An investigation of the role of radio listener clubs in facilitating audience participation in discussion of issues that are of relevance to the public good

Abstract

This study examines the role that radio listener clubs can play in facilitating the empowerment of audiences. It confirms assertions in literature that such clubs enable audiences to participate in public deliberation and debate. It offers insight into the way that such empowerment is put into practice within particular broadcast cultures. It is proposed that the operation of listener clubs within one environment can best be understood when one considers how it is located within the global history of the circulation of ideas about radio. The study demonstrates this argument through an examination of listener clubs in Malawi. To establish a theoretical framework, it reviews literature about the study of audiences, identifying three conceptualisations of the relationship between radio stations and their audiences. The first two are informed by an interest in the empowerment of audiences and are referred to as ‘Brechtian’ and ‘Freirean’ in nature. The Freirean conception represents a more sophisticated version of the Brechtian one, in that it includes more fully articulated methods for the achievement of emancipation. The third conceptualisation is informed by an interest in the control of audiences and is described as ‘Sarnoffian’. The study explains that Brechtian and Sarnoffian conceptualisations originate from radio as it became established in the Global North while the Freirean conceptualisation originated in the Global South. It traces the global circulation of the two Northern Hemisphere concepts, paying attention to the way they were exported from the UK and US to environments with whom these countries historically entered into relationships of colonial rule. It concludes that in these environments the Sarnoffian conception informed the approach to audience adopted in public and state-controlled radio. It also traces the circulation of the Freirean concept, arguing that it was exported from the Southern Hemisphere to inform the global development of community radio. Against this backdrop, the study then reviews the international history of listener clubs, demonstrating their location within the broader development of relationships between radio and its audiences. Finally, it locates the Malawi example within this broader history. The study traces lines of influence between the establishment of radio in Malawi and concepts of radio that originate from the UK, the US and Latin America. It is proposed that in the UK and US, such influence formed part of relationships of colonial rule, while in Latin America it formed part of exchanges of ideas about decolonisation. It is further proposed that the extent to which one or another of these concepts were taken up in Malawi was informed by the existence of an authoritarian system of communication, controlled by the state. However, the extent to which an authoritarian relationship exists between a station and its audience differ within each of the tiers of broadcasting. The Brechtian, Sarnoffian and Freirean concepts of radio all play a role in shaping the distinctions between the three tiers of radio in Malawi. With this observation in mind, the empirical component of the study explores the way that listener clubs are taken up within each of these tiers. It examines three such clubs, each based in one of these tiers. It reveals that, in each case, clubs enable a participatory and emancipatory mode of communication to co-exist with one that is defined by an interest in social control. The emancipatory approach to communication dominates more strongly in the case of state and community radio, so that it can be seen to be Freirean rather than Brechtian in nature. More limited influence is achieved in the club introduced in commercial radio. The study nevertheless affirms the emancipatory potential of listener clubs in all three tiers of broadcasting. This enables the achievement of a degree of social emancipation even in the context of authoritarian broadcasting as this exists in Malawi. Recommendations are offered for ways in which to secure greater investment in listener clubs in Malawi, so that their potential as vehicles for the emancipation of audiences can be more fully realised.