There is another type of electronic visual media which is being made in this world, in a mode of production distinctly different from the mass media model. This is the work created by community media groups and independent producers who have appropriated the consumer video equipment.

While much of the use of small format video is documenting family birthdays or graduations in affluent neighborhoods, there are a growing number of people who put together video programs to implement community development projects and to share information and history with others in locations that range from Bangladesh to Brazil. The efforts of community media makers are often ridiculed and or dismissed as "flashes in the pan." They are belittled as pathetic when measured against the power and ubiquity of mass culture. The assumption is always that these local community efforts are in direct competition with the Goliaths, the moguls. When size of audience is measured there is, of course, no comparison. Even setting aside the power of well-aimed sling-shots, the scope and power of vertically and horizontally integrated transnational media business is without match in world history. The notion that community groups with a few camcorders, radio mikes and websites would effectively challenge these structures is absurd. But the very notion of this sort of wrestling match is not consistent with the goals and practice of most community media.

This is media not bent on entertainment or amassing viewer numbers, though on occasion this can be the result. In the alternative media world, there is a different operational framework — the relationship between makers and watchers is not at all the same. In fact, the term "watchers" is not descriptive of that relationship. "Users" or "user/participants" is perhaps more appropriate. Community media is often part of a larger process of community activities that can include environmental organizing, alternative health care, community self-defense, labor union mobilization and hundreds of other activist projects. Video, radio and web activities are integrated into the organizing. A widely recognized example is Mcspotlight.org, the web site created in conjunction with the defense of the London Greenpeace activists who were sued by McDonald's corporation for passing out brochures alleging that Big Macs were bad for everything from service labor to children's health. The web site, the videos and the radio tapes were coordinated to produce an effective campaign that ultimately "won" the case in the court of public opinion, although the civil judge's decision was more ambiguous.

Community media is often treated as historically insignificant, but many groups are actively building an authentic "public sphere" in their communities and deserve serious consideration not only in academic study, but in public service funding and infrastructure assistance. They also deserve to be considered as legitimate providers of important global information, and accorded recognition in the official discussions of international telecommunications at the ITU (The International Telecommunication Union) and UNESCO.

Although often "narrowcast" for specific audiences and local situations, community media deserves funds and space for local production and infrastructure for global exchange. Internet diffusion is an obvious possibility, but satellite transmission is more immediately possible given the current set of the technical infrastructure. The value of this sort of exchange is on many levels: of creating communities of interest across borders, exchanging information that has global relevance, of providing models for popular organizing and for providing inspiration for creative production. These exchanges can provide information about specific problems that are replicated from community to community, often faced in total isolation. Non governmental organizations (NGOs) and activist groups need to be able to share information and to witness the documentation of local problems and solutions across borders and regions.

Grassroots and community producers have been building associations, coalitions and support groups to grow a global movement and infrastructure for community media. Groups like Videazimut are not advocating a mass network made of community media productions that would attempt to rival Murdoch's "Star Channel," but they are exploring various types of exchange of video and radio projects via satellite and the internet. The successes of public access in the United States, Germany, Australia and other locations have proved that "taxing" the profits of telecommunications infrastructure can provide revenues to initiate and support a public interest communication system. Perhaps similar regulations on a global scale could take a proportion of the profits from global commercial networks to support public interest media exchange. We have the technology to set up a way to share and collaborate around issues and ideas. We are beginning to understand how effective the world wide web can be for this sort of exchange. A global community media network could address specific areas of interest and concern.

The idea is not to create a mass audience to weep for princesses, but to tax the mass media corporations that exploit those tears. Those corporations utilize resources that are the provenance of all peoples on earth: the airwaves and geostationary satellite paths and moreover our eyes and hearts, the access to which is now so readily available to commercial and governmental entities.
 

AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA.

The Media Channel is a not-for-profit project of OneWorld and The Global Center, and is produced by Globalvision New Media.