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表达了对媒体现状的不满，激进分子认为媒体在提供不受企业影响的新闻和音乐节目等方面做得不够。这些活动人士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明显的缺点；他们的目标是改变媒体所有权的现状，并直接使用低功率调频（LPFM）技术来实现这一目标。这项科学技术论文改进资助是围绕LPFM行动主义的社会环境和技术实践的民族志调查。其目标是揭示这些行动者如何通过低功率调频广播（LPFM）活动家工作来实现他们对民主媒体准入和媒体多样性的信念；这些活动包括游说、自学使用传输和生产技术，以及向公众提供技术、后勤和法律支持。这项研究将主要集中在费城的一个LPFM积极分子社区，但数据将在参与者与监管机构、社区团体、LPFM站点和未来站点以及其他积极分子会面的各种地点收集。在借鉴科学与技术研究（STS）的学术成果的基础上，本项目对LPFM技术的社会生活和意义有重要的见解。更具体地说，将强调四个主题，以探讨这些行动者。LPFM的概念及其工作：1)同一性；2)专业知识;3)性别;4)解释的灵活性。这些主题将被用来使社会关系、性别和技术身份、技术解释和行动主义之间丰富而复杂的相互作用变得可见（也许是可听的）。LPFM作为一种小规模、低技术含量但广泛应用的技术，在STS学术或其他地方基本上没有被研究过，它构成了一个重要的研究场所，在目前对信息技术影响的主张广泛感兴趣的背景下，它将特别相关。STS的许多工作集中在大规模的、相对建立的关系上，例如科学与国家之间的关系；相反，这个项目提供了对边缘的、小规模的、不太稳定的技术激进主义企业的洞察。这是一个同样重要的研究场所，该项目旨在揭示活跃分子（试图）影响变革的动态、高度偶然的环境。这些活动人士也是公民，他们认为自己的工作具有广泛的相关性和公共利益，这超越了小利益集团或社区无线电爱好者，进入普通公民的生活，有可能使更多的公民参与。这项研究为STS内外的学术研究和潜在的行动主义提供了一个机会。它将提供对公民的一般了解。在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.