The Listener as producer. presentation at Prix Europa 2013

The Listener as Producer:

radio audience in the age of social media

Expert Seminar "Radio- and Audio-Strategies for External Cultural Relations”

Prix Europa Festival, 25th October 2013Berlin

Tiziano Bonini, IULM University of Milan

venerdì 11 ottobre 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 audience


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.


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



social studio: software for displayingphone/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:

Persistence means 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.

Replicability means that the content produced in networked publics is easily replicable.

Scalability in 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

author/speaker/producer listener/audiencevisibleaudiblelinked/networked to the community of listenerspublic figurecan take part in the conversationcan manifest its emotions or opinions (sms, email,)its opinions, comments and feelings about the programme go publicproduces contents/coop productionits feelings and opinions are measurable (through netnography)mobile and more data noisy audiences

visibleone-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

author/speaker/producer listener/audience

not visibleone-to-many (invisible) comm. modelunique author

not visible not audiblenot linked to the community of listenersprivate figurepassive (it cannot take part in the conversation) insensitive (it cannot manifest its emotions towards the speaker)its listening habits are measurable

not visible audibleprivate figurecan take part in the conversationnot able to freely manifest its emotionsor opinions (phone calls are filtered)its listening habits are measurable

not visibleone-to-many (invisible) comm. model +one-to-one (phone conversation)unique author

not visible audibleprivate figurecan take part in the conversationcan manifest its emotions or opinions (sms and email)its listening habits are measurable

visibleaudiblelinked/networked to the community of listenerspublic figurecan take part in the conversationcan manifest its emotions or opinions (sms, email,)its opinions, comments and feelings about the programme gopublicmobile and more data noisy audiencesproduces contents/coop productionits feelings and opinions are measurable (through netnography)multiple auditory regimes coexist (Lacey 2013)

visibleone-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 visibleone-to-many (invisible) comm. model +one-to-one (phone conversation/email)unique author


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 ties of

variable intensity which in some cases can produce strong ties 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 programmeSNS Audience = social capital of the radio programme

SNS audience


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


If a public is a network then it needs differentmethods of investigation

Broadcasting age Networking age

attention economy reputation economy

Methods of attention valuation:

- Hooperatings- meters (Arbitron)- diaries (Rajar)- CATI (phone calls) (Mediametrie and others)

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.”


Social radio case histories

1) Detektor FM (German web radio) features

2) Voi Siete Qui (Radio24, Italian national news&talk radio) storytelling

3) RaiTunes (Rai Radio2, Italian public service radio) music show

4) Radio Ambulante (latin american radio feature project) features

5) Dokumentar (SR Swedish public service radio) features

6) Mehrspur (SWR 2, German public service radio) features

7) Radio Ortung (Deutschlandradio Kultur) radio drama


Detektor FM detektor.fm is a nationwide German web radio which covers politics, economics, culture and music.

Their app is named “crowdradio”

“The next generation of listener loyalty.” is their slogan

1. CrowdRadio is always on locationPhotos, videos, texts, audio commentary directly at concerts, festivals, flash mobs and demonstrations - every user can become a reporter and send authentic reports with CrowdRadio. No one is closer to the action than the listener.

2. CrowdRadio represents new methods of showing advertising.The CrowdRadio app provides the essentials for the next generation of radio advertising. In-app advertising is only one of many new possibilities with which active and valued listeners and customers can be reached directly

3. CrowdRadio is the Second ScreenRadio stations can at last send information to their listeners about each program highlight with CrowdRadio - directly to a smart phone. The listeners can also participate in the program by voting and commenting on the interactive content.

4. CrowdRadio connects social networksWith CrowdRadio, the users are reachable wherever they happen to be - in front of the radio, while looking at the station’s website, or within social network and communities. CrowdRadio connects all of these communication channels. The listeners can send their contributions to the editors using the app, and also via Facebook or Twitter. CrowdRadio is an interface between all of the station’s different channels.

Bertolt Brecht: “radio should be not only a mean of distribution but also a bidirectional communication medium”


Voi Siete Qui (You Are Here)Voi Siete Qui is a crowdsourced storytelling programme. Every day we tell an episode in the life of a listener. Real stories from the listeners are dramatized as docu-fictions and edited withindie music soundtracks. Listeners comment the stories on social media and share their similar experiences. Listeners also share their stories on the Facebook fan page.

45 minutes live show180.000 listeners every day3 seasons490 episodes broadcast so far4000 stories received by email2 free ebooks published15.600 fan on Facebook3.000 followers on Twitter

map website


https://maps.google.it/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=it&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=214017189010283043445.0004c8cc07a3ddc9b4741

https://maps.google.it/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=it&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=214017189010283043445.0004c8cc07a3ddc9b4741

Voi Siete Qui (You Are Here)

We ask every day for new stories from listeners. We always repeat that there are no prizes and we are not searching for new novelists. We ask for experiences listeners want to share with the audience. Sharing stories from which the others can learn something is our main aim.

The stories we receive are peer-reviewed by me and the host, we select one story for being produced only if both of us are agree. We select stories from a wide range of issues: we also choose sad stories without happy ends, but we don’t schedule them on friday (people are tired, on friday. We have experienced an increase of SMS with people weeping after our stories on friday)

Every week we have a meeting to decide the contents of the next week’s episodes: we search for contents and side stories to build around the main story of the listener. Film or short stories excerpts (You Tube and Google Books are our great friends). We also raise side stories from Facebook and Twitter.

We often ask in advance on Facebook what kind of film and novels the story of the day reminds to the listeners. Sometimes listeners spontaneously provide us with excerpts in pdf and mp3 music through private Facebook messages. Sometimes we use and edit their suggestions.

Once per week we open up the playlist building process on Twitter, through the #openPlaylist. we tweet the issue of an episode and we ask for songs.

http://www.radio24.ilsole24ore.com/programma/voi-siete-qui/index.php




RaiTunes

continous stream of listeners’ posts

The Facebook fan page of the programme is a lively space, where the programme keeps on living when the presenter switches off the microphone. The fans are young and extremely active. They use to post an average of 60 to 100 You Tube links to music videoclips every day (even on week end!). The update of the page never stops during the day. People (girls and boys, women and men) keep on posting at every hour, day and night. The FB wall continually changes. It seems a collective stream of consciousness. Music video posting is the real glue of the RaiTunes community. The listeners of the show are used to music shows, are used to go to concerts and they behave like a concert audience. The fans who post on the wall show to possess a high and wide musical knowledge, perfectly matching to the musical choice of the presenter. On the wall we can assist to a collective process of “fine tuning” of the General Taste of RaiTunes audience.


Radio Ambulantehttp://radioambulante.org/

Radio Ambulante is a crowdfunded latin features and documentary audio web project. The project’s goal is to catch the people’s ear with narrative journalism, not fction. “It is a project to tell stories from all Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, where people listen to radio every day,” (Daniel Alarcón, one of its founders and a renowned writer himself). It raised some of its initial funds via Kickstarter – $46,000, beating its goal by $6,000 – and it’s crowdsourcing reporters and stories.


http://radioambulante.org

http://radioambulante.org

Dokumentar

P3 Dokumentär (P3 Documentary) is the label for a series of free-standing documentaries, scheduled on the same recurring time-slot (Sundays 6-8pm; Saturdays 8-10pm). The topics vary from week to week. The two common and defining qualities for the programs are that they have a Swedish perspective and an historical focus. As the producers’ state on the program’s website:

To understand how events in our contemporary history create impressions and change the way we live they have to be set in context and be given perspective. […] It can be about the common man’s struggle or the political power plays – but in P3 Documentary it always takes its starting point from the Swedish perspective. (sverigesradio.se, 110223).

P3 Documentary has been on-air since 2005, and since 2006 it has had the same time-slot within the schedule. It has been nominated for – and awarded – several radio- and journalistic prizes. The show is chosen for its (unexpected) popularity among younger audiences and since it is the most popular (public radio) podcast in Sweden.

- Requests for future topics from Facebook


Mehrspurhttp://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/sendungen/feature/-/id=659934/nid=659934/did=6843358/1raj4si/index.html

Dokublog is the web 2.0 platform of the SWR feature department built in 2008. Dokublog is a platform "for sound hunters and feature makers", as Dokublog maker Wolfram Wessels puts it, inviting them to submit their pieces as well as all the sounds they recorded. Selected productions are broadcast in SWR's feature broadcast "Mehrspur". The site can be browsed not only by features, broadcasts, recording locations or authors but also by sounds. Any feature or sound may be re-used for new productions. 1800 recordings and features have been submitted so far.


http://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/sendungen/feature/-/id=659934/nid=659934/did=6843358/1raj4si/index.html

http://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/sendungen/feature/-/id=659934/nid=659934/did=6843358/1raj4si/index.html

http://dokublog.de/site/index.php

http://dokublog.de/site/index.php

Radio Oortunghttp://www.dradio.de/aktuell/1266138/

RADIOORTUNG – Hörspiele für Selbstläufer“ is a new site-specific mobile radio format, developed by the radio drama department of Deutschlandradio Kultur. The Listeners walk through public spaces (e.g. Berlin and Cologne) with their mobile phones and trigger via GPS short fragments of radio dramas or radio documentaries - the listener is being received by the radio drama or radio documentary. A second audio track is overlaying the reality of the places so that the city itself becomes a silver screen for the stories. The storytelling is non-linear and site-specific and reflects the subtile interventions of the new mobile technologies, that influence the listeners everyday lives.Listeners and walkers experience the city as an audible and highly-subjective archive. Online-visitors of the RADIOORTUNG website (www.dradio-ortung.de) can also move through this acoustic surveillance map.


http://www.dradio.de/aktuell/1266138/

http://www.dradio.de/aktuell/1266138/

http://www.dradio-ortung.de

http://www.dradio-ortung.de

Educate/Inform/Entertain model

Connect/Participate/Engage model


::: Academia :::http://iulm.academia.edu/TizianoBonini

::: Audio/Radio :::www.radiofactory.orghttp://audioboo.fm/tizianobonini

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Education

The Listener as producer. presentation at Prix Europa 2013