Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-13-2008

Keywords

podcast, broadcasting

Abstract

Our essay historicises the term “podcast” and offers some new contexts for understanding the history of the term, the practices it designates and its relation to broadcasting.[4] [4] The paper proceeds in four sections. We first analyse the origins and emergence of the word podcasting among the press and the digerati. We dispute the standard argument that podcasting’s main innovation is a marriage of RSS and Apple’s iPod by presenting podcasting as a practice that arose from a network of actors, technologies and behaviours. In the second section, we discuss how podcasting works and why we need to look beyond distribution to understand its historical emergence. In the third section of the essay, we connect podcasting with the development of affordable and easytouse consumer audio production software and hardware, technologies that are necessary (though not sufficient) preconditions for podcasting to offer greater access for audiences and producers than traditional models of broadcasting. We conclude by examining the implicit contrast between “podcasting” and “broadcasting” in order to trouble the commonsensical definition of broadcasting and thereby reopen some basic questions about who is entitled to communicate and by which techniques. While podcasting is neither a complete break from broadcasting nor part of any kind of revolution, it is the realisation of an alternate cultural model of broadcasting. The practice of podcasting thus offers us an opportunity to rethink the connections between broadcasting and other kinds of media practices and to reexamine the political and cultural questions broadcasting presents.

Comments

24 October 2015: At the time of publication, Sheridan College author Michael Brendan Baker was associated with McGill University.

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences

School

School of Humanities and Creativity

Journal

Fibreculture

Peer Reviewed/Refereed Publication

yes

Terms of Use

Terms of Use for Works posted in SOURCE.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Original Publication Citation

Sterne, J., Morris, J., Baker, M. B., & Freire Moscote, A. (2008). The politics of podcasting. Fibreculture, (13). Retrieved from http://thirteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-087-the-politics-of-podcasting/

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