University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Dissertations (ASC) Annenberg School for Communication 1997 Communities Through the Lens: Grassroots Video in Philadelphia as Alternative Communicative Practice Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations_asc Part of the Communication Commons Recommended Citation Wong, Cindy Hing-Yuk, "Communities Through the Lens: Grassroots Video in Philadelphia as Alternative Communicative Practice" (1997). Dissertations (ASC). 17. http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations_asc/17 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations_asc/17 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Communities Through the Lens: Grassroots Video in Philadelphia as Alternative Communicative Practice Abstract "SAME BOAT, SAME DESTINATION ... That's what a community is, if you believe that you're in the same predicament and you are going to the same place. It's one thing if you believe that you're in the , same predicament, but you're not going to the same place. I ain't gonna to deal with that, then it isn't your community; if you do, then it is. So Community Vision is articulating what the boat is and what the vision is, where you are going." (Louis Massiah, Founder of Scribe Video Center; interview, July 15th 1996) Community/grassroots videos, community murals (Barnett 1984), ommc unity (or outlaw) short-wave radio (Urla 1995), community theater, neighborhood newspapers, and 4th World indigenous film and videomaking (Michaels 1994; Aufderheide 1995, Elder 1995) all represent communicative practices which offer alternatives to dominant mainstream mass media. In this dissertation, I examine how one of these alternative media -- community video -- takes shape in terms of its organizational processes, its textual creation and its dissemination and readership.