What makes you happy? Insights into feelings and muses of community radio practitioners

Abstract

What makes you happy in your daily activity at the radio? This question was asked to more than forty community radio practitioners from all over the world in the framework of a research on community radios as a social movement. People were encouraged to reveal their feelings and elaborate on their inner motivations for joining the radio station. Three main points could be singled out from the interviews: the idea of the radio as a ‘free space’ for the articulation of views and opinions, the role of community radio as amplifier of voices of other social groups, and the collective dimension of projects.This article draws on interview texts using the method of discourse analysis to illustrate motivational frames of community radios activists, providing an original view of the radios, often considered ‘only’ as producers of alternative audio material or mere ‘infrastructures’, while the dimension of motivations and feelings is often neglected.

Keywords

• empowerment
• voice
• social change
• emotions
• framing
• community radio