Abstract
Community media strikes many as old-fashioned in an age of big media on mobile, leading many to wonder whether the concept itself needs an update and what its capacities are. The subject is so fundamental in media studies that its breadth covers courses ranging from introductory ones to advanced specialties such as international/global communication. Teaching community media at the collegiate level can be particularly challenging in my experience. The difficulty lies in that both instructor and student typically lack community media work experience, and there is no specific theory to mitigate that misery. In that regard, Carpentier’s book, The Discursive-Material Knot, stands as a cure.
This book surveys one particular community media in Cyprus, the Cyprus Community Media Center (CCMC), by delving into the role it played in the decade-long Cyprus conflict. A ‘radical combination of theory and empirical research’ (p. 2), the book is an ontological–theoretical exploration in the study of community media to a great extent. Specifically, Carpentier looks into a system of different knots involving the material, the discursive, agency and structure. He plays out these knots not only to demonstrate connections and disruptions, but also to visualize patterns and pathways that we may apply to our own studies of community media in the future. That system is what he refers to as the discursive-material knot.
Knotted relations are unpleasant by nature. They are hard to articulate and comprehend. Dealing with the immense tangle of discursive and material issues in a participatory process, Carpentier cuts the Gordian Knot in an innovative way. His sword is structuralist/post-structuralist theory. While untangling the knot, his analytical framework at the same time ties participatory theory, community media theory, conflict theory and conflict resolution theory together. This approach is illuminating, despite how intimidating it may sound. For example, to deconstruct the discursive in participation, Carpentier focuses on stakeholders including ‘the citizen’, ‘the ordinary person’, ‘the expert’, ‘the owner’ and ‘the leader’. The analytical framework was fully established as he moves from Platform 1 to Platform 2.
Carpentier shows the capacity of CCMC in transforming antagonism into agonism while revisiting the Cyprus problem. The Cyprus problem is the nationalist divide between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, where the two communities generated separate and conflicting Cypriot nationalist movements based on their respective ‘motherlands’. The buffer zone between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot soldiers did not smooth away antagonistic nationalism. But something truly fascinating happened.
Several bi-communal villages existed in the buffer zone and the villagers were adamant to keep those mixed despite external pressures. In some incidents, Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot villagers protected each other in fighting against irregulars from their own nationalities. It suggests that grounded in materiality, localism can win against nationalism. Does this imply something to community media? The answer is revealed in Platform 3.
Like these villages, the CCMC is also located in the buffer zone. Initially a training center under the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the CCMC established a web radio station, MYCYradio, in 2013. Its mission was described as being a ‘one-stop-shop for inter-communal media collaboration and a resource for civic society-led advocacy’ (p. 287). Underneath its bureaucratic title, the CCMC played the role of conflict transformation, a buffer zone in its own right. Carpentier tells us how the web-based MYCYradio fulfills that mission via discursive-material analysis.
In the discursive dimension, MYCYradio developed a participatory identity through signifying practices of producers, guest speakers and audiences. That identity was constructed by a kind of alternativity characterized by the workforce of volunteers, the practice of amplifying unheard voices and the freedom to broadcast. Oftentimes, alternativity connotes small numbers. It was indeed the case of MYCYradio: the audience of a particular program, as mentioned in the book, was as few as 10 people. The hosts named them the ‘ten heroes’. Here my earlier question echoes: how would a community media like MYCYradio work if the audience encompasses such a slim portion of the communities? It is left without answer. This is understandable as the question is no less a Gordian Knot than the conflict itself.
Knotted in the discourse, the material dimension of MYCYradio makes the Cypriot community media case even more intriguing. Given the material restrictions of a media organization under protection by UN forces and sustained by the UNDP’s donorship, MYCYradio was unable to report protests against either Americans or the UN personnel. These protests, ironically, were covered by the mainstream Cypriot news media. Prostrating itself to UN authorities, however, did not stop the radio station from losing UNDP sponsorship. It would be very revealing otherwise should a layer of the tension between the UN and the community media be added to Carpentier’s analysis. After ending the project with the UN, the CCMC acquired a newfound independence with financial support from international donors.
The community media’s role in conflict transformation cannot be overstated. Carpentier notes that CCMC and MYCYradio offered counter-narratives and re-interpretations of prevailing (post-)antagonistic discourses by highlighting a kind of togetherness. In the Cyprus Oral History Project broadcast, an interviewee captured an epiphanic moment, saying that ‘[t]hey suffered like we suffered’ (p. 350). The materiality of Cyprus – traditional food, Cypriot dialects and local climate – was mobilized to signify the sense of togetherness. Again, localism wins.
But Carpentier’s analysis does not stop here. Its multilayered-ness goes deeper to acknowledge internal conflicts within the community media pertaining to problem-solving and decision-making. The conflicts go as far as to include an anecdote of dispute over the use of different languages in broadcasts. All of these lead Carpentier to argue that what he means by togetherness is conflictual togetherness indeed. Sounds ‘knotted’? Well, perhaps it is about time to revisit the ontology of the discursive-material knot. And this time, you have a solid case in hand.