Abstract

Community media performs various social roles including the production of collective identities, the construction of meaning, negotiating proximities to power, enriching networks of social bonds, and enhancing individual capacities. Evaluating these roles has emerged as an under-theorized and yet critical area of investigation for better understanding community media's role(s) in social formation and for articulating its social benefits to policy-makers and funding agencies. This thesis proposes a framework for evaluating community media's influence on social formation by mapping the influence community media outcomes have on collective capacities for determining social, political and economic outcomes (i.e. community capital). An Outcomes Mapping Framework, which links community media outcomes to various forms of community capital, was tested for practicability in the field during the study of a small community television station in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada (Telile Community TV). This Framework proved useful in identifying: (i) the dynamic and varied ways that Telile TV has played a role in expanding local influence over social outcomes; (ii) indicators of social change causally linked to community television practice; and (iii) some of the strengths and weaknesses of extant community media practice within regional media ecologies. The field results also revealed the critical importance of ontological context for evaluative assessments of community media practice