For the pilot study four stations were investigated – two in an urban area and two in rural areas.
The four stations were initially identified based on a literature review of existing community radio stations. To select the final stations to focus on, I narrowed down based on four considerations.
Social context was the first consideration. Out of the four stations, my initial aim was to select two stations: one in an urban area and one in a rural area, for comparison purposes as far as community access of community radio content is concerned. This was working with the hypothesis that urban areas are more media-rich, and the idea that “radio seems to have less direct influence the more media-rich the context, and the more sophisticated and media-literate the audience” (Myers 2008, 37). Following the pilot study, however, instead of researching on two stations purely based on their setting in rural or urban areas, I decided to study three stations, not only due to geographical setting, but also based on their unique organisational features which were noted during the pilot study. As such, the final decision to study three out of the four stations – both of the rural stations and one of the urban stations – was due to the perceived value that they would add to the study in terms of diversity of organisational structures, as per maximum variation sampling and typical case sampling considerations, described in more detail later in this chapter.
The second consideration was the various funding and management structures in existence in the community radio sector. Given the unstable nature of the community broadcasting sector in Kenya, with stations going off and on air due to funding constraints, I was interested in stations which had managed to stay in existence for at least two years, such that they had relatively fixed, functioning management structures. Therefore, longevity of the station’s life was another factor that I put into consideration. The four stations met this criterion.
Licensing was the third consideration. In Kenya, few stations operate under a community radio license. However, many vernacular stations, even those individually owned, term themselves as community broadcasters based on their language of broadcast or radius of coverage.
Nevertheless, these individually-owned stations do not qualify as community broadcasters according to the existent legislation and therefore are not subject to community broadcast regulations. I opted to focus on the stations holding a community broadcasting license as defined in the legislation, as these would operate within one set of rules – the boundaries set out for community broadcasters in the law. Reports suggested the existence of 10-15 operational community radio stations across Kenya25 as of 2010. Out of these, three were in Nairobi’s slums, while the rest were distributed across the country.
The fourth factor was broadcast language used. Since I knew that content analysis would be one of my research methods, it was important to select community broadcasters whose content I would generally understand without needing substantial translation. This limited my choice to those broadcasting in either of Kenya’s official languages, Kiswahili or English, and those broadcasting in three of the Bantu languages of central and Eastern Kenya: Kikuyu, Embu and Meru. This elimination narrowed my choice to six stations. Of these, three were in Nairobi:
Ghetto FM, Pamoja FM and Koch FM, and three were located outside Nairobi: MMUST FM, a university station, Kangema FM and Mugambo FM. The pilot study revealed that of the three Nairobi stations, Ghetto FM was no longer operational, and instead, a commercial station, Ghetto Radio, was now running. This left the choice between Pamoja FM and Koch FM. Of the three stations outside Nairobi, MMUST FM was located in a university, set up mainly for student training purposes, and targeting university students rather than the community residing around the university. Since one of my research questions was the demographics of those
25 See for instance ‘Poised for growth: Community Radio in Kenya’ report by Fairbairn and Rukaria (available on http://www.developingradiopartners.org/kenya.html), one of the few comprehensive community radio surveys carried out in Kenya since the sector’s commencement in 2004.
listening to and participating in community radio, this station was considered inadequate for answering this research question, since its major listenership would in all likelihood consist of one demographic group – the student population of 18-25 years old.
The following rationale was applied when deciding which of the two urban stations to study.
The two urban stations visited in the pilot phase of the research were Pamoja FM and Koch FM, located next to the Kibera slums and in the Korogocho slums of Nairobi, respectively. I eventually decided to study Koch FM, rather than Pamoja FM. Pamoja FM is the station near the Kibera slums of Nairobi. From visits to the station, it turned out that Pamoja FM is in fact located in the suburb near the slum and not actually in the slum. This already created a feel of disconnection from the slum. During the various research visits in the course of the pilot study, the station manager was not forthcoming in interviews, and seemed to have a ‘canned’ story, which had apparently been narrated many times, perhaps to donors and other researchers.
Efforts to probe about underlying issues from the manager and other station staff did not bring to light much new information that had not already been noted in background reading on the station.
Incidentally, although it holds a community broadcasting license, this station was founded by three friends who pooled funds and applied for the license.26 As such, it is technically not owned and run by the community, but rather, by several individuals in the community, making it an uneasy fit into the operationalised definition of community media as being community-run. In subsequent research visits during the pilot study, I noted that the people present at the station during most of the research visits were interns who were in the station short-term, and not actually community members who were ‘permanent’ staff at the station. The three people who were said to be regular community volunteers were rarely at the station, and seemed to be chiefly engaged in other pursuits outside the station. This meant that it was primarily the interns who were available for interviews. In-depth interviews with these interns revealed that they (the interns) do not hail from the surrounding community. Rather, they are sourced from
26 According to a report on the community radio sector “Pamoja FM’s Managing Director was one of three friends who founded the station. On his retirement after 17 years experience as a photo-journalist in the private print sector, Mr Adam Hussein was looking for a way of giving something back to the community. With two friends, he applied for a community radio licence. The three invested money (Mr Hussein from his retirement fund) to pay for the licence, equipment and rent. After consulting with organisations and individuals in the community, the three friends developed a programme schedule and the station went on air.” (Fairbairn and Rukaria, Poised for Growth: Community Radio in Kenya in 2009 2010, 45-46)
colleges offering mass media studies both within and outside Nairobi. They stay at the station typically for three to six months. This resulted in interviews that were not from the perspective of community members, and which lacked insights from people who had been at the station long term. During literature review, I found a relatively large body of literature and news articles regarding this station, which holds the distinction of being a harbinger of peace in the slum during the 2007/2008 post-election violence. This, while positive, added to the feel of an over-researched station. In contrast, I found Koch FM was located in the heart of Korogocho slum, and not in suburbs nearby. As well, there were consistently available long term volunteers who had been at the station for two years or more, and who hailed from the community around the station. These informants offered insights from a community perspective. Based on the above factors, therefore, it was more fruitful to study Koch FM rather than Pamoja FM further.
For the stations located in rural areas, the original idea was also to select one between the two stations, Kangema FM and Mugambo Jwetu FM as a representative of community broadcasters in rural areas. However, during the pilot study, it became clear that much as the two stations carry the label ‘community radio’ and they are located in somewhat similar rural areas which have agriculture and small business as the main methods of subsistence for the population, they have distinctly different management and funding structures. While Kangema FM one station is government-funded, the other is funded by a mix of international donor and local-government funding. In view of my research question delving into station organisational structures, studying both stations offered the opportunity to explore whether different funding and management models in almost similar rural contexts have an impact on programme content, community perceptions and audience engagement with the station. Thus, I selected the three stations for in-depth study since from their characteristics, they stood out as those
“from which one can learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the purpose of the research” (Patton 1990, 169).
As described in the decision-making process above, I used a combination of maximum variation sampling and typical case sampling to select the stations. Maximum variation sampling is sampling across, for example, diverse geographical regions or social strata. It helps to find details of differences on the one hand, and important shared patterns that cut across the differences on the other (Patton 1990, 172). I was interested in the stations’ location in rural versus in urban areas, hypothesizing that audience access to other radio stations and to
technology such as mobile phones and the internet would be different based on location, and these would impact on audience engagement with the stations. Equally important for the selection were funding and management structures. In the pilot study I identified at least three distinct forms of community radio funding and management structure. One structure I tagged
‘fully government funded and community operated’, the second I tagged ‘jointly donor and government funded and community operated’, and the third I tagged ‘fully donor funded and community operated’. While the first and the last station structures are on opposite ends of the maximum variation sampling continuum, the second station lies somewhere in between. It was my hypothesis that funding has an impact on operations and on content produced by the stations, and I sought to prove or disprove this by selecting these particular cases and examining them in-depth.
Kangema FM (fully government funded and community operated) is funded and run by a government agency, but employs local community members for its running and holds a community broadcasting license. The station manager is a Meteorologist seconded from the government’s Meteorology department. Funding for this station comes from a combination of government funding and revenues from community announcements. With its close government ties, this station lies at one extreme of maximum variation sampling.
On the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of funding arrangements, Koch FM is fully donor funded and community operated. It’s funding and management were distinctly separate from government or private ownership, which is one of the qualities that is said to distinguish a community radio from other stations. It is a radio station located in a slum area and funded by Norwegian Church Aid, an international Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO). During the field visit, it was noted that this station has purposely decided not to apply for Constituency Development Fund (CDF)27 funding so as not to be influenced by the government. It was therefore my second case for maximum variation sampling.
The third station, Mugambo Jwetu FM (jointly donor and government funded and community operated), lies somewhere between the previous two stations in terms of funding. It served as my ‘typical’ case of community radio station in terms of funding structure. Typical case
27 Dubbed NG-CDF since 2013, as per webpage ‘About NG-CDF’ on http://www.ngcdf.go.ke/index.php/about-ng-cdf
sampling is illustrative; it seeks to describe what would usually be found; that is, the standard or the average. In operating a joint funding model, the station is neither overtly pro- or anti-government. It was started with funding from the Finnish Embassy and UNESCO, but was allotted government premises for its operation through the CDF. Until mid-2014, the station shared premises and even furniture28 with the local CDF office. It offers an example of joint funding and operational structure. In my pilot study, I noted that each of these three stations has a unique relationship with the local government, although they all carry the label of community radio station. I therefore thought it would be of value to examine if the stations’
content, as an expression of ideology, would be impacted by these differences in funding and management. A summary of the above-discussed characteristics of the three stations is laid out in Figure 1 below:
Figure 1: Rationale for Selected Stations