* eBook: Radio Audiences and Participation in the age of Network Society. Ed. by Tiziano Bonini and Belen Monclus. Routledge, 2015

Key theme: The listener as producer: the rise of the networked listener

In this first installment, editor Tiziano Bonini explains the structure of the book:

“This book is divided into two macro-sections: Interactive Publics and Productive Publics. These two sections do not represent two different worlds of practices but, conversely, describe two different moments of the same process: audience participation mediated by radio. We conceive of audience participation in radio as a process that is articulated along a continuum, moving from interaction (with a low level of activity) to co-creation (Banks and Deuze 2009) and co-production (with a high level of participation). Here we will show and analyse different innovative practices of interaction and participation.

In this body of work, interactivity is intended in both its minimal technical meaning, as a sequence of action and reaction, as well as in the wider sense of a social-communicative relationship (listeners that reply to a call by a radio host by either phone, smartphone messaging systems, email or Facebook/Twitter texts; listeners that react to a call by a radio host by doing something, such as downloading content or liking/commenting/sharing social media posts; radio hosts and authors that reply to questions and content coming from listeners).

The boundary between interactive and productive publics is traced according to the ideal model of audience participation (AIP model – Access; Interaction; Participation – see Carpentier (2007)), where: “this difference between participation on the one hand, and access and interaction on the other, is located within the key role that is attributed to power, and to equal(ised) power relations in decision-making processes.” (Carpentier 2011, 29). According to the AIP model, in the first section, contributors will analyse processes of participation that allow listeners to produce content (SMS, phone calls, social media messages, etc.) but do not let them take part in the co-creation of radio programmes in any way.
The first section of this work will analyse contemporary forms of interaction between radio and its listeners, using specific case studies to examine all the technological means that are currently involved in these processes: the telephone, short text messages, social network sites.

The second section will focus on examples in which the radio public not only reacts to the producers’ requests using the technology at hand, but consciously participates in the production of radio content and has some voice in deciding the content being produced. Some examples in this section will look at the collective production of a playlist used by music programmes: a number of programmes have been built upon listeners requests and music choices, by different means.
Further examples of co-creation refer to other genres, such as the documentary. In Sweden, Germany, Italy and Latin America, some radio producers seek to involve the public in one or more steps of the productive process of a radio documentary, by means of crowdfunding as well.

…

“The title of the book Radio Audiences and Participation in the Age of Network Society highlights the paradigm shift that is transforming the nature of mass media audiences and publics. The rise of the network society (van Dijck 1991; Castells 1996; Wellman 2001), due to the diffusion of ICTs, is also restructuring the topology, the properties and the very nature of media audiences, which are no more understandable only as diffused in time and space (Abercrombie and Longhust 1998). Audiences and publics attracted to media such as radio are no longer invisible, silent and disconnected. Listening habits are changing and listeners are increasingly more used to both listening to radio and leaving comments on social media, where their feelings and opinions are public, searchable, accessible and measurable, as Lacey claims: “Listeners are able to represent their listening to their social networks and track others’ online listening in real or archived time. On the one hand, this means that listening is a practise that is increasingly surveilled and increasingly open to measurement and commodification. On the other hand, it is also a sign of persistent desire to create and partake in forms of collective listenings to mediated music, sound and speech, albeit in virtual space.” (2013, 155).

Radio audiences are a mix of traditional radio broadcasting audiences and networked publics (Varnelis 2008; Boyd 2011). This not only means that new media are changing the nature of listeners/viewers, transforming them into interactive users (Livingstone 2003), but also that radio publics, once organized into networks, now have different properties, different behaviours and different affordances. Networked publics are made up of listeners that are not only able to produce written and audio content for radio and co-create along with the radio producers (even definitively bypassing the central hub of the radio station), but that also produce social data, calling for an alternative rating system, which is less focused on attention and more on other sources, such as engagement, sentiment, affection, reputation, and influence. What are the economic and political consequences of this paradigm shift (see chapter 6 and 14)? How are radio audiences perceived by radio producers in this new radioscape (see chapter 1, 2, 4 and 7)? What’s the true value of radio audiences in this new frame (see chapter 6 and 14)? How do radio audiences take part in the radio flow in this age (see chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13)? Are audiences’ interactions and co-creations overrated or underrated (see chapter 2) by radio producers? What’s the role of community radio in this new context (see chapter 11, 12 and 13)? These are some of the many issues that this present book aims to explore.”