Alternative Media

""The intentions of this paper are as follows:
1. To highlight the need for and value of critical media literacy education.
2. To propose, by way of contribution, the development of a pedagogy for those educators and advocates who will develop and share such skills.
3. To re-assert (what many others have said before me) that cultural groundwork is an essential intermediary stage toward humanely progressive societal change.
4. To emphasize the need for the increased development and organization of independent media operators, centres, networks and cultural workers, to support the development, production, and distribution of such work.
""

The aim of this article is to explore the motivations that drove many ordinary people to produce citizen journalism after the earthquake that destroyed the Italian city of L’Aquila in 2009. Using in-depth interviews, we investigate the motivations and the obstacles underlying the publication of grassroots information related to the post- earthquake situation. Findings highlight that people were largely motivated to upload their content online: (1) to contrast the quake-related news provided by Italian mainstream media with their own perceptions; (2) to document their lives and the ‘real situation’ of the city; and (3) to share their points of view with other citizens trying to re-establish online the ties broken offline because of the catastrophe. Analysis shows that these non-professional journalists also had to face a series of obstacles, such as risks of fragmentation and lack of professionalism, funding and visibility.

This book aims to show how media have been used for good and bad—to trigger genocide, but also to effectively prevent conflict, facilitate free elections, expose corruption, promote nation-build­ing, provide critical information amid natural disasters, and bring about massive social change such as free education and women’s rights. César Jiménez-Martínez feels that this will be useful for undergraduate or A Level students as a starting point for the exploration of debates regarding the role of the media on issues of development, natural disasters, or conflicts.

This paper thinks through just what makes alterative media alterative. Specifically, it asks whether it is worth considering the broader sphere of radical alterative content that exists online or otherwise outside of networks of top-down control (such as the networks of creators and readers of slash fiction) as important and neglected parts of the alternative media movement.

"What role does diasporic Chinese media play in the process of Chinese migrants' adaptation to their new home country? With China's rise, to what extent has the expansion of its "soft power" swayed the changing identities of the Chinese overseas? A Virtual Chinatown provides a timely and original analysis to answer such questions.

Using a media and communication studies approach to investigate the reciprocal relationship between Chinese-language media and the Chinese migrant community in New Zealand, Phoebe Li goes beyond conventional scholarship on the Chinese Diaspora as practised by social historians, anthropologists and demographers. Written in an accessible and reader-friendly manner, this book will also appeal to academics and students with interests in other transnational communities, alternative media, and minority politics."