ABSTRACT
In the interwar period, imperial broadcasting was dominated by state actors that made a strategic use of shortwave transmissions to promote the status quo of the colonial system. Against this backdrop, this chapter discusses how the shortcomings of the Portuguese state's broadcasting structure opened the opportunity for the white settlers living in Africa to operate radio stations that gave visibility to lifestyles and political ideas different from those promoted on the transmissions aired from Lisbon. This allowed social groups that were privileged in the colonial context, but not part of the official power structures, to use radio to increase their symbolic power. From the early 1960s onwards, the broadcasting landscape in the Portuguese Empire was also marked by broadcasts operated by the pro-independence movements that made a tactical use of radio to counter the colonial regime and to gain the support of the African populations. Altogether, the different actors that used radio to promote their political agendas created a broadcasting environment marked by an entangled and complicated relationship between strategies and tactics.
