Open Spectrum Australia Making sure community media has space in the digital age

by Ellie Rennie. Published in APO, May 14, 2009

FORGET media diversity in the fast broadband world. The new model for local media is top-down and centrally controlled.

While community media was largely ignored in the 2009–10 Federal Budget, the ABC reaped $15.3 million to begin providing “regional broadband hubs.” The money will be used to train local “user-generated” content makers and to employ a new cohort of ABC regional staff to manage them.

Read the full article

by Greg Dee, General Manager of Melbourne’s Channel 31. Published in Crikey May 13, 2009

C31 Melbourne has been promised time and again that this Federal Budget would finally deliver the much delayed digital solution for community television. Despite Senator Conroy, as recently as March this year, stating “We don’t want them [community television] to close because of a lack of willingness to transition them into the digital world. We’re not going to leave them behind”, community television finds that it has been once again been left behind. So now we know the true value of a politician’s promise.

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The Australian Communications and Media Authority has invited industry feedback on its Five Year Spectrum Outlook 2009-2013, as part of its commitment to keep the five-year snapshot of radio communications priority issues current.

ACMA have posted the full media release on their website and the Five Year Outlook was produced in March 2009. The industry comments period is open until August 31st 2009.

Quality/Control: A labelling system for community media
Report: Symposium 17 October 2008

By Ellie Rennie, Leo Berkeley and Blaise Kemp Murphet for Open Spectrum Australia

Download full report (includes footnotes): OSA Report Symposium (PDF, 189 KB)

1. Introduction

In the 1960s and 70s groups of people around Australia campaigned for access to the radio spectrum. The establishment of community radio was not just about making media; it was a rights campaign that introduced an alternative vision of how the media should be used and controlled. The groups had little in common with each other and their business models were sketchy. However, they managed to convince the government that community radio would benefit society and enhance media diversity.

The internet has brought with it a new set of rights issues. Whilst the corporate media now encourage participation, social networking is not the same as community media. Mostly, it is content that commercial media companies can hook ads onto, or a means to drill into our lifestyle choices and consumption habits for the purposes of market research. Some companies are restricting the way that we access the internet, what sites we can visit and our ability to create viable alternatives.

Just like the early days of community radio, there are many grassroots media organisations that are working to achieve democratic and ethical alternatives. Such groups are campaigning for access to the internet, developing open technologies and providing training. They are essentially ‘community media’ organisations – the online counterparts to community radio and television broadcasters.

Late last year, Open Spectrum Australia (a kind of ‘think tank’ for community media) decided to bring together community media groups from both platforms to discuss the issue of media convergence. In order to provide a focus for the day, we came up with a communication rights ‘campaign’ of our own and asked for feedback.

We proposed a labelling scheme for community-based media. The label would be used by online, broadcast and print media groups, assisting audiences and producers to differentiate a community media outlet from public service or private media. Why a label? We wanted to increase the visibility of community media, raise public awareness around information rights and provide an easy navigation system for audiences in the new media environment. We hoped it would unite broadcast and online community media and encourage groups to utilise each others’ talents, skills and technologies.

Around 70 people attended the day, including representatives from NEMBC, ACMA, Melbourne’s community radio sector (PBS, RRR, SYN, 3CR), C31, Indigenous community television (ICTV), GetUp, Engage Media, apc.au, the Creative Commons Clinic, as well as experts from the ABC and the academic community. The proposal sparked an interesting debate about the future of community-based media, the convergent media landscape and the status of information rights.

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Concerns about the transparency and reliability of information on the web aren’t confined to the use of concepts like ‘community media’. Here is a detailed and interesting proposal to develop a ethics seal for journalism web sites along similar lines to what Open Spectrum is advocating for community media.

Ellie Rennie spoke to Radio National’s Antony Funnell about the Quality/Control symposium and OSA’s community media labelling scheme. The interview was broadcast on The Media Report on Thursday November 6, 2008.

Listen here

From The New York Times, 4 Nov, 2008

“Over the objections of television broadcasters and other groups, federal regulators set aside a disputed slice of radio spectrum for public use on Tuesday, hoping it would lead to low-cost, high-speed Internet access and new wireless devices”. Read the full story…

Related article on Open Spectrum here

Thanks to everyone who participated in Friday’s Quality/Control symposium! The discussion was intense and energetic right from the start. We proposed a certification system for grassroots media. What we got was a whole lot of interesting ideas about the digital media environment, community media values and many possible directions forward. There was significant resistance to any kind of authoritative administrative body (mostly from the new media gang) and wide support for a peer-review, self-selecting system. The emphasis was on labelling distribution rather than content - a means to distinguish private media from non-profit enterprise. Everyone agreed that we don’t want an exclusionary, gate-keeper model, but that a means to assist audiences and producers to navigate the new media environment is a good thing.

Where do we go from here? Open Spectrum will write a report on the event, outlining the ideas generated and inviting further comment. We know that this proposal will only work if it is taken up at the grassroots level, so we invite you to discuss it, challenge it and run with it.

You can read Ellie’s introductory speech here and check out the live blog page by clicking on the tag above.

Open Spectrum Australia invites you to Quality/Control, a symposium on a radical new idea that may change the way we use and consume media in the future.

When. Friday 17 October
Where. State Library of Victoria, Theatrette, Latrobe Street, Melbourne

The symposium will kick off with a range of presentations, followed by directed panel conversations, all of which will allow for significant contributions from the audience. Following the lunch break, we hope that you will stay and be part of the strategic element of the day, in which we will break off into smaller groups to consider the practical considerations of the proposed scheme.

For more information and contact details turn to Quality/Control.

Quality Control is an Open Spectrum Australia symposium in association with The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, RMIT School of Applied Communication and the State Library of Victoria.

Link to PDF file.

Tim Burners-Lee, credited as the founding father of the World Wide Web, has said the web needs a rating system to help people find trustworthy news sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7613201.stm

The World Wide Web Foundation that he was launching when he made this announcement will be used to investigate this and other issues related to the web.