Community television in Amsterdam

Community television in Amsterdam

Our project in Amsterdam was influenced considerably by the Swindon model. During preparation for the project, I visited Swindon Viewpoint and spoke at length with the Leicester researchers. Many of the qualitative elements in the Swindon study were incorporated into our work: a combination of participant observation with survey research, contextual analyses of station development, and a theoretical emphasis on the concept of community. Perhaps the most fundamental difference was our effort to include a component of action research into the design; partly as a result of this, we experienced problematic relations with both research funders and members of the station. It is these problems—additions to the Swindon experience—which are elaborated here.

The “Lokale Omroep Bijlmermeer” (LOB) was one of six community television organizations in the Netherlands which had been selected to participate in a government-funded experiment with cable transmission of locally originated radio and television programming. The experiment, held in the mid-1970s under supervision of the Ministry of Culture, was broadly conceived to examine the role that electronic media might play within communities. It was monitored by three independent research teams (Jankowski, 1977; Koole et al., 1976; Stappers et al., 1976; 1977). The LOB community television station had existed as a formal organization since early 1972. During the first three years, however, it produced and transmitted only a handful of programs on the cable system in the housing estate in which it was located. With approval of funding in 1975, the LOB began cablecasting programs on a weekly basis, a frequency maintained until the end of 1978, when funds were exhausted and the station closed down.

The research project was established in cooperation with the LOB station. Although the Ministry of Culture required that stations

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participating in the experiment be receptive to researchers, most members of the LOB were already convinced of the value of a systematic study of the station and its place within the community. The general research strategy was discussed and determined in consultation with the LOB. The central objective of the project was to examine the station as a resource for community development in the housing estate. Hence, it was decided that I should, much like a cultural anthropologist, live in the housing estate in order to experience at first hand both the community and the station. Participant observation became the primary method and was performed over a four-year period.

The consultation with station representatives was based on the premise that the results should be of service to the LOB itself. Specifically, we wanted to conduct a form of action research, in which the results contributed to improvement of the organization. We were especially concerned with channeling social and political activity in the housing estate into LOB programming, with particular attention to social welfare institutions.

A number of subprojects, rooted in different disciplines, were designed to address these concerns. Our assumption was that a multidisciplinary approach, as outlined by Webb et al. (1966), would increase our understanding of the station. In addition, we intended to employ a diversity of methods for collecting and analysing information: participant observation of organizational activities, formal and informal interviews with LOB volunteers, case studies of program development, content analysis of broadcasts, and surveys of community residents. Finally, qualitative methodology within an interactionist perspective (Blumer, 1969; Denzin, 1970a; Glaser and Strauss, 1967) was to guide the project as a whole.

Shortly after the onset of the project, several conflicts developed— between the funders of the research and the researchers and between station personnel and researchers. The government had financed the research project on the condition that an interim report would be produced to facilitate formulation of government policy on the development of cable television. This report, it turned out, was the primary interest of government representatives in the advisory commission of the project, because local governments were expected to finance the stations after the experimental period. The Amsterdam government, however, had no interest in that report; it had not been involved in the experiment and was not willing to consider financing

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the station. Though the research team hence felt it inappropriate to produce the report, ultimately we agreed to write a policy document, provided it could also discuss the predicament of preparing such a document for an uninterested governmental body.

There were also tensions between station personnel and the research team—problems which indicate the generally delicate relationship between researcher and researched in qualitative studies, not least for action research. The conflicts arose from the presentation of research findings to outsiders, such as a lecture given in the presence of representatives from government and other cable television stations as well as the publication of a subproject. The problem was not so much the critical remarks about the LOB, but the fact that there had been no opportunity for the LOB to comment on the material. Because of the uncertain future of the LOB, the station staff seriously considered legal steps to prohibit further research activity. The crisis was resolved, however, by recalling the report and including LOB commentary in subsequent research documents.

Also from a scientific perspective, the integration of findings from subprojects employing different methods and theoretical perspectives posed problems. It was particularly difficult to reconcile the action research projects providing training in television production and the traditional audience surveys. The theoretical notions guiding this project were originally formulated as “sensitizing concepts” in an effort to ground the study in the actual community (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), but the daily activities of contract research severely limited the time to “discover” theory. Nevertheless, one important contribution of the project was to document comprehensively the dynamics, potentials, and problems of community media, including the interaction between different professional and interest groups, through action research and other qualitative methodologies.

A second outcome of the project was a theoretical typology of community media, later developed in an academic dissertation (Jankowski, 1988). Inspired in part by earlier statements of the mobilizing power of media (Brecht, 1932; Enzensberger, 1970), the typology categorized community stations along three dimensions: access to, participation in, and use of station programming (Jankowski, 1988:174). So-called “community action stations,” it was suggested, devoted more energy to recruiting and training residents outside the middle class, encouraging participation in program production, and providing programming on community issues.

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