Juan, Ellie, John, Chris, Amalie, everyone-
thanks for a stimulating discussion. Seems like you have raised pretty much
every issue in the book- community media, un-civil society media, etc.

Points I would like to speak to/make:

* the mission statement of this network: citizens's media!
Ellie, you seem to say that OURMedia should be "a forum for debating the
meaning of community and alternative media." Not only. Check the definition
at http://www.ourmedianet.org/general/index.eng.html
" Founded in 2000, OURMedia/NUESTROSMedios is
an emerging global network with the goal of
facilitating a long-term dialogue between academics,
activists, practitioners and policy experts
around citizens' media initiatives. "
Anyway, I suggest revisiting the mission statement. If it needs changing, we
will have to devising a system for debating and deciding.
Chris, this should answer your question: Who is the "we" in "ourmedia"? 'We'
means 'citizens' (and yes, that is also a problematic term, but let me get
to that later). I think it means our civic self as opposed to other
identities (which we also may have at the same time) as consumers, business
people, media workers, government officials, etc.

* terms and discourses: community media, alternative media, indigenous media
I'm currently working on a paper on the different discourses we have in this
field. I agree with Ellie that we have to keep discussing and defining the
meaning of those terms. I also think that 'community media' is a very
difficult term, connected to different discourses, from localism to
development,  many at odds with a progressive agenda ( if it looks
"neo-stalinist" to someone- they just may have forgotten to take off those
cold war goggles- I'm referring to ).
There is currently a very instructive discussion at the usually silent WSIS
Community Media Working Group.
http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cm

* Is our media moving in the direction of exclusivity? --> OURMedia
governance.
Chris, I think this needs to be debated AT LENGTH. One quick thing. there is
one important way in which it is getting less exclusive: The dirt work is
getting spread around more. As I understand it until OMIV, the person
ultimately in charge for making sure everything works &happens (and thereby
having more decision making power) was Clemencia. It's fair to say that
since Clemencia is no longer the motor, moderator, translator and key person
here, things have gotten pretty disorganized. This is not necessarily a bad
thing, as long as we can move on with getting re-organized. This means we
have to put in place some structures.

* Needs of the network right now are double: organizing the next conference,
re-organizing itself- one cannot work without the other.

I have a lot I 'd like to contribute but Buy Nothing Day is in 2 days and
I'm totally swamped with preparations! OK, I will be late to my own event...



Gabriele Hadl

Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto
Media Literacy Research Project
http://www.mlpj.org