Low Power To The People: Pirates, Protest, And Politics In Fm Radio Activism

E-Book Overview

The United States ushered in a new era of small-scale broadcasting in 2000 when it began issuing low-power FM (LPFM) licenses for noncommercial radio stations around the country. Over the next decade, several hundred of these newly created low-wattage stations took to the airwaves. In Low Power to the People, Christina Dunbar-Hester describes the practices of an activist organization focused on LPFM during this era. Despite its origins as a pirate broadcasting collective, the group eventually shifted toward building and expanding regulatory access to new, licensed stations. These radio activists consciously cast radio as an alternative to digital utopianism, promoting an understanding of electronic media that emphasizes the local community rather than a global audience of Internet users. Dunbar-Hester focuses on how these radio activists impute emancipatory politics to the “old” medium of radio technology by promoting the idea that “microradio” broadcasting holds the potential to empower ordinary people at the local community level. The group’s methods combine political advocacy with a rare commitment to hands-on technical work with radio hardware, although the activists’ hands-on, inclusive ethos was hampered by persistent issues of race, class, and gender. Dunbar-Hester’s study of activism around an “old” medium offers broader lessons about how political beliefs are expressed through engagement with specific technologies. It also offers insight into contemporary issues in media policy that is particularly timely as the FCC issues a new round of LPFM licenses.

E-Book Content

Low Power to the People Inside Technology Series edited by Wiebe E. Bijker, W. Bernard Carlson, and Trevor Pinch Christina Dunbar-Hester, Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II Eden Medina, Ivan da Costa Marques, and Christina Holmes, editors, Beyond Imported Magic: Essays on Science, Technology, and Society in Latin America Richard Rottenburg, Far-Fetched Facts: A Parable of Development Aid Anique Hommels, Jessica Mesman, and Wiebe E. Bijker, editors, Vulnerability in Technological Cultures: New Directions in Research and Governance Amit Prasad, Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India Charis Thompson, Good Science: The Ethical Choreography of Stem Cell Research Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and Kirsten A. Foot, editors, Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society Catelijne Coopmans, Janet Vertesi, Michael Lynch, and Steve Woolgar, editors, Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes, and Yannick Barthe, Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, editors, Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology, and European Users Deborah G. Johnson and Jameson W. Wetmore, editors, Technology and Society: Building Our Sociotechnical Future Trevor Pinch and Richard Swedberg, editors, Living in a Material World: Economic Sociology Meets Science and Technology Studies Christopher R. Henke, Cultivating Science, Harvesting Power: Science and Industrial Agriculture in California Rebecca Slayton, Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949–2012 Helga Nowotny, Insatiable Curiosity: Innovation in a Fragile Future Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday, Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain Karin Bijsterveld, Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture, and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century Jens Lachmund, Greening Berlin: The Co- Production of Science, Politics, and Ur