Serving the Society with Community Media

According to Servaes (2008:351), “…the aim of community media to serve the community is often translated as enabling and facilitating access and participation by members of the community”. Community media within the social media context generates a collective participation from everyone that will lead to the concept of group cohesiveness where everyone will be acquiring the information and agreeing on the same issue addressed by the same message in the social media. This is the essence of community media where the same message will be shared together without having any dispute and arguments.

Bryant and Thompson (2002:128), refer to H. Lasswell’s major functions that the media serve in society which are:

• Surveying the Environment

   This is where the audience is aware of what is happening around them through the media messages.

• Correlation of Environment Parts

  The media generates critical thinking among the audience members in coming out with their own perceptions

  about the current messages and making sense of it.

• Transmit Social Norms and Customs

  Media messages serve as the transmission agent of the social norms and values to the new generations of

  audience.

For example, there is a poster and/or message of a missing child distributed to everyone (via email, social networking channels etc) within a particular area. This will definitely trigger the awareness of the whole community in anticipating with the media message (surveying the environment). The community leader will take action to secure its area and to ensure the safety of its community by engaging and responding to the message. He will then call up a group of strong men to patrol the area during the days and nights (correlation of environment parts).

Later on, this procedure will be recorded and distributed among the people within the same contact list and the rest of the social networking channel’s audience in order to address the same issue in the future by the next generation in ensuring that the whole community is safe from any disturbance at all time (transmit social norms and customs). This is the main function of community media where everyone is involved and participates with the delivered message and in to address the issue collectively.

Bryant, Jennings & Thompson, Susan. (2002). Fundamentals of Media Effect.

United States of America: McGraw-Hill.

Servaes, Jan. (2008). Communication Development and Social Change. India:

SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd.