ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author defines the term ‘protest cultures’ and explains why he choose to use it and not the other terms that have been used to describe ‘non-mainstream’ media and cultural production processes and associative forms of organisation. He also defines what he means by socio-political, professional, artistic and commercial imperatives. The author explains the role of subsidy, other funders, broadcasters and politics in shaping media and cultural work in protest cultures. He discusses the main problems associated with the interaction occurring among all these factors across the three genres introduced earlier. The author outlines the key theoretical and empirical aspects and argues that journalism is a profession based on some reasons. Although journalism has no esoteric knowledge, core skills such as gathering and processing accurate and important information so that it can be disseminated to a wider audience are identifiable. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
