Hello facebookers ! Radio broadcasting seen through Facebook pages. How do you radio stations, presenters and listeners engage through social networks?

Cordeiro, P. (2011). Hello facebookers ! Radio broadcasting seen through Facebook pages. How do you radio stations, presenters and listeners engage through social networks?. Zagreb conference: "New challenges and methodological innovations in European media audience research". 7-9 April 2011.

Abstract: Terrestrial radio broadcasting is in a process of change. One can no longer think about radio without thinking about the broadcasting versus the narrowcasting and on-demand, combining different platforms. Radio today is more about content distribution than actually the FM chip on the mobile phone. Mobile Internet is growing due to converging technologies and social trends. Voice traffic on mobile phones is decreasing as wi-fi access grows, allowing people to web browsing and social networking through mobile, while at work, at home or even commuting. It’s a new mediatized behavior, as technology allows people to be connected and in connection, getting actualizations for all kinds of content, consuming various forms of content in different kinds of new media though mobile channels in several moments of the day, with a different consumption behavior. Our approach focus less on developments of each media in particular and more on the intersection across media formats and platforms, as well as the engagement media portray with audiences through social networks. Digital convergence raises new conceptualizations, concerning media, as media hybridization makes sense to an hybrid listener who is across digital platforms at his convenience, using mostly screens to get his favourite contents, creating his own personal media digest. In digital convergence, media combine audio with text, images, video, an archive system, web only channels or podcast, developing a new paradigm of access, with live broadcasting, on demand, shareable content that makes media even more social than it was before. As for radio, although convergence and digitalization have portrayed many changes, radio is about people, and made to people, reason why most radio stations are recovering the presenter’s image to engage with the audience. Our study aims to understand the relation that radio listeners establish with presenters and the interaction between them. People’s life is made available online, as the Internet is the key technology, a multimodal means of communication: people socialize online and use the Internet as a source of information, a helpful tool to work and communicate. Using a sample of radio station presenters and most active Facebook users among each radio station listeners, our objective is to study this relation in the context of imagined communities, analysing interactions, themes of interaction and promotion to the station events (like concerts, gigs or other initiatives), proving that people relate both the online and the real world through media and social networking.