This past weekend I went to the What is Radio? Conference in Portland. I attended about 16 hours of panel presentations on a range of topics including: radio’s past, radio in India, community radio, college radio, radio education, radio theory, cultural representations in radio, news radio, new forms of radio, web radio, the difference between radio and audio and finally radio’s future. It was a lot to take in one weekend, but this conference will definitely be a shifting point in my career, though unfortunately not because I found a perfect fit for my interests in collaborative storytelling. In fact, this conference actually proved that I should not be looking into radio, or at least the classic radio paradigm. There was very little discussion of collaboration at this conference and it seems that there is a definite divide between broadcast transistor radio that favors the professional producer and podcasts that can be easily made by community members. Since my interest is in community cultural development, I a more interested in using the tool of audio recording to create projects like storytelling podcasts. I did not meet or hear of anyone involved in this kind of work at the conference. Most of the presenters were either academics who study radio or radio hosts who’ve worked in news. There was some cross over with community radio and web radio, but those weren’t storytelling based. Thus, while I don’t know if I’ll be using any of the presentations directly for my research, I do think this conference has shaped how I see the radio field. I now know where not to look and that my interests in storytelling community projects could be an emergent form of radio, but not generally supported by the field. I also heard some ideas that I think will shape how I approach looking at collaborative projects:
- Community radio is focused more on locality than quality: “Production values don’t matter in the face of connection to local community”
- Western society tends to value performance of participation above all else regardless if people are listening – Kate Lacey
- It is difficult to translate small localized community radio to an urban landscape
- Social media can be used as a way to create dialogue and reciprocity from radio broadcasts
- Transistor radio is still more accessible to a larger audience than internet radio
- Increased autonomy in production has lead to more competition and less distribution: too crowded to hear
- Podcasts are seen as disruptive media (fragmented, delayed); Live broadcast radio as public good (collective, simultaneous)
- Younger generation does not see streaming audio as radio although they are listening to the same content (NOT ME)
- Radio art happens where it is heard, not where it is made
- Radio as conversation ender; audio as conversation starter
- Radio takes us out of our me-egotism and into a collective experience – John Durham Peters
I’ve also been collecting more materials as can be seen in my Diigo list. I’ve discovered some storytelling organizations that have lists of ethics for how they do collaborative projects. These will be perfect for forming an understanding of best practices. I have also worked on a conceptual framework which I will be posting soon. When I post that I will explain the direction my research process is taking including my methodologies, scope and question.