I received Aitzaz Ahsan's call to observe Black Flag Week through many media platforms. A good old-fashioned email first alerted me about the protest. I then viewed Ahsan's appeal to commemorate this turbulent week and champion the judiciary's cause through a video he had posted on YouTube. In the next few days, I received event invitations via Facebook, the online social networking site. During Black Flag Week, new emails and Facebook alerts have been informing me about related events, protest schedules for Pakistani cities as well as Boston, and unfortunate developments such as the bomb blasts in Lahore. The Pakistani blogs that I follow have been posting up-to-the-minute coverage of Black Flag Week events and encouraging wide participation.

Earlier this week, I received requests for the submission of photographs of people wearing black armbands, and cash donations to make Black Flag T-shirts, as well as an invitation to respond to Ahsan's YouTube video with one of my own. Meanwhile, clips from private television channels that have been broadcasting Black Flag Week-related rallies and gatherings pepper the Internet. One medium, however, seems to have been glaringly omitted from this largely successful mass mobilisation effort: radio.

It seems that Pakistanis are forgetting the power of radio. I do not fault the organisers of Black Flag Week for not utilising the medium, since PEMRA rules forbid privately-owned FM radio stations from broadcasting any content related to national news coverage or politics. In fact, in quick conversations with FM radio station managers in Karachi, I sensed that stations are doing what they can to support Black Flag Week by broadcasting mood-appropriate music or addressing the events in an indirect way. For example, one station hopes to interview people involved with Black Flag Week while another will cover related hyper-local events in the course of daily city-specific news coverage, which is permissible.

My point about radio extends beyond the organisation of Black Flag Week, which merely reminded me that there is a need to revitalise the role of radio in Pakistani society. It's time to remember that radio is the most inclusive medium, and that it can be a valuable tool for information dissemination and organising and mobilising the masses.

Moreover, Black Flag Week seems like an appropriate time to rally behind radio, because, as many of the discussions around the lawyers' movement have pointed out, an independent judiciary and a free press are intrinsically linked, as both are prerequisites for democratic dispensation. A media landscape cannot be considered free and independent if its airwaves continue to be curtailed.

The advantages of radio over many other technologies are manifold.

Radio technology is affordable for both producers and consumers and necessarily creates local community because it imposes geographic limitations (traditional transmissions can only go so far). People at various literacy levels can enjoy radio programming across the digital divide, especially if it is broadcast in local languages. It is possible right now for people with low literacy levels to use basic, low-cost equipment to build community radio transmitters that broadcast to simple handheld radio sets, making for ad hoc, portable, and hyper-local "radio stations." Thanks to increasing advances in rural wireless networking technologies, it is also conceivable that audio content generated this way can find its way online as part of a broader conversation across socio-economic classes. As such, radio might still be the most inclusive medium.

With regard to media censorship, radio occasionally gets more allowances than television. For example, the Pakistani government clamped down on private television channels on the basis that they were broadcasting too many vivid images of blood and gore. Radio broadcasts covering the same issues and events would not face this criticism. Moreover, low-power radio stations broadcasting content on harder-to-detect frequencies can avoid arbitrary government blocks.

Transmission points can also be mobile, making it harder to locate the source of a low-power radio broadcast. Finally, since radio stations tend to broadcast more local news than can be aired on national television stations or printed in national newspapers, they can build the trust of the communities in which they operate. If you can verify information from a media source because it relates to something that occurred in your neighbourhood or impacts your daily life, you will rely on it far more.

On a more abstract level, radio is valuable because it replicates communal and national conversations, which can lead to increased tolerance. The listener who tunes in can hear a succession of different voices speaking from diverse perspectives that comprise the bigger picture. Moreover, radio offers a wonderful platform for those who normally do not have a say in society: a voice on the air is anonymous yet authentic, a fact that allows more people to speak freely. In Pakistan, for example, radio could offer a unique platform from which women in purdah can address the public.

Pakistanis should need no convincing of the effectiveness of radio technologies. During the aftermath of the October 2005 earthquake, FM radio became one of the primary forms of information dissemination.

Before the quake hit, 81 percent of houses in the affected area had a radio set, while only 52 percent had televisions. Within a month after the disaster, PEMRA had licensed ten, three-month-long, non-commercial emergency FM stations. These licenses were eventually extended through the winter of 2006. Radio programming thus came to play a vital role in ensuring the effective delivery of relief goods and services.

Internews Pakistan produced "Jazba-a-Tameer," a daily hour-long programme which was broadcast on seven emergency frequencies and 12 private FM radio stations throughout the country. Reports aired on the show often led to the supply of food and blankets, the restoration of phone lines and electricity, and the cessation of corrupt dispensation of compensation amounts in far-flung villages.

More recently, Maulana Fazlullah -- otherwise known as Maulana Radio -- has shown how radio can help organising and executing campaigns. His so-called sermons aired via an illegal FM transmitter have led to movements against polio vaccination, girls' schools, and shops selling music and movies. Through most of 2007, he used the airwaves to advocate jihad against the military and the US. No doubt, Fazlullah's ability to mobilise militants across the Swat valley was facilitated by his use of radio. His irrepressibility is similarly enabled by radio technology. During the November 2007 operation against militants, the government closed down all the radio stations in the valley, a block that remained in effect until mid-January 2008.

However, in early December, Fazlullah and his supporters were briefly back on the air from an undisclosed location. Eventually, the government launched its own community radio station in the district in an effort to replace the cleric's programming. Certainly, Maulana Fazlullah's on-air campaigns were nefarious. But his use of radio to ensure the success of his mandate was inspired and innovative. Can you imagine what would have happened in Swat if PEMRA had responded to Fazlullah's earlier illegal transmissions by licensing a host of alternative community radio stations in the area? Students, non-profit organisations, community activists, and minority groups could have countered his messages with opinions of their own. The plethora of voices and free flow of information would have probably gone on to tell a different story for Swat.

Perhaps in addition to flying black flags and wielding the rhetoric of freedom and democracy, Pakistanis should make specific, concrete requests of the government to ensure that democratic standards, the rule of law, and the freedom of the press are upheld. Demanding that community radio stations -- the grassroots incarnation of a free, mediated democracy -- be legalised and freely licensed across the country might be another step in the long march to democracy. Much like the restoration of the judiciary is a prerequisite for democratic norms, building the capacity of the independent media is a prerequisite for free speech. We can turn to Radio Khyber as a source of inspiration in this endeavour. For the first time in FATA, 36 candidates standing for NA-45 and NA-46 in the February elections were invited to share their electoral platforms and broader manifestoes with the public at large. The process of initiating community awareness is the basis of democracy.

The writer is a media analyst currently pursuing a master's degree at MIT's Comparative Media Studies programme. She was previously features editor at an English monthly. Email: huma.yusuf @gmail.com