Challenging Voices? Going Public on Community Radio

Abstract

Presenting a program on community radio can be immensely rewarding for community access broadcasters. Yet the experience of ‘going public’ is not always positive. Based on a case study of the participation of women at one community access radio station in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this paper argues that, particularly for programmers from minority communities, the public nature of broadcasting can be problematic. Whether or not they desire such a role, such broadcasters often become positioned as public representatives of their community. This representative aspect of going public makes it problematic, because public representatives attract criticism as well as praise, and the validity of their voices can be challenged. Drawing on the narratives of women involved at community access station Plains FM and the work of John Hochheimer (1993), this paper addresses issues of participation, representation and legitimacy, and explores the challenges that they pose for the democratic potential of community access media.