Rising Above: Alternative Media as Activist Media

This paper asserts that truly activist media must be dually committed to critical education and to political action. Whereas my previous work has focused on the need for activist media to challenge media power from within, it is my goal here to build a model of activist media characterized by direct action through engagement in critical education and activism in both content and production. Such a model will provide insight both into the limitations of previous research on the oppositional potential of alternative media and into the challenge facing alternative media scholars and practitioners alike - that of rising above the noise of the dominant media of the cultural industry in order to communicate for radical social change.