Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2005

Only a handful of the estimated 150 FM radio stations in Mali could properly be called ‘community’ stations, with administrative structures to ensure representative listener participation in decision-making. However, due to regulations and scarce funding sources, virtually all stations depend on their audiences for direct financial support in return for mediated listener-to-listener communications. This article, based on over a year and a half of fieldwork in the southern Malian city of Koutiala, outlines the system of social and technical interdependence that links stations and their listeners in Mali. FM radio depends fundamentally on systems of transportation, and, to a lesser degree, other communication technologies like telephones. Social interdependence is emphasized in the speech of announcers, through an insistence on Islam as a common religion and fictive joking relationships. Referencing the operational structures of the stations in the city, including one community station, I show that a socio-technical system has developed in which local FM blurs standard understandings of ‘community’ media.

Impact assessment is one of a variety of monitoring tools available to ensure that a community radio effectively works towards set objectives and aspirations. In Mozambique a ‘bare-foot’ impact assessment methodology has been designed, tested, revised and implemented with eight community-owned stations between 2000 and 2005. The present article explores the three separate areas of attention focused upon in this methodology: (1) an internal assessment of the radio's way of functioning as an organism; (2) an assessment of the capacity of the community producers through their programmes to meet the needs and desires of the community; and (3) the overall objective of it all: assessing the extent to which impact can be registered vis-à-vis a positive development change within the community, empowerment, mending of the social tissue, etc. resulting from the work of the community radio.

The article examines the distinctive characteristics of radio broadcasting in Madagascar, a country with 200 private local stations and more than 15 regional stations of Malagasy National Radio (RNM). It takes note of the complete freedom of tone among news broadcasters, of the massive presence in the schedules of spoken news and of magazine programmes dealing with political affairs, and of the fact that Malagasy, the national language, is heard on air throughout almost the whole country. An outline of RNM's service and a review of the different categories of private stations illustrate the problems facing the medium. Even if RNM experiences excessive control by the State and retains a monopoly of national transmission across the country, radio is a real means of social intervention and of propaganda for the younger generation of politicians, whilst religious organizations are making a substantial contribution to the sector. All this is not without effect on the practice of local radio and could threaten all the advances made by Madagascar in freedom of expression and free choice of listening.

In German-speaking research on ‘Hörspiele’ or radio plays, there is little to be found when it comes to adequate theoretical tools for analysing a radio play. Radio drama is still widely seen as a literary genre and is therefore analysed by literary studies theories or drama theories. This article argues that radio drama is an acoustic art form in its own right and should be analysed as such. Its aim is to support this argument first by describing the historical reasons that led to the misinterpretation of the art form, and then by presenting a methodology, based on semiotic and narratological theories, that enables scholars to analyse a narrative radio play by integrating all of its acoustic features. The article seeks to emphasize that music, noises and voices and also technical features like electro-acoustical manipulation or mixing, can be, and often are, used as tools to signify story elements and therefore should be analysed accordingly. To demonstrate the applicability of the model, a short analysis of some German radio plays is presented at the end of the article.

The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, Jonathan Sterne, (2003) Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 448 pp., Paperback ISBN 0-822-33013-X, £18.50.

The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900 to 193s0, Emily Thompson, (2002) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 510 pp., Hardback ISBN 0-262-20138-0, £10.95.

The Broadcast Voice, Jenni Mills, (2004) Oxford: Focal Press, 288 pp., Paperback ISBN 0-240-51939-6, £24.99.

Soundscape: The School of Sound Lectures 1998–2001, Larry Sider, Diane Freeman and Jerry Sider (eds), (2003) London and New York: Wallflower Press, 242 pp., Hardback ISBN 1-903364-68-X, £45. Paperback ISBN 1-903364-59-0, £l15.99.