Editorial Remarks: Diversity, Endurance, and Community

Abstract

Radio and audio media are remarkable for their appeal globally as well as their ability to address many diverse groups, communities, languages, and cultures. The enduring appeal and flexibility of radio and other audio media has sustained it despite competition and change. This issue contains a variety of original research that reflects the ongoing and emerging fields in radio and audio media research. Diversity in playlists, community radio, creating community, representation, digital radio, podcasting, and linguistic communities are all part of this issue. Heikki Hellman and Arto Vilkko’s article, “Is There Diversity on Popular Music Radio? Developing a Methodology for a Quantitative Analysis of Radio Playlists,” “develop[s] indicators that cover four components of musical diversity: origin, ownership, repetition, and epoch of music (Hellman & Vilkko, 2021, p. 193).” This study of the diversity of Finland’s radio playlists proposes relevant variables and indicators that can be applied to the further study of radio, in particular diversity. “Sonic Borderscapes in Richard Curtis’ Film the Boat that Rocked (2009)” by Jopi Nyman examines pirate radio with respect to sonic borders and community (Nyman, 2021). Nyman tackles the concepts of shared national cultural values, borderscapes, belonging, and becoming. The article’s focus on “transgressive programming emanating from beyond the border offers moments of affect and pleasure for the new generation by bringing them together, which leads to the formation of an alternative public space (Nyman, 2021, p. 227)” allows for an investigation of audience identity and alternative culture of dissent. In “Characteristics of the Classic Radio Experience Perceived by Young Listeners and Design Implications for Their Digital Transformation,” Stefan Hirschmeier and Vanessa Beule examine the changes in consumption of radio with the advent of nonlinear radio automated playlists (Hirschmeier & Beule, 2021). This examination of the traditional radio experience as it moves into digital radio is based on interviews with a younger audience. It identifies 5 categories of 37 radio characteristics that frame the experience of radio. “Missing, or Just Missed? Mediating Loss in the Missing Richard Simmons Podcast” by Kelli S. Boling, Kevin Hull, and Leigh M. Moscowitz examines “the Missing Richard Simmons podcast to explore how both podcast producers and audiences use new media forms to define and process JOURNAL OF RADIO & AUDIO MEDIA 2021, VOL. 28, NO. 2, 189–192 https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2021.2006443