CuCo Lab Conversations | Rebekah Larsen (Copenhagen)
INFORMATION
Talk radio in the US has been an enduring player in the media landscape for decades. It tends to be highly partisan (largely conservative) and rife with varieties of misinformation; it is often framed as alternative ‘infotainment’ on a dying (i.e., not digital) medium. There is thus a comparative dearth of research into talk radio in contemporary media studies and adjacent fields. Yet conservative talk radio—and the stations that carry it—can play outsize sociopolitical and even quasi-journalistic roles today, particularly in rural contexts. I substantiate these arguments via a mixed method, ongoing project focused on several rural talk radio stations in the US. These stations are based in a region with a high density of broadcast media and majority conservative population. In this presentation, I describe how these stations contextualize and normalize topics for their distinct audiences, produce local news as hybrid digital-broadcast actors, and facilitate local and national politics. I will also touch on methodological challenges, including on-the-ground ethnography in partisan environments, as well as capturing and archiving radio data at scale. I end with a brief discussion of why a better understanding of talk radio—and conservative media more generally—is also invaluable to current policy interventions, e.g., to mitigate news desertification.
SPEAKER
- Dr. Rebekah Larsen | Website
COORDINATES
- Date: Friday, 21.02.2025
- Time: 10.15 – 11.15
- Place: Campus Belval MSA 4.340
- Webex: https://unilu.webex.com/unilu/j.php?MTID=md6786f049891944f9bb6616163af2fac