Lori Beckstead & Dario Llinares

Title of Paper Presentation:

Mapping the Boundaries of Podcast Studies

Abstract:

Before podcasting was even known as ‘podcasting’, it was described as a kind of ‘internet radio’ whose distribution was facilitated by RSS technology. The affinities and divergences between podcasting and radio have underpinned much of the initial research, critical analysis and, indeed, the drawing of disciplinary boundaries of podcast studies. Commenting on the rationale for their 2022 Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies, editors Mia Lindgren and Jason Loviglio suggest that the mingling of radio studies and podcast studies in their book “reminds us that neither ‘radio’ nor ‘podcasting’ should be approached as static objects of analysis; instead both are constantly changing, shaping each other and other media” (2022, 1).  

But as still a nascent discipline we argue that Podcast Studies has and should appropriate methodological and conceptual areas that go further than this binary narrative. Indeed, its status as a “flexible”, “hybrid” or “liminal” medium,  points to interdisciplinarity as a requirement , grounded in the notion that the podcast acts as both the object of study and mode of articulation. In this paper, Lori and Dario propose seven ‘core concerns’ (rather than disciplinary boundaries) of Podcast Studies: Purpose, Content, Production Practices, Audiences, Technologies, Political Economy, and Scholarship. However, from within these “concerns” we offer a provocation: that Podcast Studies should challenge neolithic structures of academia by always seeking to assert audio as the form and mechanism of articulation. In turn we ask how Podcast Studies research should seek to confront and disrupt accepted structures of scholar knowledge production while maintaining tenets such rigor, value, ethics and relevance.  

Reference: Lindgren, Mia and Lovigio, Jason. 2022. The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies. Oxon and New York: Routledge. 

Presenter Biographies: 

Lori Beckstead is an Associate Professor in the RTA School of Media and Director of the Allan Slaight Radio Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University where she teaches courses in podcasting, radio and sound studies. She is the on-again, off-again co-producer and co-host of The Podcast Studies Podcast along with Dario Llinares. 

Dr. Dario Llinares is a podcaster and associate professor at Ravensbourne University, London. His research has focused on a range of cinema and media-related themes: the status and practice of cinema-going in the digital age, the aesthetics of postmodernism, representations of masculinity in prison cinema, and podcasting as a media technology. He is the co-founder and co-host of the highly respected Cinematologists Podcast, co-editor of Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and forthcoming Podcast Studies: Practice into Theory with Lori Beckstead.