Community radio stations depend on the labour of volunteers to fulfil their crucial social, cultural and democratic functions. Yet volunteering is treated as purely mechanistic in much community radio literature and practice: a means to an end, a resourcing challenge or reflective of the participatory environment. Volunteers invest countless hours in supporting community radio stations; time that could be spent in paid employment, informal labour or pursuing leisure activities. So, what is it that drives community radio volunteers, and how does this fit in with broader understandings of volunteer motivations? Drawing on interviews with Australian community radio volunteers, this article proposes four categories for understanding volunteering motivations in community radio: leisure, instrumental, relational and ideological. Interrogating the nature of volunteering in community radio offers practical insights for stations seeking to attract and retain volunteers while also providing theoretical insights into how community engagement and civic participation develop through community media.
Backhaus et al. (2025) studied this question.