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 2013
Berlin
Tiziano Bonini, IULM University of Milan
venerdì 11 ottobre 2013

“A history of long-distance relationship”
Framing the history of
radio as a history of
distance between radio
and its audience
- 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-??)

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.


listener’s voice



listeners’ posts


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:

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.


author/speaker/producer listener/audience
Radio
+ telephone
+ sms
+email
+ blog
+ SNS


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

visible
audible
linked/networked to the community of listeners
public ﬁgure
can take part in the conversation
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)
mobile and more data noisy audiences

author/speaker/producer listener/audience
Radio
+ telephone
+ sms
+email
+ blog
+ SNS

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

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

Radio
+ telephone

Radio +
paper letters


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

not visible
one-to-many (invisible) comm. model
unique author

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)
multiple auditory regimes coexist (Lacey 2013)

not visible
audible
private figure
can manifest its emotions or opinions (sms and
email)
its listening habits are measurable
not visible
audible
private figure
not able to freely manifest its emotions
or opinions (phone calls are filtered)
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)

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 = economic capital of the radio programme
SNS Audience = social capital of the radio programme

fm audience
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 different
methods of investigation
Broadcasting age

attention economy

Networking age

reputation economy

Methods of attention valuation:

Methods of reputation valuation:

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

- 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 nonprosumer 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)
2) Voi Siete Qui (Radio24, Italian national news&talk radio)
3) RaiTunes (Rai Radio2, Italian public service radio)
4) Radio Ambulante (latin american radio feature project)
5) Dokumentar (SR Swedish public service radio)
6) Mehrspur (SWR 2, German public service radio)
7) Radio Ortung (Deutschlandradio Kultur)


features
storytelling
music show
features
features
features
radio drama

Detektor FM

detektor.fm is a nationwide German
web radio which covers politics,
economics, culture and music.
Their app is named “crowdradio”

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

“The next generation of listener loyalty.” is their slogan
1.

CrowdRadio is always on location
Photos, 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 Screen
Radio 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 networks
With 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.


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 with
indie music soundtracks. Listeners comment the stories on social
media and share their similar experiences. Listeners also share their
stories on the Facebook fan page.
map website


45 minutes live show
180.000 listeners every day
3 seasons
490 episodes broadcast so far
4000 stories received by email
2 free ebooks published
15.600 fan on Facebook
3.000 followers on Twitter

Voi Siete Qui (You Are Here)
http://www.radio24.ilsole24ore.com/programma/voi-siete-qui/index.php

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.

RaiTunes
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.

continous stream of listeners’ posts


Radio Ambulante
http://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 Spanishspeaking 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.


Dokumentar
P3 Dokumentär (P3 Documentary) is the label for a series of freestanding 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


Mehrspur
http://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.


Radio Oortung
http://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 nonlinear 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. Onlinevisitors of the RADIOORTUNG website
(www.dradio-ortung.de) can also move through this
acoustic surveillance map.


Educate/Inform/Entertain model

Connect/Participate/Engage model


you ﬁnd me
here

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

tiziano.bonini@iulm.it

The Listener as producer. presentation at Prix Europa 2013

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