Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism

The United States ushered in a new era of small-scale broadcasting in
2000 when it began issuing low-power FM (LPFM) licenses for noncommercial radio
stations around the country. Over the next decade, several hundred of these newly
created low-wattage stations took to the airwaves. In Low Power to the
People, Christina Dunbar-Hester describes the practices of an activist
organization focused on LPFM during this era. Despite its origins as a pirate
broadcasting collective, the group eventually shifted toward building and expanding
regulatory access to new, licensed stations. These radio activists consciously cast
radio as an alternative to digital utopianism, promoting an understanding of
electronic media that emphasizes the local community rather than a global audience
of Internet users.

Dunbar-Hester focuses on how these radio
activists impute emancipatory politics to the "old" medium of radio
technology by promoting the idea that "microradio" broadcasting holds the
potential to empower ordinary people at the local community level. The group's
methods combine political advocacy with a rare commitment to hands-on technical work
with radio hardware, although the activists' hands-on, inclusive ethos was hampered
by persistent issues of race, class, and gender.

Dunbar-Hester's
study of activism around an "old" medium offers broader lessons about how
political beliefs are expressed through engagement with specific technologies. It
also offers insight into contemporary issues in media policy that is particularly
timely as the FCC issues a new round of LPFM licenses.