Costelloe-KuehnMemo6

With the practice of "tactical" or "alternative" or "community" media production as the focus, this project could be "about":

1) The ways in which **activist** groups (the "newest social movements") combine artistic practices and emerging technologies ("new media") to create and mobilize communicative **networks** in order to challenge elites and promote alternatives (regarding environmental justice, the global justice movement, or media reform and alternatives). How do communication technologies enable the formation of new forms networks and, in turn, what kinds of political/social/cultural capital and organizational strategies do these networks foster?

2) The challenges and opportunities associated with developing a **local** media ecology that serves and draws on the expertise of diverse groups: middle-class activist, "foreigners," indigenous groups, etc. There's the example of the small local radio station in New Orleans which provided invaluable information in the aftermath of Katrina while all the bigger corporate-owned stations "abandoned" post. There's the Kothkale Community Radio project in Sri Lanka which was funded by UNESCO to help revitalize a community hit by a large dam project. The focus is on locality and community, as opposed to the "progressive" or activist or radical potential of alternative media. Might be easier to get funding and academic prestige?

3) A **policy**-oriented project that "evaluates" and compares a number of community-media centers with both quantitative and qualitative methods. Jo Tacchi's work provides an example in her collaborative methodology (Ethnographic Action Research) of a community radio station in Sri Lanka.