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

Speeches to the nation offer presidents the potential to influence people. In the COVID-19 pandemic, the leaders’ discourses on the nation have been followed by many citizens in different modalities. However, are there differences if the audience watches or listens to the politician in a press conference? This research examines how the modality of presentation (audio or video) influences the perception of attractiveness, persuasiveness, credibility, emotional response, attitude and voting intention. A sample of 360 participants evaluated these variables after watching two videos and listening to two audio segments of the former president of the United States (Trump), the ex-prime minister of the United Kingdom (Johnson) and the president of the Government of Spain (Sanchez) in press conferences about coronavirus. The results showed that modality is an important variable in the participants’ perceptions, emotions and attitudes. Audio was the format in which politicians were perceived as more attractive, persuasive, credible, energetic and dominant. The attitude towards them and the voting intention were also higher in response to the audio version. However, some emotions, such as neutrality, anger and sadness, were better perceived in the video presentations.

As journalists and media-makers in Canada work towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, there is increased discussion on how to work respectfully with Indigenous communities, stories and knowledge. However, for podcasters and audio journalists, there are still limited resources on guidelines and best practices. This article considers several resources which foster decolonial frameworks for mediamaking, from media production guides to broader Indigenous methodological frameworks, and discusses how they can inform media production in these contexts. The authors then discuss their experience working on the Canadian Mountain Podcast – a series that shares mountain-related research from academic and Indigenous perspectives – and the steps the team took to decolonize their methods and work respectfully with different forms of knowledge. Finally, this article looks at the team’s use of developing land acknowledgements and how this practice provided a space to reflect on their journalistic practices and adjust their processes as audio stewards.

While numerous studies focus on streaming platforms as new business models or as novel elements in the supply chain, there is a notable gap in research addressing how streaming is operationalized within the context of state cultural policies. This study aims to fill this gap by conducting a preliminary examination of Turkish Radio and Television Broadcasting Corporation’s (TRT’s) digital transformation through its music streaming platform, TRT Listen. This research contributes to the international literature by highlighting various potential approaches to the digitalization of public radio broadcasting. This study, which examines the purpose and realization of TRT Listen, first provides a historical overview of TRT’s radio broadcasting and thus reveals the continuity in TRT’s cultural policy, which is shaped as a mission to educate the public and inculcate a national cultural identity, from radio broadcasting to the platform app. Two different research methods were used in this study: walk-through technique for the app and in-depth interviews with TRT’s staff and music industry representatives. The basic argument suggests that TRT Listen represents a continuation of historical music policies and nation state cultural agenda inherited from TRT’s radio era. However, at the operational level, this strategic continuity seems to disappear in the audience engagement techniques of digital platforms. The three main discussion sections of this article – TRT Listen’s strategic orientation, content curation and copyright management – reveal the platform’s mission to educate the public culturally in Turkey.

Hospital radio is a form of audio broadcasting for in-patients produced by volunteer staff. This study examines hospital radio’s functioning and community benefits. It first provides the history of hospital radio in the United Kingdom, which has been overlooked in literature, and describes the introduction of the audio programme launched at Fujita Medical University Hospital in 2019, Japan’s first hospital radio initiative, which was based on the United Kingdom’s hospital radio. Drawing from interview data of volunteer staff who conducted the hospital radio, it describes the motivation to volunteer and the bond it created among the staff, who began to view their roles from fresh perspectives. Further, from the patients’ request messages, the study clarifies hospital radio’s significance in their lives during their hospital stay. Overall, this study reveals communication among hospital staff members, patients and professional, as well as professionals’ improved ability to self-reflect.

This article, within the context of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Community Media Association (CMA) in 2023, and its role within the context of British radio history, will draw on grey literature from the CMA digital archives, including policy statements, policy briefings and background material for the lobbying actions during the period 1997–2007. First-hand material to be discussed will draw on interviews with key actors involved in policy-making until the introduction of Community Radio into legislation, as well as on press releases, statements and policy documents of the regulators Radio Authority and the Office of Communications, policy statements and documents published by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, statements from the BBC and commercial radio representatives and parliamentary records of the debates on community radio legislation. The analysis and discussion of this material will help to establish the role of the main players in policy-making and regulation and how events unfolded between the outcome of 2 May 1997 general election, when the Labour Party took power, and 20 July 2004, when the Community Radio Order (CRO) was approved. It will also trace the development of the lobbying action of the CMA, the discussions and the tensions preceding the government’s approval to go ahead with a new sector. It will argue that, despite having the merit of introducing a new sector in licensed radio broadcasting, after three decades of community media activists campaigning, the Labour Party fell short on its promises of funding the sector in its initial phase, denying it a solid and sustainable start.

Review of: ‘Other Stations Are Shit’: Student Radio in Aotearoa New Zealand, Matt Mollgaard and Karen Neill (2023)

Christchurch: Freerange Press, 228 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-47369-263-6, e-book, $24.45

Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio, Katherine Rye Jewell (2023)

Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 480 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-469677-25-5, p/bk, $29.95