Alternative media is a media different from established or dominant media types in terms of content, production, or distribution. Alternative media takes many forms including print, audio, video, internet, and street art. Some examples include the counter-cultural zines of the 1960s, ethnic and indigenous media such as the First People television network in Canada (later renamed Aboriginal Television Networks), and more recently open publishing journalism sites such as Indymedia.
While the mainstream media, as a whole, represent the interests of governments and companies, alternative media tend to be non-commercial projects that advocate the interests of people who are excluded from the mainstream, for example, poor, political and ethnic minorities, labor groups, and LGBT identities. The media is spreading a marginalized viewpoint, as heard in progressive news programs, Democracy Now !, and creating an identity community, as seen for example in It It Gets Better Project created on YouTube in response to an increase in gay teen suicide cases it is created.
Alternative media challenges the beliefs and dominant values ​​of a culture and has been described as "counter-hegemonic" by the adherents of the cultural hegemony theory of Antonio Gramsci. However, since the definition of alternative media as just opposed to the mainstream is limiting, some approaches to studying alternative media also answer questions about how and where these media are created, as well as the dynamic relationship between the media and the participants who create and use them.
Video Alternative media
Definition
There are various definitions of "alternative media." John Downing, for example, defines "radical alternative media" as a medium "expressing an alternative vision of hegemonic policies, priorities, and perspectives". In his assessment of the various definitions for the term, Chris Atton noted repeatedly the importance of the production of alternative media derived from small groups of counter-hegemonic and individual groups.
Christian Fuchs also argues that alternative media should have four different properties. The first is that people must be involved in the creation of what is put on alternative media. The second is to be different from the mainstream. The third is that he must create a different perspective of the country and large corporations. The fourth property is that alternative media must "build different types of relationships with markets and/or countries."
Maps Alternative media
General approach and practice
The approach to the academic study of alternative media seeks to understand the ways in which this medium is significant, each emphasizing different aspects of the media, including the role of the public sphere, the social movement, and the participation by the community that creates the media.
Democratic theory and public sphere
One way to understand alternative media is to consider their role in the process of democratic communication. The philosopher JÃÆ'¼rgen Habermas proposes that a healthy democratic community needs a space where rational debates can occur between the citizens involved. It is important that this public dialogue takes place beyond the control of any authority so that citizens can exchange ideas as equivalent. This translates into the need for free speech and free press.
In Habermas's idea of ​​the public sphere, participation is open to everyone, all participants are equal, and any matter can be raised for debate. However, this view does not take account of the inherent exclusion of women and minorities (and their interests) from public debates. Given this social inequality, the philosopher Nancy Fraser argues for the importance of independent public spheres, in which members of the subordinate group can first negotiate their issues and concerns among themselves and then reinforce those issues into the more public sphere large. The alternative media associated with this counter-public space is crucial in developing the needs and identity of the group and in challenging the larger dominant public domain. The feminist counter-public sphere, for example, is responsible for spreading the view that women's issues such as domestic violence and reproductive rights are eligible for debate in the wider public sphere.
Social movements media
Social movement is a type of collective action. They involve large, sometimes informal, groups or organizations that focus on certain political or social issues and incite, reject or cancel social change. The media of social movements is how social movements use the media, and often, because of the nature of social movements, the media tends to be an alternative.
Communication is essential to the success of social movements. Research shows that social movements experience significant difficulties in communicating through mainstream media because mainstream media often systematically distort, stigmatize, or ignore the point of view of social movements. They may deny access or representation of social movements at critical moments in their development, using message frames that weaken or weaken public perceptions of the legitimacy of the movement or implicitly encourage actors of movement seeking coverage to meet the questionable values ​​of current reportage the main concerning social activism, including an increased interest in violence, emotionality, and slogans. The problematic coverage of social movements is often referred to as the paradigm of protest: the idea that mass media marginalize protest groups through the depiction of demonstrators, and, thus, then support the status quo. As a result, social movements often turn to alternative media forms and practices to reach their goals more effectively.
An example of how the mainstream media problematically includes social movements is the Occupy movement, which begins with Occupy Wall Street in September 2011. The Occupy movement protests against social and economic inequality around the world, its main purpose being to make economic and political relationships in all societies less hierarchical and vertical more evenly distributed. Local groups often have a different focus, but among the main concerns of the movement is how large companies and the global financial system control the world in ways that disproportionately benefit minorities, undermine democracy and unstable. In comparing major news coverage of the Occupy movement against coverage of some alternative press trends emerged. First, mainstream media use the confusion over the event as a dominant frame while alternative media focuses on what the demonstrators really want to achieve. Secondly, the mainstream media put the protesters in violation, while the alternative media focused on police brutality and their acts of violence against peaceful protesters.
For more information on social movements, and alternative media, see Social movement theory.
The alternative media is activist. Social movements in areas such as human rights, environmental movement, and civil rights generate alternative media to advance their goals, spread awareness, and inspire participation and support.
Human rights
Examples of human rights social movements using alternative media are WITNESS groups. WITNESS is a non-profit human rights organization and its mission is to partner with organizations in the field to support documentation of human rights violations and their consequences, for further public engagement, policy change and justice. They rely on video footage using technologies such as handheld camcorders and smartphones to capture the world's attention and visuil communicate human rights abuses. They have documented violations of human rights from the police in Brazil, children soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, human trafficking in Brazil and the United States, and many other human rights issues, all through the use of alternative media.
Environmental movement
Example of environmental movement using alternative media is group, Green Peace. Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization whose goal is to "ensure Earth's ability to preserve life in all its diversity and to focus its campaign on global issues such as climate change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic engineering and anti-problems nuclear use of direct action, lobbying and research to achieve goals, as well as alternative media, They use online tactics such as podcasts and blogs as well as performing arts.
Civil rights
An example of civil rights groups using alternative media is the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC). The SNCC was one of the most important organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The SNCC is involved in voter registration rights in the south, establishing Freedom Schools, organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), among many other accomplishments. Alternative media tactics used by SNCC include building a dedicated Communication Section that includes a photography arm, its own printing press (which publishes its Voice Student bulletin), publishes publicity material, and creates a wire press alternative.
Participatory culture
Alternative media has often been studied as a participative cultural manifestation, in which citizens do not act as consumers only, but as contributors or producers as well. By opening access to media production, participatory culture is believed to be further democracy, civic engagement, and creative expression.
Participatory culture before the internet. Amateur Press Associations is a participatory cultural form that emerged in the late 19th century. Members of such associations set up and print their own publications, which are sent through the customer's network. Zine, radio talk shows, and group projects also precede blogs, podcasts, wikis, and social networks. With web services like Wikipedia, Tumblr, Imgur, Reddit, Vine, and YouTube, all of which allow users to distribute original content, making media production more participatory.
Alternative media is also created by participative journalism as citizens play an active role in collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information. This form of alternative news gathering and activists and reporting functions outside mainstream media institutions, often in response to the lack of professional journalism. It engages in journalistic practice but is driven by objectives in addition to generating profits, having different ideals, and relying on alternative sources of legitimacy.
Participatory media approach considers participation in producing media content as well as in making decisions about media production processes as a feature defining alternative media. Participatory culture can be realized in several ways. Media literacy is a way to start participating by understanding the conventions and means of production of media systems. Individuals who learn to produce their own media are the steps that move citizens from literacy to participation. Fan fiction, community radio or low power FM radio, home video, are just some of the ways people can produce media content to participate in culture and produce alternative media.
By encouraging participation, alternative media contribute to strengthening citizenship attitudes and allow citizens to be active in one of the key areas relevant to daily life and to place their right to communicate in practice. To demonstrate the relationship between democracy and participation in the production of the media, the term citizen media illustrates that alternative media can help those who produce the media also become active citizens - especially in democracies. This idea is closely related to community media (see next section).
Community media
Community media including citizens? media, participatory media, radical activists and media and the broader forms of communication involved by local or regional platforms. Like other alternative forms of media, the media community tries to bypass the commercialization of the media. The abolition or avoidance of a sole or sponsorship is motivated by a desire to be free from supervision or obligation to fulfill a particular agenda. Community media are often categorized as grassroots, descriptions that apply to the financial structure and content creation process. While there is diversity in the media community, which varies according to the media platform (radio, TV, web or print), media sources are usually open to the public/community to deliver materials and content. This open policy is in tune with the values ​​of community media to defend the approach and ethos of democracy. Historical community media has served to provide an alternative political voice. Across all forms of the world community, media is used to increase the needs and discourses of certain spaces, usually linked by geographical, cultural, social, or economic similarities.
Race and original media
Minority community media can be localized and national, serving to disseminate information to targeted demographics. They provide a platform for discussion and exchange within minority communities as well as between minorities and the majority of people. Often minority-focused media outlets present important resources, giving their audiences important information, in their own language of origin, helping groups determined to participate as equal citizens in their country of residence. These media platforms and outlets create opportunities for cultural exchange and upgrading or empowerment of disenfranchised or marginalized groups, based on racial, ethnic or cultural identity. Historically, these media forms have served a dual purpose, to disseminate information to communities traditionally ignored or ignored by the mainstream media and as vehicles for political protest or social reform.
Spaces designed to address minority discourses that typically straddle the lines of both alternative media and activists work to provide resources that are not available through the main steps and to shift the perspective or comprehension universally accepted from a particular group of people. Exploration of sociologist Yu Shi to the alternative media provides conflicting arguments about the role of minority media to facilitate the creation of cultural venues and inhibit the assimilation and acculturation of society. Shi outlines the widespread common understanding that media that are provided with racial information provides places, power, and political agents.
Throughout the 20th century, media space was developed to accommodate the growth of multi-cultural countries in the United States. African-Americans created local publications such as Chicago Defender to share important information to protect citizens from discriminatory practices by police and policy makers, while Jet and Ebony magazines serve to empower national black identity, praising the achievements and leadership of American blacks. Similar practices are becoming increasingly common for Latino/Latino and Asian groups. As immigration increased post-1965, Spanish-language newspapers and television stations, along with the creation of television networks such as ICN-TV specifically for Chinese immigrants. Critical awareness of an increasingly participatory global media culture in a multicultural society is becoming widespread and a necessary approach to explain the success and impact of ethnic or minority media, and to embrace the changing ways in which people 'use' their media.
Connect to subaltern
There are several related goals found in alternative media studies and subaltern studies, in view of the voice of the lost and oppressed voice covering both fields. The Subaltern study illustrates Antonio Gramsci's discussion of the "subaltern" group, ie, groups of people who are considered socially, economically, and inferiorly inferior ratings. One of the most important questions in underground studies is that put forward by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the subordinates speak?" which he requested in his seminal essay of the same name. Spivak investigates whether subalterns have a voice in the hegemonic political discourse, and if so if their voices are heard, allow them to participate. This is important, because the ability of subordinates to participate in politics and other social and cultural practices is the key to building - as well as challenging - their subaltern status. This specialized scientific body is useful for the study and discussion of alternative media because of their mutual preoccupation with the ability of people who lose their right to participate and contribute to mainstream hegemonic discourse, especially in the case of ethnic and racial media in which these groups speak from subaltern positions.
This relationship is reinforced in the work of alternative media scholar Clemencia Rodriguez. In his discussion of citizenship, Rodriguez commented that "Citizens must establish their citizenship daily, through their participation in everyday political practices... As citizens who actively participate in actions that reshape their own identity, another identity , and their social environment, they generate power. "So it can be said that by subaltern groups that create alternative media, they do express their citizenship, generate their power, and let their voices be heard.
Forms of media
Press - print
The alternative press consists of printed publications that provide a different or different perspective from that provided by major newspapers, newspapers, and other major print media.
Factsheet Five publisher Mike Gunderloy describes the alternative press as "a kind of underground underground press press, Entire Earth , Boston Phoenix , and Mother Jones is the kind of thing that belongs to this classification. "In contrast, Gunderloy describes the underground press as" the real thing, before it becomes slick, co-opted and profitable. "The underground press comes out in small, often unreadable, thin subject that was not mentioned, and never brought ads for designer jeans. "
Examples of alternative media are tactical media, which use 'hit-and-run' tactics to bring attention to emerging problems. Often tactical media try to expose large companies that control the source of mainstream media.
One of the leading NGOs dedicated to the practice of tactical media and info-activism is Tactical Technology Collective that helps human rights advocates in using technology. They have released several toolkits freely to the global community, including NGO In A Box South Asia, which helps in setting up an independent NGO framework, Security-In-A-Box, a collection of software to keep data secure and secure for operating NGOs in a potentially hostile political climate, and their new short-form toolkit of 10 Tactics, which "... provides original and artful means for supporters of the right to capture attention and communicate a reason".
Radio
Radio has become a significant alternative form of media due to its low cost, ease of use, and near ubiquity. Alternative radio has emerged in response to mainstream radio broadcasts supported by capitalists and/or countries. For example, in the early 1970s in Australia, a new alternative radio sector was created by those who felt ostracized from the national two-sector broadcasting system, consisting of national public service announcers and commercial services. In the US, the first independent listener-backed station, KPFA, began in 1949 to provide the way for free speech without being limited by commercial interests that characterize mainstream radio.
Their content ranges widely; while some station's main objectives are explicitly political and radical, others are trying to broadcast music that they believe are excluded from mainstream radio. Alternative radio often, though not always, takes the form of community radio, which is generally understood as participatory, open, nonprofit, and created by and for a community. This radio station can be broadcast legally or illegally, as a pirate radio. Alternative radio is a global phenomenon. Examples of alternative community and radio efforts include Tilos RÃÆ'¡diÃÆ'³ (Hungary), Missinipi Broadcasting Corporation (Canada), Pacifica Radio and Prometheus Radio Project (both in the United States), and Radio Sagarmatha (Nepal).
Videos and movies
Alternative films and videos are generally produced outside the mainstream film and video industry and feature content and/or styles that are rarely seen in mainstream products. However, the genre, content, and form in particular vary widely. Often produced in the context of nonprofit organizations, such as art video collections (eg Videotage, Los Angeles Filmmaking Cooperative) or grassroots social justice organizations (eg Line Break, CINEP - Center for Research and Popular Education). Participatory video projects in which marginalized or resource-poor groups tell their stories through video demonstrates the possibilities for access and participation in video-making to empower those involved, circulate invisible representations in the mainstream media, and challenge existing power relationships.
Alternative films in the United States are evident in The Film & amp; 1930s Photo League Chapters, drawing attention to class unity and issues through social documentary films and editing of news stories. Although it began in the 60s and 70s, the making of radical video reached its peak in the 80s, as technology became more accessible. Public access television provides broadcast channels for radical punk and hip-hop radical cultural critics who are often influenced. Deep Dish TV, for example, is a television network that seeks to provide media access to grassroots organizations and perspectives that are marginalized or misconstrued through public access television. Today, portable and accessible recording technology and the internet enables increased opportunities for global participation in the production, consumption, and exchange of alternative video content.
Internet
With the growing importance of digital technology, the question arises about where digital media fits in the dichotomy between alternative media and mainstream media. First, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other similar sites, though not necessarily made for information media, are increasingly being used to spread news and information, potentially acting as an alternative medium as they allow ordinary citizens to bypass traditional goalkeepers, mainstream media and sharing information and perspectives deemed important by these citizens.
Second, the Internet provides an alternative space for mobilization through interpersonal networking, collective action toward social change, and makes information more accessible. Usually, among those who have aberrant, unbelieving or non-traditional views, the Internet platform allows the creation of new alternative communities that can vote for those who are normally marginalized by mainstream media.
In addition, the Internet has also led to an alternative form of programming, which allows professionals and amateurs to subvert or avoid commercial and political restrictions on open access to information and information technology. [36] Some examples of alternative computing are hacking, open source software or systems, and file sharing.
Finally, the internet has also given rise to new ways of creating and disseminating common knowledge - different from the top-down ways. It seeks and encourages the participation of many users, encouraging the form of collaborative knowledge production and folksonomy. Wikipedia is a great example of this genre.
Street art
Often considered a guerrilla art, street art operates freely from the boundaries of the formal art world. In the form of graffiti, stencils, murals, and prints, street art takes on or transforms public space as a means of protest and social commentary. An important aspect of street art as an alternative form is a blend of aesthetics and social engagement, urban space usage, and interaction with the social landscape of the area in which art is made.
Street art movement gained popularity in the 1980s as a distinct art form from high art and commercial venues, but as popularity grew, some street artists moved from alternative venues on the road to museum galleries and performances. Cities such as Paris, Buenos Aires, and Sao Paulo are well known for using street art as a legitimate alternative medium through collective and artist competition, drawing attention to alternative sounds. The Internet also greatly influences street art by functioning as a platform for artists and fans to share photos of street art from around the world. Websites like Streetsy.com and WoosterCollective.com are among the most popular street art sharing sites.
Performance
Performance as an alternative medium uses theater, song, and performing arts as a means to engage the audience and advance the social agenda. Performing art is an avant garde art form that usually uses live performances to challenge traditional forms of visual art. It operates as a "theater antithesis, challenging forms of orthodox art and cultural norms." Playing an important role in the social and cultural movement of Dada and Surrealism to Post-Minimalism, the performing arts reflected the current political environment. While performing arts are often exiled to high art, street theaters are usually used in grassroots style, utilizing local communities for performances or conversations. It can be used as a form of guerrilla theater for protests, as in the case of The Living Theater dedicated to changing the hierarchy of power in society through experimental theater.
Music
Certain genres of music and musical performances can be categorized as alternative media. Independent music, or indie music, is music produced separately from commercial record labels. Professor David Hesmondhalgh describes the alternative nature of indie music as "a hard-headed network of post-punk companies that creates significant challenges to the commercial organization of cultural production favored by major record companies." Subversive sounds or lyrics and alternative distribution models distinguish them from commercial record companies.
Genre
Particularly with the increasing role of new media in alternative media projects, communication scholar Leah Lievrouw identifies five alternative media genres and contemporary new media activists: cultural disorder, alternative computing, participative journalism, mediated mobilization, and general knowledge.
- Jamming culture generally tries to criticize popular culture like entertainment, advertising, and art. It tends to comment on issues of capitalism and corporate consumerism and seek to make political comments. Characteristics of culturally disturbing texts include the use or repetition of images, videos, sounds or texts and that it is ironic or satirical in some sense. Today, culture jamming can come in the form of internet meme and guerilla marketing.
- Offer alternative computing with information technology and communication technology materials. It seeks to criticize and reconfigure systems with the intention of subverting or avoiding commercial and political restrictions on open access to information and information technology. Some examples of alternative computing are hacking, open source software or systems, and file sharing.
- Participative journalism refers to a web-based source of critical or radical news either in the form of an online news service or blog. These alternative news outlets often adopt the philosophy of citizen journalism and see themselves as an alternative to mainstream news and opinions. Participatory journalism projects may include unreported groups and problems. In this genre the authors and readers of some of these alternative media projects have the ability to contribute and therefore have characteristics as participatory or interactive. An example of participative journalism is Indymedia
- Media mobilization is related to communication practices that mobilize or organize social movements, identities, or cultural projects through the use of new media tools and platforms such as Facebook or YouTube. Characteristics of this genre include interpersonal networking, collective action on social change, and make information more accessible.
- Secret knowledge as a genre refers to projects that provide an alternative to traditional top-down creations and knowledge dissemination. It seeks and encourages the participation of many users, encouraging forms of collaborative knowledge production and peopleonmoies. Wikipedia is a great example of this genre.
Thinking about the current form of alternative media in terms of genre not only allows us to identify features and conventions of certain modes of communication, but also how "they enable people to express themselves appropriately, and to achieve their goals or intentions." In other words, we can begin to understand how creators and participants of alternative new media projects are actively shaping their communication practices.
YouTube is considered not only a commercial company but also a platform designed to encourage cultural participation by ordinary citizens. Although YouTube aims to be a leading commercial company, however, YouTube has become a community medium as one form of alternative media. Scholars assume that YouTube's commercial boost may have increased the likelihood of participation in online video culture for a broader spectrum of participants than ever before. This idea allows us to divert our attention from the false contradiction between market-driven and non-market-driven culture to the tension between corporate logic and irregularity and emerges from participatory culture, and the limits of the YouTube model for cross-cultural diversity and global communications. In theory, YouTube stands as a cosmopolitan cultural citizenship site. Uploading episodes of foreign soap operas and splitting into sections to cross the YouTube content limit, can be seen as a cultural citizenship act similar to media sharing practices from the various communities identified by Cunningham and Nguyen (2000). However, the people who have the highest chance of dealing with other cultural citizens are those who have access to a variety of content, information, and platforms; this is often referred to as the 'participation gap'. The notion of participation gap makes digital and digital literacy share important issues for cultural politics. Therefore, it is still controversial whether YouTube is just another channel to strengthen cultural imperialism or one of the alternative media.
Aesthetics
In relation to production modes and experimental and innovative collaborations, aesthetics in alternative media can be a political tool used to subvert dominant forces. Like many alternative media makers, the intellectual Crispin Sartwell identifies politics as an aesthetic environment. Thus, this political system of art not only uses aesthetics as a means to gain power but is also produced through aesthetic forms in all media. Thus, not infrequently the alternative media looking for artistic, non-traditional, or new avant-garde tools to represent the contents. In this case, the use of aesthetics allows alternative media to handle superficial content in a way that aligns, renegotiates, or exposes the politics that it is working on.
Form
Scholars have connected the Avante-garde art movement as an arena in which alternative aesthetics is used as a political tool. Movements like Futurism, Dada, and Situationism appear to challenge formal rules about what art is, how it looks or sounds like it, or where it can radically alter public and political ideology. The logic, reason, and rule of style and beauty, mandated by the dominant class, are denied as affirmation of subjugation.
Appropriation
While some alternative makers see to radically escape the dominant class restraints by rejecting their dominant visual dogma, others fit, twist, and re-mix to subvert dominant languages ​​and messages through mockery, ridicule, and satire. The dÃÆ' Â © tournement (and its successor-jamming culture) of the Situationists, Pop Art mimicry, and the reworking of normative narratives in slash fiction is an example of the appropriation of mainstream media texts.
Participation
The avant-garde movement that has emphasized audience participation includes Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Situationism, Pop Art, Neo-concretism, and the Oppressed the Theater. By inviting the audience to participate in media creation, collaborators look to subvert or criticize the hierarchical structure (capitalism, ivory tower) in society by embracing a democratic mode of production. Strategies involving input or collaboration from all stakeholders often result in a less formal 'right' aura.
Top media specialists
See also
- Alternate facts
- Alternative media in South Africa
- Alternate media (US left politics)
- Alternate media (U.S. political rights)
- Fake news
- Pirate television
References
External links
- Media related to Alternative media in Wikimedia Commons
- Underground/Alternative Newspaper History and Geography Maps and databases featuring more than 2,000 underground/alternative newspapers between 1965 and 1975 in the US.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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