Community media

Community media is any form of media that is created and controlled by a community, either a geographic community or a community of identity or interest. Community media is separate from commercial media, state run media, or public broadcasting.

Community media has been described, in a broad sense, as "community communication" as the structure of the media is horizontal where the content is generated and circulated by and within the community that owns it.

The International Association of Media and Communication Research states that community media "originates, circulates, and resonates from the sphere of civil society". As media created by civil society, there is an implied component of civic engagement in the production of community media.

The nascent impetus for community media analysis stemmed from the efforts to "democratize" the media. and civil society requires communication platforms.

Although there is a clear aversion to engage with commercial forces in the production of community media, there may be times when some market interaction is desirable.

Grassroots media is focused more specifically on media making by and for the local community that it serves making the discussion more narrow and precise. It is essentially a subset focusing on small scale media projects which aim to bring different visions and perspectives to the "codes" that are so easily embedded in the social psyche.

The first Public-access television station in the United States considered to be community media was set up in 1968 in Dale City, Virginia. It was managed by the city's Junior Chamber of Commerce and ran programming for two years without advertising. It closed due to lack of financing, equipment, and infrastructure. Another early example of community media is found in the counter-culture video collectives of the 1960s and 1970s.

Videofreex, Video Free America, and Global Village used new technologies to the benefit of community interests. In addition, the Raindance Corporation founded by Michael Shamberg, Paul Ryan, and others became known as "guerrilla television." The premise of guerrilla television was to non-violently blaze a new trail for the creation of media as an alternative to broadcast television. This initial activity was made possible by Sony's introduction of the video Porta-Pak.

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