‘Just like us’: community radio broadcasters and the on-air performance of community identity

ABSTRACT

The ‘community’ of community media has long been a contentious question in the field. Given the wide range of interpretations of community and the ongoing fragmentation of media audiences, it has never been more important for community media to define and delineate their audiences. One approach to this is developing and maintaining a sense of mediatized community identity through content production. Community identity represents an under-researched area in community media studies. While community media audiences and broadcasters have themselves been the subject of research, how a sense of community identity is created through content production is less understood. This article details a critical discourse analysis of programming from ten different community radio stations within the same geographic location. The findings of this research reveal the very different approaches that stations take to developing a mediatized community identity. Several stations approach identity expression by engaging in overt performances of ‘localness’, while the growing influence of commercialization was also observed among many stations. What this research highlights is that the performance of community identity on community radio is integral in shaping the listening communities, as well as delineating community radio from its commercial and state-run counterparts.

KEYWORDS:

• community radio
• identity
• community
• critical discourse analysis
• broadcasting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Correct as of October 2020

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bridget Backhaus

Bridget Backhaus is a lecturer in journalism and media studies at Griffith University, Australia. A former community radio journalist and producer, her research explores the role of community media in social and environmental change with particular focus on issues of voice, listening, identity, and participation. Bridget is the author of Polyphony: Listening to the listeners of community radio (Routledge, 2021).