Free Radios Research Articles

Representations of the alternative in Madrid during the transition to democracy: the case of free radios’ mediatic (counter)culture (1976-1989)

In the 1980s, a multitude of small radio stations proliferated in the Spanish ether, posing a new way of doing and understanding communication, and constituting a new social movement: that of free radios. A movement that was born and grew within an alternative subculture, close to the radical left, for which it played the role of an instance of ideological production and reproduction. In these pages we will see how the media counterculture that surrounded these stations generated a subcultural style based on the transformation and resignification of language that helped to build an identity and a representation of the alternative in Madrid during the Transition to democracy. Keywords: free radios, alternative communication, subculture, Spanish Transition

RESISTÊNCIAS NAS MÍDIAS A COMUNICAÇÃO SOCIALIZADA: UMA BREVE HISTÓRIA DAS RÁDIOS LIVRES E COMUNITÁRIAS NO BRASIL

Este artigo tem como objetivo, refletir sobre a influência do movimento italiano nas rádios livres no Brasil. Destacaremos principalmente o papel da Radio Alice de Bolonha por ter sido a rádio mais importante nesse processo. Destaca-se também nesse estudo, a grande influência teórica do militante das rádios livres Felix Guattari para a difusão desse movimento, principalmente na metade dos anos 80, quando foram lançadas suas primeiras sementes, e como hoje ele atinge praticamente todo o país. Nesse sentido, pretende-se apontar alguns momentos distintos da experiência das rádios livres e a inserção das rádios comunitárias no Brasil. Abordaremos ainda o papel da Rádio Novos Rumos, localizada no município de Queimados, na Baixada Fluminense, pelo fato dela ser considerada a primeira rádio comunitária do país.

Freedom Waves: Giving People a Voice and Turning It Up! Tuning into the Free Radio Network in the Basque Country

In this article we propose a historical chronicle about the role of the free radios and community spaces of social communication in the Southern Basque Country, analysing recent changes in this field and its implications. The Basque case is meaningful in two ways: quantitatively, because of the high number of these free radio stations since the eighties; and also, because of the current changes in the political context, a less conflictual scenario. Starting with an analysis of the contemporary reality of the Southern Basque Country and of two free radio stations – Hala Bedi Irratia and Eguzki Irratia – this article looks at the hybridisation between alternative social movements and media. We look at the progressive evolution towards stable funding formulas (memberships) and the openness and quality of this type of radio. Finally, we highlight a fundamental difference between media such as free radio in contrast to mass self-communication through ICTs: besides the message, the media is (self-)constructed collectively by those involved.

The commons: a brief life journey

A commoner's Bildungsroman, this article narrates the intellectual development of a radically rooted intellectual, through reflections on dominant explanatory frameworks, evoking through that journey, the real-life personal and conceptual implications of the pursuit of understanding the world, and the desire to change it. Introduction: searching for roses, music, and adventure In 1969, the year of factory and students' explosions in Italy, I was nine years old. I became teenager in the 1970s, a decade of intense mass movements of struggles and social creativity that involved youth, workers, women producing house occupations, social centres, free radios, experiences of self-organization in high schools, universities, factories, collectives, and self- organized abortion clinics. I could not understand it all but struggle made sense, and even more so the feeling of freedom, dignity, and autonomy that many of these struggles communicated to me, as a young and nao ¨ve boy striv- ing for more than the bread and butter rationale I was accustomed to in my family: I also needed roses, music and a sense of adventure towards new horizons. After 1979 and the heavy-handed repression following the anti- terrorist laws that crushed large sections of social movements, and after the seed of heroin was implanted into youth circles killing many and taking out of action many more, the party was finished. For me, it was as if in the moment you manage to get onto the dance floor and begin to understand how to dance, the music stops, and the lights are turned off. The party was over, and it was transferred to other scenes: in front of the TV, with the explo- sion of private channels in the hands of Berlusconi, into disco clubs, into the beginning of precarious lives in time of economic austerity and financial boom ... and into reading and discussion groups.

TERRITÓRIO, MÚSICA E DIFUSÃO DE INFORMAÇÕES: O CIRCUITO SONORO EM CAMPINAS-SP

This research examines the formation and the thickness of the circuits of radio FM and the music production in Campinas. The circuit FM in Campinas falls in the field of cultural industry since the decade of 1970, and has been expanding in the context of urbanization and metropolis growing in Brazil. Today this circuit incorporates a bigger system, coupled with the strategies of vertical use of the territory. We noticed that in contrast to the circuit FM, some residual musical component in places involves, among others, the alternative production and free radios. These circuits involved by a technically and territorial division of labor spurred by circuits upside of information, survive to the urban division and fragmentation. It is, therefore, a study of Campinas as a place that houses technical, informational and communicational densities. We analyzed geographical conditions of contemporary life in this city, inquiring about the communication component in the use of the territory.

Dalle radios pirates alle radios locales privées: le radio libere in Francia e la caduta del monopolio (1977-1989)

The evolution of free radios in France between 1977 and 1989 contributed to redefine the French audiovisual landscape determining the end of the public monopoly of the broadcasting service. Free radios represented one of the last evolutions of May ’68, expressing the point of view of minority political groups and of local communities. After a period of illegality between 1977 and 1981, free radios were allowed with the election of Francois Mitterrand in May 1981. Despite various attempts by the socialist government to maintain these new media inside the associative sector, forbidding fundings from commercials and the concentration among radios, the broadcasting stations started to be influenced by market logics. However, the intervention of political groups aimed at regulating the radiophonic sector - unlike it was happening in Italy during those same years - guaranteed the existence of associative and community radios through public grants, proving the social importance of alternative mass media, local for contents and radiophonic organization.

Resource Management in Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Heterogeneous wireless sensor networks such as High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) have environmental sensors located in remote and hard-to-reach locations far from the main high-bandwidth data links. The sensed data needs to be routed through multiple hops before reaching the backbone. The routing is done by battery-powered nodes using license free radios such as 802.11. Minimizing energy consumption is critical to maintaining operational data links. This paper presents a solution that includes scheduling and routing algorithms and achieves up to 60% energy savings per battery operated node with 20% lower latency when compared to existing techniques. Our TDMA based scheduling algorithm limits the number of active nodes and allows a large portion of nodes to sleep thus saving energy. Since the algorithm is completely distributed and hence minimum (at join time) control packet exchange is required, nodes in sleep state can switch off the wireless network interface thus minimizing power consumption. Furthermore, results show that by limiting the number of active nodes, contention in the channel decreases and hence aggregate throughput increases up to 10%. Scheduling is combined with a dynamic creation of a backbone of nodes in charge of providing connectivity to the network and delivering data to the proper destinations. This mechanism sits on top of the unmodified MAC layer so that legacy network devices can be used, and expensive hardware/software modifications are avoided.

Les Radios locales privées en France au travers de l’exemple du département de la Gironde. (1976 – 1986

Summary The development of the private local radios in Gironde, as at the national level, is done in a legislative context altered on several occasions but which is never used. The social phenomenon, marginal and claimant of the „free radios“ offering an anarchic character rediscovers quickly its proper laws of regulation which are essentially economic. At the experiences of associatives radios succeed the experiences of business radios with a very clear tendency at the concentration by the integration of the radios in national networks. We have to reflect on the reason which have permitted a such evolution so distant from the initial hopes.

¿Por qué las radios libres invadieron nuestro dial? Reflexiones sobre el concepto de anomia comunicacional como origen de proyectos de comunicación alternativa (1976-1989)

A finales de la década de los setenta y durante la de los ochenta surgieron en España cientos de radios libres. Proyectos cuyo objetivo era cambiar el modelo comunicativo vigente por uno más horizontal, participativo, democrático e inclusivo. ¿Dónde podría situarse el origen de este tipo de práctica? A esta pregunta se pretende responder en este trabajo con el desarrollo del concepto de anomia comunicacional, pues parece que este tipo de emisoras nacieron como respuesta a una tensión existente entre valores de la cultura dominante socialmente deseables y los medios normalizados para acceder a ellos.