Let’s talk on air! 

Check the tuto­ri­als for broad­cast­ing com­mu­ni­ty assem­blies using RootIO

 

The Grass­roots Radio project encour­ages the com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tions to live broad­cast the meet­ings where com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers make deci­sions about the sta­tion, and, in gen­er­al, all of the assem­blies that the com­mu­ni­ties con­sid­er worth mak­ing pub­lic. If you are part of a com­mu­ni­ty or a social group, or are inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing a com­mu­ni­ty around a com­mon inter­est or con­cern, you might want to check this set of tuto­ri­als the project has devel­oped in order to  sup­port you with live broad­cast­ing using RootIO and a stan­dard smart­phone.

 

 

Why is the live broad­cast­ing of com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings impor­tant?   

 

 

Com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tions can be very dif­fer­ent from coun­try to coun­try, but they all share some fea­tures: they allow non-pro­fes­sion­als to take part in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion are­na, they pro­mote dia­logue with­in com­mu­ni­ties and it is not nec­es­sary to have par­tic­u­lar skills to lis­ten to them. These ele­ments can sup­port you as cit­i­zen and/​or com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber in hav­ing access to pub­lic deci­sion-mak­ing, and to com­mu­ni­cate your con­cerns. To make this hap­pen, we believe it is cru­cial that the sys­tem of roles, tasks and rules that guides the sta­tions — i.e. their gov­er­nance — ful­fils some require­ments:

• fos­ter­ing a sense of com­mu­ni­ty own­er­ship, avoid­ing cap­ture of the sta­tion by a few indi­vid­u­als or inter­ests;
• achiev­ing a fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion of dif­fer­ent claims and con­cerns; includ­ing also the mar­gin­alised cat­e­gories;
• pro­vid­ing space for informed com­mu­ni­ty reflec­tion and pub­lic delib­er­a­tion, increas­ing intra-com­mu­ni­ty com­mu­ni­ca­tion;
• sup­port­ing more sophis­ti­cat­ed approach­es to con­flict res­o­lu­tion than zero-sum ones (e.g. dis­cussing instead of vot­ing);

• pro­mot­ing civic par­tic­i­pa­tion and vol­un­teerism;
• fos­ter­ing finan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty;
• increas­ing media plu­ral­ism.

 

We believe that the live broad­cast­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tions’ meet­ings, through the use of RootIO, can sup­port the achieve­ment of these goals. First, this oper­a­tion puts the focus on the impor­tance of trans­par­ent assem­bly deci­sion-mak­ing process­es that can be heard by all the com­mu­ni­ty. Sec­ond, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­vene dur­ing the assem­blies through a sim­ple phone call increas­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of people’s inclu­sion in the dis­cus­sion are­na.

 

GO TO THE TUTO­RI­ALS