A B S T R A C T
Alternative media theory aims to capture an important component of the third (non-state and non-market) media sector, but it also has a number of disadvantages. The temporality of alternativeness, the homogenizing effect of the alternative-mainstream binary which excludes fluidity and diversity and the resulting media-centric position all form structural constraints of this alternative media approach. This article argues that while the alternative media approach is valuable, it can be strengthened by combining it with a rhizomatic media approach, which allows us to focus on three aspects: their role as at the crossroads of civil society, their elusiveness, and their interconnections and linkages with market and state. The combination of the alternative and rhizomatic media approaches is then applied to two Brussels radio stations, Radio Panik and Radio Air Libre, in order to show how they connect a number of civil society (and other) organizations, act as a nodal point and construct linkages with market and state. Through an analysis of the websites of the radio stations and programmes, and through an analysis of 10 broadcasts of Passe Muraille, one of Radio Air Libre’s programmes, the surprising richness of their civil society networks, in both numbers and diversity, is mapped. Moreover, a second mapping shows how both radio stations engage with market and state. The analyses of the two rhizomatic-alternative radio stations show us that the third way, navigating between market and state, still persists, but at the same time the rhizomatic approach allows us to incorporate more of the complexity of these media organizations.

A B S T R A C T
The popularization of ‘new’ Internet-based media has generated much optimism about the social and participatory-democratic potentialities of these media, leading to predictions about the demise of the mass communication paradigm, and its replacement by a many-to-many communicative paradigm. But as happened before, the reappraisal of participation also produced a number of theoretical, conceptual and empirical problems. Participation became (at least partially) an object of celebration, trapped in a reductionist discourse of novelty, detached from the reception of its audiences and decontextualized from its political-ideological, communicativecultural and communicative-structural contexts. These celebratory perspectives on participation cover how some of the basic concepts of the mass communication paradigm are still very much alive, providing the discursive frameworks for the reception of old and new media products. This article aims to show the persistence of (a number of components of) the mass communication paradigm through an analysis of the reception of two north Belgian participatory media products. One of these case studies is based on the ‘new’ world of a YouTube-like online platform called 16plus; the second case study is based on the ‘old’ concept of access television in a 2002 TV programme called Barometer. Through an analysis of these multilayered audience receptions, this article shows that participatory practices are not unconditionally appreciated by audience members, but are subject to specific conditions of possibility that are still embedded within the mass communication paradigm. Albeit in different degrees, these case studies show the importance of two ‘old’ key concepts – professional quality and social relevance – for these audiences’ evaluation of participatory practices.

A B S T R A C T
This article looks at the articulations of the subject position ‘ordinary people’ by analysing focus group discussions with audience members, and interviews with participants in a north Belgian audience discussion programme called Jan Publiek. In this talk show ordinary people are granted access to a prime-time, live television programme, in order to discuss one specific issue each broadcast. This feature positions Jan Publiek among what have been called ‘audience discussion programmes’ or ‘vox-pop’ programmes (in contrast to elite talk shows). The article focuses on the construction of the ordinary person as a complex and multi-layered subject position. We argue that this identity is relational, and positioned towards an alliance of power-blocs consisting of celebrities, experts, politicians and media professionals. Through this relational positioning, ordinary people become articulated in Jan Publiek as authentic, but also as unorganized, apolitical, powerless, unknown, spontaneous and unknowledgeable. Lefebvre’s distinction between the everyday and everydayness is then used to evaluate the political and emancipatory capacity of Jan Publiek and audience discussion programmes in general, which are sometimes criticized for their commodified and apolitical nature, but on other occasions valued for their democratic potential.

A B S T R A C T
This article examines the role of the internet in 2003 Iraq war from the perspective of the challenges it poses to the practices and formats of mainstream journalism and to the hegemonic articulations of war. Theoretically centralizing the concept of hegemony (as a network of interlocking but still distinct hegemonies), it positions blogs as alternative media by contrasting them to mainstream journalistic routines in situations of war and the tendency of mainstream media to essentialise the other/the enemy. Three very distinct cases are examined. First, the Iraqi blogger Salam Pax; second, the so-called mil-blogs and third the role of the internet in the distribution and archiving of the Abu Ghraib photographs. In each case, the discourses being produced are analysed in terms of the extent to which they challenge the hegemony of mainstream journalism and of the ideological model of war. While blogs certainly provide an alternative space for the production of different and counter-hegemonic narratives of war, approaching these blogs as inherently alternative and counter-hegemonic is deemed too simplistic. Some blogs re-enforce hegemony, and others are appropriated within the mainstream precisely because of their personalised and distinct narrative. At the same time this appropriation can also lead to hegemony striking back, disciplining the blogosphere or including some and excluding others from the mainstream public space.

A B S T R A C T
Temptation Island only seems to feed the banal voyeurism of its viewers and to offer the participants the opportunity to derive pleasure from their stay and/or to increase their celebrity status. At the same time, popular culture is an important site for the societal construction of meaning. It is a place where definitions are offered on what our societies accept or not, tolerate or not, and sanction or not. Television programmes such as Temptation Island are microcosms allowing us to examine our boundaries as well as elements in our culture that we take for granted. It is in particular the emphasis on human relationships, gender and sexuality —core elements of society— that makes Temptation Island relevant research material. The analysis of the television text and the reception of this text (on online forums) shows the cultural importance and gendered nature of discourses on fidelity, honesty, physical beauty and on the holy rules of the game. It also shows how the (male) viewers enter into a social contract with the programme, in order to ogle the (female) bodies, to derive pleasure from the failure and misfortunes of the participants, and to tolerate emotional abuse in the name of the game.

A B S T R A C T
In contrast to the informational city, the communicative city model is characterized by a normative stance on a series of social, political, ethical and spatial dimensions. Building on an expanded version of Kunzmann’s description of the communicative city, this article emphasizes the importance of alternative media organizations for developing the (concept of the) communicative city, both at the discursive and the practice-based level. In other words, the existence of urban alternative media and their defining features (where the participatory and the translocal are highlighted) contribute to the development of the discourse of the communicative city, which is one of the representational regimes that aim to produce the city, its inhabitants and its communities. The material existence of these urban alternative media simultaneously bears evidence that the communicative city already exists, although some of its key practices remain hidden in the belly of the city, often ignored by the official city cultures. This article aims to revisit alternative media theory in order to show the importance of this belly of the city for the city. The article starts with an overview of four distinct approaches towards alternative media (the community media model, the model of alternativeness, the civil society media model and the rhizomatic media model), which show the importance of the participatory and the translocal for alternative media theory and for the communicative city.

A B S T R A C T
When Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe published an elaborate version of their discourse theory in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), they were met with fierce resistance by a unified front of traditional Marxists and anti-poststructuralists. The debates on post-Marxism dominated much of the book's reception. This focus, combined with discourse theory's rather abstract nature, its lack of clear methodological guidelines, and its more natural habitat of Political Studies, caused discourse theory to remain confined to this realm of Political Studies, despite the broad ideological definition of the political preferred by the authors. This article aims to revisit discourse theory and bring it into the realm of Media Studies. A necessary condition to enhance discourse theory's applicability in Media Studies is the re-articulation of discourse theory into discourse theoretical analysis (DTA). DTA's claim for legitimacy is supported in this article by two lines of argument. Firstly, a comparison with Critical Discourse Analyses (CDA) at the textual and contextual level allow us to flesh out the similarities - and more importantly - the differences between CDA and DTA. Secondly, DTA's applicability is demonstrated by putting it to work in a case study, which focuses on the articulation of audience participation through televisional practices. Both lines of argument aim to illustrate the potential, the adaptability and the legitimacy of DTA's move into media studies.

A B S T R A C T
Chantal Mouffe’s political philosophy has been influential in a variety of domains, including sociology, cultural studies, media studies, law, art, literary criticism, and journalism studies. By combining Gramsci’s focus on hegemony with post-structuralist theory she has developed -in collaboration with Ernesto Laclau- a sophisticated perspective on the political that intersects with all aspects of society, including the role and functioning of journalism. Her emphasis on the productive role of hegemony and conflict in society combined with her plea for a radical pluralist democracy, open a wide range of new perspectives for journalism studies. We present an overview of Mouffe’s work set against a recent interview with her, in which we discuss, among other things, the potential diversity of contingent journalistic identities, ranging between being complicit with hegemonic socio-political projects, and safe-guarding or even deepening democratic institutions, including itself.

A B S T R A C T
The review essay deals with two recent publications on media-war relationships: Tumber and Palmer's 'Media at war. The Iraq crisis' (2004) and Thussu and Freedman's 'War and the media. Reporting conflict 24/7' (2003/2005). Two questions are raised in this essay. First, is it still relevant to look back at two publications on media-war relationships when (at least some of) the wars they focus on have fundamentally altered? And even more importantly, is there a convincing reason left for actually reading them? Answering these questions allows for a more fundamental reflection on the importance of academic activities in relationship to issues of media and war. Three answers are suggested: the importance and necessity of documenting, analysing and archiving war, the facilitation of academic and societal dialogue on issues of war, and the analyses of the political, economical, cultural, technological and ideological contexts that transcend singular wars. Especially the last domain is considered crucial. Although each war is characterised by a high degree of specificity and contingency, which unavoidably influences and alters the media-war-military relationships, the contextual analyses enable uncovering the presence of more structural aspects in these relationships. More specifically, these contextual analyses teach us most about the role of power and ideology in the representational processes that deal with war. These analyses again show the powerlessness of media and media professionals to escape from the dichotomised ideological model of war and from the (direct or indirect) legitimisation of what Knightley had termed 'the institution of war'.

A B S T R A C T
The concept of 'community media' (CM) has proved to be, in its long theoretical and empirical tradition, highly elusive. This theoretical problem necessitates the use of different approaches to the definition of CM, which will allow for a complementary emphasis on different aspects of the identity of CM. This article uses a combination of four theoretical approaches as starting point: CM as serving the community, CM as an alternative to the mainstream, CM as part of civil society and CM as rhizome.
This article then focuses on the fourth approach to analyze a project that aims to broaden the communicative rhizome by creating an on-line database, which allow for the exchange of locally produced content beyond the confinements of locality. RadioSwap enables program-makers all over the world to upload their content and/or download, listen to and re-broadcast content produced by others. Although still limited in its capacities, this database does allow produced media discourses to circulate, and offer an embryonic form of translocalism and socio-communicative change.

A B S T R A C T
This article uses key notions of the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe to analyze the identity of the media professional. Within their post-structural framework, this identity is seen as over-determined, contingent and constructed but at the same time subjected to a hegemonic articulation, based on four nodal points: objectivity, autonomy, management of resources and employee–employer relations. Combined with a theoretical discussion on the (counter-)hegemonic articulations, this allows for the field of discursivity that surrounds the identity of the media professional to be (re)constructed, resulting in four dimensions that offer (potential) points of identification. This field of discursivity is then used (and put to the test) as a series of sensitizing concepts for the analysis of the seven phone-in broadcasts the program Ter Zake (on VRT – the North Belgian public broadcasting company) has organized, illustrating both the contingency of the identity of the media professional and the rigidity of the hegemonic articulation.

Key Words: Audience discussion program, current affairs program, discourse theory, hegemony, identity, journalism, media professional, nodal points, objectivity, phone-in.

A B S T R A C T
In this article the theoretical notions of power developed by Giddens and Foucault are combined to serve as a framework for the analysis of the participation of 20 ‘ordinary people’ in Jan Publiek, an audience discussion programme on north Belgian public service television (VRT). In this analysis the positive/generative and negative/repressive aspects of power – united in the Giddean ‘dialectics of control’ – and especially the management of the participants in the pre-broadcast, broadcast and post-broadcasting phase and the resistance this management provokes, are brought into focus. The conclusion returns to the Foucauldian question of the (local) overall effect and the production of discourses on participation and ‘ordinary people’. Although the ‘ordinary people’ actually deliver a major contribution to the realization of the programme Jan Publiek, they are also confronted with the management of the production team, putting their participation into perspective.

Key Words: audience participation, confessional and disciplinary tech-nologies, dialectics of control, ordinary people, power, resistance, television.

A B S T R A C T
The Video Nation project is one of the BBC’s recent major contributions to stimulating audience participation within mainstream media. This project (cl)aims to maintain a balanced power relationship between participants and members of the production team. Despite its transformation from a television setting to a web-based ‘online community and archive’ (although Video Nation partially returned to television in 2003), this project still has the ambition to give people the opportunity to represent themselves and their daily life. At the same time, it signifies the multilayered culture of ‘ordinary people’ and the cultural diversity within the British nation. The analysis illustrates the complex nature of audience participation in the mainstream media as, in contrast to community media, it becomes necessary to find and maintain an equal power balance between participants and media professionals in a structurally-biased institutional context. The power play that is seen at work in a highly fluid and contingent context creates the need for constant negotiation and care in order to protect the vulnerable power equilibrium between media professionals and participants. Crucial in this process is the participatory attitude of the media professionals, whose identity is no longer solely built on being a gatekeeper and producer of content, but also on gate-opening and facilitating the creation of content.

Key Words: audience, ordinary people, power, self-representation, television, World Wide Web.

I N T R O D U C T I O N
The debates on a new public remit tend - not surprisingly - to focus on the different aspects of the public broadcasting service. Though legitimate questions originate from this focus, this article shifts the emphasis towards another group of media that can (potentially) play an important public role: community media (CM). Because of the complexity of CM, which is characterised by the tension between the diversity and the specificity of these organisations, a multi-theoretical approach is used, combining four theoretical frameworks. The combination of these frameworks not only results in a more elaborate analysis of the identity of CM, highlighting the importance and the vulnerability of these CM-organisations, but also allows emphasising the need for a series of remedying strategies. These strategies are not only aimed at improving the position of CM, but are also oriented towards the re-conceptualisation of convergence from a technologically determined articulation to an articulation that centralises the democratic quality of public life.

I N T R O D U C T I O N
The concept of 'community media' has proved to be, in its long theoretical and empirical tradition, highly elusive. The multiplicity of media organizations that carry this name has caused most mono-theoretical approaches to focus on certain characteristics, while ignoring other aspects of the identity of community media. This theoretical problem necessitates the use of different approaches to the definition of community media, which will allow for a complementary emphasis on different aspects of the identity of community media. This article firstly aims to combine four theoretical approaches in order to capture both the diversity and specificity of these community media and to show their importance. This article also claims that antagonism-used within the frame of the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe (1985)-plays a crucial role in the identity of community media. From the discourse-theoretical viewpoint, community media can be seen as the condensation of the attempt to offer an alternative for a wide range of hegemonic discourses on communication, media, economics, organizational structures, politics and democracy. Again, the four approaches will be used to analyse this broad range of alternative and hegemonic discourses. It is subsequently claimed that this antagonism towards state and market and the resistance against a multitude of hegemonic discourses has left the community media movement in a position of discursive isolation. The lack of strategic alliances has created the conditions of possibility for the muting of the democratic media discourse that is disseminated by these community media. The (organizational) bodies-in a Foucauldian sense-through which these discourses could function, disappeared. Putting the fourth (rhizomatic) approach to the forefront nevertheless offers the opportunity of a rearticulation from an antagonistic position towards an agonistic position-as Mouffe (1999a, p. 755) calls it-where the notion of pluralism enables the recognition of both the diversity of the media landscape and specificity of the different media organizations within this media landscape. This rearticulation based on a more fluid community media identity would enable these media to actively establish different types of linkages with (segments of) the state and/or the market-within loosing their proper identity and becoming incorporated and/or assimilated-using the renewed (political) interest for civil society and for revitalizing the public sphere to their benefit. Despite its importance, the fourth approach needs to remain firmly encapsulated within a multi-theoretical combination of approaches in order to capture the specificity and diversity of community media.

I N T R O D U C T I O N
This article contains a reflection on a fundamental claim made by the production teams of two North Belgian (or Flemish) audience discussion programmes Jan Publiek and De Eeuwige Strijd: by allowing 'ordinary people' to participate in their programme, they claim they facilitate and empower 'ordinary people' to discuss social, moral and political topics in public. In order to evaluate this claim a discursive and social constructivist approach will be used: participation is to be considered a floating signifier, open to articulation. (Laclau 1985: 113) In this article it is contended - following Hall's, Fairclough's and Van Dijk's position that mass media themselves can be analysed as a discourse (Hall 1980: 128-138; Van Dijk 1985: 5; Fairclough 1995: 57-68) - that Jan Publiek and De Eeuwige Strijd contain a discursive articulation of participation. In other words, the programmes Jan Publiek and De Eeuwige Strijd themselves are a discourse on participation. Referring to Pateman's definition of participation, the division of power within the programme is used to analyse the articulation of participation. (Pateman 1972: 71) The major questions then become how the different power relations function, how within the dialectics of control voices are managed, power is shared and unequal power relations are resisted, and what discourse on the participation of 'ordinary people' the combination of power and resistance eventually produces. The empirical part of this artcile is based on a selection of data that were collected in the 3ADP-project , but only the data related to the second series of Jan Publiek, broadcast from September until December 1997 and the first series of De Eeuwige Strijd, broadcast from January until May 1998, will be discussed. Two specific emissions on racism will be analysed more in-depth: the Jan Publiek emission on the 'riots' in Anderlecht (Brussels) was broadcast on 13 November 1997, the De Eeuwige Strijd broadcast on racism was broadcast on 12 January 1998. A specific software package (ISI's Profile Timer©, hereafter referred to as PRT) is used in order to facilitate the content analysis of these two emissions and to visualize the findings. The analysis of the Jan Publiek emissions is supplemented with an analysis of the interviews with the two production teams and with the 20 panel members of Jan Publiek.

A B S T R A C T
In dit artikel wordt in een eerste deel een analysemodel ontwikkeld op basis van de combinatie tussen theorieën die zich enerzijds richten op de traditionele media en anderzijds op de nieuwe media. Beide theoretische stromingen maken echter op een verschillende manier gebruik van de concepten toegang, interactie en participatie, waardoor een geïntegreerde benadering zich opdringt. Dit laat toe deze concepten elk een (duidelijk afgebakende) plaats toe te wijzen binnen eenzelfde analysemodel. Het startpunt van deze analyse is het discours van de digitale kloof, dat sterk de klemtoon legt op (een specifieke articulatie van) toegang. Via de kritieken op dit discours wordt het concept participatie uit de participatieve communicatie geïntroduceerd en behandeld. Tot slot wordt één van de 'buzzwords' uit de ICT-theorie - namelijk interactie of interactiviteit - besproken, wat zal toestaan deze drie noties in één model te integreren. In een tweede deel wordt dit zogenaamde TIP-model gebruikt om een concrete gevalstudie te evalueren. Het geselecteerde BBC-project Video Nation is gericht op het in beeld brengen van de alledaagse maar meerlagige leefcultuur van 'gewone mensen', op het representeren van de culturele diversiteit binnen de Britse natie en op het nastreven van een evenwichtige machtsrelatie tussen participanten en redactieleden. In het besluit wordt ten eerste gepleit voor het (verder) stimuleren van de participatieve houding bij media professionals, zowel op micro-, meso- als op macroniveau, waarbij voldoende aandacht besteed wordt aan de politieke, sociale, artistieke en culturele dimensies die verweven zijn met het alledaagse; aan het situeren van 'het publiek' binnen hun gemeenschappen en organisaties; en aan het opstellen van participantrechten. Ten tweede wordt de voor Video Nation kenmerkende projectmatige benadering op de voorgrond geplaatst, aangezien dit een meer structurele benadering mogelijk maakt en meer ruimte creëert voor de geïntegreerde aanwending van verschillende mediaplatformen.