Across the globe, in post-industrial and so-called “developing” societies, in large urban centers and small rural villages, through grassroots organizing efforts and in collaboration with NGOs and international aid agencies, communities are working to remake media systems that serve local interests, address local concerns, and otherwise shape, reflect, and inform local experience. In some cases, communities turn to radio – arguably the most affordable, easiest to use, and by far the most ubiquitous form of electronic media around the world – as a means of enhancing community communication. For other communities, the advent of smallformat and, more recently, digital video cameras provides an occasion for local populations to more fully participate in contemporary media culture: a built environment increasingly dominated by the image-making regimes of multinational corporations. Still other groups and individuals, dissatisfied with conventional press reports on poverty, homelessness, and economic justice, construct alternative discursive spaces through the printed word and in so doing create community among those who, quite literally, live on the margins of society. Conversely, computer-mediated communication represents an opportunity to re-create local community, paradoxically enough, within and through an emerging global information infrastructure.

Despite the disparate peoples involved, the distinctive communities to which they belong, and the particular motives behind their appropriation of communication technologies, the impulse to “communicate community” appears irresistible.