Radio: Interactive Media and the Cycle of Influence (Blog 6)

     Radio programming has a different effect of mediation than that of film. Without the visual aids, radio communication is forced to put all of their focus on the verbal materials which they wish to communicate whether it is entertainment or non-fiction information sharing. This medium requires the listener to use their imagination to visualise and conceptualise the topics of conversation. This invokes more participation and draws a more active audience than that of film which provides the visual and audio and requires nothing of a passive audience. Radio’s tendency to require and provoke audience participation in the materials lays the grounds for reciprocation of influence between the radio programming and its listeners.

     PhD student in Anthropology, Tal Nitsan described the value of women’s radio programming in Guatemala, in a lecture at the University of British Columbia. Nitsan illustrated the effect of radio on its audiences and how that effect comes full circle back to radio, thus creating a self-perpetuating cycle that nourishes both the audience and the radio programming. Nitsan detailed an account of a woman who happened upon the women’s radio program in Guatemala and became a faithful listener. This woman eventually attended the radio’s community workshops on education such as those pertaining to women’s rights. This woman was empowered by this knowledge and applied it to save the life of her daughter-in-law who was being beaten nearly to death by her son. The knowledge passed on by the radio programming had a real effect on the community in which it served. As Nitsan declared, it indirectly saved the life of a woman.

     This woman also became an employee of the radio program, which was mutually beneficial for both parties. She was able to share this story and be an advocate for the radio show, while also benefiting from her involvement from the empowering information and support she received. This demonstrates reciprocity and cycle of influence which radio programs and their listeners can be privy to.

     Franz Fanon describes the influence of media in his article, This Is the Voice of Algeria In A Dying Colonialism. Fanon discusses the role of the radio in Algeria during France’s colonial occupation of Algeria. The radio was a tool which affirmed the French colonial presence to both oppressors and the oppressed who did not own radios and were thereby left out, separated from high society. The French listeners were in part, inspiration for the colonial programming and the radio helped their listeners connect with one another and French culture, society in order to make Algeria feel more homely. The radio gave French listeners “the feeling that colonial society is a living and palpitating reality, with its festivities, its traditions eager to establish themselves” (Fanon, 71).

     The radio then played an equally important role in the reversion of this ideology that normalized and affirmed the French presence. The use of the radio during the Algerian revolution against their colonial masters was in its ability to educate and rally mass amounts of people who were un-involved due to their illiteracy. Radio was able to transcend class because many Algerian natives were unable to read and therefore did not become politically engaged due to the inaccessibility of information to them. Radio reported on the revolution in progress and was involved in creating movement within that revolution.

     In the case of the French colonialist, the oppressed Algerians as well as the women educating one another about their rights, all have this dynamic of radio influencing their audience and the radio itself being a product of that interaction in a cyclical, reciprocal manner. The radio’s strength is in its interactive quality which is influenced by and contributes to the community on which it reports and communicates to.

Sources

Fanon, Frantz. (1965). A Dying Colonialism. New York, USA: Grove Press, Inc.

Nitsan, Tal. (2011). Class Lecture. University of British Columbia. Vancouver, Canada.