Researching journalistic practices in local community radio production in the UK

What is it about?

This chapter presents a reflexive and practice-focussed approach to researching radio journalism in local community contexts. By applying a theoretical frame through which media production is seen as arrays of situated ‘doings and sayings’, not only practitioners and their interactions with technology are considered but also the surrounding material infrastructures and immaterial, yet no less significant, relational structures and understandings. The theoretical framing is derived from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Theodore Schatzki. The methodological strategy is illustrated through the case study of research on community radio stations in six English market towns. The fieldwork was ethnographically oriented and combined a practice-as-research component, where the researcher was embedded as a volunteer. Her first-hand experiences yield insights such as social capital usage in negotiating access to news sources. The title ‘Situating journalistic coverage’ conveys the situatedness of the activities being investigated and the practitioners’ localized interests. It also refers to the data-gathering strategy; site-specific yet not losing sight of wider contexts.

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Photo by Jacob Hodgson on Unsplash

Photo by Jacob Hodgson on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This chapter is making the point that local media and locally-based journalistic practice should be taken seriously and that research into local media in the Global North is important, since the mainstream is retreating to centralised hubs. The examples of empirical evidence provided in this chapter also illustrate the academic value of subjective, ‘on-the-ground’ findings. This approach can be applied to investigating locally enacted activities of broadcasters in mainstream professional and volunteer community sectors, therefore levelling the playing field in academia.

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