Griffith University research team (left to right): Dr. Susan Forde, Associate Professor Michael Meadows and Dr. Jacqui Ewart. Photo: Ponch Hawkes
Griffith University research team (left to right): Dr. Susan Forde, Associate Professor Michael Meadows and Dr. Jacqui Ewart. Photo: Ponch Hawkes
About Community Media Matters
Professor Michael Meadows is based at the Centre for Cultural Research at Griffith University in Austalia. He and his colleagues are well established as the leading community radio researchers in Australia and beyond.
You may know that Australia had a head start on community broadcasting and the sector there is quite mature. Nevertheless it remained woefully uninvestigated until the team at Griffith proposed a new methodology for studying the community broadcasting sector.
The final document, Community Media Matters presents the results of the first national qualitative research study into Australian community broadcasting audiences. It explores why a significant and increasing number of Australians listen to community radio and/or watch community television, what they value about it, and how it meets their needs.
Community broadcasting in Australia began in the early 1970s with the establishment of the first metropolitan community radio stations. Community television is a comparatively recent development dating from the early 1990s. Today, Australian community radio is a mature industry catering to a wide variety of interests. Their study deals with audiences for ‘generalist’ stations in metropolitan and regional Australia and explores responses from two major interest groups — Indigenous and ethnic communities. Audiences for the nascent community television industry provide a further focus.
The data on which their findings are based has emerged from a series of audience focus groups, interviews with individual listeners/viewers and station managers, and representatives of community groups accessing community radio and television. The report also looked especially at indigenous media in Australia. Their primary findings are available on the community broadcasting website and are detailed in separate chapters in the report which you can download and read. You can also make use of the team’s toolkit and read the executive summary of findings.
Talking with Professor Meadows
Michael recently visited the UK and presented a follow up of Community Media Matters to a seminar convened at the University of Bedfordshire by radio researcher Janey Gordon.
Aware we were looking at qualitative research for the new feature Michael gave some of his time to talk about community radio research, the importance of looking at social gain and how to carry out little but meaningful pieces of in-house research.
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Continue on to explore how to run a listener focus group with Janey Gordon
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