"The primary objective of this book is to present a wide range of community radio projects, not so that the “ideal” model can be identified, but in the hope that the book will serve as a useful tool for community broadcasters and potential community broadcasters looking to create or adapt models... of community radio that are suited to the specific conditions they face. This objective of facilitating an international exchange of experiences and ideas has been AMARC’s primary motivator since the first World Conference of Community Radio Broadcasters took place in 1983. The use of radio as a tool for cultural and political change, while a growing phenomena, is not new. Indeed, the first participatory community radio stations surfaced almost simultaneously in Colombia and the United States over forty years ago. Since that time, innumerable participatory radio projects have attempted to promote community-led change in a variety of ways. Some of these projects have attempted to foster this change by providing formal education in areas such as literacy and mathematics, or by promoting agricultural techniques suited to a particular vision of development defined by the central government. This type of project has been common in the Third World, especially in Africa and Asia. Sri Lanka’s Mahaweli Community Radio (chapter 13) is one example of such a project. Other projects have been more political and have attempted to support the organisational and cultural initiatives of marginalised communities. These are the projects that tend to involve listeners in a participatory process. Haiti’s Radio Soleil (chapter 9) and Zoom Black Magic Liberation Radio in the United States (chapter 10) are two examples. Following the tradition of participatory communication, most of the chapters in this book are not written by impartial observers but by people with first-hand knowledge of community radio and with direct experience in the projects they write about." (Introduction)
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"The topic of this anthology is communication in rural areas. Most of the 17 contributions are concrete experience reports from radio and internet projects and networks. Especially worth reading are the contributions that deal with the combination of both technologies." (Commbox-CD)
"The volume examines the risks and opportunities of a digital society characterized by the increasing importance of knowledge and by the incessant rise and pervasiveness of information and communication technologies (ICTs). At a global level, the pivotal role of ICTs has made it necessary to rethink... ways to avoid forms of digital exclusion or digital discrimination. This edited collection comprises of chapters written by respected scholars from a variety of countries, and brings together new scholarship addressing what the process of digital inclusion means for individuals and places in the countries analyzed. Each country has its own strategy to guarantee that people can access and enjoy the benefits of the information society. While this book does not presume to map all the countries in the world, it does shed light into these strategies, underlining what each country is doing in order to reduce digital inequalities and to guarantee that socially disadvantaged people (in terms of disabilities, availability of resources, age, geographic location, lack of education, or ethnicity) are digitally included." (Publisher)
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