Radio Commons^™

Intimacy, Inc., Robert S. Boynton

RadioDoc Review

Routledge’s new Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies is a follow up to its Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio, published in 2000--precisely the moment when podcasting began to undermine radio’s audio hegemony. What if the transition from radio to podcasting is a paradigm shift, the new medium posing challenges different from radio, and closer to those faced by journalism, literature, and film? Siobhan McHugh's The Power of Podcasting: Telling Stories Through Sound represents a podcast-first, back to basics approach which approaches podcasting as a process, not a technology.

The Greatest Menace Review: Living With Shadows Of The Past, Adrien Mccrory

RadioDoc Review

The Greatest Menace is an investigative podcast by Patrick Abboud and Simon Cunich which examines the history of Cooma Gaol, Australia’s experimental homosexual prison. The podcast explores a difficult and confronting piece of history, weaving together the past and the present as host Abboud attempts to uncover buried information about Cooma Gaol, the people incarcerated there and the people who operated it. This review explores the approaches taken by Abboud and Cunich to explore this history, mindful of the present-day impact that digging up these stories has on those involved. While investigating the prison’s past, Abboud interviews former prisoners, victims …

Toward A Third Podcasting: Activist Podcasting In An Age Of Social Justice Capitalism, Jess Shane

RadioDoc Review

A manifesto that provocatively argues for the rise of "Third Podcasting" patterned after Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's concept of "Third Cinema."

Audio Activism: A Discussion Of Mother Country Radicals, Zayd Dohrn

RadioDoc Review

This article is a transcript of a speaking event at Northwestern University, USA, in which producer Sarah Geis interviewed writer Zayd Dohrn and podcast producer Misha Euceph about their recent podcast Mother Country Radicals, which concerns the history of the Weather Underground, as well as Black Liberation more broadly, from the perspective of Dohrn, who grew up as a child of radicals from that period. Dohrn and Euceph explain the process and thinking they brought to the project and explore a few key moments that shaped the podcast, reflecting on the complicated relationship between family and activism.

Egyptian Female Podcasters: Shaping Feminist Identities, Kim Fox, Yasmeen Ebada

Faculty Journal Articles

The objective of the research study was to explore how young female podcasters in Egypt acquire feminist knowledge, how their feminist identity has been shaped and, specifically, how podcasts were used for digital feminism. With audio production genres and feminist epistemology frameworks, our analysis shows how podcasts were knowingly utilized as a tool for cyberactivism. The study found that the podcaster’s feminist identities embodied Westernized and/or Black feminist epistemologies, while also indicating a deeper recognition of Egyptian feminism attained during their college careers. The researchers conclude that production of podcasts, informed by feminist pedagogy and epistemologies, was an empowering mechanism …

In The Dark – Pushing The Boundaries Of True Crime, Sharon Davis

RadioDoc Review

True crime podcasts are a burgeoning genre. As journalists and storytellers, how do we balance the pursuit of justice and our responsibility to the victims with the demand to tell a gripping tale? As listeners, are we using the pain of others for our own entertainment? In the Dark podcast (Seasons 1 and 2) takes us beyond a vicarious fascination with true crime stories into a forensic and essential look at deep-rooted biases, corruption and systemic failures that prevent justice from being served.

The first season (2016) investigates the 1989 kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling In …

One Story, Told Week By Week: Episodic Podcast Storytelling And The Habitat, Charlotte De Beauvoir

RadioDoc Review

The rise and success of podcasting introduced episodic storytelling in the world of non-fiction sound narrative. Delivering a story in different entries is very different from producing a one-off piece. What concrete implications does this have for the narrative? And what keeps an audience listening to a podcast, episode through episode? This article offers some answers to these questions via a case study of The Habitat, a 2018 podcast by the American network Gimlet.

Sound Commodity: Contemporary Public Radio And Podcasting, Casey R. Kelly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Podcasting is both a disruption and an opportunity for public radio. It’s disruptive in that it marks a shift in how public radio organizations connect with listeners, who increasingly seek on-demand content. For traditional broadcast outlets like public radio this has raised a host of questions around how to allocate resources and deal with new workflow and labor demands in the digital age. It also has exacerbated ever-present commercial pressures in public media. As for opportunities, podcasting is a platform for public radio to reach new listeners, elevate underrepresented voices, and experiment with new sounds and storytelling techniques. It also …

Editorial: Transnational Audio Storytelling: Writing The Common Language Of Sound, Laura Romero, Siobhan Mchugh

RadioDoc Review

Editorial on a special transnational issue of RadioDoc Review, curated by Dr Laura Romero and co-edited by A/Prof Siobhan McHugh. The issue features mainly sound-rich European works in languages other than English, critiqued by reviewers from four continents. It also showcases invited articles on mainstream podcasts, The Shadows (audio fiction) and Serial Season Three (crafted documentary) .

Editorial: How Women Are Reclaiming Their Power In The Podcast Sphere, Siobhán Mchugh

RadioDoc Review

This issue considers intimate stories, mostly by women - particularly germane in this era of #MeToo.

Mothers And Daughters In The Digital Private Era: Review Of “A Life Sentence: Victims, Offenders, Justice And My Mother” By Samantha Broun And Jay Allison And “Mariya” By Mariya Karimjee, Kaitlin Prest, And Mitra Kaboli., Michele Hilmes, Professor Emerita

RadioDoc Review

The conditions of contemporary soundwork have sparked an extraordinary flowering of intimate storytelling, much of it told by women. Freed from the bonds of technology, scale, and forms of support and distribution that keep traditional radio relentlessly mainstream, the new “digital privacy” of the last fifteen years has allowed new kinds of stories to be told: or rather, has allowed some of the oldest stories in the world to finally be spoken aloud. In both “Mariya” and “A Life Sentence” sexual violence against women is portrayed in all its complexity, tragedy, and terrible familiarity.

In “A Life Sentence,” Samantha Broun …

Comedian Hosts And The Demotic Turn, Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

Podcasting is a showcase for what cultural studies scholar Graeme Turner coined “the demotic turn” or the increasing visibility of the "ordinary person" in the today’s media landscape. Collins argues that the emergence of a particular breed of podcasts – comedian-hosted interviews with celebrities – function in an “off-label” manner as a form of self-help or vicarious therapy. The emergence and rapid growth of this genre can attributed to three main factors: a confessional culture, the triumph of experience over expertise, and the democratization allowed by the form’s technology. She explores the link between emotional intimacy and comedy, and analyzes …

Bowraville And Phoebe's Fall: Award-Winning Australian Podcasts From The Media Formerly Known As Print, Wendy Carlisle

RadioDoc Review

Digital technology has democratised the audio storytelling space in a quite profound way. This article compares two major podcast investigations produced by established Australian newspaper mastheads: Bowraville by The Australian, and Phoebe’s Fall by The Age. Bowraville examines the unsolved murders of three Aboriginal children in the 1990s – all of whom came from the same small town. Phoebe’s Fall investigates the bizarre death in a garbage chute of a luxury Melbourne apartment building of 24-year-old Phoebe Handsjuk and her troubled relationship with her much older boyfriend.

In depicting what have been described as the three essential ingredients of …

‘Swansong’ And ‘ Losing Yourself’: Meditations On Life, Death And The Liminal, Cristal Duhaime

RadioDoc Review

This article considers two very personal audio documentaries that reflect on love and identity via the liminal space between life and death. Swansong, by award-winning UK radio producer Hana Walker-Brown, is set in a hospital, as Hana and her father bear witness to her grandmother’s dying and celebrate her joyful life. Losing Yourself, by US producer Ibby Caputo, is a revelatory account of dealing with a cancer diagnosis.

Swansong is a picture of a person fondly remembered but Hana elevates it beyond eulogy into a multi-layered meditation. Her grandmother Joan’s voice flutters in and out of ethereal recreations of …

Intrigue: Murder In The Lucky Holiday Hotel – A Greek Tragedy In China, Sonya Song

RadioDoc Review

Following the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, President Xi Jinping has rendered himself the omnipotent ruler of one fifth of the world’s population. Xi has defeated his political rivals with no mercy; among them was a rising political star, Bo Xilai, who was shot down in 2012 and is now in prison. Bo has been nearly forgotten – until early this year when his dramatic life and political battle were revived by Carrie Gracie with her brilliant BBC podcast series, Intrigue: Murder in the Lucky Holiday Hotel.

Although as a Chinese native I followed …

The Arts Of Amnesia: The Case For Audio Drama, Part Two, Neil Verma

RadioDoc Review

This article examines what the relationship between audio drama and radio drama might illuminate about both forms. Drawing on some 40 podcasts and other audio forms that take a serial structure, I explore the rise of audio drama podcasts since 2015 and situate them in both a more recent historical context since the late 1990s and in a broader history stretching back to the first Golden Age of radio. By listening closely to key works on Serendipity, Homecoming and other podcasts, I argue that contemporary audio has profound potential to change both how we listen and how we relate …

The Arts Of Amnesia: The Case For Audio Drama, Part One, Neil Verma

RadioDoc Review

This article examines what the relationship between audio drama and radio drama might illuminate about both forms. Drawing on some 40 podcasts and other audio forms that take a serial structure, I explore the rise of audio drama podcasts since 2015 and situate them in both a more recent historical context since the late 1990s and in a broader history stretching back to the first Golden Age of radio. By listening closely to key works on Serendipity, Homecoming and other podcasts, I argue that contemporary audio has profound potential to change both how we listen and how we relate …

Editorial, Radiodoc Review, Volume Two, Issue Two, 2016, Siobhan Mchugh

RadioDoc Review

Overview of articles reviewed in fourth issue of RadioDoc Review

Editorial Overview, Volume 2, Issue 1, Siobhan A. Mchugh

RadioDoc Review

Overview of the nine audio features critiqued by Guest Reviewers, who are themselves eminent producers and curators of audio features. The works reviewed are from the US, UK, Canada, France, Poland and Denmark.

On Radio: Up From The Boneyard: Local Media, It's Digital Death And Rebirth [Part 1], Tim Anderson

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

Is there any such thing as local digital media? Looking at the case of local podcasts, Tim Anderson argues that people indeed do, and always have, inscribed the local in their digital media creations.