Smart radio and audio apps: the politics and paradoxes of listening to (anti-) social media

摘要

The recent crop of audio social media applications tends to appeal to users in terms of getting their voices heard loud and clear. Indeed, it is striking how often verbs such as "shout" and "boast" and "brag" are associated with microcasting platforms with such noisy names as Shoutcast, Audioboo, Hubbub, Yappie, Boast and ShoutOmatic. In other words, these audio social media are often promoted in rather unsociable terms, appealing less to the promise of a new communicative exchange than to the fantasy that we will be able to "talk to the world" (Spreaker) or have our voices "immediately available to millions of listeners'"(Live 365). The promotional framing of these new media suggests a key contradiction at play in these new forms of radio, speaking to a neo-liberal desire for a decentralisation of broadcasting to the point where every individual has a voice. Focusing on the promotion and qffordances of these various new radio- and radio-like applications for sharing speech online (like the Australian Omny app), this article seeks to interrogate what is at stake in these contradictions in terms of the ongoing politics, experience and ethics of listening in a mediated world.