Internet radio : a history of a medium in transition

Author / Creator

Bottomley, Andrew author

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Online

Physical

Summary

This dissertation reveals how the extant medium of broadcast radio has simultaneously been shaped by and has shaped newer digital media like the World Wide Web and social media. Despite the immense...

This dissertation reveals how the extant medium of broadcast radio has simultaneously been shaped by and has shaped newer digital media like the World Wide Web and social media. Despite the immense popularity of streaming music services and the widespread attention to podcasting, the 20-plus-year history of radio on the internet remains largely a mystery. Through five chapters, this study explores past and present theoretical conceptions of radio, examines the history of radio’s emergence on the internet during the 1990s, and provides close analysis of shifts in different forms of radio programming and modes of production (music, talk and news, drama and feature-documentary). The overarching goal is to construct a portrait of a medium undergoing convergence that strikes a balance between continuity and change. Contra to digital revolution narratives that divorce the internet and other “new media” from the past, internet radio is carefully positioned within the century-long history of radio broadcasting. Adopting a critical-cultural approach to media history, three main methodologies are used. First, discourse analysis of archival documents, original interviews, and popular and trade press materials analyzes the ideological and rhetorical frames within which technologists and media producers made sense of and explained their actions. Second, textual analysis of a variety of nonfiction and fiction radio programming demonstrates the ways in which the form and content of radio shifted through internet convergence. Third, participant observation of a converged newsroom and original open-ended interviews with radio producers and podcasters illustrate the ways in which the work of making radio has changed as a result of media convergence. While this study contributes most directly to the media studies field of radio studies and the emerging interdisciplinary field of sound studies, it has impact across media and communication studies plus the history of science and technology. Internet radio being a converged medium, this study is equally a work of internet studies, in particular a history of the early World Wide Web. Thus, this study is also a heretofore unexplored history of the multimedia internet, including being the first in-depth examination of the role of audio in the history of computing.

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