Podcasting ― New Aural Cultures and Digital Media

Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary collection of academic research exploring the definition, status, practices and implications of podcasting through a Media and Cultural Studies lens. By bringing together research from experienced and early career academics alongside audio and creative practitioners, the chapters in this volume span a range of approaches in a timely reaction to podcasting’s zeitgeist moment.

In conceptualizing the podcast, the contributors examine its liminal status between the mechanics of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media and between differing production contexts, in addition to podcasting’s reliance on mainstream industrial structures whilst retaining an alternative, even outsider, sensibility. In the present tumult of online media discourse, the contributors frame podcasting as indicative of a ‘new aural culture’ emerging from an identifiable set of industrial, technological and cultural circumstances. The analyses in this collection offer a range of interpretations which begin to open avenues for further research into a distinct Podcast Studies.

Dario Llinares is Principal Lecturer in Contemporary Screen Media at the University of Brighton, UK. His current research focuses on the status and practice of cinema-going in the digital age. He is co-founder and co-host of the Cinematologists podcast.

Neil Fox is Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator in Film at Falmouth University, UK. His debut feature film Wilderness played at over fifteen international festivals, winning eleven awards, including Best Screenplay. He is co-founder and co-host of the Cinematologists podcast.

Richard Berry is Senior Lecturer in Radio at the University of Sunderland, UK. His 2006 essay on podcasting, “Will iPod Kill the Radio Star?”, has become part of the foundation upon which subsequent studies of podcasting have been built.