• Journal article

"We Have No Algorithms!" DIY Online Radio As Post-Platform Media

Rekret, P. 2026. "We Have No Algorithms!" DIY Online Radio As Post-Platform Media . European Journal of Cultural Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494261468024

Title"We Have No Algorithms!" DIY Online Radio As Post-Platform Media
TypeJournal article
AuthorsRekret, P.
Abstract

This article examines the emergence of do-it-yourself online radio stations (DORs) as a form of “post-platform media” that operates within, yet resists, the dominant logics of platform capitalism. Drawing on interviews with UK-based stations, we argue that DORs constitute a novel form of cultural production that presses against and reconfigures existing frameworks across platform studies, cultural, media and radio studies,
participatory and community media research, and cultural industries scholarship. Platform studies has shown how algorithmic systems reorganise cultural circulation around metrics and optimisation. Community media research has foregrounded civic representation and oppositional politics, while creative labour scholarship has theorised cultural work through frameworks of precarity and professionalisation.
DORs operate according to a fundamentally aesthetic logic that presses at the limits of these approaches. They cultivate communities in which the boundary between producer and audience is porous, and cultural participation is grounded in human curation, embodied knowledge, and gift economies rather than algorithmic optimisation, explicitly political mandates, or career advancement. We conceive DORs as sustaining
alternative logics of value, curation, and social relation, even as they negotiate profound dependencies on commercial platforms for distribution and promotion. In this sense, DORs exemplify constrained but significant modes of media resistance, offering insight into how cultural autonomy
might be sustained within digital capitalism.

Keywordscommunity media, post-platform media, cultural labour, algorithmic curation, platform capitalism, community radio
JournalEuropean Journal of Cultural Studies
ISSN1367-5494
1460-3551
Year2026
PublisherSAGE Publications
Publisher's version
File Access Level
Open (open metadata and files)
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1177/13675494261468024
ProjectArchiving Community: Social Infrastructure and Small-Scale, Online Radio Stations

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