Radio's New Wave: Global Sound in the Digital Era

Radio’s New Wave explores the evolution of audio media and sound scholarship in the digital age. Extending and updating the focus of their widely acclaimed 2001 book The Radio Reader, Hilmes and Loviglio gather together innovative work by both established and rising scholars to explore the ways that radio has transformed in the digital environment. Contributors explore what sound looks like on screens, how digital listening moves us, new forms of sonic expression, radio’s convergence with mobile media, and the creative activities of old and new audiences. Even radio’s history has been altered by research made possible by digital and global convergence. Together, these twelve concise chapters chart the dissolution of radio’s boundaries and its expansion to include a wide-ranging universe of sound, visuals, tactile interfaces, and cultural roles, as radio rides the digital wave into its second century.

Michele Hilmes is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is the author or editor of several books on broadcasting, including Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922 to 1952, Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting, and The Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (with Jason Loviglio).

Jason Loviglio is Associate Professor and Director of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is the author of Radio's Intimate Public: Network Broadcasting and Mass-Mediated Communication and co-editor (with Michele Hilmes) of The Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio.