Page 174 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Global Commun ty Med a | 1

Germany, the United States and other rapidly industrializing nations. It was a
central facet of the growth of the labor union movement. In the United States,
with its multilingual immigrant workforce of the decades leading from the 1880s
through the 1930s, newspapers also came to be printed in a variety of European
languages, such as German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, and Yiddish. In Germany
in the later nineteenth century the Socialist press f lourished, providing a consid-
erable spectrum from highbrow intellectual journals to newspapers, and from
women’s publications to pamphlets geared to workers’ recreational activity.

ThE suFFragisT PrEss

The women’s suffrage press, dating from 1848 in the United States, developed
its work over the decades that followed, painfully and painstakingly helping
build the movement that finally won the right to vote for women citizens after
World War I. In New Zealand this right was already conceded in 1893, in France
it was not granted until 1945, but in every country the suffragist press was a key
element in the ongoing public campaign’s eventual success.
It is important to realize that as in the other instances in this period, these
publications, were they newspapers, magazines, fliers, posters, or books,
mostly did not come out daily, or necessarily regularly. They carried little or no
advertising, nor were they glossy. Often they might be just a few pages, and not
necessarily designed well. But the demand for them within the suffragist move-
ment, among its women and men members, was nonetheless high.

ThrEE viTaL ConTrasTs
Before we proceed further, these examples push us to recognize three further
important points concerning community media.
First, the media described above had considerable impact in spite of their
small size. People sometimes make the mistake of evaluating these media as
though they operate in the same way as mainstream media. Yet their objectives
are often sharply different, since they are focused on campaigning and mobiliz-
ing the public to take on social issues, while big commercial media primarily
exist to make a profit by running ads, by entertaining, and sometimes by provid-
ing a news service. As a consequence, the mainstream media agenda usually fails
to challenge existing social structures based on wealth and political power. By
contrast, community media are integral parts of social movements. They enable
those movements to have dialogue and fresh perspectives, and are energized in
turn by the movements’ vitality.
Second, social movement audiences or readers are different from mainstream
media users. They are active, aware of their surroundings, committed to social
change. When they make use of these media, they are not looking for a break
from a tough working day or from a day when the kids have been scratchy-side-out.
They are not looking for escape, but for involvement.
Third, the timeframe of these two types of media is completely different. Social
movements often take a long time to form; they have peaks and lulls. Slavery