Interactivity on Radio in the Internet Age: A Case Study from France

Blandine Schmidt

Interactivity, a ubiquitous phenomenon in contemporary media, is much appreciated by radio professionals. In France, radio is the one traditional medium which invites its audience to participate in the creation of content on air. Far from being a recent phenomenon, interactive radio broadcasting has been an important part of radio programmes on various themes, including many issues concerning society. By empowering the public through direct democratic participation, radio broadcasting often makes claims to freedom of expression on air. However, media making such claims based on interactions with their audiences are often accused of manipulating people's voices in a way that is utilitarian or commercial or both.

Communication can be summarized as the transmission of a message between a transmitter and a receiver. Further research allows us to add detail and complete this basic outline. Norbert Wiener's (1943) notion of feedback in his text titled 'Behavior, purpose and teleology', written with Arturo Rosenblueth and Julian Bigelow, is an important source. They are of the opinion that behavioural analysis can be applied to both machines and living organisms. Wiener (1948) considers cybernetics as the science of 'control and communication of the animal and of the machine'. It was with the appearance of a new type of machine (the 'informative machine') that a theoretical framework was built, involving all the phenomena around mechanisms of information treatment (Meunier 2003). The mathematician Claude E. Shannon completed Wiener's work in The Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1949. A protégé of Wiener, Shannon proposes a conceptual framework to define and characterize notions of information and communication. Nowadays, these theories are used and widened in the social sciences. Therefore, sociology uses the concept of feedback in the field of interpersonal communication. Sociologists show interest in the exchange of messages between two sources of information, taking for granted that every sent message results in another received message in response. Even if feedback seems to be missing, it has to be supposed. Cybernetics opens up new horizons to discuss the qualities and specificities of transmitters and receivers.

The term 'interactivity' was first used in information technology and in the study of relationships between humans and machines. Today its meaning has widened; it has become a plural notion in numerous fields like information and communication sciences. To achieve interactivity, a transaction has to be established and maintained by two actors exchanging elements of equal, active and mutual participation. Interactive radio broadcasting has changed the foundations of the relationship between a medium and its audience. Listeners can break their earlier silence by contributing to a broadcast. This brings about a modification in their status as receivers; they become 'transmitters' themselves.

There are several approaches to interactivity in radio that enable various kinds of listener participation. We must say that these approaches have multiplied over the past few years. Indeed, the creation and the democratization of these new communication technologies (such as the internet or mobile phones) were considered and appropriated by the radio medium, resulting in the development of new means of interaction. In this chapter we will focus on the emergence and the re-enforcement of these new digital ways of communication by the medium of radio using the internet. The main questions we try to answer are, firstly, in terms of the appropriation of communication tools by the public, what does the use of these new technical interactions allow and involve? And secondly, what changes have been brought about by such interactive relationships today? Our work focuses on a common type of interactive radio programme in France: the advice line. Many radio stations claim to support, help and accompany listeners in their private lives. This help, more or less personalized to individual cases, is proposed in several fields: legal, emotional, familial, sexual, consumer-related, etc. Advice lines use different strategies to stimulate interactivity. To get answers to our questions, we will first consider the existing duality in the interactive radio relationship. Then we will talk about the internet tools radio stations provide to their listeners to interact with and participate in the content. Finally, we will describe the results of our field study of comments made by listeners of a French advice line programme.

The duality in radio interactive relationship

Indeed, interactivity in radio is very attractive to radio professionals because it ensures dynamism on air while establishing a relationship of proximity with the listener. This can build up a loyal audience, which can lead to an increase in the number of listeners. Consequently, it is important for a radio station to become more accessible to people. To achieve...