Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Using some of today's most popular listening experiences (Welcome to Night Vale, Serial, Radiolab, The Truth and others), Podcasting offers a springboard into a host of larger media-and-society debates. It probes the ethics of digital journalism, cultural commitments to narrative and storytelling, evolving modes of listening and semantics, fandom and social media, intimacy and (erotic) listening pleasure, and youth cultures and the politics of production opportunities. Through close listenings, empirical audience analysis, and interviews with producers of some of the most well-known and influential podcasts, Podcasting studies what new genres are taking shape and shows how they function. It defines what is unique about our current "podcast moment" and then looks forward to ask what the current seismic shifts mean for the future of making and experiencing audio speech.
Synopsis
Born out of interviews with the producers of some of the most popular and culturally significant podcasts to date (Welcome to Night Vale, Radiolab, Serial, The Black Tapes, We're Alive, The Heart, The Truth, Lore, Love + Radio, My Dad Wrote a Porno, and others) as well as interviews with executives at some of the most important podcasting institutions and entities (the BBC, Radiotopia, Gimlet Media, Audible.com, Edison Research, Libsyn and others), Podcasting documents a moment of revolutionary change in audio media.
The fall of 2014 saw a new iOS from Apple with the first built-in "Podcasts" app, the runaway success of Serial, and podcasting moving out of its geeky ghetto into the cultural mainstream. The creative and cultural dynamism of this moment, which reverberates to this day, is the focus of Podcasting. Using case studies, close analytical listening, quantitative and qualitative analysis, production analysis, as well as audience research, it suggests what podcasting has to contribute to a host of larger media-and-society debates in such fields as: fandom, social media and audience construction; new media and journalistic ethics; intimacy, empathy and media relationships; cultural commitments to narrative and storytelling; the future of new media drama; youth media and the charge of narcissism; and more. Beyond describing what is unique about podcasting among other audio media, this book offers an entry into the new and evolving field of podcasting studies.