ENTANGLED AUTONOMY ON AUTOMATED AIRWAVES: THE CASE OF RIVENDELL

Rivendell, a free and open source software suite for automated radio broadcasting, has brought several groups with clashing stances on technology, communication, and cultural politics into cooperation. This paper treats Rivendell as an opening onto the politics at play when the liberal ethos propelling free and open source software (Coleman, 2013) meets the autonomy-prizing traditions of independent broadcasting within an automation system. Complicating this already tense juncture, Rivendell has drawn users and code contributors from drastically opposed political groups within American broadcastings—right-wing Christian talk radio networks and progressive community stations—and has sustained a difficult terrain of working compromise that the activist push for low-power FM broadcasting inaugurated (Dunbar-Hester, 2014). In this paper, analysis of Rivendell's open source code base sheds light on its development and helps connect it to longer histories of media automation and its attendant social frictions. Interviews with lead Rivendell developers complete the picture of the project's trajectory, of its relation to the religious right context where the project began, and of the negotiations that have played out among its developers and its community of users in terrestrial and internet radio. The ongoing compromises and tensions threaded through Rivendell can offer insight into an issue that becomes larger and more pressing as media become increasingly complex and networked: how artists, activists, and media technologists who prioritize independence have reckoned with their reliance on socio-technical infrastructures whose connections may strike them as far less than savory.

False and Misleading Health-Related Claims in Food Supplements on Spanish Radio. An Analysis from a European Regulatory Framework

Objective: The excessive growth of the food supplements’ industry highlights the need to focus attention on all aspects involved in their proper consumption; one that takes centre stage is advertising. The aim of this research is to analyse the presence of false and misleading claims in food supplements advertising. To this end, a relationship is established between the different types of health-related claims and the substances on which they are based, whether authorised or not by EFSA. Design: This empirical work conducts a content analysis of all radio mentions broadcast throughout 2017 on news/talk radio stations. Setting: Spain. Participants: All radio mentions broadcast on news/talk commercial radio stations in Spain with the highest audience levels. The corpus is composed of 437 advertisements. Results: Results indicate that 80.3% of function claims included in the analysed advertisements are not authorised by EFSA, while 20.4% of disease claims are not allowed by EU regulation. Likewise, almost half of the substances referred to (43.7%) are illicit: 54.1% in function claims, 57.3% in disease claims, and 73.7% in the case of reduction of disease risk claims. Conclusions: This work reveals consistent failures to comply with European regulation on food supplements advertising. The widespread use of unauthorised health claims and substances is aggravated by the indirect recourse of illness as a persuasive argument, descriptions of alleged benefits as product attributes, and the omission of essential information. This leads to dangerous misinformation and can pose serious health risks. Stronger legal mechanisms are needed for effective consumer protection.

RAC 1: Análisis de un caso de éxito de emisora de radio

The factors that have contributed to the position of RAC 1, a radio station belonging to the Godó Group, as the audience leader in Catalonia, despite being the most recent channel available, are defined and explained. This detailed analysis of audience data for Catalan broadcasting is a line of research carried out by the Observatori de la Ràdio a Catalunya. The last 10 years have seen an increase in the number of people who listen to radio only in Catalan, regardless of the language they typically use for communication. This phenomenon is unprecedented and requires an analysis beyond casual interpretations. According to EGM data, RAC 1 accounts for more than 40% of the daily share of talk radio (2019), placing it as the first preference for listeners in Catalonia. In addition, this radio station has become the fifth most important conventional radio station (837,000 listeners) in Spain, with many more listeners than stations that have national coverage. RAC 1 celebrated its 20th birthday on 1 May 2020. Its contents focuses on infotainment and has a successful image among the media. Addressing and describing the keys to the success of a radio station represents a new approach in the scholarly literature. This case study of RAC 1, which has been an audience leader for a decade, thus represents a pioneering approach. The methodology applied to determine the causes of this phenomenon includes an analysis of the positioning of the channel’s overall offering, its programming strategies, and its program content, based on reports from the Observatori de la Ràdio a Catalunya, the Institut de la Comunicació (InCOM) of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and the Generalitat de Catalunya. The analysis is completed by in-depth interviews with the main stakeholders of the radio station. Resumen Se identifican y explican los factores que han contribuido a posicionar a RAC 1, emisora del Grupo Godó, como líder de audiencia en Cataluña a pesar de ser la última cadena incorporada al dial. El análisis pormenorizado de los datos de audiencia de la radiodifusión en catalán es una línea de investigación del Observatori de la Ràdio a Catalunya. En los últimos 10 años se ha observado un aumento de los oyentes que escuchan radio solo en catalán, con independencia de su lengua de comunicación habitual. Este fenómeno es inédito y requiere ser analizado más allá de interpretaciones casuales. Según datos del Estudio General de Medios (EGM), RAC 1 ocupa más de un 40% del share diario de la radio generalista (2019), situándose como primera preferencia para los oyentes en Cataluña. Además, se ha convertido en la 5ª emisora de radio convencional (837.000 oyentes) en España, con muchos más oyentes de los que tienen cadenas de cobertura estatal. RAC 1 cumplió 20 años el 1 de mayo de 2020. Enfoca sus contenidos en base al infoentretenimiento y tiene una imagen de éxito entre los medios de comunicación. Abordar y describir las claves del éxito de una emisora de radio es un enfoque nuevo en la bibliografía académica. Hacerlo a partir del estudio de caso de RAC 1, que lleva una década ininterrumpida siendo líder de audiencia, es la primera vez que se hace. Para conocer las causas de este fenómeno se ha utilizado una metodología que analiza el posicionamiento de la cadena en el conjunto de la oferta, sus estrategias de programación y, por último, sus contenidos programáticos, en base a los informes del Observatori de la Ràdio a Catalunya, del Institut de la Comunicació (InCOM) de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) y de datos de la Generalitat de Catalunya. El análisis se ha completado con entrevistas en profundidad a los principales realizadores.

Young Guns and Billionaires

Chapter 2 examines how the Republican Party’s crackup evolved over the course of Barack Obama’s two terms as president. As divided as the GOP may have been after the 2008 presidential election, its major donors were linked in their opposition to Obama. For the first time since McCain-Feingold, the full force of conservative wealth in America was united against healthcare reform and any spending to revive the perilous economy, rescue the auto industry, or provide relief for mortgage holders. The election of the first African American president made it easy for conservative commentators on talk radio and Fox News to call Obama’s healthcare plan “reparations.” This stoked racial resentment and boosted the plans of wealthy industrialists Charles and David Koch to move Republicans further to the right. Their main organization, Americans for Prosperity, raised hundreds of millions of dollars yearly and quietly provided training, infrastructure, and funding for many of the “spontaneous” Tea Party groups that helped restore Republican control of Congress. Donors may not have been willing to give millions of dollars for compromise, but the slash-and-burn tactics of the Tea Party became a catastrophic example of overreach. The 2012 presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, got caught up in a party tilting ever more to the right; he was only given financial support for his campaign against Obama when he renounced his Massachusetts healthcare program—the model for Obamacare—and put Ryan on his ticket.

The Radio Right

By the early 1960s, and for the first time in history, most Americans across the nation could tune their radio to a station that aired conservative programming from dawn to dusk. People listened to these shows in remarkable numbers; for example, the broadcaster with the largest listening audience, Carl McIntire, had a weekly audience of twenty million, or one in nine American households. For the sake of comparison, that is a higher percentage of the country than would listen to conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh forty years later. As this Radio Right phenomenon grew, President John F. Kennedy responded with the most successful government censorship campaign of the last half century. Taking the advice of union leader Walter Reuther, the Kennedy administration used the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Communications Commission to pressure stations into dropping conservative programs. This book reveals the growing power of the Radio Right through the eyes of its opponents using confidential reports, internal correspondence, and Oval Office tape recordings. With the help of other liberal organizations, including the Democratic National Committee and the National Council of Churches, the censorship campaign muted the Radio Right. But by the late 1970s, technological innovations and regulatory changes fueled a resurgence in conservative broadcasting. A new generation of conservative broadcasters, from Pat Robertson to Ronald Reagan, harnessed the power of conservative mass media and transformed the political landscape of America.

Conclusion

The deregulation of the airwaves by the Jimmy Carter administration, combined with the advent of cable broadcasting, allowed the resurgence of politically conservative radio in the late 1970s and 1980s. A new generation of religious broadcasters—including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—used radio and television to become household names. Indeed, it was while organizing to protect broadcasters from the Fairness Doctrine that the idea to create the “Moral Majority” came to Falwell. Also, radio broadcasting was the preferred way that former California Governor Ronald Reagan kept up his political brand as he prepared to run for president in 1976 and 1980. In the four decades since, right-wing talk radio has profoundly influenced national politics, but those tempted to call for a return to Fairness Doctrine–style regulation would do well to bear in mind Donald Trump’s expressed desire to challenge broadcasting licenses for critical journalistic outlets like NBC News.

Low Hanging Fruit: How Sports Talk Radio Hosts Discuss Racism

Talk radio has grown exponentially in the United States. The growth in talk radio was ignited by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed station owners to purchase more stations without antitrust scrutiny. One of the most popular formats on the radio is sports talk radio. Sports talk radio provides a unique entry point to understand how callers and hosts discuss racism in sport. The purpose of this study is to advance our understanding of race on the radio by examining how sports talk radio hosts discuss racism. The researcher interviewed 15 sports talk radio hosts over the phone to better understand how they discuss racism on the airwaves. After reviewing the transcripts and going through several rounds of data analysis, three themes were discovered: We can smell it, race is not always about race, and Black/White binary.