Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media - Current Issue

The increasing accessibility of mobile technology has transformed how migrants document and share their experiences, shaping narratives of identity, belonging and displacement. This article examines mobile storytelling as a participatory research method for exploring migration experiences and transnational identity formation, focusing on Ukrainian migrants in the United Kingdom. As thousands of Ukrainians resettle in the aftermath of the 2022 Russian invasion, their stories offer critical insights into the emotional, social and cultural dimensions of migration. Based on the pilot study ‘Once Upon a Time in Ukraine: Mobile Storytelling with Ukrainian Migrants’, conducted in Dorset in May 2023, this research engaged ten Ukrainian female migrants in a mobile storytelling workshop. Participants used their mobile phones to record personal narratives, reflecting on their journeys, adaptation and evolving identities. The study highlights how mobile storytelling enables migrants to assert agency over their own stories, fostering self-expression and emotional processing while also contributing to collective memory and public discourse. Findings suggest that mobile storytelling facilitates a hybrid sense of identity, allowing migrants to navigate between past and present, homeland and host country. By leveraging accessible technology, migrants can actively shape their representations, challenging dominant migration narratives and creating a space for their voices in academic and media discourse. This article argues that mobile storytelling is a valuable methodological approach for migration studies, providing a deeper understanding of transnational identity construction and the role of digital media in contemporary migration experiences.

As the Australian community radio sector approaches its 50th birthday, many stations are reflecting on their own colourful pasts. Regional community radio stations are under-represented in historical literature, with most Australian community radio histories focusing on metropolitan stations. This research explores how community radio histories can find new life through practice-based research. Drawing on historical research conducted for and alongside a regional Australian community radio station, this article critically reflects on both the importance of preserving and sharing community radio histories and the potential of radio production as an approach to reciprocal research in this space. The findings suggest that radio production has a key role to play not only in increasing the accessibility of research findings in the platform age but also as a way of shaping and guiding inquiry itself. This is vital for both preserving historical research and ensuring that these stories remain accessible to their communities.

Thailand’s community radio sector encompasses a diverse array of stations, both religious and secular. This suggests the capacity to drive social transformation. However, while operational structures within these stations reflect a broad range of roles that potentially influence their formats and content delivery, programmes primarily emphasize entertainment, the dissemination of national and local information and news largely from official sources, as well as religious propagation. Political programming is largely absent. These limitations arise from a lack of diversity among station operators, the intentional avoidance of political issues, the absence of supportive affiliations, ambiguous licensing criteria and constraints in technical resources and transmission coverage. Rather than fulfilling its promise as radio ‘by the people, for the people’, current structures and roles suggest that community radio – especially people’s radio – is increasingly being sidelined, resulting in a less diverse and pluralistic media landscape and leaving rural areas and minorities without a voice.

This article looks at the use of radio in three Irish films set in the past and centring on women confined to oppressive environments. It examines the narrative role that the radio plays in terms of diegetic sound but also as an object in itself and as a tool that links these female characters uneasily to the outside world. In each of these films, the radio inspires a desire for connection and escape as well as communicating the inner feelings of the female characters concerned.

Lying dormant for decades after being one of radio’s star attractions during the twentieth century, audio drama seems to be making a comeback in Spain thanks to the emergence and consolidation of podcasting. This phenomenon is being promoted equally by the new digital platforms and by traditional broadcasters. This research aims to explain how the podcast is helping to revive drama and to what extent the new productions will allow radio stations to preserve their identity or if the latter will be forced to reinvent themselves due to the peculiarities of this new format. The results confirm both hypotheses. The fact is, there has been significant growth in production during three well-defined periods. Moreover, at the same time, fiction is changing in terms of its characteristics, content and production techniques, as the rich heritage accumulated over the last century has been lost with the passing of time.

This study analyses the older adults’ participation in the production of programmes broadcast on RadiUS, the radio station of the University of Seville, and its contribution to their active ageing. To identify the interests that people over 65 pursue as prosumers through multiplatform radio and podcasting and to define the challenges and benefits of this practice for them, a mixed methodology was employed: a content analysis of the programmes making up the sample, a questionnaire delivered to each one of the 40 people who participate in these programmes and a focus group conducted among participants. Findings confirm that older adults’ participation in the production of multiplatform radio programmes and podcast episodes makes a key contribution to their active ageing; they organize themselves by sharing roles and tasks without hierarchies and tend to adopt a proactive attitude to improve their technical radio skills as well as the content quality of their programmes.

Review of: Podcast Studies: Practice into Theory, Lori Beckstead and Dario Llinares (eds) (2025)

Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 383 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-77112-643-4, h/bk, GBP 79

ISBN 978-1-77112-676-2, p/bk, GBP 35