Online Community Radio 'On the Margins': Rethinking Borders and Futures through Radio Alhara

This paper explores the sociopolitical potential of online community radio stations ‘on the margins’ through a rhizomatic analysis of Radio Alhara in Palestine. The radio station was established in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, by a group of friends with the aim to connect the Palestinian diaspora through sound, ‘outside of the mainstream media and algorithm’s censorship’ (Tan 2021). The name ‘Alhara,’ from the Arabic word for neighborhood, refers to the station’s community approach to radio-making. The paper argues that Radio Alhara’s structure can be characterized as rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) by emphasizing notions of decentralization and fluidity. Through values of human curation, collaboration, and experimentation, Radio Alhara provides a community media platform that resists principles of digital capitalism, such as algorithmic gatekeeping and data colonialism. Additionally, Palestinian (internet) infrastructures are routinely targeted by slowness, surveillance, and destruction, as a result of Israeli settler colonialism. However, online community radio stations ‘on the margins’ provide gateways for rethinking (colonial) power relations, (diasporic) communities, (geographical, institutional, online/offline) borders and futures in a transformative manner.