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This chapter examines role that technical affinity played as the radio activists’ group underwent organizational maturation. This largely played out as the systematic elevation of “technical” work and the downplaying of policy-advocacy expertise (even though both were salient in their work). The chapter argues that the radio activists cultivated a technical identity that served to mark boundaries between their group and others in the terrain of media democracy work, which was especially important as they struggled to retain radical activist criticality and to resist being transformed into a “mainstream” nonprofit organization. At the same time, technical identity worked to mitigate potentially troubling disjunctures within the activist organization. It marked continuity between the activists’ past, present, and future, and it enabled them to assign coherence to a diverse range of tasks that might otherwise seem incongruent. The chapter refers to this dynamic as “boundary effacement.”

This chapter examines the discursive practices by which LPFM advocates attempted to redefine radio’s use and meaning. During the 1990s and 2000s, radio broadcasting (a familiar and decades-old technology) remained the site of intense contestation (even in the wake of digital media and Internet-based technologies). Radio activists (and other advocates, with whom they were not always in accord) defined FM radio as noncommercial, well-suited to local or community-level use, and a medium for political expression and organizing.

This chapter follows radio activists’ assessments of emerging Internet-based technologies (primarily wi-fi networks). Particularly for urban areas where LPFM licenses were out of reach, the activists considered other “appropriate technologies” to as platforms for community media. The chapter shows that radio activists were selective in their adoption of or resistance to various options, some of which they largely rejected (such as webcasting) and others of which they cautiously embraced (such as community wi-fi networks). Having identified radio as the artifact with which their politics best aligned, they were circumspect about the promotion of other technologies that were less obviously tied to the values they identified in radio.

This chapter focuses on the productive and affective priorities of technological activism. It describes a pedagogical workshop the activists held over a weekend—the barnraising ethos in miniature, with attendant advantages and difficulties for activists, novices, and expert participants. It draws out some of the dynamics surrounding expertise that vexed the activists as they tried to realize a political vision that called for equality. It shows that one consequence of promoting technology as a platform for emancipatory politics is that this can result in a constant battle with unequally distributed expertise.

This chapter continues the exploration of identity production and work with a special emphasis on gender identity. Recognizing that men’s relationships with technology are a dominant iteration of masculinity, the radio activists sought to challenge the association of technical competence with masculine gender. Radio activists imagined barnraisings and tinkering workshops as spaces where both women and men could be empowered through gaining technical skills. Technical affinity and geek identity were hailed as a means to reconfigure established patterns of masculinity and femininity. However, activists’ hopes did not always match outcomes.