Instructor Wrap Up - Community Media Chapter 7 - by Ellie Rennie

A seemingly unrelated reading that I have crazily chosen for this semester in Comm 131P, right?  I beg to differ.  There is certainly a method to my 'geeky madness' when it comes to New Media/You Media.  When I was first planning this course well over a year ago now, I had the hardest time trying to find a textbook for the course.  I ordered many books from publishers, purchased many books from online sources, and spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what I wanted to cover in the class.  New Media can cover so many ideas, and so far, we have read through a number of them.  Community Media was one of those ideas that I was completely enamored with.  In fact, I almost required you to purchase a number of books for the course before deciding to change things up a bit and simply make the readings available on D2L.  The decision was a hard one, but I'm happy with the readings I have chose for this semester.  Who knows - the course may look completely different next semester, as it did last semester.

I think I have mentioned before that the first semester I offered this class, I required the textbook "The New Media Reader".  There were quite a few difficult readings in that text, but it really opened up the world of new media in a number of different ways for students.  Through feedback I received from students over the last year or so, I decided to no longer require that text and simply go to a 'reader' that I put together myself.  This allowed me to cover quite a few more topics than I had previously in this course.  One of those topics is Community Media.  To frame this idea a bit, click HERE to read about it a bit.  While Wikipedia is not my favorite place currently, it sure helps to give a jumping off point a lot of time.  This is one of those times!

Here is a short excerpt from the book Community Media by Ellie Rennie page 12: "Chapter 7 synthesizes the arguments of previous chapters and offers some further thoughts as to what media democracy in the digital age might look like.  Community media has always been about self-expression - - - and seeing ourselves as part of the society in which we live.  Democracy is said to be in a predicament over the perceived distance between the people and the institutions that represent them, which results in political apathy.  Can participation in the media help close that distance?  E-government model suggests direct input into the policy process by citizens.  Is this desirable? Being able to represent oneself in the media paves the way for a more visible, transparent, and responsive model of democracy.  Community media may not solve the problems of the mass media, but it does offer some valuable lessons for e-democracy."

If you are at all interested in this concept, you can purchase the book through online booksellers.  In fact, Amazon has an interesting review about the book.  You can link to the Amazon page HERE. 

You can also read more about community media
HERE

HERE 

and HERE.   These are just a few samples of what is out there pertaining to Community Media.

Are you geeking out about Community Media movements?  Perhaps not yet, but at least this exposed y'all to a concept that some may have never heard of previously.

Enjoy!
:)
The Blogging Prof.