'The world is our community': rethinking community radio in the digital age

Abstract

New media technologies - Internet and mobile phones - have transformed the face of radio broadcasting. Research in this area has shown that these technologies are reconfiguring both radio's institutional structures and its practices. Radio, now accessed on multiple digital platforms, is allowing diverse forms of utilization and engagement. In this article, the researcher analyses the changing nature and meaning of 'community' in community radio in the digital age using insights from literature on imagined communities, trans- locality and liminality. The researcher argues that new media technologies are opening up new spaces for community radio that go beyond the geographical and community of interest to embrace trans-local and diasporic communities. There is thus need to interrogate the meaning of community radio in terms of audiences and programming in such new configurations.