The Podcast Studies Podcast

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

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.

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.

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