Interactivity on Traditional Media Web Sites

This study compares the radio industry's use of interactivity to that of other traditional media on the Web such as newspapers and television stations, along the dimensions of audience-oriented interactivity and source-oriented interactivity. A content analysis of 112 traditional radio station Web sites, 282 traditional newspaper Web sites, and 128 traditional television station Web sites found that traditional radio station Web sites provided more audience-oriented interactivity compared to other traditional media Web sites, and traditional newspaper Web sites offered the most source-oriented interactivity. A general conclusion of this study is that although traditional radio stations were more likely to transmit live and archived sound than other media, all traditional media Web sites have held back from developing interactivity beyond e-mail, and have limited the transmission of streaming media, as well as archived audio and video content.     

Call-In Talk Radio: Compensation or Enrichment

This study focused on call-in talk radio because it provides a unique opportunity to test competing hypotheses drawn from two different perspectives about the appeal of media programming. A good deal of research on call-in talk radio grows from a deficiency perspective, which holds that people seek out media content to fill gaps in their lives. More recent research, however, suggests that, like the selection of other media content, the appeal of talk radio lies in enrichment, or its ability to provide content for specialized interests. A random telephone survey tested competing hypotheses that compared listeners to call-in talk radio with nonlisteners. For the most part, the results supported an enrichment explanation. Compared to nonlisteners, listeners to call-in talk radio listened to the programs for information, perceived themselves as more mobile, and valued arguments. Compared to nonlisteners, callers to the programs were also more civically engaged. Moreover, listening to various subformats of talk radio programs was also likely to signal enrichment.     

‘WHAT DO YOU EXPECT OF THIS FRIEND?’

In Canada during the pre-television era, the perception of radio as an intimate medium profoundly affected the way people ordered their listening, production, performance and discussion of programming. With evidence drawn primarily from Canadian archival sources, this paper contends that radio's perceived intimacy deeply troubled those who considered themselves responsible for the physical and cultural welfare of listeners, and that Canada's early broadcasting experience provided a particularly good example of how worry could become action. Though thinking about intimacy had helped broadcasters before the mid-1930s to understand the function of radio in relation to other media, it also led the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) after its formation in 1936 to scrutinize and control commercial and unsponsored programming, advertising and public service messages alike. The CBC's self-assigned stewardship role – a reaction to plentiful and popular American programming and an emulation of the British Broadcasting Corporation and European services – pushed it toward protecting children and other listeners thought to be gullible or sensitive from programmes that abused the intimate relationship by stepping beyond established boundaries of taste or threatening the Corporation's ‘civilizing’ role.     

Exploring the Influence of Parasocial Relationships and Experiences on Radio Listeners’ Consumer Behaviors

The purpose of the present study was to explore the influence of radio listener experiences on radio listening behaviors, consumer perceptions and behaviors, and social media involvement. A national sample of listeners (N = 2,700) from a variety of small, medium, and large designated market areas (N = 9) throughout the United States revealed the presence of parasocial relationships (PSRs) and experiences of parasocial interaction (EPSI) with local and nationally syndicated radio personalities. Both PSRs and EPSI predicted radio listening, positive perceptions about, recall of, and purchasing of the brands, products, and services recommended by listeners’ favorite radio personalities. Results also show that PSRs and EPSI predicted listeners’ involvement with social media platforms.     

Visualizing a Non-Visual Medium through Social Media: The Semiotics of Radio Station Posts on Instagram

For decades, radio was primarily a hidden or unseen medium to listeners. In recent years, digital technologies have transformed radio to a medium that can both be seen and heard. In particular, visuals on social media have given audiences a real-time glimpse of broadcast operations and talent, while enhancing interaction with stations. This study examined how commercial stations across the United States portrayed themselves through posts on Instagram. Using a qualitative methodology and social semiotic theory, results of the study revealed two dominant themes of station posts—station promotion and community—that signified the essence of radio stations.     

Black Radio Listeners in America’s “Golden Age”

“Black Radio Listeners in America’s “Golden Age’” argues that U.S. black listenership has been all but ignored in radio scholarship regarding the 1930s-1950s, as has the context of America’s racial segregation and radio’s active role in affirming and propagating it. The essay argues for an expanded understanding of archive and archival methodology in order to gain a more complex, accurate, and varied understanding of historical black listenership, and, toward that end, performs culturally contextualized close textual analysis across media: a 1937 Lead Belly song (“Turn Yo’ Radio On”), Joe Bostic’s column for The People’s Voice in the 1940s, Frederic Wakeman’s 1946 novel The Hucksters, a 1949 feature on black listeners in Sponsor magazine, a 1934 Vitaphone Short featuring Cab Calloway, and Ann Petry’s 1946 novel The Street. Through engaging with widely-varied representations of black radio listenership, Stoever argues that black listening practices from this period not only challenge the periodization of this era as the “Golden Age” of American radio, but also upend traditional categories of active, passive, and “resistant” listening that scholars have employed to understand media reception, revealing that active listening can look and sound different for black listeners, particularly in a period when listening “actively” to segregated media in ways prescribed by the dominant culture often proved to be deleterious. The act of “turning one’s radio on” was a complicated act of agency for black listeners, not simply a passive form of ignorance, escape, and/or anesthetization as popularly represented.     

The Scullery of the Broadcasting House: Female Writers and the Literary Features of the Dutch Broadcasting Organization KRO (1928–1940)

Departing from the claim that media actively co-construct gender relations in a society, this article focuses on the interwar literary features of the Dutch Catholic radio broadcaster KRO. Similar to all broadcasting organizations in the Dutch Interbellum, the KRO aired these literary features in order to contribute to the cultural elevation of its listeners. Remarkable about the KRO, however, is that it created a division between an official literary feature, which was aired on Sunday afternoons, and a series composed of literary contributions aimed specifically at women, which was broadcast on Tuesday afternoons. Specifically focusing on their repertoires, this article primarily aimed to analyze the differences between these two features. It appears that the books of female writers were underrepresented in the official feature and overrepresented in the women’s feature, which indicates that Dutch radio reflected the hegemonic gender relations in the interwar literary field.     

Designing the Auditor: A Prototype of Locative Radio with Original Sound Content

Location-based sound media are similar to traditional radio in that they rely on communication in sound alone. The smartphone has GPS and Bluetooth, and it is easy to attach sound to locations like a rail station, a neighborhood, or a street. The research team designed a media prototype, Auditor, and produced a soundscape called “The Railroad Dialogues.” The medium and content were tested in a field trial with 42 young, urban headphone listeners. The article reports on the informants’ level of immersion in the sound content and interface, and considers their potential to supplement radio in the future.     

Taking Message-Attitude Congruence as Media Effects: Examining Perceived Influence of Political Talk Radio in Hong Kong

This study examines how people perceive the influence of political talk radio in Hong Kong. Theoretically, the study focuses on the influence of message-attitude congruence, that is, the situation in which a person's opinions or attitudes are consistent with the viewpoints promulgated by media messages, on the third-person perception. It is argued that message-attitude congruence provides a situation in which people may attribute their attitudes partly to media influence. Hence message-attitude congruence is expected to relate to increased levels of perceived media influence on self, and thereby weaken the size of the third-person differential. Moreover, it is hypothesized that attribution of media influence should be more likely when people perceive the media influence as desirable and when there is the absence of alternative sources of influence. These arguments were tested with a telephone survey (N = 800) in Hong Kong, where political talk radio has been a prominent medium in the past decade. The results support the theoretical arguments and contribute to our understanding of the significance of the medium in the city. The broader theoretical implications of the findings are also discussed.     

“A certain stigma” of educational radio: Judith Waller and “public service” broadcasting

This paper explores Judith Waller’s radio programming philosophy over her career that began in 1922 at WMAQ Chicago. In the 1940s, representing the interests of her employer NBC, Waller began to use the phrase “public service” as a way to break free of the “stigma” of educational radio. The concept of public service programming shifted during the 1930s and 1940s in the US, redefined and negotiated in response to assumptions about radio listeners, the financial motivations of commercial radio, and Federal Communications Commission rulings. This paper brings renewed attention to the past and present political economy of media in the US, providing a window into the historically complex relationship between commercial and noncommercial media that continues to this day.     

“Doubt is in the Air.” Modeling the Comparison Between Traditional and Web Casting Radio on the Greek Case

Considering radio as a social system for the production of culture and communication, and based on an overview of the Greek case, this article suggests a model for studying the potential of the Web casting radio compared with the traditional radio in various media environments. The model suggested includes eight dimensions: institutional framework, market structures and business models, content diversity, audience profile, interactivity, sociability, relations with the recording industry, and relations with major news media and organizations. The analysis shows that a complex approach is needed to explore the chances for the potential of the Web casting radio to be realized.     

Audience Motivations for Using Interactive Features: Distinguishing Use of Different Types of Interactivity on an Online Newspaper

This study examines audience uses of three types of interactivity, user motivations for visiting an online newspaper, and the relationship between user motivations and use of the different types of interactive features. There are three types of interactivity on a continuum: medium, human/medium, and human interactivity. In an online survey of 542 respondents, results indicate that medium interactive features were used most frequently and human interactive features used the least. Three motivations for using online newspapers emerged—information seeking/surveillance, socialization, and entertainment. In addition, further analysis found that although all three motivations were predictors of use of medium interactive features, the information seeking/surveillance motivation was not a significant predictor of use of human/medium and human interactive features.     

The Development of News as a Viable Format in Philippine Radio (1960s–Present): A Study of DZRH and DZBB

This article traces the development of news as programming content in Philippine radio from the 1960s to the present. Two radio stations, DZRH and DZBB, were chosen for the study. Aside from their popularity among Metro Manila listeners, they are also similar in content (news and information-oriented programs) and have long histories. The case studies show the socio-political, regulatory, economic, and technological influences on the metamorphosis of DZRH and DZBB into news-oriented radio stations. Attention was given to the changes in news program format, news production, and the ratings and advertising of the two stations.     

“Touching the sentiments of everyone”;: Nationalism and state broadcasting in thirties Mexico

This paper provides a historical perspective on the intersection of media, popular culture, and nationalism through a study of the broadcasting policies and programs of one of Mexico's earliest government radio stations. This study analyzes the musical programs that formed the centerpiece of government radio programming in order to evaluate the racial and class ideologies imbedded in the nationalist discourse of state broadcasters. By viewing these government programs through the lens of a broader literature on nationalism in the Third World and among diasporic communities, it is possible to identify a fundamental tension in Mexico's official nationalism between a search for the roots of an “authentic”; ethnic identity, and a need to position Mexican culture within the constellation of Western “civilization.”; Finally, this paper investigates audience reactions to state broadcasts in order to explore the meaning of early broadcast nationalism for Mexico's radio listeners.     

Educational Radio,Listening Instruction,and the NBC Music Appreciation Hour

This article examines the educational and social impact of an instructional radio program, called the Music Appreciation Hour (MAH), broadcast on the NBC network from the 1920s to the 1940s. Walter Damrosch, who came from a musical family and had previously conducted the New York Symphony, envisioned the possibility to use radio to teach music to American schoolchildren by tapping into its aural and emotional qualities. Through archival materials, including correspondence, teachers’ manuals, student notebooks, and program evaluations, it is argued that while Damrosch positioned himself with a new progressive movement that espoused student-centered education, he instead became an appealing on-air “personality” to student listeners and the network. This research serves as an important example of some of the ongoing tensions between education, entertainment, and the mass media.     

From Coughlin to contemporary talk radio: Fallacies & propaganda in American populist radio

Talk radio has evolved into the town meeting of the 1990s. Talk radio's success comes from a combination of powerful personalities, audience involvement, and propagandistic appeals. Talk radio has become so powerful as to prompt the president of the United States to denounce many of its practitioners. Radio listeners need to understand how public figures use the media to manipulate the airwaves and their messages to influence the masses. This paper critically examines conservative talk radio figures using Father Charles Coughlin, the famous “radio priest” of the Shrine of the Little Flower, as the locus of comparison. The authors analyze the radio discourse of Coughlin, contemporary national figures such as Rush Limbaugh, and a Detroit‐area commentator, Mark Scott. Traditional propaganda analysis facilitates understanding of the rhetorical force of talk radio and enables the public to increase their awareness of and ability to deal with propaganda.     

Public trust: a comprehensive investigation on perceived media credibility in China

The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive investigation on perceived media credibility in China. In order to assess people's attitudes toward six media formats (television [TV], newspapers, radio, magazines, websites, and mobile devices), a series of surveys were conducted with a random sample of 5807 residents in 10 cities in China. Findings indicated that Chinese respondents perceived TV to be the most credible among all media and that TV was rated as more credible than newspapers. In addition, two official mouthpieces, China Central Television and the People's Daily, were both perceived to be highly credible. But readership in general was a nonfactor in terms of credibility. These findings challenged conventional thinking on media credibility. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Character sketches: The curious propaganda careers of Mary,Jane, and Willie

This article draws on the concepts of narrative interactivity and closure to investigate three World War II-era print media characters. The analysis details how Al Parker’s Mary & Jane and Norman Rockwell’s Willie Gillis developed a perceived authenticity that invited fans to envision the propaganda drawings as having lives beyond their artistic origins. The essay concludes that the narrative arcs of these characters prefigured the imagined relationships that subsequent generations developed with televised characters.     

Disembodied Voices and Dislocated Signals: The World of Modern-Day DXing

DXing is a hobby which historically has been associated with amateur radio enthusiasts, though there are subcategories of DXing which focus on shortwave, AM, FM, and other communications. DXing features many interesting characteristics, including its own jargon, intercultural communication, a competitive, gendered orientation, eavesdropping, and a strong sense of community.

This article examines an understudied aspect of radio listening: the DXing community. There is a dearth of scholarly research focusing on this community of radio listeners, but DXing remains a popular and widely practiced hobby and aspect of radio listening to this day. Based on 17 interviews that were conducted with active, present-day DXers (including ham radio DXers and broadcast band DXers), as well as a textual analysis of articles and other materials pertaining to DXing, this article examines the hobby, the particular aspects which appeal to its participants, and some of its notable characteristics, such as the jargon that has developed within the community, and its social networking aspect. Furthermore, the response of the DXing community to the growth and increased prevalence of new media technologies is also examined.     

Whose interactive' channel? Exploring the concept of interactivity defined in Taiwan's 2000 presidential election online campaigns

This study bases on two theorized aspects of web interactivity, human‐to‐online‐media interaction, and human‐to‐human‐via‐online‐media interaction, aiming to explore how the concept of ‘interactivity’ was defined and realized by primary candidates' websites in Taiwan's 2000 presidential election. Measured by an Interactivity Index Scale developed in this study, the research findings indicate that candidates' websites performed better in offering human‐to‐online‐media interaction; however, the human‐to‐human interaction via online media was not realized as the primary objective of the online campaigns. Further analysis revealed that even in the perspectives of human‐to‐online media interaction, candidates tended to define web interactivity in terms of working towards their interest, not towards those of the voters. The implication of such findings is provided for future studies on online political communication.