What makes you happy in your daily activity at the radio? This question was asked to more thanforty community radio practitioners from all over the world in the framework of a research oncommunity radios as a social movement. People were encouraged to reveal their feelings andelaborate on their inner motivations for joining the radio station. Three main points could besingled out from the interviews: the idea of the radio as a ‘free space’ for the articulation of viewsand opinions, the role of community radio as amplifier of voices of other social groups, and thecollective dimension of projects.This article draws on interview texts using the method of discourse analysis to illustratemotivational frames of community radios activists, providing an original view of the radios, oftenconsidered ‘only’ as producers of alternative audio material or mere ‘infrastructures’, while thedimension of motivations and feelings is often neglected.