Making Our Media: Global Initiatives Toward a Democratic Public Sphere, Vol. One: Creating New Communication Spaces.

T he first volume of the two volume set, Making Our Media ana- lyzes a collection of locally directed radio, video, and web-based news projects from around the world to assess how evolving tools, players, spaces, and methods are impacting media projects invested in participatory practices and social change.Sensitive to the realities of global inequalities the authors engage in timely discussions on the opportunities as well as the challenges of participatory media.The collection of essays comes out of a decade of ongoing exchanges between media producers, activists, academics, and policy advocates who are part of the transnational Our Media Network, which bridges theory with practice to inform and transform the practice of citizen media.Co-editors Dorothy Kidd and Clemencia Rodriguez explain, "Our Media provides a meeting space to exchange, support, and strengthen these more inclusive and participatory media and to collaborate on larger efforts to democratize national and global media systems" (p. 1).The collective expertise of the Our Media scholars is interwoven throughout the book.In addition to 13 case studies that appraise media projects from nine countries around the world, there are reflective introductions to each of the four sections of the volume.These introductions help frame the case studies with historical and theoretical context and draw on the experience of the practitioners and theorists involved in the Our Media Network.The result is that the volume reads like an organic but extremely well facilitated conversation appraising innovative grassroots media projects as well as the theories that frame these practices.Kidd and Rodgriguez introduce the volume by revisiting "watershed historical moments in the global mediascape of the last thirty years" (p.2).In an era where "participatory" has become almost a catch all phrase for any media circulating on the Internet, the editors provide a useful definition, suggesting that projects are "based in collective design, decision making, creative interchange and governance, at all stages of the production and circulation of meaning and up to and including the ownership and self government of the media outlet" (p. 6).Nick Couldy in his introduction to the first section, "Pushing Theoretical Boundaries," raises a series of provocative questions that frame many of the essays: "What do we call what we study?What aspects of this practice do we give the greatest priority to investigating?For example is it the processes that underlie these diverse media practices or how they impact audiences?"(p.25).The three authors of this first section are media producers and researchers and their practical experience informs their theoretical frameworks.

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