Radio Audiences and Participation in the Age of Network Society

This book maps, describes and further explores all contemporary forms of interaction between radio and its public, with a specific focus on those forms of content co-creation that link producers and listeners. Each essay will analyze one or more case studies, piecing together a map of emerging co-creation practices in contemporary radio. Contributors describe the rise of a new class of radio listeners: the networked ones. Networked audiences are made up of listeners that are not only able to produce written and audio content for radio and co-create along with the radio producers (even definitively bypassing the central hub of the radio station, by making podcasts), but that also produce social data, calling for an alternative rating system, which is less focused on attention and more on other sources, such as engagement, sentiment, affection, reputation, and influence. What are the economic and political consequences of this paradigm shift? How are radio audiences perceived by radio producers in this new radioscape? What’s the true value of radio audiences in this new frame? How do radio audiences take part in the radio flow in this age? Are audiences’ interactions and co-creations overrated or underrated by radio producers? To what extent listeners' generated content can be considered a form of participation or "free labour" exploitation? What’s the role of community radio in this new context? These are some of the many issues that this book aims to explore.

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Tiziano Bonini is a Lecturer in Media Studies at the IULM University of Milan, Italy. Since 2005, he also works as a freelance radio producer for community, national commercial and public radio.

Belén Monclús is a Lecturer in the Audiovisual Communication and Advertising Department at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. Since 2007, she is the coordinator of the Catalonia Radio Observatory (l’OBS, GRISS-UAB).