Subject‐authored theories of media practice: The case of Bolivian Tin Miners’ radio

The author argues that scholarship focused on developing theories of alternative media‐practices organized by democratic principles and driven by social change agendas‐is marked by a central paradox that disempowers the research subjects as social and communication theorists. He posits that media practitioners move through their worlds on the basis of complex notions of how social change occurs and what role communication plays in that process. Ethnographic data collected from Bolivian tin miners’ radio serves to illustrate this theoretical assertion and to begin constructing subject‐generated theories of alternative media practice.