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Friday, November 11
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RAR01
Business and Regulation
PP 312
Reading between lines: the relationship between media coverage and legal status of Community Radios within European countries
F. Ribeiro
1
1
University of Minho, Communication & Society Research Centre, Braga, Portugal
Community radios (CR) face countless contradictions all over Europe. From legal disparities to different perceptions of its social and economic value, recent
research has been promoting ground breaking discussion on the potential of exclusively-community driven radio projects of communication (Carpentier,
2014; Howley, 2010). According to Doliwa & Rankovic (2014), many factors contributed to the present paradoxes of European community radio, ranging
from lack of political initiative to adjust the Media Law, low voluntary involvement, limited social knowledge about its possible benefits, to the restricted
spectrum occupied by the commercial and public sector. As these projects operate mainly in a local – or even smaller – scope, the adoption of legal suit‑
ableness for community radio may be a decisive answer for the latest economic events which disgracefully lead local media to its extinction or substantially
reduction of potential (Cammaerts, 2009). A possible strategy to understand the social value of CR can be provided through the representation of these
projects by the media and the types of news coverage published in this regard. Furthermore, conducting a research based on media discourse is indeed
a very typical tool to understand how a problem, context, group or reality is portrayed by/for a society, whether migratory contexts (Macedo & Cabecinhas,
2012), educational policies (Melro, 2011) or climate change endeavours (Carvalho, 2010) are analysed in this regard. If it is understood media discourse as
both mirroring the reality or create a new one by its own account, it could be interesting to follow this methodology to observe how European mainstream
media offer perceptions of the so-called Third Sector Media, particularly in the case of CR. Inspired by these theoretical assumptions, acknowledging this
years’ECREA general guideline to contest to the “unstoppable flow of permanent changes (…) disparity of various histories, geographies, ontologies and
technologies”, this communication seeks to find meaningful data to the following two objectives: 1) Providing an overview of the regulatory framework
of community radio in Europe, from important previous studies (Meda, 2014; CMFE, 2012, etc.); 2) Taking into account this generic openness/reluctance
of legal instruments, observing if there is a relationship between such framework and howmainstreammedia (online newspapers, for instance) tend to in‑
form/be silent towards these radios.This comparison will expectably answer these research questions: is there a clear relationship between legal framework
of CR and the number of news about them? Is it safe to admit that if a country does not embody legal regulation for CR, media consequently neglect this
issue? If media regularly report on CR, what subjects, concerns, actors, troubles or main events are portrayed? This communication stands for a particular
aim of European Commission's Horizon 2020, followed by the Communication & Society Research Centre in the University of Minho (Braga – Portugal),
which demands for social and communication shifts, through technological solutions with tangible effects on people's daily routines. Thus, these “societal
challenges”, as put forward by the EC, are at the core of the Strategic Plan of CSRC for 2015–2020.
PP 313
Radio and Regulation: The Loss of Localism in Portugal
E. Costa e Silva
1
1
University of Minho, Communication Sciences, Braga, Portugal
The loss of localism has been a common trend in most radio markets in Europe and US. Localism is critical when analyzing the radio universe. Local content
and local ownership have been closely associated with the concept, a crucial rationale for justifying radio regulation. However, deregulation of ownership
lead to a concentration phenomenon that has affected local radios in several western democracies and Portugal has not been an exception. Since the dem‑
ocratic revolution in 1974, radio sector has been shaped by laws that enlarged the limits to ownership concentration. Nonetheless, since there is a media
regulation agency in Portugal (ERC) with powers to prevent concentration in the case pluralism and diversity are at stake, there are legal possibilities to stop
the erosion of localism by applying rules to markets in the defense of radio local dimension. Each market operation has to be formally authorized by ERC
within the legal framework: concentrations operations can be prevented if there is a risk for the freedom of speech or to the confrontation of the different
points of view; and the decision on the nature of the programming (only musical or with some news broadcast) should be taken considering its impact on
the diversity and pluralism of the radio offer in the geographical coverage area and on the safeguard of the local news.The question is whether the media
regulator has been acting in accordance to its remit, controlling market forces in order to stop the harm to these principles, or if it has adopted a market-ori‑
ented approach, privileging economic factors. This paper analyses the local radio market in Portugal by, in a first moment, assessing the changes in the leg‑
islation that have allowed for concentration. In a second moment, the regulatory action of ERC will be analyzed by examining the decisions of the media
regulator in what concerns the radio market. Since a new law passed at the end of 2010, all decision from 2011 to 2014 will be assessed in order to highlight
the trends of concentration of radio market and to identify the profile of the media regulator action.
PP 314
Radio Is the Curator: An Historical Overview of the Music Business in Brasil
E. Vicente
1
, D. Gambaro
1
, T. Ramos
2
1
University of São Paulo, Arts & Communication School - ECA, São Paulo, Brazil
2
University Anhembi Morumbi, Communication & Education School, São Paulo, Brazil
The historical relations between the record and the radio industries back several years and are considerably known. In Brazil music industry has consolidated
as of the 1960’s, when international record companies (majors) seeking for newmarkets fixed operations in the country and assembled their castings of Bra‑
zilian artists. Radio and television were then fundamental for creating idols and thus consolidating a music market. Given this context, the proposed paper
will show the way radio has been performing as mediator – even as curator – of musical consumption from this period on, acting today as the analogic part
of the smart curation, as proposed by Frédéric Martel. We call it a mediator because, between the divulgation work of the record companies and the listen‑
ership, there is a negotiation space operated for a long period by the radio presenters and, more recently, by the radio broadcaster managers themselves.
Radio Research
(RAR01–RAR06)