Experiencing Radio at the Interface: Preserving the Past and Designing the Future of Radio

In this short essay, I discuss various meanings of “interface,” borrowing from fields such as software design, human/computer interaction, and music technology, and I consider ways in which the metaphor of “interface” could benefit the study of radio. As radio shifts from the one-to-many, temporally dependent medium of terrestrial broadcasting to the many-to-many, play-on-demand media of podcasts, Internet radio, and other emerging forms, considering the variety of interfaces at play in radio will help scholars and archivists to study, preserve, and perhaps recreate the phenomenological experience of radio in its various forms and transmutations.     

Radio as an Instrument of Protest: The History of Bush Radio

This article provides a historical account of Bush Radio, the oldest community radio station in Africa, based in Cape Town, South Africa. The creation of Bush Radio's precursor, the Cassette Education Trust (CASET) was a pivotal moment for the emergence of community radio on the continent. This people's history of Bush Radio tells the full story through the voices of the founders and staff, together with other sources of historical data. The article argues that although the apartheid state constructed essentialist racial and ethnic categories, CASET and later Bush Radio constantly positioned themselves in a space of liminality to interrogate and redefine these categories. Privileging an instrumentalist approach, this article shows the connections between ideology, politics, and economics as they converge to form the industrial structure, the political environment, and the cultural product of broadcasting.     

Metaphor use and perceived managerial effectiveness

This study examines the metaphorical language of three managers in a Northwest city government. Four communication specialists used an interpretative method to identify, categorize, and rate perceptions of metaphors in three 30‐minute transcribed interviews. The results establish a set of metaphor categories, support a theory of culturally‐shared metaphors, demonstrate managers' differences in metaphor use, and suggest an association between managers metaphor use and subordinate ratings of effectiveness.     

Managerial rhetoric as the metaphor for the World Wide Web

–This article explains how metaphors influence how we experience events, and how the Web, viewed through a different metaphor or lens, currently appears a little less valuable as a tool of education or democracy. Although the Web constitutes a new communication milieu, possessing the potential to revolutionize communication in the next millennium, its rhetoric is currently one of consumerism and capitalism–economic not political ideologies pertain. This article conducts a metaphorical analysis of the World Wide Web positing that the Web might be understood best through a managerial metaphor rather than the current spatial/relational metaphor. Using Sproule's 1988 categories of managerial rhetoric, this article critiques contemporary Web practices in an effort to better understand the Web and its communicative potential.     

Stamm,Sound Business: Newspapers,Radio, and The Politics of New Media

The competition and conflict existing between newspapers and radio is one of the organizing images of Pre‐World War II journalism in America. Although there was some animosity, competition and conflict between these media, this study argues that the metaphor of “war”; overstates and distorts the early as well as on‐going approach the managers of these media took toward each other. Examination of the minutes, proceedings, and publications of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, as well as secondary sources, indicates that editors followed a much more consensual and cooperative model, rather than one characterized by conflict Rather than being adversarial, the documents of ASNE indicate that the editors were trying to achieve shared economic objectives with the competitive medium of radio.     

Rethinking Program Diversity Assessment: An Audience-Centered Approach

The marketplace metaphor that provides the foundation for the regulation of electronic media assumes not only that a diversity of content is available, but also that audiences expose themselves to this diversity. This exposure dimension of the diversity issue has been largely absent from conventional diversity assessments. This article proposes a method of assessing exposure diversity and conducts a preliminary analysis using 1995 Nielsen data for prime-time television. The marketplace metaphor that provides the foundation for the regulation of electronic media assumes not only that a diversity of content is available, but also that audiences expose themselves to this diversity. This exposure dimension of the diversity issue has been largely absent from conventional diversity assessments. This article proposes a method of assessing exposure diversity and conducts a preliminary analysis using 1995 Nielsen data for prime-time television.     

互联网产品中隐喻表达的设计研究

利用规范分析的方法,把互联网产品中的隐喻分为操作型隐喻和展示型隐喻两种。融合视觉设计、文学修辞等领域的经典方法,归纳出5种具体的隐喻设计方法。提出互联网隐喻设计过程要经过本体分析、喻体设计两个阶段,其中喻体设计包括积累喻体(产生)、甄选喻体(评估)和再创造喻体(开发)三个步骤。最后利用一个实例说明如何使用这些方法和步骤来完成一个隐喻作品的设计。     

A bird's-eye view of scientific trading: Dependency relations among fields of science

We use a trading metaphor to study knowledge transfer in the sciences as well as the social sciences. The metaphor comprises four dimensions: (a) Discipline Self-dependence, (b) Knowledge Exports/Imports, (c) Scientific Trading Dynamics, and (d) Scientific Trading Impact. This framework is applied to a dataset of 221 Web of Science subject categories. We find that: (i) the Scientific Trading Impact and Dynamics of materials science and transportation science have increased; (ii) biomedical disciplines, physics, and mathematics are significant knowledge exporters, as is statistics and probability; (iii) in the social sciences, economics, business, psychology, management, and sociology are important knowledge exporters; and (iv) Discipline Self-dependence is associated with specialized domains which have ties to professional practice (e.g., law, ophthalmology, dentistry, oral surgery and medicine, psychology, psychoanalysis, veterinary sciences, and nursing).     

Centered but not Caught in the Middle: Stepchildren's Perceptions of Dialectical Contradictions in the Communication of Co-Parents

The researchers adopted a dialectical perspective to study how stepchildren experience and communicatively manage the perception of feeling caught in the middle between their parents who are living in different households. The metaphor of being caught in the middle is powerful for stepchildren and this metaphor animated their discourse. A central contribution of the present study was to understand the alternative to being caught in the middle and what this alternative means to stepchildren. Reflected in the discourse of stepchildren is that to feel not caught in the middle is to feel centered in the family. Stepchildren's desire to be centered in the family was animated by the dialectic of freedom-constraint, which co-existed within the contradictions of openness-closedness and control-restraint. These contradictions are detailed in the analysis, along with advice to parents from the perspective of stepchildren. Implications for the interaction of stepchildren and their parents are discussed.     

Centered but not Caught in the Middle: Stepchildren's Perceptions of Dialectical Contradictions in the Communication of Co-Parents

The researchers adopted a dialectical perspective to study how stepchildren experience and communicatively manage the perception of feeling caught in the middle between their parents who are living in different households. The metaphor of being caught in the middle is powerful for stepchildren and this metaphor animated their discourse. A central contribution of the present study was to understand the alternative to being caught in the middle and what this alternative means to stepchildren. Reflected in the discourse of stepchildren is that to feel not caught in the middle is to feel centered in the family. Stepchildren's desire to be centered in the family was animated by the dialectic of freedom–constraint, which co-existed within the contradictions of openness–closedness and control–restraint. These contradictions are detailed in the analysis, along with advice to parents from the perspective of stepchildren. Implications for the interaction of stepchildren and their parents are discussed.     

Metaphors for learning: A cognitive exercise for students

The challenge of teaching first-year students basic library skills is to make the process interesting and relevant. In this collaborative project between professor and librarian, metaphors in everyday life were used as a springboard for library research. Through the metaphor project, Honors students learned how to approach a topic, break down its parts, brainstorm searchable words, and make assumptions about ways to research. Most importantly, they learned to evaluate the results of their research to ensure that, in the materials located, they had actually found a real life application of their metaphor.     

The Metropolitan Museum of Art as an Adjunct of Factory: Richard F. Bach and the Resolution Between Gilman’s Temple and Dana’s Department Store

Abstract This article examines the metaphors used by museum leaders in the early twentieth century. Richard F. Bach’s metaphor for the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an adjunct of factory is positioned as a philosophical resolution between those of two prominent contemporaries: Benjamin Ives Gilman’s metaphor of the art museum as a temple and John Cotton Dana’s metaphor of the museum as a department store, which are often viewed by historians in a dichotomy of unresolved tension. While examining differences in institutional agendas suggested by these metaphors, this article illuminates the common goal among them: Museums explicitly saw themselves as serving an essential role in American society to refine public taste and the aesthetic sophistication of their audiences. A close analysis of the metaphors reveals three historical models that offered varying visitor experiences for exercising good taste.     

Stewart,Essential Radio Skills: How to Present a Radio Show

This article reports on ongoing studies of political satire in the seriocomedy genre produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and its French language counterpart, la Société Radio‐Canada (SRC). We compare and contrast examples of each network's way of imagining its respective society as well as each other's society. We situate the definition of seriocomedy in a discussion of the contrasting role of private and public broadcasting in the North American context. Then we present examples from programs produced in two historical periods. The definition of seriocomedy and the analysis of texts follows the dialogical theory of discourse developed by the Russian thinker, Mikhail Bakhtin. In the conclusion, we discuss how these examples of dialogical criticism help demonstrate the complex process in which the seriocomedy genre expands and reinstitutes the normative boundaries of what can be said or represented in public culture.     

Metaphor and Intra-Attitudinal Structural Coherence

Metaphor is ubiquitous as a persuasion device although the process by which its effects are achieved is still not yet fully understood. The study proposes that the trope's persuasive outcomes derive from an emergent structural match between linguistic and conceptual metaphor that produces coherence among the structural components of attitude; a literal-only message offers no such match and hence by comparison less attitude coherence. To test this proposition, four hypotheses related to metaphor's effect on attitude and intra-attitudinal structural coherence were tested by manipulating message type (metaphor vs. literal), knowledge of metaphor target/attitude object (low vs. high), and placement of metaphor/literal equivalent (message introduction vs. conclusion). Results provided moderate support for the predictions.     

The Effects of Metaphor Use and Message Format on Cognitive Processing and Persuasive Outcomes of Condom Promotion Messages

The potential of pictorial and verbal metaphors to gain attention and enhance persuasion is considerable. Few scholars, however, have investigated the persuasive effects of metaphor in health messages. We applied a 2 × 2 factorial experiment to examine the effects of metaphor use (metaphor/literal) and message format (verbal/pictorial) on cognitive processing and persuasive outcomes of condom promotion messages. Results showed no significant differences in cognitive processing according to metaphor or format, but there were differences in attitudes and behavioral intentions according to metaphor and format, with literal and verbal messages performing best. Potential explanations for findings and implications for future research and health message design are discussed.     

The Future of Radio Revisited: Expert Perspectives and Future Scenarios for Radio Media in 2025

In 2005–2006 the research group DRACE (Digital Radio Cultures in Europe) performed a study on how 43 people in key positions related to the radio industry in 4 European countries and Canada viewed the future of radio and which delivery technologies they considered would be most successful. In addition, it analyzed the motives and reasons certain technologies were seen as more promising than others. Finally, it presented 4 different future scenarios for radio media. The study was published in the Journal of Radio and Audio Media, May 2008.

In 2005 the future of radio was considered much less obvious and clear than it appeared 10 years previously. Instead of a transition from analog to digital audio broad- casting (DAB), there was a selection of alternative technological options for digital audio delivery. When looking back from 2015 and considering the results of expert interviews, the project group about Public Service Media in the HERA project: Transnational Radio Encounters found interesting perspectives in replicating this study—now looking forward to 2025. By using the same questionnaire and interviewing the same experts (or new persons in the same positions) they could compare the predictions with the present situation, looking for technological, regulatory, policy based, and user-oriented contexts. Furthermore, they could ask the experts to look 10 years forward to 2025. Besides from the interviews, desk studies were performed in order to explore the national similarities and differences as background for the analysis of the scenarios for the 2015 and 2025 studies.

This comparative study involves Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, and the UK.     

1928: Radio becomes a mass advertising medium

This magazine has observed that “we have neither adequately gathered the history of broadcasting nor acknowledged its importance.” At that time the lack and loss of primary historical data that might be of future use to broadcasters was being decried. Painstaking analysis and synthesis of such data would be the next, and most directly valuable, step. The following article is that sort of historical writing. It should be of interest to every broadcaster, and of use to those here and in other countries who need to examine the antecedents of the American system of economic support for broadcasting. The thesis of this article argues that it is possible to locate a period in the late 1920's in which broadcast facilities, audiences, programs, and station owner attitudes, were “right” for the national advertiser to enter upon radio sponsorship in a serious way.     

Queer Radio History: Pacifica Radio

Pacifica Radio was the first listener-sponsored non-commercial radio network in the United States to air queer voices beginning with Allen Ginsberg reading his iconic poem, Howl on KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California in 1956. From that broadcast, Pacifica stations KPFK-FM (LA), WBAI-FM (NYC), KPFT-FM (Houston), and WPFW-FM (Washington, D.C.) have consistently given space to the LGBTQI community and perspective over 60 years, creating a vibrant recorded history relatively unknown and vastly under-researched.

What survives of the broadcasts are largely found in the Pacifica Radio Archives (and other repositories) and documented in the printed station program folio guides (1949–2005) and consumer catalogues.

This article explores the importance of Pacifica’s queer sound and print archive and looks to identify what survives and what has been lost. It also highlights the many ways the queer story was expressed; bearing witness to the Gay Liberation movement through reportage, literature, poetry, radio drama, music, interviews, live event coverage, documentaries, docudramas, listener call-ins, and group discussions. The author presents this article to bring awareness to these rare instances and help motivate their preservation and access for extended scholarly use.     

Radio,Democracy and Development: Evolving Models of Community Radio

Although community radio has a long history in South and North America, new models are evolving in other parts of the world from South Africa to Central Eurasia. True to its community roots, stations reflect the unique history, culture, and political climate of each country. Radio is the most democratic of media both in providing easy access to citizen participation and in being widely available. In rural areas from subsistence farmers in Mozambique to nomadic herders in Mongolia, radio is the only medium. With limited resources in new democracies, it is the most cost-effective medium. The expressive human voice and natural sound engage the imagination through story telling. Radio stations are not simply passive transmitters of information or hit music; they are a catalyst for building community, for improving health and education, for fostering a civil society. These are no longer theoretical visions; many stations now demonstrate all of these goals.