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Media power, challenges and alternatives 205

audience interests not catered for by ad-financed or thoroughly commercialised
channels. In the case of Channel Four, greater openness came from a public
service system responding in part to the growing cultural power of new social
movements. Channel Four, a public trust organisation, initially cross-subsidised by
ITV’s advertising revenue, subsequently became more exposed to commercial
pressures, contributing to a programming shift that was less experimental and
less open to hitherto excluded voices. The conditions that enable dissident voices
to use public media apparatuses to reach large audiences remain restricted and
in an era of supposed digital plenitude these examples are reminders too of the
protracted social and institutional struggles that carve out the space that courageous
creative workers seize.

Alternative media

The second key form of contesting media power arises from within the broad
and fluid category of alternative media. Critical political economy has a strong
affinity with forms of ‘radical’ and ‘alternative’ media whose practices pursue
similar purposes. Radical media can challenge and contest dominant media
power, can advance and realise different kinds of communication than those
available across ‘mainstream’ media. Yet, the relationship between CPE and
alternative media has often been more fraught and complex than these obvious
affinities would suggest. Despite its commitment to expanding communications
freedom and diversity, the CPE tradition has been erratic in its engagement with
alternative or radical media, sometimes dismissing it as marginal to the task of
democratising ‘mass’ public media (Couldry 2006: 182–83).
Within the broad and fluid category of ‘alternative’ media, ‘radical’ media have
helped constitute counterpublics beyond the dominant public sphere (Fenton and
Downey 2003; Milioni 2009). North American examples include websites such
as CounterPunch.org, radio shows such as Democracy Now!, culture jammers like
Adbusters (Atkinson 2008) as well as social-justice-oriented Independent Media
Centres (IMC). Non-commercial community media have been heralded as a
counterforce against corporate media, notably in systems such as the US where
the latter dominate (McChesney and Nichols 2002), and increasingly embraced
by media activist movements aiming to democratise public communication
(Hackett and Carroll 2006). More broadly, community or ‘citizen’s media’
(Rodriguez 2001) are valued as media serving, often empowering, minority
social or ethnic groups and interests in geographic or geocultural communities
(Buckley et al. 2008). ‘Alternative’ media, then, covers a range of practices
resistant to simple categorisation or even common attributes but generally
comprising ‘small, alternative, nonmainstream, radical, grassroots or community
media … that is often based on citizen participation’ (Fenton and Downey 2003:
185; Coyer et al. 2007).
Recognising that alternative media can be viewed via their products or their
processes, Atton (2002) suggests that it is the tendency away from professionalised,