Kate Coyer was Keynote Speaker at ECREA conference

The Radio Research Section of ECREA held its latest conference at the Getafe campus of the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Spain), from 28-30 October 2015. The theme was Radio: Diversity, Innovation & Policies. The challenges presented by the digitalization and convergence process have made the radio medium move into a new scenario in which it has been redefining its role.

CMDS Director of Civil Society and Technology Project, Kate Coyer was among the conference’s keynote speakers. In her talk, she took an expansive view of resistance and discussed how storytelling is political, policy is political, and media production is political. She offered some historical examples, presented the work she and her colleagues are doing around digital archiving which also speaks to the power of storytelling and who is telling our history and why that matters. And a resiliency that takes radio beyond the moment of revolution into lasting and sustained media forces in the communities in which they operate.

She drew on key examples such as radio in post revolution Tunisia, the Hungarian governments taking over the private, public and community radio sectors, Occupy radio and its roots in indie media radio, and the low power fm radio movement in the US.