Dissertation Research: "Radio for whom?" Media Activism, Identity, and the (Re)Imagination of FM Radio Technology in the U.S.

在整个20世纪80年代和90年代，越来越多的草根运动对现状媒体表示不满，活动人士认为这些媒体在提供不受企业影响的新闻和音乐节目方面存在不足。 这些活动家试图通过公开他们的批评和获得更多的媒体制作手段来抵消这些被认为的缺点;他们的目标是改变媒体所有权的现状安排，并直接使用低功率FM（LPFM）技术来做到这一点。 这个科学和技术论文改进补助金是围绕LPFM行动主义的社会环境和技术实践的民族志调查。 它的目标是揭示这些演员如何通过低功率调频广播（LPFM）活动家的工作，制定他们对民主媒体访问和媒体多样性的信念;这些活动包括游说，自学使用传输和制作技术，并为公众提供技术，后勤和法律的支持。 该研究将主要集中在费城的LPFM活动家社区，但数据将在演员与监管机构，社区团体，LPFM电台和潜在电台以及其他活动家会面的各种地点收集。 在借鉴科学技术研究（STS）的奖学金，该项目有显着的洞察力的社会生活和LPFM技术的意义的好处。 更具体地说，将强调四个主题，以探讨这些行为者。妇女参与地方妇女政策的概念及其工作：1）身份; 2）专业知识; 3）性别; 4）解释的灵活性。 这些主题将被用来使可见的（也许是可听的）社会关系，性别和技术身份，技术的解释和行动之间的丰富和复杂的相互作用。 作为一个小规模，低技术，但广泛的技术，在很大程度上是未经审查的STS奖学金或其他地方，LPFM构成了一个重要的调查网站，这将是特别相关的，在目前的背景下，广泛的兴趣索赔有关的信息技术的影响。 STS的许多工作集中在大规模的，相对建立的关系，如科学和国家之间的关系;相反，这个项目提供了对边缘的，较小规模的，不太稳定的技术行动主义企业的洞察力。 这是一个同样重要的研究网站，这个项目旨在揭示动态的，高度偶然的环境中，活动家（试图）影响变化。 这些活动家也是公民，他们认为自己的工作具有广泛的相关性和公益性，不仅限于小型利益集团或社区广播爱好者，而且还涉及普通公民的生活，有可能促进更多的公民参与。 这项研究代表了一个机会，有助于学术和超越STS和潜在的行动主义。 它将提供公民的一般了解。在一个抵制因企业同质化和控制而被认为背叛民主价值观的地方与技术接触，涉及媒体机构，活动家，公众，公司和监管机构。

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a growing grassroots movement has registered dissatisfaction with status quo media, which activists perceive as falling short in such areas as providing news and musical programming free of corporate influence. These activists have attempted to counterbalance these perceived shortcomings by making known their critiques and gaining greater access to the means of media production; they aim to change the status quo arrangement of media ownership and are working directly with low power FM (LPFM) technology to do so. This Science and Technology Dissertation Improvement Grant is an ethnographic investigation of social settings and technical practices surrounding LPFM activism. Its goal is to reveal how these actors enact their beliefs about democratic media access and media diversity through low power FM radio (LPFM) activist work; these activities include lobbying, teaching themselves to use transmission and production technologies, and providing the public with technical, logistical, and legal support. The study will focus primarily on a community of LPFM activists in Philadelphia, but data will be collected at a variety of sites where the actors travel for meetings with regulators, community groups, LPFM stations and prospective stations, and other activists. In drawing on scholarship in Science & Technology Studies (STS), this project has the benefit of significant insight into the social life and meaning of LPFM technology. More specifically, four themes will be emphasized in order to explore these actors. conceptions of LPFM and their work with it: 1) identity; 2) expertise; 3) gender; and 4) interpretative flexibility. These themes will be used to make visible (and perhaps audible) the rich and complex interactions between social relations, gender and technical identity, interpretations of technology, and activism. As a small-scale, low-tech, yet widespread technology that has largely been unexamined in STS scholarship or elsewhere, LPFM constitutes an important site of inquiry, which will be especially relevant in the present context of widespread interest in claims about the impact of information technologies. Much work in STS focuses on large-scale, relatively established relationships such as that between science and the state; conversely, this project offers insight into the marginal, smaller-scale, less stable enterprise of technological activism. This is an equally important site for research, and this project aims to reveal the dynamic, highly contingent environment in which activists (attempt to) effect change. These activists are also citizens and they conceive of their work as having a broad relevance and public good, which extends beyond small interest groups or community radio aficionados, into the lives of ordinary citizens, with the potential to enable greater civic participation. This study represents an opportunity to contribute to scholarship in and beyond STS and potentially to activism. It will provide a general understanding of citizens. engagement with technology at a site of resistance to a perceived betrayal of democratic values due to corporate homogenization and control, involving media institutions, activists, publics, corporations, and regulatory bodies.