Vox Populi: Resource Partitioning, Organizational Proliferation, and the Cultural Impact of the Insurgent Microradio Movement

Research on social movements has emphasized the origins of cultural movements, but has said little about how they impact popular culture through the creation of new organizations. The production of culture perspective asserts that market concentration in cultural industries inhibits diversity, but is silent about how social movements challenging corporate capitalism spur organizational birth. Organizational ecology describes how market concentration triggers anti-mass production movements, but has not examined whether the diversity of new organizations alters consumer behavior. The authors integrate these literatures to analyze how low-power FM (LPFM) radio stations arose in response to the domination of radio by corporate chains and investigate the impact of LPFM stations on radio listening. Implications for the study of social movements, organizational ecology, and the production of culture are outlined.