Scottish Island Studies research chapter in Community Media edited collection

Kathryn A. Burnett and Tony Grace (2009) ‘Community, Cultural Resource and Media: Reflecting on Research Practice’  in Gordon, Janey (ed.) (2009) Notions of Community:  A Collection of Community Media Debates and Dilemmas; Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2009. 310 pp., 5 ill.

ISBN 978-3-03911-374-3 pb.

This volume gets beyond simple descriptions of the values and processes involved in community media and is deliberately seeking argument and structured debate around the issues of this vibrant sector of the media. The contributors examine the dilemmas that have emerged within this sector and provide an incisive overview. The chapters use case studies and data research to illustrate the major debates facing community media, along with a sideways look at the dilemmas that community media practitioners and their audiences must engage with.
This collection provides an international perspective and covers the traditional formats as well as newer media technologies. It also gives some intriguing examples of community media, which get beyond simple good practices.

http://www.peterlang.com/download/datasheet/50337/datasheet_11374.pdf

Contents: Janey Gordon: Introduction – Saba ElGhul-Bebawi: The Relationship between Mainstream and Alternative Media: A Blurring of the Edges? – Lawrie Hallett: The Space Between: Making Room for Community Radio – Janey Gordon: Community Radio, Funding and Ethics: The UK and Australian Models – Kathryn A. Burnett/Tony Grace: Community, Cultural Resource and Media: Reflecting on Research Practice – Katie Moylan: Towards Transnational Radio: Migrant Produced Programming in Dublin – Gavin Stewart: Selling Community: Corporate Media, Marketing and Blogging – Michael Meadows/Susan Forde/Jacqui Ewart/Kerrie Foxwell: A Catalyst for Change? Australian Community Broadcasting Audiences Fight Back – Kitty van Vuuren: The Value and Purpose of Community Broadcasting: The Australian Experience – Pollyanna Ruiz: Manufacturing Dissent: Visual Metaphors in Community Narratives – Janey Gordon: The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere: Mobile Phone Usage in Three Critical Situations – Jason Wilson/Barry Saunders/Axel Bruns: ‘Preditors’: Making Citizen Journalism Work – Dimitra L. Milioni: Neither ‘Community’ Nor ‘Media’? The Transformation of Community Media on the Internet.

SCIS Research-Teaching linkages: SCIS research projects presented to UWS MA Creative Media Practice students, 3rd March 2011

Narrative Approaches to Creative Media Practice Research

As part of the MA Creative Media Practice core module Research: Critical Development ( Module Co-ordinator Dr Kathryn A Burnett) both film lecturer Tony Grace and SCIS doctoral student Rachael Flynn delivered to the year 2 students on this postgraduate course as part of a thematic week exploring narrative approaches to community media research and practice.

SCIS PhD student Kirsten MacLeod presents at !Documentary Now! 2011

¡Documentary Now!

A Conference on the Contemporary Contexts and Possibilities of the Documentary, University of Westminster,  January 2011

AVPhd Panel presentation by SCIS PhD student Kirsten MacLeod, “I film therefore I am: Process, Practice and Participation in Community based Filmmaking”.

Kirsten MacLeod (University of the West of Scotland)

This paper will explore examples of community-based media in Scotland, focusing on participation in the production process and the construction of identity and knowledge. Using a visual practice based methodology, the research focuses on fieldwork examples of community based, collaborative video production, in urban and rural areas of Scotland.
The paper is concerned with exploring community media as a transformative social process, a catalyst for new relationships, experience and knowledge about the world. It presents community documentary projects as a lens through which to explore issues of participation, representation, identity and knowledge within communities.
Taking a fluid approach to community as meaningful and symbolically constructed (Cohen), and to community media as covering a spectrum of media which serves, reflects or involves communities, geographically bounded, or of interest (Atton, Jankowski), this paper presents participation as part of an ongoing process of production, which lives on beyond the end product of the actual media itself, in the situated social experiences of its participants.
By examining the process of production, the research deconstructs the filmmaking process, exploring how people engage in filmmaking as participants, but also as members of the audience community. How meaningful is community media to communities who produce it, as a process and in the longer term once the end product is “out there”?
Through examples from Glasgow and islands on the West coast of Scotland, as well as broader trends in Scottish community media, the paper describes how community media channels the situated-ness of knowledge and identity.
The paper advocates a practice led methodology, where the research engages directly with the process of filming and draws reflexively and practically on the researcher and participants’ experiences.