The Listener as Producer - Radio and its public in the age of social networks

Radio and its Public in
the Age of Social Media
Radio Transnational Forum @Radio2013UoB
University of Berdsfordshire, 9-12 July 2013
Tiziano Bonini, IULM University of Milan
giovedì 4 luglio 2013

“A history of long-distance relationship”
- a four stages’ history -
1) an invisible medium for an invisible public (1920-1945)
2) an invisible medium for an audible public (1945-1994)
3) an (in)visible medium for an audible/readable public (1994-2004)
4) a visible medium for a networked public (2004-??)
Framing the history
of radio as a history
of distance between
radio and its public

REMIXING WALTER BENJAMIN: RADIO AS A SOCIAL MEDIUM
In its Reflections on Radio (1930) Benjamin expresses the most fruitful ideas for our contemporary radio age:
“The crucial failing of [radio] has been to perpetuate the fundamental separation between
practitioners and the public, a separation that is at odds with its technological basis. […] The public
has to be turned into the witnesses of interviews and conversations in which now this person and
now that one has the opportunity to make himself heard”.
The radio that Benjamin is advocating is a medium that reduces the distance between transmitter and receiver, allowing
both the author/presenter and the listener to play the role of producers, who contribute to creating the radio
narrative.The importance that Benjamin attributes to active reception is in stark contrast with the hypnotic effect of
Nazi aesthetics (Baudouin 2009:23) and with the allure of a radio show seen as a product to be consumed. Benjamin
juxtaposes the aestheticisation of politics and art embodied by Nazism with the politicisation of art, something which
requires, in his view, a more active and participant role for the listener: politicization of the listener.
Benjamin further developed this theme in The Author as Producer (1934), in which he pointed out the need for a new
intellectual/producer figure (writer, photographer, radio drama author, film director) and the end of the distance
between writer and reader due to the advent of new mechanical and electrical reproduction technologies.

1) an invisible medium for an invisible public (1920- 1945)

1) an invisible medium for an invisible public (1920-1945)
Radio +
paper letters
author/speaker/producer listener/audience
not visible
one-to-many (invisible) comm. model
unique author
not visible
not audible
not linked to the community of listeners
private ﬁgure
passive (it cannot take part in the conversation)
insensitive (it cannot manifest its emotions towards the speaker)
its listening habits are measurable

Radio
+ telephone
not visible
audible
private ﬁgure
can take part in the conversation
not able to freely manifest its emotions
or opinions (phone calls are ﬁltered)
not visible
one-to-many (invisible) comm. model +
one-to-one (phone conversation)
unique author

Radio
+ telephone
+ sms
+email
not visible
audible
private ﬁgure
can manifest its emotions or opinions (sms and
email)
mobile and more data noisy audiences
not visible
one-to-one (phone conversation/email)
unique author

4) a visible medium for a networked public (2004-??) listeners’ posts
listener’s voice

social studio: software for displaying
phone/sms/Twitter/Facebook/ messages

networked
publics...:
publics that “are restructured by networked technologies” (Boyd
2011:41). These kinds of publics all share 4 fundamental affordances
that make them different from all the previous mediated publics:
Persistencemeans that in SNS the public’s expressions are automatically recorded and archived.
This means that feedbacks (opinions, feelings and comments) of every listener are public and since they can remain on line
for a long time they can also have a role in shaping the reputation of the radio station.
Replicabilitymeans that the content produced in networked publics is easily replicable.
Scalabilityin networked publics refers to the possibility of tremendous - albeit not guaranteed - visibility.
This means that, for example, unique listeners commenting and talking about a radio show on its social network proﬁle can
reach a wide audience.
Searchability means that content produced by networked publics can be easily accessed.

Radio
+ telephone
+ sms
+email
+ blog
+ SNS
visible
audible
linked/networked to the community of listeners
public ﬁgure
can manifest its emotions or opinions (sms, email,)
its opinions, comments and feelings about the
programme go
public
produces contents/coop production
its feelings and opinions are measurable (through
netnography)
visible
one-to-many (radio/blog post/FB note or post)
+
one-to-one (phone/email/chat) +
many-to-many (FB Home/ # Twitter) +
many-to-one (FB comments and posts from
the listeners)
coop production

Radio
+ telephone
+ sms
+email
+ blog
+ SNS
Radio
+ telephone
+ sms
+email
Radio
+ telephone
Radio +
paper letters
not visible
one-to-many (invisible) comm. model
unique author
not visible
not audible
not linked to the community of listeners
private figure
passive (it cannot take part in the conversation)
insensitive (it cannot manifest its emotions towards the speaker)
not visible
audible
private figure
not able to freely manifest its emotions
or opinions (phone calls are filtered)
not visible
one-to-one (phone conversation)
unique author
not visible
audible
private figure
can manifest its emotions or opinions (sms and
email)
visible
audible
linked/networked to the community of listeners
public figure
can manifest its emotions or opinions (sms, email,)
its opinions, comments and feelings about the programme go
public
mobile and more data noisy audiences
produces contents/coop production
its feelings and opinions are measurable (through netnography)
visible
one-to-many (radio/blog post/FB note or post) +
one-to-one (phone/email/chat) +
many-to-many (FB Home/ # Twitter) +
many-to-one (FB comments and posts from the listeners)
coop production
not visible
one-to-one (phone conversation/email)
unique author

Radio
+ telephone
+ sms
+email
+ web radio/tv
+ blog
+ Social NS
Radio
+ telephone
+ sms
+email
Radio
+ telephone
Radio
(+ paper letters)
author/producer
author/producer
author/producer
author/producer
listener
listener/producer
listener/producer
listener/producer
TIME
DISTANCE

a) Change in the publicness of publics (more visible, more audible)
The presence of the public within radio programmes goes from the telephone – which implies only the presence of a
voice, invisible and disembodied, to social media – in which the public has a face, a name, a personal space for discussion
(the Wall), a bio-cultural profile (the Info section), a collective intelligence (the Home Page), a General Sentiment
(Arvidsson 2012). It is the end of the public as a mass that is blind (it cannot see the source of the sound), invisible (it
cannot be seen by the transmitter), passive (it cannot take part in the conversation) and insensitive (it cannot manifest
its emotions towards the speaker).The implant of SNS on the body of the radio medium renders the immaterial capital
made up by the listeners public and tangible.While until recently the public was invisible to radio and was confined to
its private sphere except in the case of phone calls during a programme, today listeners linked to the online profile of a
radio programme are no longer invisible or private (as underlined by Gazi, Starkey, Jedrzejewski, 2011), and the same
goes for their opinions and emotions.And if emotions and opinions are no longer invisible or private, they are
measurable. For the first time in Radio history, listeners are not only numbers: their feelings, opinions and reputation
are trackable and measurable through netnographic methods (Kozinets 2010).

b) Change in the speaker-to-listener relation
The new communication model that derives from the short-circuit between radio and social media is a hybrid model, partly still
broadcast, partly already networked. Radio is still a one-to-many means of communication. However, telephone already made it
partly a one-to-one medium (phone interview) and many-to-one (open mic, phone talk radio); to this we have to add SNS, which are
at once a one-to-one (chat), one-to-many (tweets, FB notes or posts), many-to-many (FB Home,Twitter hashtags), many-to-one (FB
comments) kind of media.The mix between radio and SNS considerably modifies both the hierarchical/vertical relation between the
speaker/presenter and the public, and the horizontal relation between each listener. Both types of relation are approaching a less
hierarchical dynamic typical of peer-to-peer culture.When a programme’s presenter and one of his or her listeners become friends
on FB they establish a bi-directional relation: both can navigate on each other’s profile, both can watch each other’s online
performance and at the same time be an actor in it.They can both enact two types of performance, public and private: they can
comment posts on each other’s walls or reply to each other's tweets, send each other private messages or communicate by chat in
real time. For the first time in the history of radio the speaker and the listener can easily communicate privately, far from the ears of
other listeners,“off-air”.This gives rise to a “backstage” behaviour between presenter and listener that was previously unimaginable.

c) Change in the listener-to-listener relation
At the same time, the relation between listeners is similarly changing. Fans of a radio programme can establish links
online, exchange public comments on the programme’s wall, express more or less appreciation for speciﬁc contents,
exchange contents on their personal walls, write each other private messages or chat with each other.The radio’s public
has never been so publicised.While before SNS the concept of radio public was a purely abstract entity, which could be
understood sociologically and analysed statistically, today this public is no longer only an imagined one (Anderson 1993).
People who listen frequently to a radio programme and are its fans on FB have the opportunity, for the ﬁrst time, to see
and recognise each other, to communicate, to create new links while bypassing the centre, in other words the radio
programme itself.“The gatekeeping function of mass media is challenged as individuals use digital media to spread
messages much farther and more widely than was ever historically possible” (Gurak 2001).While a radio public is an
invisible group of people who are not linked together, the SNS audience of a radio programme is instead a visible group
of people/nodes in a network, connected by links of variable intensity which in some cases can produce strong links that
transcend the broadcaster.

d) Change in the value of publics
(SNS public: social capital = mass media public: economic capital)
This visible group of people/nodes/links is the most important new feature produced by the hybridisation between radio and SNS.A
radio programme’s network of friends/fans on SNS represents its specific social capital (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).While the wider
(and invisible) radio public, as charted by audience rating companies, still constitutes the programme’s economic capital, the more
restricted public of social media should in my view be considered the real social capital of a programme, a tangible and visible capital, the
meaning of which is well explained by Bourdieu and Wacquant, when they define social capital as “the sum of the resources, actual or
virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of
mutual acquaintance and recognition” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:14).
For radio makers, a wide network of friends/fans is of great importance for their future. Even if the fans' network does not generate a
tangible economic value like the radio audience already does, it nevertheless generates a great reputational capital.The message of the
SNS public of a radio programme is the network itself, because this network is able to produce value.The value embedded in the
networked public is not already convertible into economic capital, but the crisis of traditional mass advertising will lead to a future
increase and refining of tools for the capitalization of the wealth of networked publics linked to radio programmes and stations. Besides,
building networked and productive publics for radio could be of strategic importance for public service media. Public service media are
loosing audiences and legitimacy since they are abdicating from serving listeners as citizens (Syvertsen 1999). Since making and
participating mean “connecting” and creating social relations, as Gauntlett has brilliantly showed (2011), building and nurturing wealthy
and productive networked publics for public service media could be an opportunity to legitimize their service as a real public one, a
service that provides listeners with tools to let them participate and create new social relations among each other.

fm audience
FM Audience = economic capital of the radio programme
SNS Audience = social capital of the radio programme
SNS audience

Radio Public in the age of social media is
a network of small media

If a public is a network then it needs different
methods of investigation
Broadcasting age Networking age
attention economy reputation economy
Methods of attention valuation:
- Hooperatings
- meters (Arbitron)
- diaries (Rajar)
- CATI (phone calls) (Mediametrie)
Methods of reputation valuation:
- Sentiment analysis (Kozinets 2010)
- Social Network Analysis (Barabasi)
- Digital etnography (Marres, 2011)
- Digital reputation rating systems (Klout, Kred, etc.)

e) Change in the role of radio author (from producer to curator)
Radio is increasingly becoming an aggregator, a filter for the abundance of information, useful especially for the non-
prosumer listeners, who do not publish videos and have no time to explore friends’ profiles, which are a true goldmine
to discover new trends.The radio author’s job thus resembles more and more that of a translator, of someone who
connects two worlds – niches and mass culture – by delving into niches and re-emerging with a little treasure trove
that can then be used productively.The producer’s function in the age of Facebook is thus to drag contents emerging
from small islands, small communities and to translate and adapt them for the public of large continents, transforming
them into mass culture. Radio authors and producers are becoming more and more similar to the figure of the
curator, a cultural shift in the role of all kinds of author's labour already noted by Brian Eno in 1991, as Reynolds (2011)
reminds us:“Curatorship is arguably the big new job of our times: it is the task of re-evaluating, filtering, digesting, and
connecting together. In an age saturated with new artifacts and information, it is perhaps the curator, the connection
maker, who is the new storyteller, the meta-author.”

A critical view
positive aspects of a reputational economy based on networked publics:
- productive publics
- quality (reputation) of a public more important than quantity
- publics can inﬂuence public spheres and discourses
- publics can produce counter narratives
- politicization of media publics
- peer-to-peer economy
- more cooperation/participation between media producers and media publics
negative aspects of a reputational economy based on networked
publics:
- reputation wars
- reputation corruption
- privacy issues
- non-transparent policy of rating reputation
- digital reputation data enclosure
- digital panopticon
- more exploitation of user generated contents
“the material construction of a new public sphere in which reputational capital can become politicized in different ways, rather than
the mere critiques of the function of reputation as a device of subsumption and exploitation is what constitutes the really interesting
horizon for contemporary critical medium theory.” (Arvidsson & Bonini, forthcoming)

::: Academia :::
http://iulm.academia.edu/TizianoBonini
::: Audio/Radio :::
www.radiofactory.org
http://audioboo.fm/tizianobonini
tiziano.bonini@iulm.it
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