Welcome to MediaMap, mapping media for future democracies. Join us on a journey across Europe. Meet specialists and researchers from various fields, unravel the democratic functions of media, and discuss its impact on the essence of democracy. MediaMap. Okay, how would you define community radio? And how did you get involved? Well, community radio goes back a long time. It must be nearly 50 years old now. But it started, one of the first places it started was in South America, particularly in Bolivia, where the miners were really oppressed and a lot of them weren't able to read and write. And with that idea of liberation theology and people coming together to talk about their problems and then to start people power like we have all over the world and they began to broadcast and of course radio is cheap it's cheap for people to receive but it's also really cheap and easy to make so they began to broadcast without a license. And the unions, the mining unions, used that as a way to actually force employers to give them better wages. And this idea spread throughout the world. I mean, they weren't the only place doing it, but it went to Africa, to Asia, and particularly in Europe, people began to take it up. So in Italy, for example, in the 1970s, there were a huge number of radio populari, so popular radio. And then in Ireland, a tiny country on the western side of Europe, Little Ireland, there were a number of people who were working with pirate radio because at that time we only had state radio, a public service broadcaster. So all these young people were playing their favourite music on the air and some people who were working with communities that were marginalised, some of them were Catholic priests, some of them were, again, union organisers. One particular man we're very fond of, Jack Byrne, was a salesman for, I can't remember what kind of company, but they began to go around their local areas and we could do this too. Sure, look, my son has a radio station in the attic, why don't we put one in the garden shed? And what we'll do is we'll play a bit of music, but really what we'll do is we'll bring people in, we'll talk about why have we got a good road coming into our area? Why does the post not arrive? What can we do about people's living conditions? And then we'll be gathering a group of people together. And rather than going out and protesting on the streets, which is one way of doing things, community radio became a force for people to come together and solve small problems and bigger problems. And it became a world movement. And what impact do you think it has? Oh, I think it's massive. I think on a personal level, for somebody getting involved in radio, they grow and develop, they learn how to communicate, but they also learn how to work with other people and particularly with people who are different to them. So just taking Ireland as an example, up until the 1990s, we really didn't have anybody coming to Ireland we had no immigrants we were a country that exported people we had a lot of emigrants but since the Balkan wars in the 1990s and then with all the war we've seen in the world since we have a big influx of people plus with climate change people to move. And we have a lot of what we call economic refugees. So it's really important that those people who don't have a vote, a lot of them, and who are like, you know, maybe don't have a security of feeling that they're at home or that they belong or that they're safe, that they have a place to communicate with each other. that they have a place to communicate with each other. So you have community stations like Near FM in Dublin that would have maybe 20 languages spoken on the air. And what they do is they don't just get the chance to come on the air for their Ukrainian programme, for example, but they actually then become part of the radio structure and they serve on committees and on boards and they get to know the Irish people and they get to know the Nigerian people. So it really does build community. I think the strongest part of community media is the word community. And community and communication come from the same thing. On a world scale, it's more difficult to see. But again, it's all part of people power. I'd like to go back to Latin America, the idea of conscientization, liberation theology, the idea that, you know, people have agency, people can do things for themselves. But I might actually just ask Jude to come in here on the idea of what it does for a person, because Jude is very involved. You're very involved in our student station. Yes. Yeah, actually, I suppose i returned to uh college and i started working on student radio and what it did for me as a student uh was really amazing because it brought all of the theory into practice which was great so it really made excuse me it really made sense then you know when you went back into the classroom. But what it also did was it helped me to create programs that other students might be interested in. So there was a huge community of younger students who may have been very interested in things like consent, sexually transmitted diseases, alcoholism in youth, drug use and the safe environment surrounding that, which was really great. But it was also a fun site. So you could explore music venues and, you know, record shops and get people to get involved that way. But what it also did was it actually prepared an awful lot of students in the student radio to go out into the media world. So you were really ready to hit the ground running. And we've got lots of Illumia in RTE, BBC. We've got them all over Europe working in media, coming from a very small hub of a community radio station in a college, which was an amazing, you know, facility to have. OK, so it's sounding to me like it's very, it's close to home. And of course, home can mean anything. But yet people are getting skilled. They're getting skilled. They're being upskilled. They're getting their voice heard. And I suppose the very mention of what you get from it, Amarack, the European Charter, have actually stated, and I'll read it for you because I think it's important. It's everything Rosemary has said. They actually said that its specific aims of community radio is to promote the right to communicate, assist the free flow of information, to encourage creative expression, which they do in the college, and to contribute to the democratic process. And it enables the development of a pluralist society. And I know, Rosemary, you were a member of AMREC. I was, I was. This is going back years now, but I went to my first world meeting of community radio stations and I was blown away by the energy, you know, and the colour and this was back in the 90s and I was quite young and I had travelled a bit, but I hadn't really met people on their own terms. And the strength of the women from Africa was amazing. And the men and women from South America, for someone coming from a very small island, it was mind blowing. And the power of people together and, you know, just and how seriously people took issues, things that we take we know are serious like climate change these people were living with the early impact of it so I was invited to stand for election and I think it was like late one night and somebody said you'll go and I said oh sure I will, the next thing I found myself on the steering committee and there was so much work so much work in it but it brought me into contact with so many different ways of communicating so many different ways of bringing community together and every single person involved in community radio this was but community media nowadays digital media as well their main concern is not what they're doing with the microphone or how beautiful somebody looks on the camera their main concern is giving people a voice you know there's was an expression we used and that's used everywhere now giving a voice to the voiceless which might sound strange but you're saying these people are silenced so give them the opportunity to speak for themselves so one of the things I learned through Amark and through my work in community radio is not to do what we're doing here now get the back of it and just talk and talk and talk your job if you're working in community media is to step back you give somebody the skills you suggest how they might do something and then you just watch them fly and it's their business it's it's not yours so in my personal experience of radio of community radio it was my business as an Irish speaker so I speak a minority language it was my business because my community at that time didn't have any radio station. We were the first one to start. So that was me very much invested in it. But when I left that and moved, for example, to the college I'm in, where I got to know both of you in Limerick, I was not a student. I was on staff. So my role when I saw a need for a community radio station was to get students enthusiastic about the idea, teach them how to make radio and then stand back. And so I did. That's your job is to make yourself redundant. Yes. And that's really what participation can be about. Rather than getting the power, getting the job of station manager and remaining there forever. So there's no hierarchy. And of course, there's always power in relationships. You know, I knew how to make radio, the students didn't. But once they begin to learn then I have to give up that power and I have to step back. And I think that's what's really vital because if you don't do that in participation all you're doing is pretending. You're keeping that hierarchy that you all you're doing is pretending. Yeah. You're keeping that hierarchy that you mentioned. You're keeping control. Yeah. And it can be very hard to do. It can be very difficult, yeah. I mean, you gave up recently. You spent years. Years, yeah, with CRAIL, the Community Radio of Ireland. So in that experience, I got to see all the different workings from all the different radio stations all over Ireland and the problems they face, you know, coming into an era where social media is so prevalent. But that the passion behind it, because it's a really all about building a community and giving that community, as Rosemary said, a voice. So that's the really, you know, the big benefit. The social benefit is huge, you know know so it's even more important now with more important people coming into our country exactly yeah so it's really wonderful to see it yeah and you know you mentioned people coming into the country it's really important that people who aren't citizens are not made to feel that they're not welcome yeah and more than that that they are actually contributing to the country yeah and that they're contributing to the community that they live in absolutely and it can be so easy you know we see the rise of racism we see the rise of isolation it's so easy for somebody who maybe doesn't speak the language you know um or only speaks with a very strong accent to come in do the low-paid work go home to their family hear about their children maybe being bullied in school and to feel isolated you know and particularly some cultures the women don't find it so easy to go out but community radio is one place where everybody feels safe everybody feels welcome but you don't stay just within your own community your own language community or your own religious community or your own cultural space. Because you're meeting men and women and children from other cultures, particularly from the Irish community. And when you work with somebody on something, you know, especially when you're volunteering, because nobody gets paid. We should have said that. We're so passionate, we forget about money. Forget about the money. Forget about the money. It's not about the money, yeah. Nobody gets paid. So you're working on an idea, you know, some very creative ideas, for example, for programmes. You get excited by it and you say, I'll phone you later or let's meet downtown for coffee and we'll talk about how we're going to do this. Makes people into friends. And visibility then. What about visibility in terms? That's huge, a huge area. And long before it became, you know, trendy to talk about EDI, you know, equality, diversity, inclusion, interculturalism, which are all really important. Community media were doing that without doing it in a patronising way or a charitable way. It's almost as if it's a new thing. It is, yeah. I'll tell you a good story. There's a small place in the south of Ireland called Yall, do you know? And they had a community, they still have a community radio called Community Radio Yall, which is cry. Yeah. And their motto, their signal was cry in the afternoon. So they were funny people. But they had got a free space, free studio, space to put their studio, but it was two flights of stairs up. So they couldn't have anybody in a wheelchair on air. So they were very concerned about it. So they constructed like a pipe that they could put the lead down to the microphone on the street downstairs they would say to somebody we want you to do your program we want you to be here but we can't bring you up to the studio so they it's amazing you can find a way yeah and away so funding. Funding is a hat. Yeah. No, funding is a great help and we'd say a lot of stations get funding through Irish. The government would supply some funding for radio stations. We also have the wheel which you can apply for more funding and it's really Commission Amman which is like the community development side of it would which you can apply for more funding. And it's, you know, it's really Commission of Man, which is like the community development side of it, would, in Ireland, would support a lot of the stations. But you do have to apply for absolutely every single penny that you get. It's a complete skill and it's a huge responsibility on stations. So you have to have somebody that's able to, you know, to really work with. There's a huge amount of paperwork involved when there's money as well. So that's a lot of it's a lot of work to get your funding. It is for people who are on a voluntary basis. I was going to say that when we have a network or an association, a forum, Community Radio Forum of Ireland. It's called CRAIL, which is the word for broadcast. And Jude was on it at one stage. I was on it at one stage. And it's the national association. So we provide training for people in filling in application forms. Which is a big deal. We teach people once a year. We have a festival of training and we bring four people from every station together, put them up in a hotel, spend two days working on different aspects. So form filling, filling in application forms is one workshop. That's very valuable. Yeah. So it's all about information and, you know, access to education. And it's really promoting democracy, really, a pluralist society. So it's a kind of a maximum democracy, isn't it? It is, yeah. It's democracy at, you could say, the lowest level, but the lowest level is the max. Yeah. The maximum, absolutely. And I suppose what we could do now is maybe discuss what you understand, you know, democracy to be, Cathy. OK, well, it's the freedom to express yourself, basically. Yeah. To have nobody stop you. Nobody stop you, to be heard, to be listened to. And that's our democratic right as citizens. And that's our democratic right as citizens. And I think it comes to be translated into who controls things. Yeah. So no matter where you are, if you have more than 20 people, the way humans are, we have to have rules as to how we live with each other. Yeah. And the bigger the group grows, the more you need to know what you're allowed to do and what you're not allowed to do. And the constraints are there, should be there for a reason so that nobody is trampled on or bullied or denied food or denied the right to shelter. But depending on the system you have, you can have the really strong bullies, you know, the men with the guns. Because that will always appear within any group. It's like a school yard with children. So that's why, you know, you need a system that can intervene to prevent unfairness, to prevent injustice, to prevent injustice, to provide for social benefit for people, to provide for a decent wage for everyone, decent housing for everyone. And those freedoms you talked about, I mean, they're so important. And some political systems don't allow for them. And democracy is quite a fragile. Yes, yes. And I think we need to use our media to help us protect it. And, you know, years ago in the French Revolution, when the Republic first appeared in the modern world, they called the press the fourth estate. So they were the fourth area of life. And their job was to watch what governments were doing, to make sure that the new Republic stayed true to its principles. And by golly, we need that now. We need our media to hold our so-called democratic politicians and our democracies to account. I mean, here we are in 2025 and we're looking at what's happened in Ukraine, in Palestine, all around the world. And we're looking at the damage that the big powers are causing, and particularly America, the so-called home of democracy, is so out of step with its own principles. Yes, yeah. So you need people to have their voice, to have their power, to say to the people in government, you are not doing what you are mandated to do. And many years ago, in some places, it was a trade union. Trade unions aren't as strong as they are anymore. In some countries, I keep coming back to Latin America, it was the priests in the church who stood up against governments that were so unfair missionaries and now I think you know the media that we have in the world with the three types you know the state or public service commercial they can be too close to the state or the commercial to the men and the women with money and power yeah and it really is a space to come back to our original yeah for community media to step in there and be a strong voice that says enough or this is wrong yeah so when we talk about participation then in democracy, what do we mean for people? Well, I suppose the old way was letters to the newspapers. And I suppose the internet has changed all that now in a sense. But you also had, and you still have access to particular programmes. You can join panels on television. You can ring up radio shows. But there's a constraint. And this constraints. So you're involved in that idea of gatekeeping. And that follows all the way through. And with social media, it appears in a sense it's the ideal public sphere where we can all go on. we can all say what we like, but that brings its own difficulties. So do you think it's dangerous having, I suppose, citizens participating? It could be. But you have to trust people. I suppose you asked what was democracy. One of the essential things is that it's about the people. And so you have to find ways of making sure that the people's voices are heard. So you can have representative democracy where people vote and then the people they vote for go off and decide everything. And then you can have the likes of what we have in the world at the moment, where the politicians are doing their own thing. Or you can have a more participative democracy, which is slower and it's much more difficult to manage. But where you regularly consult people and where people say, I like this, I don't like that. I want change here. I'm happy here. Don't change this. Very, very hard. It's more an imaginary thing in a way. Yes. But it's an ideal yeah ideal that we want to strive towards yes because i think it was um brecht berto brecht she said just because uh it's utopia doesn't mean we shouldn't strive yeah yeah yeah so you were talking about different ways of getting involved in the media yes and you were talking about you know going on panels and stuff so you could say that's one layer of participation that's reactive. OK, so you give feedback. The next layer then is what you said about being able to go on a panel on a TV show or be a guest on a radio show. And that's mediated participation. And then the layer above that is when you have the citizens or the denizens the people can actually say well i want to make a program about you were talking about in community media about this yeah and then there's a layer above that that's even more powerful and this is the one that we should all be trying to go for where the people own and manage station yeah and that's when you get real direct participation that's genuine participation at its most powerful level. We rarely get there, even in community media, because somebody has to close the door at night and somebody has to pay the electricity bill. But that's what you're aspiring towards. The other level is too low. And then social media has changed everything. So you can have all these people who used to be on twitter and now they're probably on x or truth or master well not mastered on but anyway you could be um on social media but the difficulty there is if you have a company or a power that's funding um and building the algorithms that's spreading things how do you then yeah and i think community media is one small voice that can start to do that because the medium is not important for community development it's which is what community media are about so we moved from press yeah on steckes to radio and to television and now on to digital media so whether it's your own channel or better again having loads of people in the community who are all putting up their TikTok video about the poor water in the area or whatever but still at the top is the corporate system. So what do you think journalists should be doing to create a democratic communication? That is a very, very good question and a very big question because journalists are under huge institutional constraints and personal constraints as well in terms of pleasing the editor, terms of pleasing the editor, in terms of wanting to climb up the ladder, be promoted, time constraints, resource constraints. So there's any number of constraints that they're operating before they even start. Yeah. Yeah. Every single one of them we could talk for half an hour about. I think you found in the interviews you did with journalists, they were talking about money, promotion, the ownership. Yeah. As you say, pleasing the editors. One of the big things they found was we have a lot of defamation laws in Ireland that, you know, really are constraining how they produce material. And what they're finding is then they're called up by social media. We'd say citizens are saying, how come you're not reporting on this? It's on social media. You know, particularly when it comes to something interesting about politicians or about planning laws or about anything that's really needs to be highlighted. And they have to then go and research it and get the all clear before they can actually put it into print so the old constraints are very important but also they have a like they considered it like feeding the beast which is what one really clever editor told us it felt like because you were continuously topping up their social media feed as well so they have to continuously add to it so that was taking a huge amount of well creating a huge amount of strain on them plus the money in journalism isn't there anymore it's not as respected as it used to be and because of that you've got a lot of people who are leaving to go into advertising so you know you are losing really great um journalists to um to be able to pay for their mortgage and just live a life at the moment. And you have the rights of citizen journalism. Pure, yeah. And it's really great for citizens journalism but we don't have fact-checking. And fact-checking is an enormous issue as we know we've seen it in the States. And a lot of that comes down to, as you said, respect for journalism and for what journalists do. And that's been eroded. The idea of the fourth estate, that they keep an eye on what people are doing. I mean, one of the great things I heard about why a journalist is important is because a journalist tells people things that somebody doesn't want them to know. And so if you ask yourself, why is this journalist not being allowed to investigate a story follow the money look to the power and i think that that's really sad we don't get much investigative journalism anymore because you talked about uh having to feed the beast of the um constant updates 24 hours news 24 7 that is exhausting so all you can do is keep giving exciting headlines you can't go down under the surface and investigate though we do have some particularly digital natives now who are setting themselves up as the place to go to find a bit more depth again it gives a space to community media because in one way you'd say they're not important they're not paid and nobody's telling them what to do they choose their own stories they have all the time in the world to do it exactly they have time they have passion they're in their community so they can send out the the message and find out what's going on and spread the message so there is power and sometimes power can be counteracted by in little little ways and if you have enough little ways all around, you're going to make a change. It's like the ant saying to the elephant, get out of the way. And the elephant steps on the ant, doesn't see or hear. And then the ant gets more ants together. And they go, get out of the way. And when you have millions of ants, they're like, get out of the way. And that's how you're going to get a bit of power through people participation in the media yeah so community radio really is a very positive let's come together give a voice to the voiceless and yeah encourage information and education you said it yeah absolutely and democracy thank you thank you Yeah. Absolutely. And democracy. Thank you. Thank you.