‘Unrelenting passion and selflessness’: Theorising the affective labour of community radio practitioners

Labour as participation

A participatory perspective sees labour within community radio, and particularly those that enact it, as emblematic of the participatory ethos and practices of a station or even sector. Participation is crucial to community radio’s positioning as ‘citizens’ media’: a space where collectives can actively enact citizenship by ‘intervening and transforming the established mediascape’ (Rodriguez, 2001: 19). Indeed, participation and citizen access are seen as both central to and characteristics of community media (Dreher, 2017, among others). Naturally, the term ‘participation’ is not without its critics. Building on the decisive work of Arnstein (1969) and her typology of the various guises of participation, several authors have critically interrogated ‘participation’ and how it is applied within various contexts. For example, Downing (2014: 336) refers to ‘participatory’ as ‘an empty buzzword’, while Cornwall (2007) suggests ‘participation’ could even be categorised as a ‘fuzzword’: a term so ambiguous and pervasive that they act to conceal ideological differences. Cooke and Kothari (2001) go so far as to refer to participation as ‘tyranny’. Suffice to say, the term is polarising. Referring more specifically to media systems and processes, Carpentier (2016) argues it is more useful for critical analysis to demarcate between two interpretations of participation: a sociological approach and a political approach. A sociological approach sees participation as simply taking part in social process: a definition which is sweepingly broad but also offers scope to consider both the involvement of an individual in a process and as belonging to a broader system such as a community or even a society (Carpentier, 2016). The second approach – political – harks back to Arnstein’s work and refers to the equalisation of power in decision-making processes. Within both the sociological and political perspectives are both maximalist and minimalist approaches to participation, and phenomena such as engagement, access and interaction which are necessary precursors to, but not constitutive of, participation (Dahlgren, 2013). While a participatory perspective is a valuable lens for exploring the broader context of community radio labour, viewing the labour as merely emblematic of a station or practitioner’s role within the participatory landscape of a station reveals little about the experiences of that labour itself.

Labour as instrumental

The second broad perspective within the literature positions community radio labour as part of a process – a means to an end – rather than as a discrete focus of analysis. Here the labour of community media practitioners – staff and volunteers – is viewed instrumentally: as a way of producing a programme, as contributing to the station’s goals, as a way of ensuring the sustainability of the station into the future, and as a way of volunteers benefitting from the experience. Within this body of work – which includes both academic and grey literature – volunteers and volunteering are a key focus. Recruiting and retaining volunteers is an omnipresent concern for industry, with work exploring various efforts to engage specific communities (Baker, 2007) and attract volunteers more broadly (Bryant and Pozdeev, 2014). Related to this is the sizable body of literature exploring the benefits participants gain from their work in community media. There is a strong emphasis on skill development and training in both industry and academic work (Backhaus et al., 2023; Forde, 2015; Forde et al., 2003), alongside other broader and more intangible benefits including social connection, identity and empowerment (AMARC, 2007). Yet within this large and diverse corpus of literature there is little that explores or analyses the labour itself.

A notable exception is Moylan’s (2019) writings on the cultural work of community radio. In this illustrative text, she contextualises practitioner reflections on community radio labour within their broader cultural and social landscapes, revealing the significant role this work plays in not only providing locally grounded information but also in preserving culture through storytelling and empowering individual practitioners. While Moylan draws extensively on the day-to-day experiences of practitioners, including discussions of the challenges of recruiting and retaining volunteers, in framing community radio work as cultural labour, her overarching argument positions community radio work as a multifaceted form of participation that produces nuanced and empowered community representations. Through Moylan’s work, it is clear to see the connection between the two strands of literature focussed on community radio work.

While both perspectives – the participatory and the instrumental – offer valuable insight into the broader role and outcomes of community radio labour, both obscure the labour itself and how practitioners navigate the physical, mental and affective demands of this work. While there is clearly considerable research and analysis that needs to occur in this space, this article now turns to one of the least discussed elements of community radio work: immaterial labour.

Broadcasting affect

While the myriad benefits of community broadcasting far exceed the broadcast content itself – Meadows et al. (2007), among others, espouse the value of community radio as ‘process’ rather than product – the importance of the broadcasts themselves cannot be overlooked. Despite the widespread availability and accessibility of curated playout software – the far more labour-intensive research, curation, production and presentation of broadcast content remains a significant component of community radio work (Moylan, 2019). While the transmission of affect was not discussed in so many words, several presenters discussed the importance of making listeners feel a particular way:

. . . we’ve got a lot of nice listeners out there that we love to mix with, and they ring us up and, yeah, you just try and make them sound like they’re the only person around that you’re talking to. (Presenter, regional station)

This affective transfer was recognised as an important part of broadcast presentation. Broadcasters sought to make their listeners feel a certain way - uplifted and energised, socially connected, part of a community, even evoking the sense of a particular time. This was certainly the case for one of the ethnic broadcasters interviewed for the project. She explained that many of her listeners had migrated to Australia around the same time that she did – in the late 60s and early 70s – and are seeking comfort and connection to culture through nostalgic music and a familiar language:

. . . Now [the listeners] are much older. And they prefer someone to talk to them in their language and they revert to old songs: ‘Yeah, I remember that. And I remember my mother, you know, singing that song.’ To me, it’s just a little bit of company for them. (Ethnic program presenter, regional station)

Despite the widespread appreciation and enjoyment that presenters derived from their work on community radio, the burden of the affective dimensions of this labour was also highlighted.

. . . if you come in [to the radio station] and you’ve had a real bugger of a day, you gotta make sure that everybody else [listening] doesn’t realise it . . . you’ve got to be able to be friendly and be happy. (Presenter, regional station)

This reflection illustrates the complex relationship between affect and emotion: to achieve a particular affective impact on the listening audience – a collective, general emotional state rather than a specifically recognisable emotion – the broadcaster must regulate their own subjective emotions. In this way, we see emotional labour as a subset or type of affective labour, mobilised to serve the broader affective goals of the station. Hochschild (2012: 147) identifies three characteristics of emotional labour: contact with the public (face-to-face or ‘voice-to-voice’), requiring the worker to produce an emotional state in another person, and where the employer can exercise a degree of control over the emotional activities of the worker. In the work of community radio practitioners, the first two characteristics are apparent, yet the third requires deeper analysis. Given the significant discrepancy in the number of volunteers compared to the number of paid staff members in the Australian community radio sector, it is reasonable to assume that any exercise of control is likely to involve volunteers – be they presenters or board members. Management of volunteers in a not-for-profit context is a very different relationship compared to that of an employer-employee (Ward and Greene, 2018). Further, Australian community radio practitioners widely report a significant degree of autonomy over their practice and content: a characteristic of community broadcasting which is valued by practitioners (Backhaus et al., 2023). Despite the differences, the earlier interview excerpts demonstrate that control over the emotional activities of practitioners is taking place, but that it is self-imposed rather than enacted by an employer, as in Hochschild’s definition. Though presenters recognised the constructed nature of their broadcasts in terms of the tone and affect they conveyed, it wasn’t necessarily seen as inauthentic. One presenter described the perceived difference between community radio work and other forms of media labour:

I just always knew that I didn’t like commercial, because I didn’t like the idea of advertising dictating what you could do and say. And so, the community right here really fits, I think, my personality and . . . my values. . . I really enjoyed that kind of the intimacy of radio where it’s not like a performance like TV. (Journalist, metro station)

This practitioner views the perceived authenticity and a sense of connection or ‘intimacy’ between the broadcaster and the listener as unique to community radio compared to commercial radio or television. Another community radio practitioner saw this ‘intimacy’ as reflecting his own positioning within the community: a view that shaped his approach to broadcasting:

I guess it’s part of that community radio thing. Like this is your community that you’re involved in and speaking to . . . Anyone is always welcome in here because it’s a community show for the community. It’s not for me, I’ll just facilitate it. (Presenter regional station)

Many broadcasters spoke of their perceived obligations to their communities, which were variously framed as listeners, those who lived in the same area or those who shared a particular interest or culture. While many of these communities exist outside of their community radio mediatisations, there was a strong sense among interviewees that broadcasting and other station activities (such as attending community events), brought community together. Therein lies a key difference between emotional labour and affective labour. The work of community radio broadcasting involves not only managing the emotions of the broadcaster and, by extension, the audience, but also involves what Siapera (2019: 282) describes as ‘the creation of networks and communities, which, in turn, (re)produce society in specific ways’. Given the lack of commercial imperative and managerial oversight of these practices, we might consider the community radio stations themselves as microcosms of affect – communities of their own creation that exist in a cycle of self-perpetuating affective practices tied to a shared and constantly reinforced vision of the station’s identity and purpose.

However, this research has thus far failed to consider the implications of affective work for practitioners. The practitioners interviewed were highly invested in and passionate about their work and their stations. As one practitioner described: ‘I was like, “this is just so important and it’s so interesting and there’s nothing else like it”.’ Equally, practitioners often downplayed the labour and expertise their roles required, with another describing themselves as ‘just the person behind the desk pushing the buttons’. There are implications for this level of investment though. For one practitioner, this seemingly endless cycle of expectations and labour led to them ultimately leaving the sector:

I wrapped up at [community radio station] for the reason that I was just supremely burnt out. . . It’s just a sector that . . . relies on that unrelenting passion and selflessness . . . It’s just one of these things where you put your own needs aside for the greater good of the programme. Or the station in my case. . . not maliciously in any way . . . (but) it’s expected that people come to the sector and give an arm and a leg . . . It’s a culture that’s developed over time in a sector that is, you know, massively under-resourced and relies on people power . . . I guess the question that is . . . still an unanswered thing for me, and probably always will be, is . . . Where do you stop? (Former practitioner, metro station)

Burnout and exhaustion are not new phenomena is community media, with Gordon (2006) observing high levels of workload stress among both paid staff and key volunteers in her survey of the British and Australian sectors. Recognising the additional burdens that affective labour places on volunteers as well as the culture of overwork is vital in ensuring that volunteers and staff are adequately supported .

Narrowcasting affect

The second element of affective labour that takes place within community radio is the cultivation of affective atmospheres within the station itself. The above discussion demonstrates that affective labour in community radio broadly aligns with what takes place in other media context – albeit without the profit/ratings incentives of commercial outlets. However, the affective labour that contributes to the atmosphere or ‘feel’ of a community radio station is less understood. Unlike other forms of media with commercial or institutional imperatives, community radio is ostensibly a community space where seemingly disparate individuals and groups can come together and connect over a shared goal or affective investment (Bailey et al., 2007; Bedford, 2019). Herein lies a key difference between community radio work and the other forms of unpaid media labour characteristic of the ‘age of platform capitalism’ (Srnicek, 2017): where corporate platforms exploit the free labour of users for content and for profit – what Fuchs (2015) describes as the ‘audience commodity’. In contrast, community media creates spaces for relationality, collectivism and communal values without the commodification of platform capitalism (Cibin et al., 2020). Nonetheless, as the preceding section has demonstrated, there is a significant labour cost associated with creating and maintaining these spaces. The challenge is ensuring that participation remains meaningful and embedded in community routines rather than a burden of addition labour (Cibin et al., 2020).

The affective environment or space of community radio stations was discussed by several participants. It was variously described as a ‘a safe environment to learn, to grow’ (presenter, metro), ‘so welcoming and so engaged’ (station manager, metro) and as ‘in your element, it’s your area, it’s your environment’ (presenter, regional). This sense of creating an inclusive, supporting and safe space was reinforced throughout the data.

This is not for a particular thing, you know, this is for everyone. You have a right to this place. You’re welcome here . . . We want to build this place together. (Station manager, regional)

However, what was broadly not discussed was the labour that goes into creating these kinds of spaces and experience. While interviewees from across the data set spoke of the affective environment of community radio stations, it was only station managers who discussed the labour that contributed to such an environment. One station manager discussed the work that went into adapting the station’s practices to better suit young volunteers:

One of the things I . . . worked really hard on was understanding how people want to interact with you and make that first contact. So, it’s quite scary for young people too. And look, a lot of young people who want to get into radio are a bit marginalised, they’re a bit kind of out there, they’re bit funky. . . . They just want to get involved and do something that kind of interests them. So, you need to open up those dialogue avenues. Maybe there’s ways they’re comfortable with. So often that’s submitting a form online, or sending an email, or having a door that’s open with someone friendly who will give them the rundown of what’s what and inviting them in to feel like there’s a friendly atmosphere where they can do what they need to do and flourish. (Station manager, metro)

Another station manager saw this affective work as central to creating a positive environment conducive to volunteers and the broader community:

I’m a very positive person, you know the glass is full, right, Most of the time. Well, I think that’s important because you really . . . set the tone for the way the volunteers interact with each other, the way the whole station feels. . . . And so I think, . . . doing what we do internally will reflect externally. (Station manager, regional)

For this interviewee, there was a clear link between the affective environment and the broader sustainability of the station, particularly in terms of volunteer retention: ‘It should be a fun place, especially if you’re a volunteer. You know a happy volunteer is going to be a solid volunteer.’ While the labour associated with creating these spaces was not explicitly discussed, it was clear that management play an important role in setting the affective environment of the stations.

Our findings point to multiple roles of affective labour in the experiences of community radio practitioners, which we have conceptualised under two broad themes, broadcasting and narrowcasting. Community broadcasting relies on immaterial labour that both cultivates and transmits desirable affective dimensions through on-air content and within radio station cultures. Community radio practitioners work through cycles of affective labour that are crucial to station identity, the construction and maintenance of listening communities, attracting and retaining volunteers and staff and positioning the station as a community space.

Affect and sustainability

At the foundational level, affective labour is important in community radio due to its contributions to the sustainability of stations. Human resources are central to station sustainability (Gordon, 2015) and this research has demonstrated the importance of the affective environment of a station for securing and retaining volunteers and staff. In the Australian context, volunteering has been trending downwards for at least two decades, exacerbated by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic (ACNC, 2022). This is neither a new nor isolated occurrence (for example, see Putnam’s, 2001, influential work Bowling Alone). The Australian community radio sector, however, has proven more resilient to this trend than other community organisations (CBAA, 2021).

As discussed, there is a significant body of literature that explores the benefits of volunteering, but framing community radio as spaces or objects of affect sheds light onto its enduring appeal for volunteers. While personal and professional development have been identified as welcome outcomes and, in some cases, motivations for participating in community media (Backhaus, Anderson and Bedford, 2023), this fails to entirely explain the enduring appeal of community media. In discussing ‘Happy Objects’, Ahmed (2010: 41) invokes Nietzsche’s work on the retrospective attribution of causality to explain how objects can be affective before they are encountered or experiences:

Certain objects are attributed as the cause of happiness, which means they already circulate as social goods before we ‘‘happen’’ upon them, which is why we might happen upon them in the first place.

The interview data prompts a question: would the interviewees been as likely to get involved if the stations were not already considered ‘happy’ or positive spaces? In this way, the affective labour associated with constructing community radio stations as ‘happy’ objects has real implications for volunteering and, in turn, sustainability.

Equally though, while the evidence presented here strongly positions community radio stations as ‘happy objects’ which elicit a positive experience for the interviewees, it is important to bear in mind that this is not universal. There is a need to avoid a normative view where community media is intrinsically seen as ‘good’: drawing on the example of extreme nationalists, Coyer (2011: 170) suggests that the notion of ‘good’ depends on how the community is defined. To oversimplify: one person’s happy object may be another’s hate speech. Groups cohere around a shared orientation to particular objects (Ahmed, 2010), in this case, community radio. These groups have been conceptualised as ‘affective communities’ (Backhaus, 2022) and, as such, must be subject to the same critique of other communities around access, exclusivity and assumptions of homogeneity. While establishing stations as affective spaces can be valuable in establishing affective communities based on shared investment in the same object, this can equally be exclusionary and isolating for those that are either inadvertently or deliberately marginalised from participating.

Affect and audiences

A further important element of the affective labour of community radio practitioners that lies beyond the scope of this article is how this affective work is received. There is a significant body of work concerned with issues of media affect in fields such as media psychology and reception studies (Cavalcante, 2018), but research that brings together both the production and reception of media affect may offer important insight. For audiences, media affect can be sticky, cumulative and can leave ‘residue’ (Watkins, 2010), yet it is equally important to consider audiences as agentic, resilient and able to develop strategies to manage emotions and affects generated by media (Cavalcante, 2018). This was not a consideration of any of the practitioners interviewed in this research – the broad assumption being that audiences received the broadcasts uncritically with the intended affect successfully shared. An explanation for this is the relatively limited meaningful contact between practitioners and their audiences. Despite the blurred boundaries between producers and consumers of community media, Guo (2017) found that direct contact between community radio broadcasters and their audiences was dominated by existing relationships, and that there was limited interaction beyond pre-existing personal circles. Further, Atkinson’s (2008) work found that interactions with audience members rarely exceeded superficial encouragements, which may explain the assumptions expressed by practitioners in this research. However, this is clearly an area that merits further investigation, particularly given the wealth of work on audiences as active and agentic.

Affective labour as work

Finally, considerations of affective labour are vital because they contribute to our understanding and broader positioning of the work that takes place within community media. While there are a range of reasons and motivations underpinning participation, ‘passion’ is a key recurring theme, not just in this research but in the work of others (Felton, 2024; King and Rahemtullah, 2019; Moylan, 2019). Yet, as this article has discussed, there is a dark side to this ‘unrelenting passion.’ While the affective labour of community radio practitioners is crucial to both the curation of the station identity and the community surrounding the station, it is important to avoid a normative view that sees this as an unquestionably positive phenomenon. The intense affective investments that community radio practitioners make in their stations can lead to a range of issues. Burnout and mental health concerns are paramount and require careful management and support structures. Without an understanding of the complex contributing factors that lead to burnout, it is impossible to effectively advocate for adequate supports, be they at the station or sector level. Recognising the additional load that affective labour places on staff and volunteers contributes to a more nuanced understanding of community radio work. Where affective labour is unrecognised, community radio work is undervalued which has implications for resourcing, training and funding.