doxa.comunicación | nº 30, pp. 107-125 | 107

January-June of 2020

ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978

David García-Marín. PhD in Sociology (specialised in Media and the Knowledge Society) from UNED. Professor of Journalism at Carlos III University of Madrid, where he teaches Media Theory in the degrees of Journalism and Cultural Studies. Previously, he worked as a guest professor in several master’s degree programmes in digital communication, new pedagogies and transmedia journalism at UNED, where he was also the director of several courses on digital media and disinformation. His research areas focus on podcasting and the digital audio field, participation in digital media, disinformation, transmedia journalism, and interactive pedagogies. He is the author and coordinator of numerous articles and books focusing on current perspectives on communication and the challenge of disinformation in our society.

University Carlos III, Madrid, Spain

[email protected]

ORCID: 0000-0002-4575-1911

Abstract:

The advent of Web 2.0 entailed a surge of numerous participatory theories that heralded the advent of citizen communicative empowerment and the decentralization of the media discourse, nowadays potentially led by amateur creators, or “those who were formerly known as the audience”. This essay poses a comparative analysis between the zine and the podcast as alternative media catalysts for media empowerment and the spread of counterculture narratives by studying their defining aspects, such as funding, distribution/circulation, project longevity, their features as media that is personalized, instrumental, and social, in addition to their creative rationale. From this analysis, the present study engages in a theoretical inquiry into the false novelty of participatory culture and the few possibilities of liberation that citizens can find in digital media, urging a discerning approach to utopian visions regarding digital communication.

Keywords:

Podcasting; alternative media; participation; empowerment; zine.

Resumen:

La llegada de la Web 2.0 trajo consigo la explosión de numerosas teorías de la participación que vislumbraban el empoderamiento co-municacional ciudadano y la descentralización del relato mediático, ahora también potencialmente protagonizado por creadores no pro-fesionales, “los antiguamente conocidos como la audiencia”. Este en-sayo plantea un análisis comparativo entre el zine y el podcast como medios alternativos catalizadores del empoderamiento mediático y la distribución de discursos contraculturales, a partir del estudio de sus aspectos definitorios, tales como su financiación, distribución y circulación, la durabilidad de los proyectos, su carácter de medio per-sonal, instrumental y social y sus lógicas creativas. A partir de este análisis, el trabajo teoriza sobre la falsa novedad de la cultura de la participación y las escasas posibilidades emancipatorias reales que los ciudadanos encuentran en los medios digitales, instando a un en-foque crítico hacia las utópicas visiones de la comunicación digital.

Palabras clave:

Podcasting; medios alternativos; participación; empoderamiento; zine.