Abstract

Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary collection of academic research exploring the definition, status, practices and implications of podcasting within the Media and Cultural Studies. Bringing together research from experienced and early career academics, alongside audio and creative practitioners, the chapters in this book span a range of approaches in a timely reaction to podcasting’s zeitgeist moment. In conceptualizing the podcast, we examine its liminal status between the mechanics of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, between differing production contexts, and podcasting’s reliance on mainstream industrial structures whilst retaining an alternative, even outsider, sensibility. In the present tumult of online media discourse, we frame podcasting as indicative of a ‘new aural culture’ emerging from an identifiable set of industrial, technological and cultural circumstances. The analyses in this collection offer a range of interpretations which begin to open avenues for further research into a distinct ‘podcast studies’.