This project explicates the intersections of critical media consciousness, progressive social movements, and democracy, by analyzing the media strategies of the Athens Independent Media Center and the Industrial Areas Foundation. Individually, the definitions of communication, media, and democracy are often taken for granted. Collectively they provide the baseline for the argument that knowledgeable and engaged citizens are prerequisites for democratic social formations. Without an accessible egalitarian public sphere strong participatory democracy withers. Relying on participant observation, archival analysis, and borrowing cultural anthropologys methods of defamiliarization and cross-cultural juxtaposition, this thesis offers an elaboration of ideas concerning the fundamental components for a critical media consciousness. Furthermore, it provides support for the contention that the democratic process necessitates democratic communications structures and practices that increase citizen participation through the building of strong, equitable, and sustainable social relations among diverse peoples. Strong media, created and sustained by critical media consciousness, expands that democratic potential of communication technologies as citizens equally participate in the search for the common good.