Community Radios Online: An Alternative Model?

1. Les radios communautaires on-line, un modèle alternatif ?(On-line community radios : an alternative model ?)Pascal RICAUD UMR CITERES et GRER Université de Tours

2. A new personal research project We try to identify experimental formats and contents, integrating main Internet characteristics: interactivity, associated services and media … These new forms it allows to redefine, to enrich the relations between several communities (territorialized, on-line) and their radios? This is our central question.

3. What is a community radio? radios of immigrant communities (multi-community or intercommunity); regional community radios, sometimes multi-community radios (Radio Pays in Paris); militant radios, involved in social actions, more often city ones; - radios helping weak, fragile and minority people (Vivre FM is the most important radio for the handicapped persons).

4. Associative radios, communities and social movements In France, the associative radios had arisen in particular from the will of decentralization of the legislator, to offer means of information and expression of nearness, in particular for regional, immigrant communities, associative movements among which the demands and the actions had a local impact

5. Associative radios, communities and social movements At the local level, the associative radios embodied a media alternative, unlike media not specifically local: the PQR and the public local stations of Radio France or France 3

6. Associative radios, communities and social movements The alternative media contents and representations at the local level came essentially from the PHL and the associative radios, in particular the regional community radios …

7. Associative radios, communities and social movements • The analysis of the contents and the representations of these local alternative media, and in particular community radios, shows their nearness: • with social, claiming movements, • with authorities which symbolize more the participative democracy than the representative democracy.

8. Associative radios, communities and social movements • In a national media landscape where the media of opinion tend to rarefy, the community radios contribute not to the reactivation of a plebeian public sphere, but more modestly to the expression of minorities, marginalized or dominated groups.

9. Associative radios, communities and social movements • The modern communication based for a long time on the postulate of an overtaking of the social and cultural peculiarities, in the name of a collective interest crushing the differences. • The mass-media symbolized a long time this new, compulsory order, for those who had to merge in the mass.

10. More and more differentiated practices and reactivation of the community fact: paradox? • The associative regional radioes contributed to the emergence of new communities of opinions, even political basing on values, common social or cultural identities.

11. More and more differentiated practices and reactivation of the community fact: paradox? • With Internet, the nearness takes another face for these radios. They can get new public (Diasporae, secondary targets potentially interested in certain programs, in particular musical).

12. More and more differentiated practices and reactivation of the community fact: paradox? • This asks the question of the evolution of their missions. This differentiation of the practices seems particularly blatant on the community on-line radios of commercial type.

13. AFRICA N° 1

14. TROPIQUES FM

15. More and more differentiated practices and reactivation of the community fact: paradox? • For the anecdote : on the site of Beur FM we can see grouped together in the column " Agora ", an improbable list of services (equestrian forecasts, a site of meeting " the Love Maghreb.com, a tchat, a forum, a newsletter).

16. BEUR FM

17. More and more differentiated practices and reactivation of the community fact: paradox? • For the associative radios, this segmented approach is much less present. • Their media projects are widely bound to the principle of a territorial nearness.

18. More and more differentiated practices and reactivation of the community fact: paradox? The local, made for the local, by the local. This formula applies clearly to regional radioes on the band FM. For their on-line forms or webradios, the fact of becoming accessible for all, of widening voluntarily their public for some, could have consequences at the level of the contents, the services, even proposed editorial lines.

19. AYP FM

20. RADIO ARMENIE

21. More and more differentiated practices and reactivation of the community fact: paradox? On the other hand, if we take the example of Radio Armenia, Internet can more easily allow her to fill the mission that it settled. It tries not only to give substance to a micro-public place, that of the Armenian community installed in region Rhône-Alpes first of all, but also to join a wider, multicultural public place, integrating diverse identities and territorialities.

22. About which communities as it is spoken ? Now that they are deterritorialized, partially if it is about on-line radios or totally for webradios, how to rethink auditors - Internet users' communities which they address?

23. About which communities as it is spoken ? The coexistence of both broadcasting modes for the on-line radios (FM and Web) would nevertheless allow not to disturbe too much the mental maps, the imagination of every territorialized communities.

24. Internet offers new involvement possibilities If these radios are addressed at scattered communities, diaspora, they can widen and diversify their public. For a restricted and dispersed audience, Internet is more adapted than the FM diffusion model.

25. « You said collective participation ? » Copresence of communities constituted around a territorial, social identity, around a sense of identity on one side, and around other one of the on-line communities more or less produced by the radio, through in particular a more non-specialized or more federative offer (music programs).

26. « You said collective participation ? » The emergence of on-line communities - what are the motivations and the modes of appropriation ? - is connected at first to the implementation of interactive services Web 1.0 mostly (human-machine interactivity, interpersonal communication or of group). The initiative of the Internet user is then more discursive and more consumerist.

27. « You said collective participation ? » Web 2.0 which allows a personalization and / or a coproduction of the contents and the services (collaborative approach, Internet actor of the site) is almost absent in sites of the community radios.

28. Research methodology and corpus Comparative approach between community on-line radios, observations and analyses of contents over these periods of two radios on average by category of community radio (see typology), Analysis concentrated on program schedules, devices of interactivity and appropriation set up by these radios (forums, blogs),

29. Research methodology and corpus The questions which are going to guide my research: what is the visibility of the Internet users? What are their modes of expression, of exchange? What are their identical and territorial representations? Which are their motivations (open questions, focus group or ideally: deliberative workshops), Which are the visible modes of participation, appropriation (typological effort, modelling).

30. Modes of participation, mobilization of the on-line auditors still to invent? On-line observation of several tens of associative radios of France, quite comparable to producing alternative media of public micro-spaces : Their sites mostly exceed hardly the stage of spaces of expression, in best discursive, We stay at the level of the linguistic constatatives actions there (to assert / to bring back facts, to pass on an information) and meaning (assert a personal opinion, announce an emotion, a feeling),

31. Modes of participation, mobilization of the on-line auditors still to invent? It is difficult to locate on-line radios privileging even a regulating linguistic action, being characterized by collective processes of evaluation, reflection, definition of a collective project...