Sometimes I think it is hell to be a girl: a longitudinal study of the rise of confessional radio. (March 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Abildgaard, Mette Simonsen
• Is Part Of: Media, culture, and society. Volume 37:Number 2(2015:Mar.)
• Page Start: 232
• Page End: 250
• Publication Date: 2015-03
• Subjects: dailiness -- materiality -- media technology -- multistability -- participation -- phenomenology -- postphenomenology -- radio; Mass media and culture -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Wireless communication systems -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 302.2305
• DOI: 10.1177/0163443714557982
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0163-4437

Abstract

Despite wide recognition in media studies, the significance of technology is often understated or overlooked in radio and sound studies. This article addresses this absence in a longitudinal study of uses by radio listeners and radio hosts of an 'automatic telephone tape recorder' (ATTR) in a Danish youth radio segment. The study shows that the two groups developed a range of uses for the ATTR from 1973 to 1996 and that especially confessional use, despite its paradoxical synthesis of public and private, emerged as the significant feature of the segment. An analysis of changes in users' perception of technology over time is performed within a phenomenological media studies framework and the emerging field of postphenomenology, particularly through the concepts of 'multistability' and 'dailiness'. I formulate a sociomaterial perspective on radio as the 'intimate medium' whose formation is negotiated through time in a multistable process between technology, listeners and radio hosts.