Joy Elizabeth Hayes

Due to its mobility and low cost, radio is the most widely used electronic medium of communication on the globe. Although public monopoly broadcasting dominated until the 1980s, US-based commercial broadcasting was a global force beginning in the 1930s. Radio played a key role in promoting national political and cultural integration under both models. By the late 1980s, most of the world's radio systems faced liberalization of some kind, although the Arab world held out until the 2010s. A global community radio movement emerged in the 1980s and expanded in the 2000s, nurtured by democratization struggles.