Community Media Makers and the Mediation of Difference: Claiming Citizenship and Belongingness

Abstract

Focusing on two groups of community media makers in the Netherlands, this chapter considers community media as power loci in fostering citizenship and belonging. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we explore how local public broadcasters and feminist podcast makers may engage in the “mediation of difference” (Siapera, 2010) across intersecting axes of difference including gender, race, nationality and generation. We do so by asking how cultural diversity is constructed in the circulation of meaning, and how it co-shapes inclusion and exclusion mechanisms for their audiences. Taking cues from Jesús Martín-Barbero (2006) we study how our informants imagine counterpublics and belongingness by focusing on institutionality, technicity, rituality and sociality. We emphasize how local public broadcasters and feminist podcast makers in particular, mediate citizenship on a community level by representing difference.