Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media - New Voices, Apr 2021

This article introduces the concept of ‘the everyday implausible’, asserting that, between 1930 and 1960, US radio serial aesthetics produced a tug-of-war between the familiar and the unfamiliar that was simultaneously radical and reactionary. This aesthetic created a space for the listener to place new versions of herself within the narrative, inviting the imagined woman-at-home to re-envisioning the possibilities of reality. However, re-envisioning reality produced its own set of limitations. The sonic features of the radio serial soundscape created imaginary spaces within the home, but these imaginary spaces were – as often as not – also homes, making the potential of escape wholly illusory. In giving attention to the specific aesthetic features of these programmes, this article interrogates the meaningful work produced by a sparse soundscape, alongside an emphasis on domesticity and emotional conversation.

The BBC’s first director general, John Reith, believed the plays of Shakespeare were perfect for radio, with ‘little in the way of setting and scenery’ and relying chiefly on plot and acting. However, a closer look at the texts reveals that many require a good deal of adaptation to work in sound only. That has not stopped BBC radio producers creating hundreds of productions over the past century. Instead, it has spurred many of them on to greater creativity. Initially reliant on narration, producers began to devise a wide range of techniques to make Shakespeare comprehensible without visuals. These include specially devised sound effects, soundscapes and music, as well as distorting the actors’ voices in various ways, including using nose-pegs and the assistance of the Radiophonic Workshop. This article uses audio and written evidence to uncover those techniques and examines how successful they have been deemed to be.

How can sound be utilized as a tool for political conscientization? COVID-19 has disrupted face-to-face organizing tactics for progressive movements globally, making it necessary to branch out to more mediated forms of grassroots political organizing. In this article, we explore how sound might be employed to invoke an imagined working-class community across ethnic, gender and generational divides against a backdrop of crisis and corruption on the structural level. Through a close listening of a South African radio drama, Plague in the Time of King Kapital and Queen Corona (KKQC), we find that the use of sound enables a worldmaking that is both attuned to structural inequities and imagines a utopian, solidaristic working-class community. KKQC offers a case of worldbuilding and political conscientization through radio drama that is relevant to understanding the possibilities of the genre in the contemporary South African context.

The article contributes to the field of cultural studies and radio history by focusing on soccer (or fútbol), arguably the most significant mass spectacle in twentieth-century Latin America. By exploring the trajectories, iconic voices and styles of sportscasters, the article reconstructs the masculine soundscape of soccer in Argentina and Chile between the 1920s and 1960s. Play-by-play announcers, who ranged from second-rate actors and singers to professional journalists, crafted their own versions of masculinity and nationalism that were central to representing sports culture in an increasingly transnational context. The article pays special attention to the sporting press, audio records and sports films, since many commentators borrowed heavily from other forms of mass culture. Their oral representations of the game, loaded with moral evaluations and political statements, can be seen as cultural texts because they enabled new ways of imagining sports for much larger audiences than those sitting in the stadium.

Indigenous audio media are experiencing a growing movement in the field of cultural media studies. One arguably linked to the global rise of indigenous reconciliation and political action in colonial nations such as Australia, United States, Canada and New Zealand. Indigenizing the national broadcast soundscape, Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) original podcast Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo weaves its way through the patriarchal reign of liberal pluralism and settler colonialism of Canadian society from wounded vibrations of assimilation, residential school, cultural genocide, the sixties scoop, sexual assault, death and life. Through a cultural sound studies and critical media analysis framework, this article positions Finding Cleo as an anti-colonial soundwork that details the story of one of the many families involved in the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) as they search for the promise of truth to heal what we conceptualize as wounded vibrations.

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.

Narrative voice is a frequent site of experimentation in narrative journalism, and in podcasting this voice tends to be more prominent as the listener hears the narrator’s embodied voice. It can build a strong bond with the listener, which is important for independent producers as trust is not automatically afforded to them by association with a trusted media organization. This is particularly true for emerging producers, who also lack a professional reputation. This study examines the techniques used in five Australian independent podcasts to understand how they experiment with narrative voice as a podcast technique to build trust with the listener. It finds trust is built through narrative voice in four specific ways (1) first-person narration, (2) authenticity, (3) empathy and (4) emotional truth. This may allow for a greater variety of voices to be not only heard but trusted within podcasting, but also raises questions about misplaced trust.

The article addresses podcasting as a social media activity, considering independent podcasters’ – an emerging but understudied category of Pro-Ams – utilization of social media. This was done by conducting qualitative interviews (Brinkmann and Kvale 2001) with the Danish podcast phenomenon, Fries before Guys, and their main sponsor. To study the online interaction between listeners and podcasters, an inductive open coding of the podcast’s Instagram account was carried out, focusing on the ten most-liked Instagram posts and the user comments written underneath. Since Instagram is the podcasters’ primary means of communication in engaging socially with their mainly young female listeners, the aim was to explore how the digital infrastructure between Instagram and the podcast medium unfolds. The study shows that social media activity, besides providing emotional support through posts, comments and direct messages, is essential to independent podcasters to make revenue.

This article examines the role of radios in conflict by exploring the tenets of peace journalism in the United Nations sponsored Radio Okapi (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Radio Ndeke Luka (Central African Republic) run by the Swiss Fondation Hirondelle. It is a qualitative research that interviewed journalists on how they perceive their role in society and margin of autonomy. It aims at answering the question: To what extent do the conventions of professional practice of journalism affect the way newsmaking is shaped under the peace journalism approach in conflict-stressed environments? The findings pointed that peace journalism encompasses the idea of a symbolic rapprochement and reconcilement. Reporters stressed the notion of using journalism as a pedagogical tool. Many of the journalists have gone through life-threatening situations caused by opposition groups. Nonetheless, the testimonies accounted for a willingness to carry on with their commitment to a responsible journalism.

Grime music is an Afrodiasporic performance form originating in London. While artists such as Stormzy and Skepta are now international stars, its gestation took place within a grounded network of record shops, radio stations and raves. This article argues for grime pirate radio’s role as both an oppositional channel and site of creative practice. Based on empirical work undertaken from 2017 to 2019 in London’s grime scene, it demonstrates how artists harness radio’s communicative power to engender a Black counterpublic, before outlining a framework for creative agency: afforded by a network of stations and practitioners; made meaningful through its community of listeners; and realized through improvisatory practice. Existing studies focusing on pirate radio often present these fora as domains for dissemination. In grime, however, its creative function highlights the potentiality of radio as a performance medium: a space for quotidian belonging and co-presence, but also for musical development and grassroots practice.

Review of: Gender, Media and Voice: Communicative Injustice and Public Speech, Jilly Boyce Kay (2020)

Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, 193 pp.,

ISBN 978-3-030-47287-0, h/bk, $89.99, e-book, $69.99