Transformations in the Third Sector: the case study of the community radios in Spain

Abstract

The media has been traditionally a space taken by goverments and private businesses. But at the same time, and despite of the existence of this kind of mainstream media, the citizens have been looking for their own spaces of expression and freedom of broadcasting. They don´t want to be only a recipient or consumer of information and all throughout years they have founded lots of social media as publications, as radios, as televisions. This participation of the people has been grown exponentially in last decades because of the birth of Internet, altought we can found dozens of previous alternative experiences and projects which worked in the needs of social communication and different social groups.

One of that experiences before Internet is the case of free and community radio which history was developed at the same time that the spanish democracy. Nowadays, the rise of new media has consigned community radio to oblivion, like an old relic from the past. It has been beaten for the possibilities that Internet provides to the citizens to create their own ways for communication.

This paper deals with the legal issues of Third Media Sector and it analyzes the case of free and community media in Spain, above everything the links between this experiences with Internet and social networks. As a conclusion, the communication policies in Spain have been always poorly democratic, and this fact has blocked the development of the Third Media Sector in this country. Finally, this paper suggests some challenges and open questions for the future of community radios.