Dunbar-Hester, Christina | USA

Christina Dunbar-Hester is a doctoral candidate in Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University, USA, where she earned her MA in 2004. She is completing an ethnographic dissertation on contemporary media activism in the U.S., focusing on low-power FM radio technology. She completed her undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied History and Sociology of Science.
 

Projekt at IAS-STS: Radio for whom?” Media Activism, Identity, and the (Re)Imagination of FM Radio Technology in the U.S.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a growing grassroots movement has registered dissatisfaction with status quo media, which activists perceive as falling short in such areas as providing news and musical programming free of corporate influence. These activists have attempted to counterbalance these perceived shortcomings by making known their critiques and gaining greater access to the means of media production; they aim to change the concentration of media ownership and are working directly with low power FM (LPFM) radio technology to do so. This dissertation project is an ethnographic investigation of social settings and technical practices surrounding LPFM activism. Its goal is to reveal how these actors enact their beliefs about democratic media access and media diversity through LPFM activist work; these activities include grantwriting, lobbying, teaching themselves to use transmission and production technologies, and providing the public with technical, logistical, and legal support. The study focuses primarily on a community of LPFM activists in Philadelphia, but data has been collected at a variety of sites where the actors travel for meetings with regulators, community groups, LPFM stations and prospective stations, and other activists. As a small-scale, low-tech, yet widespread technology, LPFM constitutes an important site of inquiry, which will be especially relevant in the present context of widespread interest in claims about the impact of new media, information technologies, and communication systems.

Selected Publications:

Activist Uses? Hams, Pirates, and Geeks in FM Radio Broadcasting, for Society for History of Technology Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, November 2005

Media Activism Goes to Work, for History & Sociology of Science Workshop Series, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, November 2005

Invited panelist, “What’s up with the FCC?” Radio, Access, Democracy Conference, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, October 2004

“Autopoietic Sounds: Cybernetic Discourse in Electronic and
Experimental Music, 1950-1980,” for Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Paris, France, August 2004

“Geeks, Meta-Geeks, and Gender Trouble: Activism, Identity, and FM Radio,” for Society for Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, October 2003