Recently, I’ve been thinking about community media tools, the physical places where they are used, and the process by which community media organizations, to quote Bob Devine, help to “bring private citizens into public life.”

In his 2000 presentation at the Alliance for Community Media conference in Tuscon, Arizona, Bob Devine began with this statement:

“For many years I’ve insisted that one of the key roles that public access organizations play in their communities involves the process of bringing private citizens into public life and engaging them in active roles of citizenship within those communities.”

I couldn’t agree more.  I see it happen everyday.

How do I mean?

Take for example the passerby outside the community media center who decides to enter the facility for the first time.  She introduces herself to the community media center staff member and says, “Hi. I pass by your facility everyday, and I want to learn more about what happens in here.”  She begins her journey from private citizen into public life.

She learns that she can become a community media center member at a reduced cost by volunteering her time as an intern in the community media center’s public access computer lab.  She takes a volunteer position helping seniors gain skills using computers and the Internet.  She becomes more engaged in the community through her involvement as a volunteer.

When the community media organization calls upon local residents to participate in a community needs assessment focus group she shows up to contribute her ideas to the conversation.  She tells the focus group leader (drawing from her experience working with seniors in the public access computer lab) how community media makes the community stronger and how the community media center plays an important role in this process.  Her comments are included in a report used by the local government to assess the community media center’s future in the local community.  It is at this point that she has become actively engaged in the community’s civic life.

The community media organization – the place not the tools – played an important role in bringing this private citizen into public life.

This is not to say that the volunteer wasn’t already engaged in the community.  I cannot say, because I don’t know.

I am simply providing evidence from my experience to support Bob Devine’s statement that community media organizations play an important role in helping residents to become more engaged in civic life.

(image above from contentandcarrier)

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References

Devine, Robert H. “Access and Community Building.” Brief Summary of a Presentation given at the Alliance for Community Media National Conference. Tucson, Arizona, 2000. Programmers. Washington, D.C. July 26.