Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting
Many congratulations to Michele Hilmes and Andrew Bottomley on the publication of their collection in radio and podcast studies. we’re all very much looking forward to getting our hands on a copy.
Below is a selection of podcast studies asbtracts from the book
Listen without Limits: True Crime, Audio Drama, and BBC Sounds Podcasts
Podcasting is dominated by “niche” genres, like chatcasts/chumcasts and true crime, that sometimes obscure the more varied potential offerings of the form. In 2018, the United Kingdom’s BBC launched a new streaming platform, BBC Sounds, a revamp of catch-up service BBC iPlayer and a new way for listeners to engage with BBC content. Using BBC Sounds commissioning documents and five case studies, this chapter interrogates the form and content offered by Sounds to its audience, primarily envisioned to be young listeners between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, seeking a personalized experience and “effortless stimulation.” By close examination of one true crime podcast, one docudrama, and three dramas, this chapter suggests that the BBC is building on decades of know-how to produce compelling audio—though at a potential cost of alienating its traditional listeners and losing the space to produce and promote sound art not defined by commercial forces
McMurtry, Leslie, ‘Listen without Limits: True Crime, Audio Drama, and BBC Sounds Podcasts’, in Michele Hilmes, and Andrew J. Bottomley (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting, Oxford Handbooks (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 June 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197551127.013.10,
The Daily Dose: Podcasting and Broadcasting in the Public Interest
This chapter examines The Daily Dose, a Baltimore-based podcast that draws from local public radio’s coverage of an unfolding crisis in such a way as to suggest a model for the public and community functions of radio in the podcast format. The Daily Dose is an example of a wave of local public radio collaborations and innovations in response to several overlapping but distinct emerging contexts. In addition to addressing the pandemic public health crisis, these include responding to the chasms left by newspaper consolidation and disinvestment, diversifying the public that works in and is served by public media, and adapting to a media landscape perched between the competing regimes of analog and digital, immediate and curated, local and ubiquitous.
Loviglio, Jason, ‘The Daily Dose: Podcasting and Broadcasting in the Public Interest’, in Michele Hilmes, and Andrew J. Bottomley (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting, Oxford Handbooks (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 June 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197551127.013.27,
Sensational Voices: Discourses of Intimacy in Podcast Production Culture
Since the post-Serial podcasting boom of the late 2010s, intimacy has become podcasting’s most often-remarked-on characteristic—cited as the distinctive feature of the podcast voice and the key element that distinguishes podcasting from radio and other popular media. Podcasters refer so frequently to audio storytelling’s presumed intimacy in interviews, press materials, and other forms of embedded knowledge that it is now conventional wisdom. Yet, intimacy remains a concept that is often invoked, rarely defined. This chapter adopts a production studies approach to investigate the cultural practices and belief systems of podcasters. Through ethnographic observation and original interviews with creative workers—ranging from producers on prestigious internationally known programs like Radiolab, On the Media, and Millennial to independent and amateur productions—it establishes a critical understanding of the “low theory” of intimacy within contemporary podcast production culture and how these working assumptions shape the content and form of current podcasts.
Bottomley, Andrew J., ‘Sensational Voices: Discourses of Intimacy in Podcast Production Culture’, in Michele Hilmes, and Andrew J. Bottomley (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting, Oxford Handbooks (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 June 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197551127.013.17,
Giving Voice or Creating a Spectacle? Personality, Intimacy, and Ethics in First-Person Narrative Nonfiction Podcasting
This chapter builds on existing work concerning literary journalistic and personal narrative podcasting to advance understanding of the use of intimacy in popular factual narrative nonfiction entertainment podcasts. It identifies two forms of intimate content in many first-person narrative nonfiction podcasts: revealing or vulnerable moments on the part of story subjects and personal reflections on the action from narrator-protagonists. The chapter argues that the deployment of these forms of intimacy is emblematic of the way that first-person narrative nonfiction podcasts sometimes privilege the relationship between the narrator-protagonist and the listener at the expense of the subjects whose stories they are telling. The podcast Missing & Murdered is used as a case study of a program that evolved to modify the format for a more equitable approach that better fits its objectives and subject matter. The chapter suggests that this example is indicative of podcasting’s ongoing maturation as a medium.
Cwynar, Christopher, ‘Giving Voice or Creating a Spectacle? Personality, Intimacy, and Ethics in First-Person Narrative Nonfiction Podcasting’, in Michele Hilmes, and Andrew J. Bottomley (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting, Oxford Handbooks (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 June 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197551127.013.18,
Finding Queer Soundwork: Information Activism in Lesbian Feminist Radio and Queer Podcast Network
Over the decades, community radio has played a key role in queer activism: as entertainment, a political project, a community space, and part of a larger queer information infrastructure. Radio shows such as The Lesbian Show and Dykes on Mykes offer a glimpse into a lesbian feminist past in which “visibility”—or in this case “audibility”—was key to establishing political rights and social education around women’s sexuality. At the same time, listening to these shows is not so different from listening to a queer podcast in the early twenty-first century. How might past practices of information activism in lesbian feminist media inform contemporary queer and feminist approaches to radio and podcasting? This feminist information study advocates for media scholars and practitioners alike to look to lesbian feminist radio practices of community safety, accountability, and discoverability as an activist media model toward more equitable future queer and feminist media world-making.
Copeland, Stacey, ‘Finding Queer Soundwork: Information Activism in Lesbian Feminist Radio and Queer Podcast Networks’, in Michele Hilmes, and Andrew J. Bottomley (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting, Oxford Handbooks (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 June 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197551127.013.24,
Podcast Journalism: Storytelling Experimentation and Emerging Conventions
News podcasts are increasingly popular despite comprising a small proportion of existing podcasts. This intimate, emotive form of journalism reaches new audiences by experimenting with journalistic platforms, formats, and ways to tell stories. This chapter extends the work on narrative journalism by examining emerging conventions in podcast journalism, including the journalist’s role as self-reflexive storyteller. It aims to map a development of journalistic storytelling from radio to podcast journalism, highlighting the link between radio broadcasting’s past and its digital present. By focusing on two award-winning English-language podcast episodes from the United Kingdom and the United States, this work aims to illustrate how podcast journalism has transcended radio current affairs formats commonly used by public service broadcasters in past decades to embrace storytelling techniques from documentary traditions and immersive journalism. By theorizing concepts of intimacy and emotions in journalistic podcasts, the chapter contributes to the growing field studying affect in media.
Bird, Dylan, and Mia Lindgren, ‘Podcast Journalism: Storytelling Experimentation and Emerging Conventions’, in Michele Hilmes, and Andrew J. Bottomley (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting, Oxford Handbooks (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 June 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197551127.013.19
New Music Fridays: Now Available via Podcasts
This chapter examines the role music podcasts play in the current distribution ecosystem for digital music. It begins by briefly reviewing the historical relationship between music and radio and the central role radio played in the dissemination of popular music in the mid-twentieth century. It then explores a potential typology for the wide range of music podcasts available before focusing on particular cases of artists or companies using podcasts to distribute or promote new music. The chapter considers how music podcasts offer a different relationship between artists and their fans and between artists and their music than either radio or streaming music and argues that the podcast format blends concepts from music radio and streaming services to create a novel opportunity for artists to connect with their work and their listeners. It also raises larger conceptual issues for media studies scholars about the limits and boundaries of various formats.
Morris, Jeremy Wade, ‘New Music Fridays: Now Available via Podcasts’, in Michele Hilmes, and Andrew J. Bottomley (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting, Oxford Handbooks (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 June 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197551127.013.2,