An IAMCR pre-conference
Description
Now two decades old, podcasting is an exuberant medium where new voices can literally be found every day. As a powerful communications tool that is largely unregulated and unusually accessible, it warrants deep scholarly scrutiny. Increasing platformisation by companies like Spotify and Audible requires urgent critical analysis, to assess their impact on diversity, creativity and alternative voices. The mainstreaming of the medium is also changing business models. Podcast studies are burgeoning across a range of fields from media and communications to criminology and gender studies. But the voices and sounds of the Global South are largely missing from this discourse.
This Roundtable aims to provoke arguments and debate on such absences and to foment research that will reframe our thinking on the potential and power structures of podcasting today. As the close parasocial relationship of podcast hosts and listeners shows, podcasting is remarkably good at ‘weaving people together’, the theme of this IAMCR event. The Roundtable builds on the first-ever podcast studies pre-conference held at ICA Toronto 2023 and is sponsored by the Working Group MARS (Music, Audio, Radio and Sound), the Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA), the University of Tasmania and Macquarie University, Australia.
Date and time
25 June 2024 | 10h00 - 16h30
Location
Griffith University, South Bank Campus, Grey St, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Abstract submission guidelines
To participate in this event, please submit a 200-300 word abstract responding to the suggested themes. Abstracts must include a title, author/s name, affiliation, and contact details. Please also indicate if your presentation includes audio.
Abstract submissions are due by 5pm (AEST) 15 March 2024
Submit abstracts to smchugh@uow.edu.au
Suggested themes include but are not limited to:
- Podcasting’s interrelations with indigeneity, pluriversality and decoloniality
- Addressing representation, gender, and racism in podcasting
- Development of professional learning and well-being through podcasting
- Podcast listeners and communities
- Podcasts and platformisation
- How podcasting extends and impacts journalism
- Fandom expressed through podcasts
- A sonorous approach to cultural studies, political economy, or history via podcasting
- Podcasting in/and the Global South
- The parasocial relationship between podcast host and listeners
- Narrative podcasting and (neoliberal?) conceptions of authenticity and intimacy
- Aesthetics of narrative podcasting
There is no cost to participants for the Roundtable.
Field trip option
Participants will have the option to attend a field trip to visit three of Brisbane’s community radio stations: radical station 4ZZZ, multilingual broadcaster 4EB, and First Nations broadcaster Triple-A, organised by IAMCR’s Community Communication and Alternative Media section. This field trip will take place the day after the Podcast Studies Roundtable (Wednesday, 26 June 2024) at a small additional cost.
Please indicate on your submission if you wish to take up the field trip option.
Convenors
Professor Mia Lindgren, Associate Dean Research Performance and Professor of Media in the College of Arts, Law and Education, University of Tasmania, Australia. IAMCR Member and co-chair IAMCR Working Group Music, Audio, Radio and Sound (MARS).
Mia Lindgren is Professor of Media and Associate Dean Research in the College of Arts, Law and Education at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Her research examines storytelling practices in non-fiction audio forms. She has published widely in the areas of podcasting, radio, journalism and health. Her current work is about podcasting and mental health in older Australians. Mia Lindgren is Co-Editor of the Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies and Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media.
Siobhán McHugh, Honorary Associate Professor (Media/Communications) at Macquarie University, Australia and Honorary Associate Professor, Journalism, at the University of Wollongong, Australia. IAMCR Member and member IAMCR Working Group MARS. Member, ICA Division in Journalism Studies, Media Industries Group.
Siobhán McHugh is a seminal podcast studies scholar and multi-award-winning producer of narrative journalism podcasts, who founded the journal RadioDoc Review to develop critical analysis of crafted audio storytelling. Her book, The Power of Podcasting: Telling Stories Through Sound (Columbia University Press 2022) analyses the aesthetics and production practices of narrative podcasts. A ‘pracademic’ concerned with practice-based and practice-led research, she has published widely on the effective power of audio storytelling and the impact of podcasting as a new medium. Narrative podcasts Siobhán co-produced include The Greatest Menace, about a gay prison experiment in Australia, which has won 17 major awards, while her other investigative podcasts have won six gold awards at New York Festivals.
Organisers
- Professor Mia Lindgren, Associate Dean, Research Performance and Professor of Media in the College of Arts, Law and Education, University of Tasmania, Australia. Co-Chair Music, Audio, Radio and Sound (MARS) Working Group (IAMCR)
- Siobhán McHugh, Associate Professor (Honorary), Dept of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature, Macquarie University, Australia. Member, MARS, IAMCR. Member, ICA Division in Journalism Studies, Media Industries Group.
- Lea Redfern, Lecturer, The University of Sydney, Australia
- Dylan Bird, PhD candidate, University of Tasmania, Australia
