Radio, Podcasts, and Digital Media

Podcasting and digital audio media sit at the intersection of journalism, storytelling, and audience behavior, drawing researchers who want to understand how people create, distribute, and consume spoken-word content in the streaming era. Scholars examine why listeners choose podcasts over other formats, how the form has revived older radio conventions while enabling new genres like serialized true crime, and what the shift to on-demand audio means for news organizations and independent publishers alike. A central open question is how algorithmic distribution and social media shape what gets heard and by whom, given that podcast discovery remains poorly understood compared to video or text. Researchers are also actively tracing how audience engagement—loyalty, parasocial attachment, community formation—differs from other media, and what that means for public discourse and the economics of independent journalism.

Works

45,606

Total citations

62,174

Keywords

PodcastingAudio StorytellingRadio RevivalTrue CrimeDigital PublishingSocial Media