Lori Beckstead chats with Ian M. Cook about his recent book entitled Scholarly Podcasting: Why, What, How? We hear from some of the scholars who podcast whom Ian interviewed for the book and talk about why podcasting is an attractive way of doing and disseminating research for so many scholars.

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For this episode, Dario spoke to freelance podcast producer Jess Shane. Jess works largely in audio documentary although you can hear her work cutting across various fields, genres and themes. Jess came to our attention due an article she wrote for RadioDoc review entitled Towards a Third Podcasting: Activist Podcasting in the Age of Social Justice Podcasting. This piqued Dario’s interest, particularly because it clearly borrows from the seminal film studies article called Towards a Third Cinema, published in 1970 by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino. The article has become a benchmark of film studies literature, the defining manifesto of Third Cinema which was a revolutionary movement emerging primarily from filmmakers in Latin America but then spreading to Africa and Asia. Anti-Hollywood (first cinema) and Anti European art-house (second cinema), Third cinema is a revolutionary kind of filmmaking practice. It seeks to provoke an out and out political action and sees filmmaking as a tool for the radicalization of its audiences. Jess outlines how the Solanas and Getino piece provided inspiration for her thinking about podcasting as a call for activism, despite the very different historical, political and technological context.

Before even getting into detail about Third Podcasting, Jess is incredibly interesting and candid, on the topic of audio documentary. Of profound interest to her is reflecting on the ethical ambivalences in the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. She interrogates how documentary purports to manifest objectivity when reporting an issue, an event or indeed trying to give a voice to an individual. But what is often obscured is the ulterior motive of the production/producer, a way of speaking to subjects which can be erroneous, perhaps even manipulative. Producers have their own agenda, which is about the construction of the story and making an entertaining podcast, over and above the ideal of truth or giving an interviewee a platform. Jess suggests that contributors who are often looking for a psychological closure or some form of catharsis, often down know what they are getting into. We discuss two of her audio documentaries that actually play with these production ethics by highlighting the process of production in “meta” way.

 

We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

 

Show Notes

Accounts and AccountabilityNicola, Talkback

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The Podcast Studies Podcast returns after over a year's hiatus. In this first episode in a new season, we bring you a hybrid recorded session from the ICA pre-conference focused specifically on Podcast Studies. Lori hosts the episode and quizzes Dario on his deconstruction of "The Podcast Space". In the first chapter of the upcoming book Podcast Studies: Practice into Theory, Dario explores the way in which Podcast Studies scholars deploy the term "space" to amalgamate various different physical/conceptual assertions to define the process and implications of podcasting. Dario uses his own experience and thinking on "academic podcasting" as a reference to build a layered map of intersecting technological, creative, organisational and spatial elements, along with ephemeral outcomes of distributing and have a podcast listened to. The delegate questions also expand the scope of the session, pointing to many of the key debates that were the underpinning themes of the conference, which was a vital get together for the Podcast studies Community.

We hope you enjoy this episode and if you are working within or adjacent to the field of Podcast Studies, and would like to discuss your work, or interview someone else about their work, please get in touch:

Dario: [email protected]

Lori: [email protected]

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Robert Gutsche, is a leading scholar in the field of Journalism Studies where he applies critical cultural theory to investigate issues of power in journalism. He is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Critical Digital Media Practice at Lancaster University in the UK and Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Informatics at Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania. As a journalist, his work appeared in The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Guardian, and various other regional and local news outlets in the U.S. Gutsche has led digital innovation related to multimedia journalism, including through the use of virtual reality and other immersive media in storytelling and research at Florida International University in Miami, as well as dynamic storytelling at the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute, and non-profit news collaborations with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa.

As host and producer of The J-Word Podcast Robert ask, from a range of perspectives, what is journalism? How can we make it better? What does "better" look like? The podcast features discussions with academics and professionals who've published recently in Journalism Practice. The focus of the conversations includes assessing the transformations of advancing digital technologies in journalism, social issues and conditions that journalists (need to) cover, and the future of the field. Articles featured in the episodes are temporarily made free access for citizens, journalists, scholars, and students. While the discussions are rooted in research, they are approached to influence practice.  

Dario introduces the show by ruminating on what the recent events with regards to Joe Rogan and Spotify. What the discourse might mean podcasting in the nexus of ordinary conversation as free speech, the editorial responsibilities of institutionalised broadcasting, and how popularity and influence can contextualise those issues.

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Prof. Mack Hagood, author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self Control and producer of Phantom Power, joins Dario to discuss sound studies and scholarly podcasting. Phantom Power is a benchmark academic podcast in terms of acoustic form and scholarly depth. Its focus is on the sonic arts and humanities and the show utilises all the myriad affordances of sound to explore scholarship and sound art. Mack and Dario unpack the joys and labors of academic podcasting, discussing the production process and the relationship between theory and practice which leads to discussion of Mack's chapter "The Scholarly Podcast: Form and Function in Audio Academia" recently published in Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography edited by Jeremy Wade Morris and Eric Hoyt. 

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Mack Hagood is an Associate Professor of Comparative Media Studies at Miami University, Ohio, where he studies digital media, sound technologies, disability, and popular music. Mack has published work on tinnitus, the use of noise-canceling headphones in air travel, the noise of fans in NFL football stadiums, indie rock in Taiwan,  the ontology of Foley and digital film sound, and the forms and functions of scholarly podcasts.

Show Notes:

Lori and Dario discuss Professor Steffan Garrero's 'experiment' in gaming the Apple Podcast Charts.

These episodes of Phantom Power are mentioned in particular:

• Test Subjects with Mara Mills
• For Some Odd Reason with Kate Carr
• R. Murray Schafer: Part 1 and Part 2
• Emotional Rescue

Mack mentions David Hendy's radio series Noise: A Human History which he uses as a text in his sound studies class.

Mack also mentions Jennifer Stoever's book The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening.

Contact Us:

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @podstudiespod

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How well do podcasts work as a medium for scholarly peer review? In the previous episode, Hannah McGregor and Ian M. Cook provided peer review on Lori Beckstead's draft chapter Context is King: Podcast Packaging and Paratexts. Now we're following up to discuss how well we think this method went. Dario Llinares leads us in a discussion about the affordances and limitations of doing scholarly peer review in the context of a podcast. Jess is also here with recommendations for a peer reviewed and a scholarly podcast.

Be sure to listen to Peer Review Podcasting Part 1 on our podcast feed.

A copy of the draft chapter under review can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRIscCkwgjFbvaZMLdfRET-XmaF48x4rxyQj7EQcdtRGXQnWOLwogODRrMbzvyJ3_64XIkcot5IMG1u/pub

A transcript of this episode is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRUdekT9PzeAYBpXCBm4oX7gbXeb-0jXnsLGa46RWI4qzVGpQaam9qpJ9NReEYX14kvaHXr2ORvSeni/pub

Show Notes:

Hannah mentions recently undergoing peer review for Kairos, a refereed online journal exploring the intersections of rhetoric, technology, and pedagogy.

Hannah mentions speaking to Chris Friend on Hybrid Pedagogy's podcast Teacher of the Ear where they discussed 'ungrading'.

Ian M. Cook has a book coming out soon called Scholarly Podcasting: An Insurgent, Curious Craft.

Jess mentions Hannah's project, the Amplify Podcast Network, which is "a collaborative project dedicated to reimagining the sound of scholarship."

She also mentions Lori's Open Peer Review Podcast which is "a demonstration of using podcasting to conduct open peer review of academic scholarship."

Jess recommends Ted Rieken's audio piece published in the McGill Journal of Education entitled Mapping the Fit Between Research and Multimedia: A Podcast Exploration of the Place of Multimedia within/as Scholarship.

Lori recommends also checking out the Peer Reviewer Roundtable Response to Ted Reiken's Scholarly Podcast.

Jess also recommends the podcast Ologies by Alie Ward.

Dario & Lori touch on Mack Hagood's chapter The Scholarly Podcast: Form and Function in Audio Academia in Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography edited by Jeremy Wade Morris and Eric Hoyt.

Dario mentions the Cinematologists' episode Knowing Sounds: Podcasting as Academic Practice, and Hannah McGregor's Secret Feminist Agenda podcast as examples which explore podcasting, scholarship, and peer review.

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Host Lori Beckstead submits her draft chapter Context is King: Podcast Packaging and Paratexts for a real-time peer review on this podcast. Peer reviewers Hannah McGregor and Ian M. Cook give their impressions and suggestions, unpacking Lori's theoretical framework looking at the various media surrounding the podcast audio through the lens of Gerard Genette's paratext theory. We've recorded this episode as an experiment to see whether it's feasible to conduct peer review of a written manuscript in the real-time, audio-based forum of a podcast. Be prepared to laugh along the way and hear our unexpected debate when Ian asks, "Why does everyone shit on Joe Rogan?"

Be sure to listen to the follow-up episode, Peer Review Podcasting Part 2, in which Dario asks Lori, Hannah, and Ian to reflect on the affordances and limitations of this peer review experience.

A copy of Lori's draft chapter under review can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRIscCkwgjFbvaZMLdfRET-XmaF48x4rxyQj7EQcdtRGXQnWOLwogODRrMbzvyJ3_64XIkcot5IMG1u/pub

A transcript of this episode is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSDdF-ObzbvuTRttDjqQrgtJCozIcBRBnlxMohvusn6fphbI1Hl6G5ksG6oN1uyqXys8WFCcX8HoiB8/pub

Hannah mentions Matthew Kirschenbaum's book Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination

Ian mentions Vincent Duclos' article Inhabiting Media: An Anthropology of Life at Digital Speed 

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We're excited to share a podcast submitted to us by Robin Davies, Professor of Media Studies at Vancouver Island University. Originally broadcast as a radio program on CHLY FM in Nanaimo, British Columbia, it features a series of short podcasts that were created as a cross-disciplinary assignment between Criminology students taught by Professor Lauren Mayes and Media Studies students taught by Professor Davies. Discussing diverse topics from the over-incarceration of Indigenous Peoples to the stigma surrounding drug users, these short podcasts are interspersed with reflections and feedback from the students who created them. The students tell us how the assignment was more meaningful to them because they were collaborating on work that would be broadcast and distributed as a podcast which would make their work accessible to listeners beyond the classroom. This collaborative practice exemplifies how podcasting can be utilised as a pedagogical tool to engender creative practice, critical thinking and self-reflection.

A transcript of this episode is available here. 

If you are interested in submitting a podcast for distribution through the Podcast Studies Podcast feed, contact us at [email protected]. Or reach out to us on Twitter @PodStudiesPod

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In this episode, Dario talks to Terry Lee. Terry is Senior Tutor in Radio & Audio at the University of Bedfordshire and is also responsible for the award-winning Radio LaB 97.1FM. He has had a long career in independent and commercial radio including managing Norwich's Future radio. In 2018, he started Fantastic Noise a podcast primarily aimed at students studying radio, and featuring the experienced voices of radio professionals and experts. Along with talking about the formation and production of Fantastic Noise, the conversation covers how students of radio approach and understand the use of sound in the digital age, podcast and radio's symbiotic relationship, and the future of audio technology and its impact on media specificity.

We are also taken around the podcast neighborhood by Jess Schmidt. Her recommendations this week are The Lolita Podcast from iHeart Radio and hosted by writer-comedian Jamie Loftus (My Year in Mensa) that uses the misunderstanding and infamy around Nabakov's classic as a jumping-off point for discussions of false media narratives. Also recommended is Blank Check, a film podcast that reviews successful directors' complete filmographies, getting to the point where they were given free rein to pursue a passion project.

Lori also discusses a recent talk she gave at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research as part of a research seminar on Podcasting, Discoverability, and Listener engagement. You can listen to the full seminar here.

Terry also recommends The Skewer a Charlie Brooker-esque satirical comedy show with great sound production, and The Offensive, a Mockumentary series like The Office or The Thick of It in tone, but focusing on a fictional premier league football team.

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How about a podcast that creates itself? Or an episode that changes each time you newly download it? Generative podcasts, created with programming, AI, and dynamic insertion technologies are not yet commonplace, but could they be? Lori speaks to Jeff Emtman and Martin Zaltz Austwick, creators of Neutrinowatch, about how and why they created this generative podcast and how it disrupts expectations of how listeners 'use' podcasts as well as how podcast platforms serve them up. And our friendly neighbourhood podcast recommendation engine Jess joins Dario and Lori to discuss two other examples of generative podcasts: Welcome to Night Vale ep. 133 and TED's Mystery Episode.

A transcript of this episode is available.

Show Notes:

Lori mentions the new Bounced podcast which showcases the best student audio productions in her department. 

Answer Me This! podcast (another of Martin Zaltz Austwick's podcasts)

Here Be Monsters (Jeff's other podcast). Jeff Mentions this episode in particular: Cold Water (ep. 150)

More info on the TED Mystery Episode can be found here.

Another generative podcast project that we didn't mention in this episode but will be of interest is the Sheldon County podcast by James Ryan. 

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PhDCasting aims to be research through podcasting practice. Jerry Padfield documents his personal reflections of a journey through a PhD at Falmouth University, researching #podcasting and #CommunityRadio practice for wellbeing. The podcast talks about the experience of completing a PhD, from the perspective of a research student: the milestones, the emotional highs and lows, and also becomes a research tool in itself, interrogating the embodied knowledge within the practice. Each episode also features a conversation with a practitioner discussing issues around podcasting and broadcasting.

Quarter Eleven: Apr 2021 – Jun 2021 (Quarters are now out of sync due to impact of Covid)

A 6-month extension to my PhD funding is confirmed due to the impact of Coronavirus. I am completing the final part of the practice in my PhD and thoughts are turning to writing the Thesis and what comes after the whole PhD itself. For me, the conversational part of this podcast has become more important than my personalised introductions. 

I talk to Falmouth University-based researcher Dr Abigail Wincott about her research in spatial audio and binaural recording, her Past Sounds podcast, which explores historical soundscapes and academic life in general.

Links

Past Sounds: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/past-sounds/id1563455180

Abigail’s website: https://abigailwincott.wordpress.com/

Abigail on Twitter: https://twitter.com/abigailwincott

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