ABSTRACT
This chapter presents is a group of media activists whose work foregrounded engagement with communication technologies. Working in a self-consciously collaborative mode, the activists approached technical work as a site to enact do-it-yourself (DIY) politics. This practice was understood to be in service of a broader goal of facilitating technical and political engagement through "demystification" of technology. These activists came together in the mid-1990s as a pirate radio collective in Philadelphia, PA, in the United States. After they were raided and shut down by the Federal Communications Commission in 1998, they stopped broadcasting, and turned toward policy advocacy and building radio stations. Expanding access to low-power FM radio (LPFM) was their main issue, but they also considered how to expand their mission to "free the airwaves" to include not only radio but also Internet-based technologies, especially community wi-fi. The chapter draws from a much larger ethnographic project, including participant-observation and around thirty semi-structured interviews, conducted from 20030-2007.
