The power of sound: community radio as a tool for social-environmental activism in Argentine Patagonia

Abstract

Media is key in strengthening environmental activism and can take a wide range of forms. Community radio is one example of alternative media with the potential to reframe narrative discourse on social and ecological issues (AMARC, 2020). Independently and sometimes through collaborations, community radio stations are run by and for local residents (2014). Historically, community radio has been often used in resistance against state-run and for-profit media where widespread political discontent has developed (King Westminster Pap Commun Cult 12:18–36, 2017). Argentina is one nation where this is the case. The following investigation looks at three community radio stations in Rio Negro and Chubut, two Argentine provinces in Patagonia known in part for their history of state violence, land development, and local resistance. Combining the Latin-American concept of neo-extractivism, settler-colonialist theory, and Habermas’s concept of alternative media as critical media with localized philosophies of community empowerment and resistance, this study seeks to understand the role of community radio as a decolonizing force against state-driven land privatization and development throughout Argentine Patagonia. Consequently, the potential for community radio to be used by social-environmental activists in other regions of the world is evaluated. Analysis suggests that the radios investigated play a role in community-level resistance against social-environmental injustices through promoting information and collective action, thus making it a means of communication with a diverse range of possibilities for social-environmental justice work in the USA and beyond.