Broadcasting set up by middle-class reformers to educate the masses, in the style of a national public broadcaster, can be taken over by everyday speech and folk culture. When local languages and vernacular voices fill the airwaves, the medium stops lecturing ordinary people and becomes a place where they hear themselves. Choosing which language goes on air becomes a statement about class and about what the nation is.
The same technology that lets an occupying power communicate also gives it new ways to hurt people. New means of torture and control arrive alongside new means of connection. Taking up a technology means taking on the harms it makes possible, not only the uses it was built for.
Gossip and casual observation, often carried by women, can serve as a real information system that informs insurgents and the wider public. These unofficial channels run alongside formal media and can be just as decisive. Paying attention to them means listening to the quieter frequencies that official records miss.