Radio and the Politics of Sound in Interwar France, 1921–1939

Abstract

In December 1921, France broadcast its first public radio program from a transmitter on the Eiffel Tower. In the decade that followed, radio evolved into a mass media capable of reaching millions. Crowds flocked to loudspeakers on city streets to listen to propaganda, children clustered around classroom radios, and families tuned in from their living rooms. Radio and the Politics of Sound in Interwar France, 1921–1939 examines the impact of this auditory culture on French society and politics, revealing how broadcasting became a new platform for political engagement, transforming the act of listening into an important, if highly contested, practice of citizenship. Rejecting models of broadcasting as the weapon of totalitarian regimes or a tool for forging democracy from above, the book offers a more nuanced picture of the politics of radio by uncovering competing interpretations of listening and diverse uses of broadcast sound that flourished between the world wars.

The Global Positioning System and Military Jamming: The geographies of electronic warfare

“…12 It was not until the 1920s when radio was capable of distributing mass media to millions of listeners. 13 During the war and interwar periods of the 20th century, radio transmissions enabled governments and movements to transmit prohibited information and ideas over national borders. 14 15 Jamming, though limited in radius and only effective in certain frequencies, was a large part of controlling the movement of information for political and military reasons.…”

Up in the air? The matter of radio studies

“…Karush, 2012;Ehrick, 2015;Rea, 2016;Bronfman, 2016;Mohammed, 2017;and in European contexts (e.g. Neulander, 2009;Lovell, 2015;Wrigley, 2015;Murphy, 2016;Scales, 2016;Vaillant, 2017;Whittington, 2018). It is harder to find book-length cultural histories of radio broadcasting in national contexts beyond the Americas and Europe, but there are notable exceptions (e.g.…”

Can imperial radio be transnational? British‐affiliated Arabic radio broadcasting in the interwar period

“…or a particular radio form (public radio in the United States, e.g. ), reinforcing assumptions about radio and the nation state (Engelman, ; Lacey, ; Scales, ). Indeed, the published works on the BBC Arabic Service, the Palestine Broadcasting Service, and the ESB service each focus on the individual station in the context of the national government (Partner, ; Stanton, ; Boyd, ).…”