Digital Innovations and the Production of Local Content in Community Radio

Changing Practices in the UK

Josephine F. Coleman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000378672
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Journalismus

This book offers an in-depth analysis of how local community radio practitioners have embraced the digital revolution.

Digital Innovations and the Production of Local Content in Community Radio contextualizes the UK model of community radio, before focussing on specific case studies to examine how the use of digital technologies has affected local radio production practices. The book offers an overview of the new technologies, media forms, and platforms in radio production, shedding light on how digitalization is impacting the routines and experiences of a predominantly volunteer-based workforce. The author presents the argument that despite the benefits of digital media, traditional aspects of programme production continue to be of vital importance to the interpersonal relationships and values of community radio.

This book will appeal to academics and researchers in the areas of communication, culture, journalism studies, media, and creative industries.

1 Radio – a social technology

Introduction

The aim of this book is to explore how digital innovations, tools and technologies have helped to shape contemporary radio production practices. The case studies employed here to generate evidence are illustrative of the UK community radio sector which, after decades of campaigning, was eventually legitimated in the early years of the 21st century. Perspectives on UK community media, however, are not featured so much in published research as those focussed on practice in other parts of the world; this book goes some way to redress that shortcoming. I suggest moreover, that the site-specific, practice-focussed framing of this study provides in-depth analysis of another under-explored but crucial aspect of media studies: the experiences of unpaid radio practitioners in the production of local(ized) and special interest content. Reflection on these matters yields important ethical insights which are of considerable value to media studies more generally.

To clarify, this book does not offer a technical account of the engineering and information technology (IT) aspects of the cable, wireless, broadcast or streamed transmission of radio signals. Rather, it explores how the practice of creating radio station output has been impacted by digital technologies and how the internet, as well as interactive social media platforms, have altered practitioners’ routines, adding or detracting from the social and sociable experiences of the practice. In addition, the research methods informing the research reported in this book, demonstrate that digital technologies have improved and enriched how radio can be studied.

The original rationale for focussing on non-mainstream radio in this inquiry was that against the backdrop of the shifting broadcast media landscape, positioned between large corporate branded networks and a growing multitude of independent webcasters and podcasters, community radio seemed to have reached a turning point. Was this licensed, not-for-profit community sector the answer to enabling the provision of a dependable and genuinely local broadcasting service? And if so, could this be achieved and afforded by the licensed operators without compromising the utopian notion that community radio should be done for, with and by members of the targeted publics? Digital innovations had unleashed cheaper, easier ways of making audio content but what impact did this have on unpaid (non-professional or amateur) practitioner experiences in the community sector and on their relationships with their local (or locally-invested) listeners? How did different equipment and skill requirements change how radio stations were structured and how the working arrangements for their practitioners were organized? What did the term “radio station” mean anyway, when across the industry, traditional functions like engineering, music acquisition, publicity, sales, management, news reporting and presenting were less and less fixed to a single physical place? Most local community radio bases, or hubs, are modestly sized and cannot easily accommodate large groups. Stations remain accessible to their publics but nowadays, listeners can “visit” a website or Facebook page to interact with the staff, rather than go to the building itself. Indeed, in some cases, thanks to advances in electronic media, it is not uncommon for entire programmes to be produced off-site, in remote studios or spare bedrooms and uploaded to station servers for later broadcast.

COVID-19, however, has been an unexpected crisis, demanding agility and innovation in both societal and individual responses to the imposed conditions of social distancing and lockdown. In all walks of life, everyday practices changed to accommodate the very different structural arrangements within which we were all expected to function. The use of digital media technologies, devices, platforms and apps soared in both the public sphere – governmental, business and third sector – and in private, domestic domains. This “turn to the virtual” threw into sharp relief how digital technologies were being harnessed by community radio station teams in pursuit of their key commitments through local broadcasting for social gain. My interdisciplinary research was conducted before and during the pandemic and comprised a combination of desk research, a practice-as-research project, participant observation and snapshot station visits, interviews and an online questionnaire. The purpose was to explore the use of digital technologies in particular local community radio stations and later to test the assumption that introducing wholescale reliance on them automatically empowers all practitioners.

In this first chapter, I introduce the subject matter by discussing the ways in which theorists understand key concepts relating to and associated with radio: mass communication and broadcasting; audio content and related outputs; and social discourse. The overview of academic discourse about radio continues as I explore what has been written about the medium’s relationship with technology, especially in the light of more recent digital innovations. I then consider in more depth the association of radio broadcasting with notions of place, community-building and belonging. In Chapter Two, I present an overview of community radio and how the seeds of what became a global movement for popular access to the airwaves were eventually allowed to germinate in the UK when the sector was established to satisfy the demand for local, niche interest radio. I then outline briefly how my research was framed and conducted.

Chapter Three is replete with descriptions and anecdotes from the case studies and research which convey how locally relevant features and programme content are produced by the predominantly volunteer producers and presenters in UK community radio stations. The focus is on how I perceived digital devices and software being routinely incorporated into performances of the practice, which were shaped by and shaped the material and organizational arrangements in the sampled station settings. Here, I begin to reveal how COVID-19 influenced that usage and differentially impacted the practitioner experience. In Chapter Four, I analyse my fieldwork findings and contextualize them against a variety of indicators about the wider sector gleaned from the online questionnaire conducted as the crisis unfolded. I discuss contemporary production environments, comparing normal with crisis conditions, and ponder the interwoven connections and interrelations with local communities that practitioners navigated in their quest to produce locally sourced and resonant content. I highlight how softer journalistic approaches and the nurturing of social networks facilitated their practice.

In the concluding Chapter Five, I reflect on how radio broadcasting and production practices have changed in relation to the provision of local content for non-mainstream community stations. The enduring value of local media and the increasing interest in living and consuming locally contribute to my arguments for more attention to be paid to how local community radio can be provided for in the future to sustain the sector. I urge that digital technologies be applied, and radio stations set up and resourced, in ways which benefit and enable everyone who is entitled to be a part of a community radio station to join in and have their voice aired.

Understanding radio as a social medium

Radio broadcasting technology was developed around the turn of the 20th century from earlier experiments in wireless telegraphy. The achievement is ascribed to Guglielmo Marconi whose projects were initially for military clients before turning to the medium’s potential for domestic usage. Radio radically changed the communication of messages because the sound of actual voices could be transmitted in real time over distance, eliminating the barriers of time and space. In his book Understanding media: the extensions of man (1964), Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan describes the electronic medium as one of the “new media and technologies by which we amplify and extend ourselves” (McLuhan, 1964, p. 64). His famous phrase coined at the time, “global village”, and his concern over whether this heightened sense of proximity to other people(s) would be a force for good, rings true in today’s media-saturated, internet-connected world.

In the 1930s, artists and writers were intrigued by the paradox of the medium’s affective immateriality over time and space and urged that the medium’s power of expression be used for positive purposes. They believed in radio’s utopian potential. Rudolf Arnheim, convinced that radio programmes should address audiences’ common needs, writes that: “Wireless without prejudice serves everything that implies dissemination and community of feeling and works against separateness and isolation” (Arnheim, 1936, p. 252). In The stuff of radio (1934), BBC producer Lance Sieveking describes radio as a machine: one which could achieve “sudden mental contact” between listener and broadcaster (Sieveking, 1934, pp. 111–112, 101). Berthold Brecht, best known for his stage plays, was a radio presenter and experimented in radio theatre. He wrote a lecture about the potential of radio for connecting people and encouraging their participation in society and politics (Brecht, 1932).

Those in political circles, however, feared the use of radio for propaganda and indeed the medium had been used tactically during the Second World War. Sociologists in the USA investigated how radio as a form of mass media could influence social change, but found that its power lay more in persuasion than propaganda (Lazarsfeld and Merton, [1948] 1975, pp. 497–501). Research indicated that members of the public needed to be predisposed to engaging with a particular message. Changing basic attitudes only happened when “in conjunction with face-to-face contacts” (ibid., p. 512).

As academic interest shifted in the 1960s towards the critical, visual text-based study of films and television programmes, the development of radio studies as a discipline stalled (Hilmes and Loviglio, 2002). This has been explained by the medium’s evanescence, and the complications of capturing specific radio programmes to store and study as texts in classroom settings (Starkey and Crisell, 2009, p. 1). Research on the medium was occasionally published by sociologists and practitioners, exploring the act and effectiveness of radio presenting. Erving Goffman for instance listened intently to live radio, tape recordings and vinyl records for his chapter “Radio talk” in Forms of talk (Goffman, 1981, p. 197). This study inspired further radio-focussed work such as Paddy Scannell and Graham Brand’s “Talk, identity and performance” in which they describe how a “discursive space” is created in radio programmes: a sense of a shared virtual space conveying a spirit of sociability (Scannell, 1991, p. 223). Scannell highlights the importance of personability conveyed by the on-air voices because listeners “expected to be spoken to in a familiar, friendly and informal manner as if they were equals on the same footing as the speaker” (ibid., p. 3).

Scannell’s further work on phenomenological aspects of broadcasting marked a turn towards focussing on the emotional and affective impacts experienced by audiences (Scannell 1996), which would later be developed by media theorist Shaun Moores. Scannell acknowledges the recursive nature of social life, how broadcasting schedules are planned around it to reproduce patterns and routines, reinforcing a framework of “dailiness” and “eventfulness” (Scannell, 1996 in Moores, 2005, p. 9). This continuity in daily life that people can identify with is reassuring and Moores cites eminent sociologist Anthony Giddens’ concept of “ontological security”; we find comfort in the knowledge that life goes on, that there is a constancy in our surroundings (Moores, 2005, p. 11). Listeners develop their own rituals of listening and use radio to mark their time. In a subsequent book, Moores describes how the constant rounds of discursive exchanges, of episodic series and regular programme slots fixed into the broadcast schedules become mediated “places” that audiences tune in to regularly and come to take for granted (Moores, 2012, p. 32). He argues that media-related interactions and experiences happen in these virtual places but are always rooted in physical localities, creating a spatial pluralization (Moores, 2012, p. 16). Wherever a listener is located, they can feel as if they are experiencing other actual localities being invoked on-air as well as the imagined radio studio.

This advanced theorization of radio became more prevalent as digital technologies became more readily available. Enhanced research methods meant that radio production methods and outputs could be studied more easily, and in more depth, to investigate those qualities such as liveness, intimacy and affective power. Scholars have discussed the “arbitrariness” and “secondariness” of this audio-only medium (Crisell, 1986, p. 213). Yet at the same time, radio listening is recognized as a vital daily ritual, even an emotional crutch, as “a domestic accompaniment … which … aids mood creation and maintenance” (Tacchi, 2009, p. 174). Notwithstanding the technological basis of the medium and how it seemed to be evolving so rapidly, theorists continued to describe radio as a social medium, to account for the human elements involved in communication: with a sometimes controversial role to play in the public sphere (Hilmes, 1997). The production and dissemination of meaningful content through speech and combinations of sounds and music are cultural activities and as such carry implications for the shaping of social discourse.

Towards the end of the 20th century, radio studies emerged as a separate discipline thanks to the collective effort of academics around the world sharing an intellectual passion for the field (Lewis 1998, 2000). Initiatives included the launch ...