tamás stresses that EPER radio is not considered a threat by the authorities – as Civil Radio was – and that this is definitely also a reason why they were granted a license. He finds it rather absurd to go through all of that and then just get a license for broadcasting a 1 km radius. But they are ‘legal’ and do fill up the flow channel 24/7. But the real focus is on their internet platform, where the state does not control them. Here they have the freedom they want. Freedom of voices, of expression, sharing their content-rich programmes.

The National Community Radio Association turns 30, with membership dwindling

Tamás, himself, has worked for some years with Civil Radio in Budapest, and is friendly with Tilós Radio, Club Radio and others of the more than 20 strong ‘freedom of expression’ radios of the 90s. But things are changing. The pandemic has increased the pace, but also without that, there are only 5-6 community radios left in Hungary, as the ‘Hungarian Free Community Radio Association’ is planning to celebrate its 30 years’ anniversary later this spring.

Radio EPER leaves the collective social change agenda, focusing on creator-audience relation

Tamás tells that EPER radio is less focused on a shared social development and change agenda brought forward by a collective, than of the close relation between the producer and her/his audience. The community radio becomes more of a platform for individual creators who develop their relationship with each of their groups of specific audiences.

EPER radio has a passive group of some 90 to 100 producers, of which 15-20 are active. They broadcast 24/7 both on a license allowing them to cover a 1 km radius only AND online, where they have a lot more special-interest listeners. For instance, they have a podcast on archaeology where they have registered listeners to be men between the ages of 30 to 50, and one covering the new movies, where the core listener is a woman between 18 to 24.

Tamas does not see a future for old-school community radio in Hungary,
rather, he believes micro-communities are the answer!

Based on Tamás’ experience in the Budapest-based Civil radio, he has attempted to create more of a ‘collective’ around the station. He invited all the broadcasters/creators to an editorial meeting, but it was not a success. The interest of the creators is much more individualised: they have their group of audiences in mind and not the station, which simply becomes the platform from where they broadcast. Whereas the editorial meeting and Tamás’ attempt to create more of a collective spirit in the radio station did not work, his invite for a garden party at his place was a success – a lot of the producers appeared, and they had a lovely time.

‘Corona Chronicle’ and ‘Get The Trolls Out’ brought the station together

During the pandemic, the station successfully produced a bi-weekly ‘Corona Chronicle’, where 15-20 creators sent stories to the station every 2-3 days: small human-based stories, which partly shared crucial Corona-related information, partly shared how others were coping – or not – during the pandemic. This saw a higher level of cooperation, which now, when things are slowly normalising, has ceased to exist.

Radio EPER furthermore collaborates with other community radios / media in Europe. Among others the radio is one of the CMFE partner radios in the project Get the Trolls Out! where they tackle issues of disinformation, hate speech and anti-religious discrimination. You can find the first EPER production here.

While the 20^th Century was the century of Radio, the 21^st century is the podcast era, Tamás concludes

Looking into the future, Tamás is convinced that the earlier community radio ‘unity’ will not return. His realistic vision onwards is that the future of community radio – at least in Hungary and neighbouring former Eastern European countries, as he says, will be that of shared platforms made up by micro communities. These ‘communities’ will consist solely of the creator and her/his audience: voice and content-based. The 21^st century is the podcast era, Tamás says.

Illustration by Al'Mata

In this long-read for Guiti News, Leïla Amar discusses new and old forms of anti-Semitism in France, in particular linked to anti-vax discourse and conspiracy theories. Leïla also speaks with members of Jewish communities and presents a complex picture of multiple belongings and interreligious commitment. 

The original French version of the article is available here and is being published in separate installments. An English translation of the article is available at this link.

How a daily radio broadcast in northern Italy reaches people in confinement and reminds everyone that detained people have hobbies, interests, and can and should be active members of society.

Liberi Dentro – Eduradio&TV is a project born during the first year of the pandemic in the region of Emilia Romagna, northern Italy when volunteering associations and educators were not allowed to access prisons. It was born with the idea of continuing to make culture with and for prisoners, and at the same time making this content available to the entire population, thus showing that the prison is a part of the city and the community.

A network of teachers, trainers, volunteers, and spiritual assistants, who have been working for years inside the Rocco D'Amato prison in Bologna, decided not to leave the inmates alone during the pandemic and set out to find new communication methods to relaunch their activities through a radio broadcast, also transmitted by a local TV station. In an emergency context, this network managed to keep up the cultural, educational, and welfare services undertaken over the years with the inmates. The idea took inspiration from Prison Radio Association, a broadcast radio channel started in 2006 that is now available in 100 prisons across England and Wales.

The impossible challenge of Liberi Dentro-Eduradio&TV was therefore to continue the educational service, in obedience to the Constitution, through the only technological tools available in the prison cell: radio and TV. Before the pandemic, each outsider had access only to specific rooms: the teachers to the pedagogical area, the chaplain, and volunteers to the chapel rooms, and so on. In rare cases, the officers on duty would allow people to reach the cell door, which remained the impassable boundary. Meanwhile, the radio and TV lie beyond that limit, and thanks to that unique position, our voices could be heard even clearer. It is also worth noting the difference between the two media: the TV is supplied to each cell, and is, therefore, a shared object, whose usage requires agreement between the "cohabitants". The radio is completely different: is not present in each cell, it is instead owned by a single person. The TV stands in front of you, the radio next to you, or rather it whispers in your ear, through the earphones, perhaps in the middle of the night, or in the inner courtyards of the air, and even in the gym. The TV is a balcony from which to look out over the chaos of the world, the radio is an invisible screen behind which one can isolate from their negative thoughts and from the chaos of a prison section.

The daily radio broadcast not only addressed people confined or limited in their freedom, but was also a daily reminder to everyone outside prisons that detained people have hobbies, interests, and can and should be active members of society. The radio broadcast recognizes a principle of equity in the fruition of education, cultural content, and, more generally, the respect of fundamental rights that, even if in detention, civil society must guarantee to every member of the community. With this objective in mind, we also promoted talks addressing diversity: gender, sexuality, LGBTQ+ issues, mental health, and others, so to live up to our promise in connecting with everyone.

In addition, to reaching detainees, Liberi Dentro also aspired to speak to the city, showing the community of the so-called free people how much culture can be found behind bars and how many activities are held. In a place that seems to attract attention only for its newsworthy events such as the arrest of a notorious criminal that has shaken public opinion, Eduradio&TV was born with the idea of continuing to make culture with and for prisoners, and at the same time making this content available to the entire population, thus showing that the prison is a part of the city and the community.

Now that the pandemic emergency seems to be slightly slowing down, Eduradio&TV continues its mission, to build a bridge between the prison and the city and it is broadcasted in the whole region of Emilia Romagna.

Eduradio&TV, which today is part of Insight, an association of social promotion founded in Bologna for studies, training, and services in the territory, is working thanks to the contribution of many institutional and voluntary stakeholders. The project has gradually expanded from Bologna to the entire Emilia-Romagna region. The project is also promoted by ASP Città di Bologna and ASL Emilia Romagna.

Article by Diana Bota and her colleagues from Liberi Dentro Eduradio&TV

Community media in Europe have been broadcasting programs in the native languages of minorities and migrants since the 1980s and are sharing these experiences through various networks and projects.

It’s great to see that public service and print media are starting to also address communities in their mother tongues – an important precondition to make sure everyone’s rights to freedom of expression and access to information are respected!

Here are some interesting initiatives:

• Podcast Mothertongues by RTE: A podcast for kids, teachers and families to start sharing the languages and cultures that make up modern Ireland.

• NewsSpectrum project: Minority- and majority-language media partnerships across Europe publish their stories. In Spain, for example, the bilingual Arabic-Spanish news website Baynana, led by a team of refugee journalists from Syria, teamed up with La Marea to publish a new series of reports on the reality of Syrian refugees in Spain.

• if you are in or around Brussels, head to De Buren on March 17th at 19:30 for an evening all about disinformation, social media and pop culture. Organized by Are We Europe in partnership with Dare to be Grey and Get the Trolls out, it will be moderated by Anneleen Ophoff, AWE’s new editor-in-chief. Sarra Riahi, Policy and Advocacy Assistant in Brussels at ENORB, the European Network On Religion and Belief, will represent GTTO. After the event, we will upload the recording on the community media section of the GTTO website.

SONOHR Festival is a three-day celebration of creative documentary and fictional audio stories that are rich in sound, and an event that always allows for an active exchange between authors and the audience. 25-27 February, Bern, Switzerland 

If you missed the LUCIA international festival, you can find highlights from the archive here:

Radiodays Europe 2022 announced

The Accelerator program is a chance to learn from experienced publishers, product managers, and journalism leaders in this special series of webinars and online workshops designed for minority-language news media. The accelerator is open to all minority-media professionals in Europe and covers a variety of topics – first up is “Tackling online harassment and smear campaigns” (see https://newsspectrum.eu/events/newsspectrum-digital-news-accelerator/ for more details).

Bedford, Charlotte (2018) A 360° framework for understanding the organization and packaging of the prison radio; its producers and listeners; its importance within the prison community itself and between that and their families and communities outside; and the use of the programs in-prison and outside – along with the inspiration from the UK association around the world.

Building Credibility and Trust in the Digital World is the theme of the first 2022 issue of the WACC journal ‘Media and Development.
The editors present the issue like this: “This issue of Media Development asks what do social justice and social injustice look like in the digital era, especially for marginalized people and communities? In what ways has the digital era changed the notion of public space? What vision do we have of a more just digital – and human – society and how do we help to bring it about?”

• 
  Articles in this issue
  • Impacts of digital transformation on communities and societies by Ellen Ueberschär
  • Dreaming of the common good by Dennis Smith
  • Digital justice by Heinrich Bedford-Strohm
  • Bridging the gender digital divide from a human rights perspective Association for Progressive Communications
  • In what ways has the digital era changed the notion of public space? Working Group
  • Communication for Social Justice in a Digital Age Symposium Manifesto
  • The Copenhagen Pledge Tech for Democracy
  • Corona, the digital divide and Indigenous peoples by Donn J. Tilson

Urszula Doliwa and Judith Purkarthofer have just published an article „Community media’s role in changing center-periphery relations through participatory, not-for-profit journalism” in the International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics. The authors have a strong connection to CMFE as former President and Vice President during the years 2013-2019. and already have several valued publications on community media.

As traditional notions of journalism focus exclusively on professionals, often embedded in media outlets and publishing houses, this new article sets out to explore the role of community media in working towards the recognition of participatory, not-for-profit journalism, more diverse discourses, and enhanced participation, especially in relation to minorities. The research draws on policy documents at the European level, reports from European projects with community media involvement as well as on interviews with community media activists and journalists. As a result, the authors can show strategies of bringing peripheral actors to the center by using community media based on access and participation, social inclusion, giving a voice, and media literacy development. The study proposes a model of the role of community media in shifting peripheral actors to more central positions.

The article is not open access and available on: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/intellect/mcp/2021/00000017/00000002/art00004

Urszula Doliwa is an associate professor and head of the Institute of Journalism and Social Communication at the University of Warmia and Mazury, Poland. Her research interests center on radio and community media.

Judith Purkarthofer works as an assistant professor at the University Duisburg-Essen. Her research interests center on multilingualism in families, educational institutions, and social contexts like community media.

Gabriella Velics

Corinne Podger presents them here: