This dissertation examines nonprofit, co-operative, and volunteer media enterprises operating outside Saskatchewan’s state and commercial media sectors. Drawing on historical research and contemporary case studies, I take the position that this third sector of media activity has played, and continues to play, a much-needed role in engaging marginalized voices in social discourse, encouraging participation in community-building and local governance, fostering local-global connectedness, and holding power to account when the rights and interests of citizens are jeopardized. The cases studied reveal a surprising level of resiliency among third sector media enterprises; however, the research also finds that the challenges facing third sector media practitioners have deepened considerably in recent decades, testing this resiliency. A rapid withdrawal of media development support from the public sphere has left Saskatchewan’s third sector media at a crossroads. The degree of the problem is largely unknown outside media practitioner circles, even among civil society allies. I argue this relates to the lack of recognition of nonprofit, co-operative, and volunteer media as a distinct third sector, thus obscuring the global impact when hundreds of small undertakings shed staff and reduce operations in multiple locations across Canada. At the same time, there is increasing recognition that such media have the potential to fill a void left by commercial and state media organizations that have retreated from local communities. Accordingly, this dissertation makes the case for a coordinated media development strategy as a component of the social economy. The challenge is to build useful mechanisms of support among civil society allies that do not replicate oppressive donor-client relationships that are all too common in the arena of governmental and private sector support. While never simple, the opportunities and social benefits are considerable when citizens devise the means to participate in the creation of a robust, diverse media ecology.

This thesis presents an ethnographic account of the everyday meanings and processes associated with the idea of ‘community’ within the London neighbourhood of Kilburn. In policy and popular discourse, community is cast both as somehow able to unite people across difference, and as under threat from the proliferation of difference, which is seen as impeding mutual understanding, cooperation and belonging. Within scholarly writing, ‘community’ is often challenged as too archaic, too rigid or too ambiguous a concept to provide sufficient analytical leverage or to work as a normative ideal. Against this background, my PhD takes a look the neighbourhood of Kilburn, where amidst significant diversity, tropes of community are still widely used. I investigate how residents imagine various forms of community in relation to diversity, as well as the connections and discontinuities between these various imaginings. I draw on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, following over a dozen community projects and groups, tracing informal local networks and getting to know residents individually. My ethnography ranges from community cafes, to religious youth groups, to urban ‘gangs’, to government-led urban regeneration projects. Despite the variation in how different individuals imagined ‘community’, there was a shared view of community as a space which facilitated the bridging of difference and the construction of shared moral projects. These spaces did not exist sui generis. Rather they were opened up through the balancing of two traits: fixity and fluidity. Fixity involved defining community in terms of a clearly identifiable and familiar set of boundary markers, which serve to give it an ‘objective’ existence. Fluidity involved suspending this attempt to define community in terms of the familiar, once people were involved, in order to allow for new, shared understandings and values to emerge. The first two chapters unpack this balancing of fixity and fluidity. Chapter 1, traces inclusion and exclusion in a range of community projects, and Chapter 2 looks at tropes of race and ethnicity, examining how such ideas might be treated as simultaneously fixed and fluid. . The two chapters unpack the transformational power of community. Chapter 3 looks at a community centre for young Muslims, as well as at a local community radio station, and argues that community spaces have the potential to foster an ethic of continual openness to difference. Chapter 4 looks at a group of ‘street youth’ and their diverse views of success, and argues that community can act as a collective repository of future potential, allowing community members to transform their ethical trajectory within their own lives. The final two chapters look at contestations over community. Chapter 5 looks at clashing uses of public spaces and argues that such spaces are often read in highly fixed ways, and as lacking the potential for community-like negotiations. Chapter 6 looks at local regeneration projects and contrasts the ways in which community is valued locally, to the ways in which it is valued by state and market actors. The thesis concludes by emphasizing the necessarily plural, dynamic, contested and grounded nature of the idea of community described here.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T12:31:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_Tomas_Jane_final_1_.pdf: 2090486 bytes, checksum: fb9ef4729841fedf92aaaf77930d37a1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-04-05 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The work “Communication for development: the roll of the community radios and televisions in the education for development of the communities of Mozambique” is meant to observe, analyze and describe the importance and the contribution of community radios and televisions in the consciencialization of the Mozambican populations for the accomplishment of actions towards local development. The studied period comprehend the last 15 years (1991 - 2005) of existence of the first media law, approved by the parliament. The research was centered in the actions taken both by the government and by civil society in general, and the meaning that the community radios and televisions have for the local population, based on theoretical and practical knowledge acquired during the present study. Community radio and television are education instruments and understanding of the community's people. They have an important part in the citizens' life, mobilizing them to involve on taken actions in the combat process of the absolute poverty that the population lives in their community. They are community goods contributing to the sustainable development of the own communities. / Trata-se de um estudo sobre as rádios e televisões comunitárias em Moçambique. São investigadas as ações implementadas tanto pelo governo como pela sociedade civil, bem como o significado que essas emissoras têm para as populações locais. O objetivo é analisar a importância e a contribuição das rádios e televisões comunitárias para a conscientização das populações moçambicanas e para a realização com vistas ao desenvolvimento local. A metodologia privilegiou a pesquisa bibliográfica e documental, além de entrevistas semi-estruturadas junto a coordenadores das emissoras, entre outros. Foram estudadas 8 emissoras sediadas nas províncias de Zambézia, Sofala, Inhambane, Maputo e Maputo Cidade, de 2004 a 2005, além de ter sido feito um breve resgate do percurso histórico da comunicação em Moçambique nos últimos 15 anos, desde a promulgação da primeira Lei de Imprensa aprovada pela Assembléia da República. Conclui-se que as rádios e a televisões comunitárias são instrumentos de educação e conscientização das pessoas das comunidades investigadas. Elas desempenham um papel importante na vida dos cidadãos, mobilizando-os a se envolverem nas ações de combate à pobreza absoluta que se vive no seu país. São bens comunitários contribuindo para o desenvolvimento sustentável das próprias comunidades

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Comunicação e saúde no Brasil, no que se refere à sua ação política, pode ser identificada, embrionariamente, quando ainda nem se configurava como campo, quando, no relatório final de 1986 da VIII Conferência Nacional de Saúde (CNS), inclui-se como garantia do direito à saúde o direito à liberdade, à livre organização e expressão. A partir daí, esse campo vai acumulando forças com os movimentos sociais, culminando no relatório final da XII CNS, em 2003, onde se torna claro o reconhecimento das rádios comunitárias como instrumento de divulgação e produção de temas relacionados ao SUS. Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar as relações que se estabelecem entre profissionais de saúde, ouvintes/usuários e comunicadores populares envolvidos com uma rádio comunitária, de modo a entender como são constituídos os nexos entre um programa de rádio sobre saúde e os imaginários desses sujeitos. Para isso, utilizou-se uma abordagem metodológica qualitativa, fazendo-se uso da etnografia e do estudo de recepção. O campo empírico se constituiu de um programa de rádio sobre saúde, o Bloco Mulher Saúde, transmitido pela rádio comunitária Rádio Comunidade FM 104,9 no município de Nova Friburgo, RJ. As discussões sobre o material pesquisado foram divididas em categorias analíticas, cuja análise gerou os seguintes resultados: a comunicação comunitária pode contribuir como mediador político-cultural na vocalização das demandas sobre saúde; existe a manutenção e reprodução do linguajar técnico hegemônico em saúde pelos médicos ao participarem de uma rádio comunitária; a comunicação comunitária pode auxiliar na construção de estratégias para ampliar o controle social no SUS / Communication and health in Brazil, as far as its political action is concerned, can be identified, in an incipient state, in the final 1986 report of the VIII of the National Health Conference (NHC). In this report, the right to freedom, to the free expression and social organization is included as a guarantee to the right to health, prior to the constitution of Communication and health as a field of investigation. Since then, this field has been strengthened with social movements, in a process that culminates, in the final 2003 report of the XII NHC, with the recognition of community radios as an instrument of production and divulgation of themes related to the SUS (Brazilian Unified Health System). This study aims at analyzing the relations between health professionals, listeners/users and popular communicators within a community radio, as a means of characterizing the nexus between a radio program on health and the conceptions and/or expectations of the people involved in it. It was used a qualitative methodological approach, by making use of ethnographic and media audience methodologies. The empirical field was through a radio program about health, Block Women's Health, broadcasted by the community radio Rádio Comunidade FM 104,9 in Nova Friburgo, RJ. The data was divided into analytical categories and the analysis gave rise to the following results: the community communication can be a cultural-political mediator for the expression of the communitys demands on health; the hegemonic medical jargon is maintained and reproduced by the medical doctors who participate in a community radio; the community communication can contribute to the creation of strategies that broaden the social control of the SUS

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Comunicação e saúde no Brasil, no que se refere à sua ação política, pode ser identificada, embrionariamente, quando ainda nem se configurava como campo, quando, no relatório final de 1986 da VIII Conferência Nacional de Saúde (CNS), inclui-se como garantia do direito à saúde o direito à liberdade, à livre organização e expressão. A partir daí, esse campo vai acumulando forças com os movimentos sociais, culminando no relatório final da XII CNS, em 2003, onde se torna claro o reconhecimento das rádios comunitárias como instrumento de divulgação e produção de temas relacionados ao SUS. Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar as relações que se estabelecem entre profissionais de saúde, ouvintes/usuários e comunicadores populares envolvidos com uma rádio comunitária, de modo a entender como são constituídos os nexos entre um programa de rádio sobre saúde e os imaginários desses sujeitos. Para isso, utilizou-se uma abordagem metodológica qualitativa, fazendo-se uso da etnografia e do estudo de recepção. O campo empírico se constituiu de um programa de rádio sobre saúde, o Bloco Mulher Saúde, transmitido pela rádio comunitária Rádio Comunidade FM 104,9 no município de Nova Friburgo, RJ. As discussões sobre o material pesquisado foram divididas em categorias analíticas, cuja análise gerou os seguintes resultados: a comunicação comunitária pode contribuir como mediador político-cultural na vocalização das demandas sobre saúde; existe a manutenção e reprodução do linguajar técnico hegemônico em saúde pelos médicos ao participarem de uma rádio comunitária; a comunicação comunitária pode auxiliar na construção de estratégias para ampliar o controle social no SUS / Communication and health in Brazil, as far as its political action is concerned, can be identified, in an incipient state, in the final 1986 report of the VIII of the National Health Conference (NHC). In this report, the right to freedom, to the free expression and social organization is included as a guarantee to the right to health, prior to the constitution of Communication and health as a field of investigation. Since then, this field has been strengthened with social movements, in a process that culminates, in the final 2003 report of the XII NHC, with the recognition of community radios as an instrument of production and divulgation of themes related to the SUS (Brazilian Unified Health System). This study aims at analyzing the relations between health professionals, listeners/users and popular communicators within a community radio, as a means of characterizing the nexus between a radio program on health and the conceptions and/or expectations of the people involved in it. It was used a qualitative methodological approach, by making use of ethnographic and media audience methodologies. The empirical field was through a radio program about health, Block Women's Health, broadcasted by the community radio Rádio Comunidade FM 104,9 in Nova Friburgo, RJ. The data was divided into analytical categories and the analysis gave rise to the following results: the community communication can be a cultural-political mediator for the expression of the communitys demands on health; the hegemonic medical jargon is maintained and reproduced by the medical doctors who participate in a community radio; the community communication can contribute to the creation of strategies that broaden the social control of the SUS

Nosso estudo recupera o percurso de emissoras comunitárias na cidade de São Paulo a partir de suas legalizações, buscando, especificamente, os procedimentos adotados por suas equipes para definir e organizar a sua programação, para se relacionar com os seus ouvintes, para resolver suas questões de sustentabilidade financeira e ainda refletir se na emissora há lugar para Educação. Exercitamos formas diferenciadas de analisar as grades de programação dessas emissoras, aqui compreendidas como recursos que guardam informações múltiplas e que podem ser reveladores do tipo de trabalho que desenvolvem. Tivemos como pressuposto o fato de que, se consideradas em seus propósitos e nas formas como são concebidas, planejadas e organizadas, as ofertas de programação de uma emissora revelam a identidade dessa rádio e podem também desvelar as competências comunicativo-educativas que priorizam em sua trajetória. Assim, considerando as afirmações de Roldão (2006) e Peruzzo (2011) de que a caracterização de uma emissora está no seu uso e nos conteúdos que gera, nossa constatação partiu da análise de três aspectos: conteúdos de programação da emissora, grau de interlocução com o ouvinte e forma pela qual expressa o seu compromisso com os rumos da comunidade. Na prática, percebemos uma emissora com pouco espaço de participação do ouvinte, fôlego e entusiasmo reduzidos para mudanças e com sérios problemas de sustentação financeira. Os apoios culturais, única forma de aportar recursos de patrocinadores ou anunciante, são regulados por orientações bastante restritivas. Legalizadas, ainda não ousam buscar modelos e formatos diferenciados de programação, tampouco imprimem gestões mais democráticas na condução de suas equipes em nome da lei da radiodifusão comunitária, que precisam respeitar para não perderem a autorização de funcionamento. Neste contexto contraditório, nos orientou um sistema de hipóteses no qual a grande maioria das emissoras de baixa potência em operação na cidade já está sem fôlego em função das restrições que comprometem sua sobrevivência e que estão impostas na lei que as regulamentou. Percebemos também que cada emissora criou um jeito de marcar presença no cenário da radiodifusão e está forjando uma nova identidade, ainda em construção / Our study recovers the path of community radio stations in São Paulo from its legalization, specifically seeking the procedures adopted by their teams to define and organize your schedule, to relate to their listeners, to solve their issues of financial sustainability and also reflect if the there is a place for education on the radio station. We have exercised different ways of analyzing the programming grids of those stations, here understood as resources that keep multiple kinds of information and may reveal the type of work they develop. We presuppose the fact that, if considered in its purpose and the ways they are designed, planned and organized, offers of a station programming reveal the identity of this radio and can also reveal the communicative and educational skills that prioritize in its path. Considering the claims of Roldão (2006) and Peruzzo (2011) that the characterization of a station is in its use and the content it generates, our findings came from analysis of three aspects: the station\'s program content, degree of dialogue with the listener and the way in which he expresses his commitment to the direction of the community. In practice, we find a station with little space for the participation of the listener, with reduced enthusiasm for change and with serious problems of financial support. Cultural supports, the only way to provide resources for sponsors or advertising, are regulated by quite restrictive guidelines. Legalized radio stations, do not dare to seek models and differentiated programming formats yet, nor have more democratic management in the conduct of their teams on behalf of the law of community radio broadcasting, which must respect not to lose the license to operate. In this contradictorily context, we were guided in a system of hypotheses in which the vast majority of low power stations operating in the city is already breathless if you considered the restrictions that compromise their survival and that are imposed in the law that regulated them. We also saw that each station has created a way to be present at the scene of broadcasting and is forging a new identity, still under construction.

Dans cette thèse, nous nous demandons comment les mouvements contreculturels ont trouvé de nouveaux lieux d’expression grâce à la plus grande accessibilité de l’audiovisuel, grâce aussi au combat des « radios libres ». Plus précisément, nous cherchons à savoir pourquoi et comment la société et l’audiovisuel français ont permis la constitution d’un média alternatif radiophonique comme Radio Ici et Maintenant (RIM) et comment cette radio a trouvé un modèle économique viable pour diffuser son idéologie. Nous verrons que l’existence et la persistance de RIM est due à la conjonction de deux phénomènes : d’une part la diminution du coût d’entrée dans la radiophonie grâce au développement et au combat des « radios libres » qui ont donné naissance aux radios associatives (avec leur modèle juridico-économique spécifique), et d’autre part la diminution du coût d’entrée dans le marché religieux avec le développement de la contreculture New Age française issue de la contreculture américaine, elle-même issue des pensées religieuses alternatives occidentales (liées à l’ésotérisme, au médiumnisme) et des religions orientales (l’hindouisme et le bouddhisme). Ainsi, le modèle juridico-économique spécifique des radios associatives a permis de faire vivre puis persister l’idéologie « radiolibriste » et New Age au sein de RIM. Mais ajoutons que ce modèle n’aurait pas été possible s’il n’avait pas été porté par des animateurs bénévoles, des invités militants et des auditeurs actifs dont nous analysons ici le profil sociologique. L’intérêt scientifique de ce sujet provient du fait qu’il s’agit principalement d’étudier RIM qui est une ancienne « radio libre ». Elle a été l’une des radios les plus importantes au sein du mouvement. C’est la plus ancienne des radios locales privées parisiennes. C’est aujourd’hui une radio associative de catégorie A. Cette catégorie correspond à un grand nombre de radios (environ 600), mais celles-ci sont peu étudiées. Enfin, c’est une radio New Age et l’un des seuls médias audiovisuels français New Age. Croisant histoire et sociologie du religieux, des médias, de la communication, de la politique, des sciences, cette thèse repose sur une écoute assidue, sur de nombreux entretiens et discussions informelles, sur l’étude de différents fonds d’archives (papier, audio, numérique) et sur de nombreuses observations de type ethnographique. Nous donnons dans une première partie les outils scientifiques pour pouvoir analyser ce phénomène. Nous verrons ensuite dans quel contexte historique, radiophonique, économique, social, juridique et politique RIM fait son apparition et continue d’exister aujourd’hui. Enfin, nous nous focalisons sur le modèle radiophonique proposé, et sur les acteurs de cette radio. / In this thesis, we wonder how countercultural movement found new places of expression through the increased accessibility of audiovisual, thanks to "free radio" fight. Specifically, we want to know why and how society and the French media have enabled the establishment of an alternative media like Radio Ici et Maintenant (RIM) and how this radio has found a viable business model to spread its ideology. We shall see that the existence and persistence of RIM is due to the combination of two factors: firstly the reduction in the cost of entry into the radio broadcasting through the development and struggle of "free radio" that gave birth to associative radios (with their specific legal and economic model) and also the decrease in the cost of entering the religious market with the development of the French New Age counterculture issue of the American counterculture, itself the result of religious thoughts Western alternatives (related to the esoteric, the mediumship) and Eastern religions (Hinduism and Buddhism). Thus, the specific legal and economic model of associative radios allowed to live and persist "radiolibriste" and New Age ideology within RIM. But add that this model would not have been possible if it had not been worn by volunteer facilitators, invited activists and active listeners which we analyze the sociological profile. The scientific interest of this subject is the fact that it is mainly to study RIM which is an old "free radio". She was one of the most important radio stations in the movement. It is the oldest Parisian private local radio station. Today, it is a community radio (category A). This category corresponds to a large number of radio stations (about 600), but these are little studied. Finally, this is a New Age radio and one of the only French audiovisual media New Age. Crossing history and sociology of religion, media, communication, politics, science, this thesis is based on a constant listening, on numerous interviews and informal discussions on the study of different archives (paper, audio, digital) and numerous ethnographic observations. We give in the first part scientific tools to analyze this phenomenon. We will then see in which historical, radio, economic, social, legal and political context RIM appeared and continues to exist today. Finally, we focus on the proposed radio model and the actors of this radio.

Ayant pour ambition de « rendre la parole » aux populations déshéritées de la ville de Pikine, banlieue de la capitale sénégalaise, Débat local est l’émission politique interactive de la radio communautaire Air’Jeunes fondée à la fin des années quatre-vingt-dix à l’initiative des associations de jeunes de la région dakaroise avec le soutien d’une grande ONG canadienne. Cette thèse étudie les usages de cette émission par les citoyens locaux dans les trois domaines principaux où les militants et promoteurs de la démocratie participative s’attachent à développer des dispositifs d’action citoyenne visant à corriger les défauts et insuffisances du gouvernement représentatif au regard de l’idéal démocratique : la place des citoyens dans le système de production des biens publics locaux, les relations symboliques entre les élus et les électeurs et l’espace public de débat sur les politiques publiques et l’action des représentants. À partir d’une étude de terrain à caractère ethnographique menée en trois séquences de 2006 à 2011 dans les studios de la radio et sur les lieux d’écoute de l’émission, il apparaît que si l’émission a permis à des formes de contestation du pouvoir local de s’exprimer publiquement sans médiation, la réalisation du projet originel de l’émission s’est heurtée à un contexte local défavorable marqué par l’absence de moyens donnés aux élus locaux pour exercer leurs compétences récemment décentralisées et par un journalisme politique local polarisé autour de deux formes dominantes laissant peu de place au débat argumenté : le journalisme antagonique des grands groupes privés et de la petite presse du secteur informel et le journalisme légitimiste du groupe public. En dépit de leur attachement militant au projet, les responsables de la radio et les animateurs de l’émission dont les origines sociales et les formations scolaires les tenaient très éloignés des formes de consommation des biens informationnels des Pikinois ainsi que des activités des associations informelles de quartier très vivantes dans la banlieue dakaroise ont progressivement cédé aux forces d’attraction qu’exerçaient les radios privées ordinaires sur leur vision de leur avenir professionnel personnel et, corrélativement, sur leur pratique journalistique. / Aspiring to “give a voice” to the poor people of Pikine, a suburb of the Senegalese capital, “Local Debate” is an interactive political programme of the community radio Air’Jeunes, created in the late nineties at the initiative of youth associations in the Dakar region with support from a major Canadian NGO. This thesis explores the use of this programme by local citizens in three main areas where activists and proponents of participatory democracy are committed to developing citizen action mechanisms, aiming to correct the defects and shortcomings under the democratic ideal of representative government: the role of citizens in the production system of local public goods, symbolic relationships between elected leaders and electors, and the public space for debate on public policies and the actions of representatives. Based on an ethnographic field study conducted in three phases between 2006 and 2011 in the radio production studio and the show’s listening sites, it appears that, even if the programme has enabled forms of contestation of local authority to be voiced publicly without mediation, the realisation of the original project faced an unfavourable local context marked by the lack of resources given to local officials to exercise their newly decentralised powers and a local political journalism polarised around two dominant forms, leaving little room for debate: the antagonistic journalism of big private groups and small informal press, and the legitimising journalism of the public service group. Despite their militant commitment to the project, radio staff and hosts whose social origins and educational backgrounds distance them from the forms of consumption of information goods and activities of Pikine’s inhabitants, as well as the dynamic activities of informal neighbourhood associations in the suburbs of Dakar, have gradually yielded to forces of attraction exercised by mainstream private radios, influencing their vision of their professional future and, in turn, their journalistic practice .

This study sets out to investigate Lunchtime Live, a twice-weekly, one-hour long current affairs show broadcast on a small community radio station, Radio Grahamstown, to understand its role in the local public sphere, and its value in helping civil society’s understanding of and involvement in the power structures and political activities in Grahamstown. Lunchtime Live seeks to cultivate a collective identity and promote public participation in the public affairs of Grahamstown. As a key avenue of investigation, this study seeks to test theory against practice, by evaluating Lunchtime Live’s aspirations against the audiences’ perception of it. This investigation uses qualitative content analysis of selected episodes of recorded transcripts of the shows that aired between August 2010 and March 2011, together with the audiences’ verbalised experiences of this programme through focus group discussions. The study principally uses qualitative research informed by reception theory. The research reveals three key findings. First, that resonance rather than resistance is the more dominant ‘stance’ or ‘attitude’ towards the content of Lunchtime Live. Residents interviewed agreed that the programme is able to give a “realistic” representation of their worldview, and thus is able to articulate issues that affect their lives. Second, that whilst the programme is helping establish links between members of the civil society as well as between civil society and their political representatives, residents feel that local democracy is failing to bring qualitative improvements to their everyday lives and that more ‘participation’ is unlikely to change this. Most respondents blame this on a lack of political will, incompetence, corruption and populist rhetoric by politicians who fail to deliver on the mantra of ‘a better life for all’ in the socioeconomic sphere. The study finds a scepticism and even cynicism that participatory media seems to be able to do little to dilute. Thirdly, in spite of the largely positive view about Lunchtime Live’s capacity to be a platform for public engagement, its participatory potential is structurally constrained by the material privations of most of its listeners. Given that in order to participate in talk shows and discussions audience members have to phone in, economic deprivation often precludes this. It is clear from this research that despite shows such as Lunchtime Live that are exploring new techniques of popular involvement, the voice of the ordinary people still struggles to be heard.

MA (Linguistics) / Department of Communication and Applied Languages Studies / The question of the use of languages in radio broadcasting is of particular importance in multilingual communities in Vhembe district of Limpopo province. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) issues broadcasting licenses, and further regulates conditions of implementation of these licenses. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which community radio stations in Vhembe district adhere to ICASA language policies and guidelines stipulated in their licenses. Literature was drawn from government language policy documents (Acts, rules and regulations), broadcasting legislative framework manuals (ICASA), government gazettes, books, journals, magazines, and newspapers. The design for the study is exploratory, whereas the target population comprised of seven (7) community radio stations, fifteen (15) radio programmes, and station managers of community radio stations in the Vhembe district. Purposive sampling was used to select three community radio stations, three programmes per station and station manager of each sampled station. Non-participant observation, documents analysis and tape recorder were used as instruments for data collection, whereby the researcher observed, recorded a total of (nine) 9 talk format programmes. The researcher further analysed documents (broadcasting licenses and programme schedules), from sampled radio stations, to examine stipulated language quotas by ICASA. Lastly, the researcher employed unstructured interviews to collect data from the station managers of community radio stations, in the Vhembe district. The sampled data was analysed through qualitative content analysis and interpreted subsequently. Findings from data analysis determined that community radio stations partially adhere to the policies stipulated in their licenses. / NRF