Issue 1 - February 2005

Abstract
In 2004 the first, national, statistically robust, quantitative assessment of the Australian community broadcasting sector’s audience reach was undertaken. Conducted by McNair Ingenuity, this research provided a major breakthrough in the wider shift to a more audience-centred approach to managing the sector. The findings, significance and implications of this research are considered here. Following recent developments in critical cultural policy studies, this paper locates this renewed concern for community broadcasting audiences within a ‘larger cycle of decision-making’ (O’Regan, Balnaves and Sternberg 2002: 2). The particular influence of developments such as the emerging spectrum market and the imminent transition to digital transmission systems is discussed. These developments are important to understanding why community broadcasting resistance to market-based conceptions of audience is being overcome, and how audience-centredness might be used to facilitate the continuing development of this ‘third’ sector of Australian broadcasting.

Abstract
This paper considers the potential of community based information and communication technology (ICT) centres to support and promote the democratic voice. It does so through presenting comparative research findings from eight ICT centres in South Asia. The research uses a methodology that combines ethnographic approaches with action research. Here I look at the notion of ‘democratic voice’ in a loosely defined sense, referring to the ability of ‘ordinary’ people to access media and other information and communication technologies, and to create their own local content. As such it describes to some extent the processes of ‘metamorphosis’ involved in ‘citizen’s media’ participants becoming, through these activities, ‘active citizens’ (Rodriguez 2004). At a point in time when alternative media studies are recognising a new relevance and development communication research facing a crisis in direction, this paper considers research findings emerging from and utilised in community based ICT initiatives across South Asia. Looking at the research in a comparative framework, lessons can be learned about the relevance of community media for supporting democratic voice, and the processes that are most likely to achieve this.

Abstract
In November 2001, the Australian Broadcasting Authority concluded its investigation into the allocation of the four community licences available in the Melbourne metropolitan area. This long process, spanning more than eight years resulted in many broken dreams and anger at the way the process was undertaken. This paper looks at who received the licences and why; and what the experience of the licence allocation process in Melbourne tell us about the way the ABA operates. This paper examines these issues along with the broader issue of whether there is a passing of values from the initial implementation of community radio in the mid-seventies. What do the decisions tell us about how values that led to the emergence of community broadcasting have changed? What does the future hold for community broadcasting? How can the sector be ‘connecting communities’ when many aspirant groups missed out on a licence? This paper will be makes suggestions as to how the system can be improved and what the future holds in this area.

Abstract
Online networks can support broad communicative participation and interaction and new media technologies have the potential to allow individuals and groups to reflect, create, maintain, establish, challenge and subvert the media and political representations that affect them. For ‘peripheral’ youth - those living outside of national and global cultural and economic core centres - new media technologies can enable access to multiple and diverse audiences, that may otherwise have not been reachable. This paper will explore the meaning of ‘peripheral youth’ and will consider how, using the Internet as a medium for distribution and communication, these young people can represent their local lives and explore different issues, identities and representations through participation in an online youth network.

The experiences of ‘peripheral youth’ with using new media will be explored in the context of the Youth Internet Radio Network (YIRN) Project, currently being implemented by Queensland University of Technology. YIRN is designed as an 'open architecture' platform for experimentation, dissemination and exploration of the potential of streaming technologies to promote the production and distribution of creative content by young people. This paper will investigate the implications of this network for the young people in Queensland who are participating and whose access to new media technologies and diverse audiences is limited due to geographical, social and cultural contexts. By engaging with young people active in the network, this research examines how online participation relates to, and is affected by, their local offline lives.