Abstract: | This article attempts to investigate the emerging people's media in relation to the development of communication rights in Indonesia and the Philippines. The thrust is to focus on how the Indonesian and Philippine press acquiesced to political and economic control by the governments of the dictatorial regime of President Soeharta and President Marcos. On the other contrary, we look at how people felt that communication rights are their basic rights and that freedom of thought and freedom of speech are essential for democratic rule. Their resistant to violence, imprisonment and murder carried out by state functionaries have brought new forms of media. These are people's media or radical and citizen media which empower as well as transform ‘passive citizens’ into ‘political actors’. |