Exploring feminist public sphere through Henvalvani Community Radio: an empowerment through communication approach

Abstract

Identification of specific contributions made by community radio for translating the rhetoric of participation and empowerment into practice requires more attention. There is also a need to conduct more theoretical and empirical studies on “women and community radio.” The study attempts to fulfill these needs to an extent, and offers a fresh perspective to look at the ways community radio can be evaluated. Women’s narratives about the influence on health aspects by Henvalvani Community Radio situated in Chamba, a region of India, provided the necessary data and helped in finding the role of such participatory technologies in affecting the agency of the women. Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action and Kleine’s Choice Framework guided the analysis. Empowerment through Communication (ETC) framework is proposed to provide a new perspective for comprehending the impact made by a community radio in influencing health seeking behavior of women. The study establishes Henvalvani Community Radio as a feminist public sphere helpful in altering the socio-cultural praxis of health communication.

Keywords:

• Community radio
• health
• women
• India
• feminist public sphere
• choice framework

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Hamelink’s (1994) definition of ICTs is used in this study. According to him, “Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) encompass all those technologies that enable the handling of information and facilitate different forms of communication among human actors, between human beings and electronic systems, and among electronic systems.” This functional definition includes both the new (i.e., Internet, e-mail) and the traditional (i.e., community-radio, TV) forms of ICT.

2 Kleine (2010) has given four dimensions of Choice. The first is the “existence of choice” referring to the existence or non-existence of a choice under a given combination of resources available to an individual. The second, “sense of choice” refers to the awareness of the possibilities offered by different ICTs. The third, “use of choice” indicates whether an individual actually makes a choice or not, while the last, “achievement of choice” refers to the state when an outcome matches the choice expressed.

3 HCR located in the region has been producing various types of contextual and community-centric programmes including awareness campaigns; programmes promoting local talents; documenting traditional practices and environmental history; health capsules; stories of migration to the cities, etc. (https://henvalvani.wordpress.com/).

4 In the present study, stakeholders include both men and women listeners, the HCR staff, key health personnel (doctors), and field level health functionaries like Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), Auxillary Nurse Midwife (ANM) & Anganwadi Worker (AWW).

5 The relationship between Ideal speech situation resulting in rational choices and self-efficacy has been shown in Defining Human Autonomy by Kompa (2016).

6 This is in line with the implication pointed out by Kleine in her paper: ICT4D? – Using the Choice Framework to operationalize the Capability Approach to Development.

7 Formal laws imply the rules and regulations of the institutions, organizations and groups which govern an individual’s access to resources, and have been used in the same connotation as used by Alsop and Heinsohn (2005) in their paper - Measuring Empowerment in Practice: Structuring Analysis and Framing Indicators, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3510.

8 Ibid.