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Improve people's mindset as far as journalism is concerned
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This Thesis is dedicated to my two daughters Alice and Patience
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informs people about development initiatives from development agencies. Although these functions overlap, the thesis finds that community radio stations in Malawi concentrate more on the latter. The programming of the stations is influenced by the agendas of development agents who sponsor programmes thereby reducing opportunities for participation. However, although people’s participation in the media is low or reduced, there are other ways in which through the media, people can benefit, enhance their capabilities and through which development agencies can reach their goals. The thesis argues that the radio stations fit well with an approach to development related to building capabilities (Sen, 1992) because they sometimes give people resources to enhance their capabilities and sometimes act as partners with development agencies and government, facilitating a variety of development goals. The thesis concludes that community radio in Malawi enables capabilities although very rarely through fully-fledged participation.
Key words: capabilities, community radio, development, Malawi, participation, radio listening clubs
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My sincere thanks and gratitude should go, first of all, to my supervisors, Professor Peter Lunt and Dr Katie Moylan for their unwavering support and guidance to ensure the successful completion of this thesis. Their comments, feedback and suggestions were always timely, constructive, and value adding. Working under their supervision and guidance, in a friendly, warm and relaxed environment, gave me the confidence to forge ahead on this rather lonely and turbulent journey.
I would also like to thank the staff and management of both Nkhotakota and Mzimba Community radio stations for allowing me to conduct my research within their institutions. Special thanks should go to the station manager of Nkhotakota Community Radio station, Mr Alhaji Rasheed and his deputy Edward Kuwacha for their cooperation and assistance during the entire duration of my research. Mr James Kumwenda and Mr Mussolin Jere of Mzimba Community Radio station also deserve special mention for their cooperation. My gratitude will not be complete if I do not mention the listeners in all the radio listening clubs I visited during my research. Their responses have shaped the content of this thesis. I also acknowledge all the people I interacted with during the course of conducting my research. Phillip Chinkhokwe, Pascal Ng’ombe of Nkhotakota Community Radio station, Lyness Sanga of FVR, Maltida Yuma of MACRA and Emmanual Kondowe of UNESCO and others too numerous to mention are some of the people who provided important information for this research.
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TABLE 1: LIST OF KEY INFORMANTS AND TYPES OF QUESTIONS ASKED ....................................................... 77 TABLE 2: THE LISTENING CLUBS WHERE FGDS WERE CONDUCTED ............................................................. 83 TABLE 3: LIST OF DOCUMENTS ANALYZED FOR THIS RESEARCH .................................................................. 94 TABLE N 4:KHOTAKOTA AUDIENCE SEP,SHARE OF 2010) R ............................................................................................................... 109ADIO, TV, AND NEWSPAPERS IN NKHOTAKOTA DISTRICT (SOURCE: TABLE 5: SHARE OF RADIO LISTENERSHIP IN NKHOTAKOTA (SOURCE: MACRA WEBSITE) ........................ 130 TABLE 6: SHARE OF RADIO LISTENERSHIP IN MZIMBA (SOURCE: MACRA WEBSITE) ................................. 132 TABLE 7: COMMUNITY RADIO STATION'S EXPENDITURE ............................................................................ 142
5.4 Establishment of Nkhotakota Community Radio Station and the Controversy Surrounding it
Appendix 5: Questionnaire for the Director of Nkhotakota Aids Support Organization (NASO)
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1.1 Background to the Study This research investigated the role of community radio in development using case studies of Nkhotakota and Mzimba community radio stations in Malawi. The study seeks to contribute to the growing scholarship on community radio worldwide and its role in the development of local communities. I argue that community radio has potential to encourage development through enhancing capabilities (Sen, 1999) even when people are not fully participating in the activities of the radio. In view of this, the thesis also advances debates in the area of theories of participation regarding its (participation) relationship to development. It adds to these debates by showing that there are separate routes to community media having a role in development associated with different levels of participation (Arnstein, 1969; Carpentier, 2011). The thesis, therefore, questions the overemphasis on participation as a panacea of development challenges. What prompted this research are the many claims and assumptions that community radio is a tool for development (Berrigan, 1979; Rennie, 2006; Milan, 2009; Myers, 2011). For instance, the World Bank argues that community radio broadcasting helps poor people to share information in their own languages, encourages debate on community development issues, and helps community members to identify, and benefit from, more opportunities (The World Bank Group, 2004 cited in Panos, 2005: 20). Furthermore, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) (1998) argues that community radio serves a catalytic role in bringing about positive change, building vibrant communities and mobilizing people to action by informing and giving a voice to the voiceless. Community
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radio is also said to give opportunities to local community members to become “producers, not merely receivers, of information and opinion and are able to articulate for themselves their social vision and demands” (Bresnaham, 2007: 212-213; Gumucio-Dagron, 2001). These are some of the ways in which community radio is linked to development. All this can be achieved through both people’s direct involvement in community radio station activities and through participation in practices and events organized by the station (such as Radio Listening Clubs). This research, therefore, had as one of its objectives to investigate how community radio stations in Malawi provide opportunities for participation in the media and in development processes.
1.2 Definitions of Community Radio
Community radio has been defined in multiple ways by scholars and media institutions. Tabing (2002: 9) defines community radio as “one that is operated in the community, for the community, about the community and by the community”. Community radio, therefore, is established to work for the benefit of the people in the community it is meant to serve both through providing programmes and information services and through the opportunity to participate in running the station and other activities. This definition presents community radio as operating differently from mainstream media. The major difference being that while commercial and public service models both treat listeners as objects to be captured for advertisers or to be informed, community radio aspires to treat its listeners as subjects and participants (Lewis & Booth, 1989). Another important aspect of this definition is that stations are ideally owned, managed and operated by the community to varying degrees. The community can be either geographical or a community
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emancipation, incorporating all social groups that are marginalized or excluded from power at a global level” (Mata, 1993: 59). From this distinction, we note that there is an overlap of the functions of community and popular radios because access to the public sphere is one way of giving voice to marginalized and excluded groups of people.
The Latin American experience raises important issues regarding ownership of community radio stations and how they can encourage participation. For instance, Radio Sutatenza was established by a Catholic priest meaning that its ownership was private. However, the members of the community participated in development projects that the founder priest initiated such as adult literacy campaigns. In contrast, the Miners’ Radios of Bolivia were established by the miners themselves through their civil society groups (Fraser and Estrada, 2001). They were “independent, self-sustained, self-managed and faithfully served the interests of their communities” (Gumucio-Dagron, 2001: 46-47). The implication of this is that community radio stations do not necessarily need to be owned, managed and operated by the community all the time for ordinary people to participate. However, in Chapters 5 and 6, I will argue that different ownership styles accord people opportunities to participate in different ways which can affect the way participation contributes to development. Two philosophies of community radio broadcasting can be identified here, one which is fully owned and run by members of the community - and the other which is a ‘donor’ station funded by a body outside the community which sets the aims and purposes of the station. Although both models encourage community participation, the latter does not include the community owning and producing media content. However, participation in community radio is not only in production of content and managing or running the
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stations but can include participation in development activities initiated or mediated by the community radio itself or on behalf of government and NGOs. In other words, some development goals can be achieved through the participation of the intended beneficiaries and forms of participation are often facilitated by donors. As Bessette (2004) argues, participatory development communication is a powerful tool for facilitating human development by encouraging community participation in development projects through community radio. It can, therefore, easily be concluded that some forms of participation through community radio involve owning and managing the stations and other forms of participation in the media mean getting actively involved in station activities.
Moving on to some parts of Europe, Australia and North America, minority groups such as indigenous immigrant, refugee and black communities who were marginalized by mainstream media used community radio to fight for their rights (Mtinde et al. , 1998: 15). Viewed from that angle, community radio is described as ‘alternative media’ in some societies such as South Africa during the apartheid era and in Bolivia in Latin America (Johnson, 1991; O’Connor, 1990). Alternative media are “those media that provide a different point of view from that usually expressed that cater to communities not well served by the mass media, or that expressly advocate social change” (Watz, 2005: 2). During the apartheid era in South Africa, community media emerged among the oppressed people as part of the struggle against apartheid (Mtinde et al. , 1998). In Africa, community radio is a part of the democratization process that spread across the continent in the early 1990’s, especially in Southern Africa of which Malawi is part. The democratization process resulted in the deregulation and liberalization of broadcasting from
