Youths and net-radio, exploring subcultural models of audiences

This thesis investigates the cultural consumption of net-radio by tertiary students from Australia and North America, in order to identify the characteristics of a transnational youth net-radio audience and the factors that draw youths to net-radio. It employs mixed methods (combining quantitative and qualitative) and a three-stage research process to gamer wider and valid knowledge about the complexities associated with youths’ consumption of net-radio. Stage One (Qualitative methods, from September 2002 to March 2006) studies the institutional and production contexts of net-radio, interviewing nine net-radio managers from commercial, public, community and tertiary sector in Australia and North America. Stage Two (Quantitative methods, from March 2004 to April 2005) involves a survey of 209 tertiary students enrolled in journalism, media and communications programs in Australia (Monash University) and North America (New York University- NYU and City University of New York- CUNY) to research their patterns of media use. In the final stage, (from March 2005 to June 2006) detailed qualitative investigation of regular net-radio users is conducted, including interviewing and observing sixteen tertiary students, eight from Monash University and eight from CUNY’s Brooklyn College. This three-stage research process enabled the identification two types of net-radio. Radio online may be considered the more conservative type of net-radio because it is regulated, traditional radio with an internet adjunct. Net-only radio can be regarded as the more radical type of net-radio because it is web only and unregulated. The survey found that net-radio has a significant audience among some a transnational group of tertiary students: 50 per cent of the survey respondents were net-radio users. Students’ access radio online to hear news, cultural music and information from their homeland or parent’s homelands, or net-only radio to listen to alternative music not found on traditional radio. Interviews revealed that net-radio audiences constitute a three-tiered subculture determined by users’ taste distinctions and how much power they have over their consumption and production practices. The lowest tier consists of participants who emerge as radio online users to hear cultural music, news and language from their homelands or parent’s homelands. This tier is formed out of what Sarah Thornton (1996, p. 8) says are “shared tastes and interests”. The highest tier consists of participants who only access net-only radio in order to hear alternative, web-based music. Members of this tier have a lot of power over their consumption patterns and emerge as users, producers and managers of net-only radio content rarely found on traditional radio. This tier fits the subcultural model of resistance outlined by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (1976) and Dick Hebdige (1979). The middle tier of youth net-radio consumption consists of participants who engage in both types of net-radio participation (radio online and net-only radio). This middle tier has more options in relation to consumption practices, but exercises less power over production than the highest tier, because users do not own or run net-only radio stations. This exploration of a transnational youth-net-radio audience, and subsequent subculture, reflected that net-radio consumption entails “hybrid practices” that embodies “continuation” of traditional radio norms such as radio online as well as “reform and rupture” as indicated in some forms of net-only radio consumption (Alton, 2004, p. 159). This thesis helps to address a gap in netradio studies and in doing so contributes to cultural studies research on the internet.