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New Voices
  • ISSN: 1476-4504
  • E-ISSN: 2040-1388

Abstract

Working at the intersection of migration studies and radio studies, we interrogate podcasting’s potential as a practice-based activist research method. This article documents podcasting’s role in an ethnographic project conducted together with Konstkupan (The Art Hive), a migrant-focused community arts space in Malmö, Sweden. We argue that the value of podcasting as a practice-based research method exists in its potential to function as a boundary object. Boundary objects are technologies and processes bridging social worlds and providing sites of communication and translation between groups. Challenging narratives that detect a decline in podcasting’s radical potential, we argue that as a boundary object, podcasting’s political significance continues in how it convenes small, diverse, but attentive ‘listening publics’. A boundary object does not demand consensus on the meanings or representations it produces, affording space for both the synchrony and dissonance of narratives produced by migrants.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Performing Integration: Participatory Art and New Publics in Malmö (2019–21)
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/content/journals/10.1386/rjao_00037_1
2021-04-01
2025-02-15
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): boundary object; ethno-mimesis; ethnography; listening; migration; podcasting
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