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，一场日益壮大的草根运动对现状媒体表示不满，活动人士认为，现状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。这些积极分子试图通过公开他们的批评和更多地获得媒体生产手段来抵消这些公认的缺点；他们的目标是改变媒体所有权的现状安排，并直接与低功率调频(LPFM)技术合作来做到这一点。这篇科学和技术论文改进补助金是一项关于LPFM激进主义的社会背景和技术实践的人种学调查。其目标是揭示这些行为者如何通过低功率调频无线电(LPFM)活动来实现他们对民主媒体获取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，以及为公众提供技术、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，但数据将在演员出差与监管机构、社区团体、LPFM站和未来的站以及其他积极分子开会的各种地点收集。利用科学与技术研究(STS)的学术知识，这个项目的好处是对LPFM技术的社会生活和意义有重要的洞察力。更具体地说，将强调四个主题，以探讨这些演员。LPFM的概念及其工作：1)身份；2)专业知识；3)性别；4)解释灵活性。这些主题将被用来使社会关系、性别和技术认同、对技术的解释和激进主义之间丰富而复杂的互动变得可见(或许也能听到)。作为一种小规模、低技术但广泛传播的技术，LPFM构成了一个重要的调查地点，在目前关于信息技术影响的主张引起广泛兴趣的背景下，这一点将特别相关。STS的许多工作集中在大规模的、相对成熟的关系上，例如科学与国家之间的关系；相反，这个项目提供了对技术激进主义的边缘、较小规模、不太稳定的企业的洞察。这是一个同样重要的研究地点，该项目旨在揭示积极分子(试图)实施变革的动态、高度偶然性的环境。这些积极分子也是公民，他们认为他们的工作具有广泛的相关性和公益性，超越了小型利益集团或社区广播爱好者的范围，进入了普通公民的生活，有可能使更多的公民参与。这项研究代表着一个为STS内外的学术做出贡献的机会，并有可能为激进主义做出贡献。它将为公民提供一个大致的了解。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点与技术接触，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.