Radio as a Tool for the Social Sciences: Production and Consumption of Public Culture at Michigan Radio (NPR)

Abstract

By creating a product of news and culture consumed by listeners, public radio both reflects and shapes the ideals, priorities, and sensibilities of its audience. As the producers of public culture respond to listener desires while at once prioritizing the cultural model of the news and culture they produce, content of public radio is reflective of the social trends in which it is situated. • Public radio can be used as a tool for anthropology and sociology in measuring the social and political movements of a given broadcast area • In consuming public culture, the listener is shaped into a Subject, and is entered into a dualistic relationship between structure and agency • Advancements of women in radio over time may be linked with the nature of public media through the idea of public culture • Observation and research showed no apparent influential relationship between gender and experience at Michigan Radio WUOM, though I understand this to be atypical in areas of senior management and in the field of broadcasting more generally