Community Radio in Ireland: “Defeudalising” the Public Sphere?

The growth in interest and research in community radio worldwide over the last few decades is a welcome development. While, as noted by Jankowski (2003), a fi rst generation of research has been largely empirical in nature, describing and analysing the organisation and operation of stations in diff erent contexts, more recently a second generation of work has begun to emerge which aims at grounding empirical studies within broader theoretical frameworks, most notably those relating to democracy and the public sphere. The specifi c components of the public sphere remain somewhat underdeveloped in these studies however. This article aims to contribute to this literature through an examination of community radio in Ireland within a framework drawn from evolving work of Habermas and associated deliberative, social and media theorists. The article, drawing on a detailed study of four community stations in Ireland, identifi es elements of community radio which contribute towards a “defeudalisation” of the public sphere as well as highlighting challenges in this regard. Although situated within a specifi c context, with Irish community radio operating within a comparable regulatory environment to both that in Australia and the United Kingdom, the article draws lessons of specifi c interest to researchers and activists in these domains, as well as off ering a framework of use to community radio researchers interested in examining the sector’s contribution to the re-animation of the public sphere more globally