Beyond Community Radio: The Future of Hyper-Local News
I HAVE, for more than half a decade now, been part of media advocates clamouring for the licensing of community radio. My convictions have not changed but what myself and many ‘comrades in the struggle’ have been clamouring for is still a pie in the sky.
In Zimbabwe today, almost four years after the ushering in of a new Constitution recognising a three-tire broadcasting system which caters for community radios, vast swathes of communities remain outside the national information grid. Efforts to have community radios licensed have hit snag, but advocacy efforts aimed at pressing government to legalise community broadcasting seem to be waning in hopelessness.
But is the hope for community media lost? While I have been part of what others have dubbed the ‘Community Radio Movement’ for the past few years, I believe that community media players and activists alike have lost much over the years more than they have gained from their efforts because of failing or refusing to embracing new opportunities in the ever-changing media sphere.
It is interesting to note that currently there are more than fifteen community radio initiatives dotted around the country, Zimbabwe, all of which claim to be ready to broadcast should the government issue out community broadcasting licenses today. Most of these initiatives fall under the banner of the Zimbabwe Association of Community Radio Stations, better known as ZACRAS. However, most of them appear to exist only as pressure groups yet they are supposed to demonstrate their relevance should they be licensed by being authentic hyper-local news platforms.
I have argued in many independent forums that community media players have shortchanged communities by limiting community media only to radio — and this has to be said for the good of the future of local journalism — which is at risk. While it is a fact that most communities in Africa today access public information through radio, it is also a fact that vast numbers of people in Africa today, Zimbabwe included, access public information through social media.
Although total reliability to new media as source of news is at stake because of the susceptibility of social networks to misinformation, social media is increasingly becoming a leading source of information for communities which hitherto had no access to public information via the mainstream media — which remains a preserve for dominant voices at the expense of serving local needs.
While the advocacy for the licensing of community radios is indeed genuine and needs to be upscaled, community media players which have spent so much energy calling for the licensing of community radios have lost so many opportunities for strengthening hyper-local journalism because they have been engrossed in the struggle for radio so much that many opportunities for hyper-local journalism have eluded them while they tussle with powers that be.
For example, a number of community radio initiatives that I know purport to use social media to disseminate information as an alternative for what they call off-air broadcasting. While this is laudable, the belief that only radio is the ultimate medium for disseminating information in local ecologies has seen most of these initiatives using platforms which have the chance of being the vanguard of local journalism as an alternative.
Yet today, as seen by the impact of citizen journalism during the infamous #ShutDown Movement of July 2016, social media has become the hallmark for hyper-local information as trust in traditional journalism dwindles. So by othering social media, community media players are making a grave mistake and must recast their approach and mainstream emerging Web 2.0 technologies into their strategies.
This is urgent because the core business of community media is delivering hyper-local news to local communities and if this could be done without radio, it is high time community media players start thinking about how they could strengthen local news ecosystems beyond radio — an easy but seeming far-fetched approach for someone who has set their eyes on radio to an extent that they only see it as the sole medium for information dissemination.
The failure of community media practitioners to see beyond radio seems to have been bolstered by some narrow argument that community radio is better than other forms of media because it is participatory. While it is true that community radio is participatory, it is not the medium itself which makes it participatory but the approach — which is hinged on open journalism practices, an approach which I have strongly argued elsewhere, that it if properly deployed in hyper-local news, could help save local journalism, rekindle it and at the same time building public trust in local news.
What is interesting about community radio today is that even in countries where it is established, it is no longer a hybrid platform because of the convergence of new and traditional media formats. For example, some innovative local radios in Kenya use WhatsApp to disseminate podcasts to thousands of users who spend most of their time on the cheap networking platform and largely depend on it for information. This approach could also be replicated in Zimbabwe where community radio initiatives have been waiting for licensing for more than two decades.
For example, while in Zimbabwe there are still some communities with no access to cellular network, most of the rural communities have at least access to one or two cellular networks which allows them to access mobile internet. A snap survey indicates that every person with WhatsApp on their mobile phone, they are a member of at least two WhatsApp groups. So this could be an exciting opportunity for community radios to create viral podcasts which could be share across networks and be accessed by millions of people.
While community radio initiatives cry ceaselessly for licensing by government, community health information in local communities is fatally deteriorating and this could pose a crisis for democracy. For example, the Biometric Voter Registration Exercise (BVR) and the upcoming polls have already shown serious shortcomings of local media — and this will be used as a litmus test for measuring the relevance of community radio initiatives in Zimbabwe.
Although the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is ultimately to blame for failing to adequately disseminate BVR information to communities, especially rural constituencies, the media, particularly community media, is the silent culprit because it is the one whose mandate is to create, gather and share relevant information to address local news needs.
It is because of this glaring failure of the local media that that many voices will be left out in the ongoing discourse about the BVR and the upcoming polls. While the mainstream media has since time immemorial been guilty of creating and propagating a rural diversity challenge leading to serious news deserts in local communities, community radios could help address this gap by remodelling themselves into hyper-local news hubs.
For instance, although they are not licensed, community radios could leverage citizen journalism to help adequately report on the BVR process and elections. This does not require them to acquire temporary broadcasting licenses to do that since new media tools are helping thousands of citizens to gather, create and share information in real time. What they could be doing is taking advantage of this information overflow to recast user-generated content into trusted local news by working with citizen reporters who are already blogging independently.
The Listening Post, a project initially set up by Internews to help elevate voices of ordinary citizens in news, for example, could be of interest to local media players, especially community radio initiatives — which already have structures in communities where they operate. One of the advantages of listening post projects is that they do not require internet connection and thus can be deployed in rural set-ups.
For example, a listening post can be used to gather views of ordinary citizens on the BVR process or election experiences, using for example, roving recorders in a neighbourhood or ward. These could then be packaged into a series of podcasts which could then be shared on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.
Because community radio initiatives have failed to leverage opportunities presented by the convergence of new and traditional media, they risk being replaced by emerging hyper-local news startups focusing on addressing news deserts in local communities. The Citizen Bulletin, for example, a hybrid hyper-local news start-up focused on user-generated content and public powered stories is already working on strengthening local news through promoting citizen reporting.
The platform which recently won the best citizen journalism platform award at the Hub Unconference New Media Festival, has begun aggregating local news per each locality where it operates. This means that audiences can now seek for and access news about their own towns, cities or districts — and can also use a tailor-made citizen reporting application to file their stories for publication.
Open Parly Zw, a Harare based local news start up on the other hand, focuses on bridging the gap between public officials and ordinary citizens. While the platform is currently focused mainly on urban communities, if replicated in rural areas, maybe taking into consideration data accessibility where it is implemented, it could be a powerful hyper-local news platform for raising urgency on public affairs, especially service delivery.
In order to remain relevant, community radio initiatives could collaborate with hyper-local news platforms that use Web 2.0 technologies. This could help strengthen their presence in communities where they operate — and are expected to be broadcasting. Some opportunities which could be brought by this collaboration include content creation and co-creation, content sharing and promotion and skills development and exchange.
I am optimistic that collaboration between community radio initiatives and hyper-local news platforms could help address news deserts in local communities. This collaborative journalism space could also help strengthen hyper-local news ecosystems and help rebuild trust in local news.
Instead of limiting community media only to radio, community media players advocating for licensing of community radios must look beyond, reimagine their efforts and recast their approaches and leverage new tools which make journalism more local, more interactive and more relevant.
Divine Dube is a journalist, editor and entrepreneur leading the creation of sustainable citizen media platforms in Zimbabwe. He is currently the director for new media initiatives at the Zimbabwe Centre For Media and Information Literacy, a civic media organisation spearheading grassroots media and digital media literacy projects in Zimbabwe.
