Advocacy and Strategies

21st Century Community Broadcasting at NO NEW COST

The roll-out plan for 250 community owned and operated multi-media access production and distribution centres.

CACTUS Shares Implementation Plan for Revitalized Community Sector with CRTC Staff

CACTUS member Cathy Edwards, Robin Jackson (the ex-executive director of the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund) and Patrick Watt met with CRTC officials on September 3rd to outline CACTUS' proposal to revitalize the community tier by creating a new community-access license class and an accompanying Community-Access Media Fund to support the new license holders. CRTC staff listened attentively and asked lots of questions. We hope that this information-sharing session will help shape the framework of the upcoming hearings by educating CRTC staffers about what the sector can accomplish if given the right tools.

Evaluation Framework for Community Television

Community media performs various social roles including the production of collective identities, the construction of meaning, negotiating proximities to power, enriching networks of social bonds, and enhancing individual capacities. Evaluating these roles has emerged as an under-theorized and yet critical area of investigation for better understanding community media’s role(s) in social formation and for articulating its social benefits to policy-makers and funding agencies. This thesis proposes a framework for evaluating community media’s influence on social formation by mapping the influence community media outcomes have on collective capacities for determining social, political and economic outcomes (i.e. community capital).