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Paper short abstract

The paper takes a comparative view of amateur radio, amateur filmmaking, and amateur TV broadcast practices over the 20th century in Japan. This allows for conclusions on how and why these amateur media practices are at certain times successful in creating a sense of commons – until they are not.

Paper long abstract

The paper asks what patterns we can discern in the cycles of the emergence and receding of various amateur media practices in Japan over the 20th century. Taking a comparative view of the lifecycles of electric media practices such as amateur radio, amateur filmmaking, and amateur TV broadcasts will allow for drawing conclusions on how and why these practices are successful in creating a sense of commons – until they are not (and sometimes are again later). Different technological affordances and differing systems of governance influence the “boom and bust” cycles of amateur radio (1920s), amateur film (1930s, then 1950s, then 1970s) or TV broadcasts (1970s). But the paper also investigates how these media technologies allow for the creation of networks that bring a precarious sense of a commons into existence, and why they cannot sustain it.

To explore that issue, the paper draws on Thomas Lamarre’s analysis of how the production of media-technological distribution can create a sense of “coming into common” and relates it to Nakai Masakazu’s idea of “common labor” to better understand the interaction of the media-technological situation and the formation of a commons through “amateur” activities. In terms of the larger historical arc, the paper concludes with a consideration of the changes in the status of the term “amateur” itself towards the end of the 20th century.