Description

Integrated Management of Community Media is a tool that enables organisations to address their structural issues in order to improve their development conditions and enhance their opportunities. The methodology generates a dialogue within the organisations about priorities, needs and the management of potential issues. Radio station La Tribu, in Latin America, through its involvement with different media networks and educational bodies, has worked for more than 15 years on the implementation of the community communication key principles that lead organisations to find the answers to their problems.

Method

Strengthening Community Radio Stations

Integrated Management of Community Media is a tool that allows organisations, communities and citizens to enhance their involvement in the field of communications. The methodology promotes and leads discussions within organisations to enable the development of more solid structures to improve their sustainability conditions. Any organisation promoting this methodology has an integrated view that allows it to access the necessary tools to manage the specific problems it faces. The methodology arises as a response to the need of communication groups to sustain themselves over time. The drive to create these organisations often arises in response to a specific situation that requires amplification through a communications platform, and they later face the challenge of sustaining themselves over time. In order to develop the methodology, a tour of the different Latin American organisations of Community Radio Stations was arranged, with the aim to understand the common issues they share and to be able to develop tools that were useful for the different environments in which these radio stations operate.

Empowering citizens through Communication

Why strengthening Community Radio Stations? Strengthening these media means supporting the escalation of these organisations’ goal, which is related to working for the Right to Communication by encouraging community participation, working from and with original and local cultures, promoting a critical view and fostering citizenship through people's involvement in solving their own problems.

The basic principles of Community Communication are:

• Right to Communication.
• Self-management. Community participation in the integrated management of the organisation.
• Autonomy
• Networking

Working experiences

The tool has been implemented in various training processes in many Latin American community radio stations and it has contributed to the process of strengthening them. The expertise gathered over years of actively advocating for the Right to Communication and, through it, for access to all other basic rights, makes community radio stations a reference player in communities that are articulated by this type of organisation, usually in Latin America, and more specifically in Argentina.

As an example of the potential impact these organisations can have as a result of developments arising from their interest in modifying the societies in which they operate, we could mention the discussion process that is currently taking place in Latin America on the different audiovisual communication services bills. The Argentinean case is an characteristic one, since the networks of community radio stations have played a crucial role in the development of a Media Act, which, in its general spirit, recognises them as necessary players for the democratisation of communication and, therefore recognising a series of novel rights. This is the result of the work and practices carried out to achieve those goals that drive organisations of community communication over time.

Partners

Colectivo La Tribu
www.fmlatribu.com

La Trama Comunicacción

www.http://latramacomunicaccion.org/