Iberian Media Collectives Will Gather in Portugal to Debate Alternative News · Global Voices
Sara Moreira

An Alternative Information Meet-up is about to take place in Coimbra, Portugal, bringing together different media projects from the Iberian Peninsula for two days of collective debate and sharing of practices around information.
The Alternative Information Meet-up will take place in Coimbra on February 25-26, 2016. #InfoAltCoimbra
The meeting starts on February 25, 2015, with a round table featuring members of alternative media projects from Portugal (Indymedia.pt, Jornal Mapa, Portal Anarquista and Guilhotina.info) and Spain (Periódico Diagonal and Radio Vallekas from Madrid, and the Catalan newspaper La Directa).
The day after, a radio workshop offered by one of the visiting projects — Radio Vallekas, “a combative Madrid Neighboorhood” — will address online/FM broadcast emission, how to build a program and the importance of connection to the community and social movements.
The meeting is organized by Rede de Informação Alternativa, a network of alternative news outlets that has been recently established by a group of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist collectives from Portugal, who “feel the need to promote a broad debate around the state of the media”:
Num mundo onde grande parte do fluxo de informação é dominado por uma televisão e uma imprensa nas mãos de grandes conglomerados de media, é urgente encontrar outras formas de comunicar e de fazer e transmitir informação. Sentimos a necessidade de desconstruir os discursos hegemónicos através de projectos de comunicação horizontais e independentes, comprometidos com as comunidades e as ruas, bem como com as lutas e os processos que aí se desenvolvem. Na mesma medida, concebemos projectos de informação que não estejam comprometidos com o discurso das grandes empresas, nem dos grandes grupos económicos, nem dos partidos políticos.
In a world where much of the information flow is dominated by the TV and the press which are in the hands of big media conglomerates, it is urgent that we find other ways to communicate and to make and transmit information. We feel the need to deconstruct the hegemonic discourses through horizontal and independent media projects, committed to the communities and the streets, as well as the struggles and processes that are therein developed. In the same measure, we design information projects that are not committed to the speech of the big companies, nor the major economic or political party groups.
The meet-up will take place at Ateneu de Coimbra. Participation in the Portuguese- and Spanish-language event is open and free — for those who can't physically make it, livestreaming might be available. Check out the Facebook event and the hashtag #InfoaltCoimbra on Twitter for updates.