Alternative Media: Free from State, Market, and  Capital(ism)? On the Antagonisms of Alternative Media and the Alternative Economy

Manfred Knoche

doi:10.31269/triplec.v22i2.1525

Manfred Knoche University of Salzburg

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v22i2.1525

Keywords: alternative media, non-commercial media, independent media, free radio, alternative economy, counter public sphere

Abstract

This work discusses the potentials, limits, and problems of alternative media in capitalism. It compares alternative media to commercial media and public service media. A model is introduced that compares commercial and non-commercial media projects. Its dimensions are the economy, work, production, and communication.

Dilemmas of alternative media are analysed. As an example, a conflict at the Austrian free radio station Radio Orange is analysed.
The paper discusses the political economy of alternative media. Alternative media such as free radio stations have set out to do media in a way that is different to capitalist media. In this context, the role of the audience as media producers and the rejection of the market, capital, and commodities are important aspects of alternative media.

The analysis shows the problems and antagonisms that non-commercial, alternative media face in capitalist society. They struggle to establish independence from markets, capital, and the state. They face the problem of how to deal with these antagonisms which results in the alternative between adopting to capitalist pressures or operating as small-scale niche alternatives with small audiences and precarious labour. The paper concludes that material aspects and the political economy of alternative media need to be taken seriously. Not selling commodities and not paying wages puts many alternative media at a disadvantage vis-à-vis commercial media.

Author Biography

Manfred Knoche, University of Salzburg

Manfred Knoche is Professor Emeritus of Media Economics and Media and Communication Studies at the University of Salzburg in Austria. He studied Journalism, Sociology, Political Science, and Economics at the University of Mainz and the Free University of Berlin. He obtained his PhD (1978) and defended his habilitation (1981) at the Free University of Berlin. He was Research Assistant in the years 1974-1979 and Assistant Professor of Communications Politics in Berlin in the years 1979-1983. From 1983-1994, he was Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, where he was also the Director of the Centre for Mass Communications Research. From 1994-2009 he held the Chair Professorship of Journalism and Communication Studies with Special Focus on Media Economics at the University of Salzburg’s Department of Communication Studies, where he was the Head of the Department’s Section on Media Economics and Empirical Communication Research. He chaired the German Association for Media and Communication Studies’ (DGPuK) Media Economics-section. He is author of many publications on the Critique of the Political Economy of the Media. His work has especially focused on the critique of the political economy of media concentration and the media industry’s structural transformations. A collection of English translations of his most important works is available from University of Westminster Press as open access book under the title Critique of the Political Economy of the Media.
http://www.medienoekonomie.at,
https://www.kowi-salzburg.at/team/manfred-knoche/
Twitter: @Medoek
Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Knoche