Theme

Radio, Sound and Internet

themeRadio resiliency and adaptability is no longer a surprising feature of this media. Witnessing the consolidation of technology, radio broadcasters are current dealing with new efforts on content production, formats, distribution channels and interaction options with audiences. Given these potentialities, in terms of audiences’ participation, engagement and interaction, technology has also been framed as a wide opportunity to manipulate, create and share information among users and listeners in an online/web scope.

As researchers seem to be keen to understand the implications of these new paradigms, the reconfiguration of radio narrative idiosyncrasy is therefore becoming one of the most serious impasses for the future of this medium. How to survive and maintain social relevance in a changed environment with ever increasing (both in numbers and variety) new forms of discourse production, and with substantial inputs from the people previously known as the audience is the key question for present day conventional media.

This is the general inspiration of ‘NET Station International Conference on Radio, Sound and Internet’, as the final outcome of the ‘NET Station: shaping radio for web environment’ ongoing research project, held in the Communication and Society Research Centre – University of Minho, in Braga (Portugal). In this scientific meeting, we aim to present the most relevant results and discussions of this project, which intended to understand how traditional radios are responding to web challenges, by observing the sound offer made available in the main national radio stations on their own websites as well as questioning audiences’ uses in the online radio domains, thus inquiring the vitality of radio in the multimedia context.