Ideal companion to key debates

摘要

One of the ironies facing scholars of alternative and community media is that a defining characteristic of the field is actually a lack of definition. By this, I mean there is no clear-cut, generally agreed upon term to describe what has been labelled everything from independent and amateur media to community media and citizen media. Thankfully, Chris Atton tackles this issue head-on in his introduction to The Routledge companion to alternative and community media. Drawing on Melucci's definition of social movements, he explains that, in his view, alternative media refers to media practices which reappropriate the capacity to define reality "in the twofold sense of constituting it symbolically and of regaining it, thereby escaping from the dominant forms of representation" (p. 2). While this makes much sense, Atton (who is Professor of Media and Culture at the UK's Edinburgh Napier University) sensibly adds that it would be wrong to attempt to offer a once-and-for-all definition because of the need to investigate the "situatedness" of these media from historical, geographic, cultural, political, economic and other perspectives. As a result, he says, "any collection of writings on alternative and community media can be neither comprehensive nor definitive" (p. 9). This helps explain why The Routledge companion to alternative and community media is itself neither comprehensive nor definitive.