Collaborative Design and Grassroots Journalism: Public Controversies and Controversial Publics

Abstract

Many hoped that the advent of networked media would lead to the democratization of media. Media being central to democratic practices, there was also hope that more democratized media, in turn, would nurture civic engagement that would lead to more distributed and democratic decision making. Now that we have lived with net-worked media for some time, belief in the democratic potential of networked media has diminished. New media public spheres quickly develop their own hierarchies, and small elites control the debates. The impact of these new practices and public spheres on the larger media landscape is often meager and easily ignored, effectively attacked, or subsumed by larger media forces. Yet even though the new practices and public spheres face internal and external difficulties, many still believe in their importance. The two design cases analyzed in this chapter involved public experiments in which new forms and practices of mobile-media broadcasting were co-developed to support grassroots journalism. The cases thus deal with the making of new media public spheres that build on civic engagement. They explore more decentralized media practices and civic political engagement conducted outside the official political system and outside and at the periphery of the established media landscape. The first case involved an arts and performance center, 1 cultural workers, an IT company, and university researchers; it explored how the arts and performance center could become a grassroots producer of critical media broadcast dealing with cultural and societal issues. The second case involved public service radio and TV broadcasters, a small media company, a grassroots hip-hop organization, and university researchers; it explored how a small grassroots broadcaster could adjoin, albeit at the periphery, a mass-media production by large public radio and television broadcasters. The cases will be analyzed from a co-design and innovation perspective. The focus is thus on how broadcast formats and civic media practices and public spheres were co-developed and what happened during the broadcasts.