ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a case of activism to promote FM broadcasting in the USA at the turn of the millennium, using data drawn from a large ethnographic project. These radio activists provide a unique site for analysing new media adoption and resistance; as technologically savvy critics of Internet utopianism, they are not dismissible as mere ‘Luddites’ or nostalgic radio hobbyists. Though features of this case are unique within a national policy context, it offers wider lessons for thinking about electronic communication and the future of civic life. In particular, the radio activists give voice to often overlooked values in electronic communication, including alternatives to ‘informational’ discourses, an insistence on contextual knowledge with community accountability, and de-emphasis of commercialism and market values. The values they ascribe to FM radio have significance as material properties of this medium but even more so as metaphorical entailments applicable to other media.
