[Commlist] CFP Podcasting's Listening Publics

Abstract deadline: today

CfP: Podcasting’s Listening Publics
Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies
Co-editors: Dario Llinares (Brighton), Alyn Euritt (Leipzig), Anne 
Korfmacher (Köln)

“Listening is essential to the engagement with most of our media, albeit 
that the act of listening which is embedded in the word ‘audience’ is 
rarely acknowledged. It is a no less curious absence in theories of the 
public sphere, where the objective of political agency is often 
characterized as being to find a voice - which surely implies finding a 
public that will listen, and that has a will to listen” (Lacey viii).

As podcasting moves through its adolescence, a period of flux in which 
reformations of the technological and industrial organisation are having 
fundamental effects on the next phase of its evolution, the ways in 
which it encourages listening and reception practices are also 
undergoing fundamental development. The nature of this development 
depends on the communities, listening publics, and audiences the 
podcasts serve and/or participate in. As Spinelli and Dann have noted 
about podcasting, it always implies a relationship between creators and 
listeners but “while individual listening might be the moment in which a 
podcast ‘happens’ in some sense, it is possible, and indeed necessary, 
to consider larger formations of podcast audiences” (13). For Spinelli 
and Dann, podcast audiences are “much more ‘knowable’ than the radio 
audience, and the interaction (particularly in fandom) [is] more 
intense” (13-14). Who are these developing and changing “knowable” 
podcast audiences and how do they interact with podcasting? What do they 
listen to, how do they listen and why? Are audiences really knowable in 
the way Dann and Spinelli suggest and what might this tell us about 
audio communication practices in the digital age?

In order to understand the complexity, diversity and listening 
engagements of podcasting’s audiences, this themed section aims to 
expand the interdisciplinary range of contemporary podcasting studies by 
including work in literary studies, fan studies, gender studies and 
disability studies, as well as submissions that critically engage with 
race. We also explicitly encourage research on podcasts outside the US 
and Britain. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Podcast reception and connectivity in times of crisis
How podcast listeners find new content, including the development of 
taste cultures, content aggregation networks, and platform-specific 
algorithmic recommendations
Podcast participation and “prosumer” medial engagement (cf. Alvin 
Toffler, The Third Wave)
The development of genres, forms, and narrative practices within 
podcasting that encourage specific types of listening practices and 
audiences
Podcast fans and fan podcasts, podcasting and fandom audiences
Podcasts within niche culture, podcasting and marginalisation
Podcasts and community-building practices
Communal vs. private, on-demand listening
The rise of right-wing politics podcasts and their listenership
The role of voice (both politically and aesthetically) in podcasting 
reception
How podcasters imagine their listenership and cater their content to 
specific listening publics
Marketing discourses of attention and engagement
Cultural values associated with (podcast) listening

Please submit a 300-word abstract and short author bio in an email to 
(alyn.euritt /at/ fulbrightmail.org). For more information about Participations 
as well as submission guidelines, visit their website at 
www.participations.org. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to 
provide extensive copy editing services. If you are in need of such 
services, please arrange for them before submission of your draft.

Deadlines: Abstracts Due: June 30th, 2020
Decisions to Authors: July 10th, 2020
Full Submissions: November 13th, 2020

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