A note from: Atton, C. (2008) Bringing alternative media practice to theory: media power, alternative journalism and production in Alternative Media and the Politics of Resistance (ed) Pajnik & Downing.

It turns out that I don’t exist, because no state entity has me inventoried, because I don’t pay a fee to a union or appear on the list of some workplace cafeteria.  Although I walk, sleep, love and even complain, I lack a certificate-of-existence that would give me affiliation to a small—and boring—number of neogovernmental organizations.  In practice, I’m a civic ghost, a non-being, someone unable to show the sharp eye of the doorkeeper even the slightest proof of being in the official mechanisms. (GY, 24th March 2008)

Yet Sanchez is visibly in the blogosphere as a citizen journalist. Though not openly identifying with the moniker, it is getting stickier by the week as her posts become embedded in the Huffington Post, the US citizen-journalist aggregator par excellence. The fact that she perceived herself, in the eyes of the state, as a civic ghost in the blog post above echoes Atton’s idea that citizens’ media aim primarily not at state promoted citizenship but at media practice in constructing citizenship and political identity along with everyday life. Citizen media are mechanisms for resistance and tools for the constuction of alternative forms of citizenship – a theme running through GY. The difference between dominant professional, state-owned media practices and marginal, amateur practices is so often celebrated, as in the following post:

Of the series of films directed by Del Llano, this one has hit me the hardest with its thematic immediacy and reference to the gagging of the official press.  Seeing it, has confirmed for me the immense privilege I enjoy of not having an editorial boss, censor, or anyone who dictates to me what topics I can cover or what importance to give them.  My worst professional nightmare would be to find myself at a table like that, where everyone’s watching their backs, in order to preserve the small privilege of working for Granma, Juventud Rebelde, or some provincial newspaper. (25th March 2008)

Yet it is easy to simply celebrate GY, to create of Yoani Sanchez an icon of resistance and mediator of an emergent (more) civil society in Cuba. What Atton reminds the reader in this chapter is that we need a theory of cultural production that can enable a more critical understanding of the ‘work’ of alternative media. To enable that critique he uses Bordieu’s theory of cultural production and particularly his notion of ‘field’. It is this notion that can enable us to see the distinctions between mainstream and alternative media (and alternative medias) and ultimately find an alternative vocabulary