Part of the establishment

Abstract

In 2004, a new movement began. It was one that promised democratisation of media production tools and the means to freely distribute work. Using domestic tools and open source software the pioneers threatened to disrupt the top down media ecosystem that we were used to. That movement was podcasting. In the ten years that have passed since we first heard the word 'Podcast' thousands of podcasts have started, audiences have grown steadily, technologies have evolved and the medium has become increasingly professionalised. By 2015 the medium had become a significant talking point through the success of podcasts such as Serial, Start-up and WTF, suggesting that podcasting may have reached maturity.

Identifying future trends by podcast mining: an explorative approach for Web-based horizon scanning

“…Commercial radio stations turned to podcasting as a means of increasing listener involvement (Menduni, 2007). Thus, in the early phase of podcast history, podcasts have been described as a deinstitutionalized form of broadcasting (Berry, 2016).…”

“…Worldwide audience accessibility in combination with online discussion facilities and accessibility without payment make podcasts a compelling tool for discussions about science, emerging topics and future developments. However, scientific discussions concerning this podcast phenomenon have been primarily focused on key aspects of its short history (Bottomley, 2015), reasons and motivations of podcast producers (McClung and Johnson, 2010), audience listening practice (Markman, 2015) and cultural practice of producing and consuming digital sound content (Bonini, 2015), the use of podcasts in education and business (Birch and Weitkamp, 2010;Kay, 2012), as well as the relationship between podcasts to radio and public broadcasting (Sellas, 2012), and the overall digital media potential (Berry, 2016).…”

Why people listen: Motivations and outcomes of podcast listening

“…Across 20 countries, 31% of survey respondents reported having listened to a podcast in the last month [ 3 ]. Scholars have analyzed the popularity of podcasts, noting the similarity to radio in terms of being an audio medium and highlighting the high levels of intimacy, sociality, and flexibility that podcast listening affords [ 4 , 5 ]. Thus, podcasting has become a modern-day radio with a wide variety of news, information, interviews, and stories, both fact and fiction, to select and listen to on demand.…”

“…As such, podcast listening might enhance one’s sense of autonomy. With low barriers to production and distribution, and little regulation or constraint [ 4 , 5 , 44 ], many different podcasts are freely available to listeners. Podcasts provide a relatively easy way to increase one’s knowledge about a variety of topics, so podcast listening could potentially enhance one’s sense of competence.…”

“…Podcasts provide a relatively easy way to increase one’s knowledge about a variety of topics, so podcast listening could potentially enhance one’s sense of competence. The informal and intimate style of some podcasts and of the listening experience [ 4 , 5 , 44 , 45 ] may lead to the formation of parasocial relationships with podcast hosts [ 9 , 36 , 38 , 46 ]. Further, listeners can directly interact with podcast hosts and fellow listeners through social media platforms and form richer, more genuine relationships than the parasocial relationships afforded by earlier forms of entertainment media [ 5 , 8 , 9 ].…”