Public access as public action: The activism of Berkeley Community Media's BTV (California)

This thesis represents a process of self and social discovery of the role of the television medium for people who want to change themselves and the world. The research uses ethnography and autoethnography to explore the rhetorical dimensions of media activism within the context of public access television. Berkeley Community Media's BTV, the public access television station under investigation, provided a site from which to collect data in the form of activist television shows and interviews with producers who identify with activist concepts.; Three activist rhetorical strategies emerged to reveal how the definition of media activism within public access television implicates artifice and identity of self and community. These strategies are "awareness of community," "advocacy for community," and "artistry." The research also associates two overall modes of presentation with BTV's activism. These modes are reflexivity and reflectivity.