Understanding the value of networked publics in radio: employing digital methods and social network analysis to understand the Twitter publics of two Italian national radio stations

ABSTRACT

Radio audiences are today a mix of traditional radio broadcasting audiences and networked publics (boyd, d. [2007]. Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life. In D. Buckingha (Ed.), MacArthur foundation series on digital learning–youth, identity, and digital media volume (pp. 119–142). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Ito, M. [2008]. Introduction. In K. Varnelis (Ed.), Networked publics (pp. 1–14). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Varnelis, K. (Ed.). [2008]. Networked publics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Varnelis, K. (Ed.). [2008]. Networked publics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; boyd, d. [2011]. Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A networked self identity, community, and culture on social network sites (pp. 39–58). London: Routledge). This not only means that new media is changing the nature of listeners/viewers, transforming them into interactive users, but also that radio publics, once organized into networks, may have different properties, different behaviours and different values. In this paper, we have employed Digital Methods (DM) (Rogers, R. [2009]. The end of the virtual. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press) and social network analysis to understand the Twitter activity and the communicative dynamics of the audiences of two Italian national radio stations: Radio3 Rai (public service station) and Radio Deejay (private commercial station). This work also aims to respond to a question asked by Rogers when defining DM: ‘Could the information contained in profiles on social networking sites provide different insights into the composition and characteristics of publics?’ (Rogers, R. [2009]. The end of the virtual. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press). Based on the results that have emerged from this study, we believe that the answer can be affirmative: the analysis of the social connections and the interaction models of the networked listeners highlights new features of these audiences, and allows us to reevaluate and understand them from new points of view. This work shows that the digital audiences related to the two radio stations clearly distinguish themselves for their distinctive online behaviour and a different display of social networks, cultural capital and affect. We therefore hypothesize the presence of three different types of capital within the two different audiences analysed: social, cultural and affective capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Media studies
• social media
• audience studies
• sociology
• network analysis
• digital methods

Acknowledgement

The authors want to thank the Center for Digital Ethnography of the State University of Milan for its support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Tiziano Bonini is a lecturer in Media Studies at the IULM University of Milan. He holds a Ph.D. in Media, Communication and Public Sphere (University of Siena). His main research interests are the intersection between radio and new media, digital cultures, audience and production studies. He co-edited the book ‘Radio Audiences and Participation in the age of Network society' (ECREA Series, Routledge, 2015). [email: [email protected]]

Alessandro Caliandro is a post-doctoral researcher in Sociology, and Director of Research at the Centro Studi Etnografia Digitale at the State University of Milan, Italy. [email: [email protected]]

Alessandra Massarelli is a graduate student in Political Sciences at the State University of Milan. She is currently trained in Digital Methods. [email: [email protected]]

ORCID

Tiziano Bonini http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6706-2797

Notes

1. Software was provided by the Digital Ethnography Centre of the State University of Milan (http://www.etnografiadigitale.it/); we thank them for their collaboration.

2. Nodes are represented by the users, which are units marked with @ (e.g. @Valentinacons). The edges are represented by the connection between users, expressed by the exchange of @ and/or RT. In this case, there are more nodes than active users (e.g. Radio Deejay = 10,826 active users vs. 11,415 nodes), as each user can mention more than one user at a time in a single Tweet. These mentioned users can also not be active users, namely those who have not contributed to the creation of the communicative flow of Tweets surrounding @radiodeejay. This is a very common occurrence when studying the graphs on Twitter, which are direct, or asymmetrical by definition (if A is a follower of B, the opposite is not necessarily true, as it would be on Facebook; or if A mentions or retweets B, the opposite does not necessarily happen etc.). The density of the networks of the two radios was also calculated. The density of a graph G = (N, E) is the measure of the connection between the edges (E) and the maximum number of possible arches between the nodes (N). The density is equal to 1 (or the maximum) if all the nodes are connected with each other – vice versa is 0. In our case, the network of RAI Radio 3 resulted as being denser than that of Radio Deejay, although the difference was insignificant: 0.0007 as opposed to 0.0002.

3. We define ‘common listeners' as those followers whose Twitter Bios show that they are in no way connected to the radio they mention in their Tweets, who do not work for it and who are not public personalities, but private citizens. In order to verify that there was no professional relationship underway between users identified as ‘common' and the radio, we also performed research outside of Twitter.

4. For an example of the different displays of cultural capital of @radiodeejay and @radio3tweet users, please consult the following Twitter accounts: @laMarsi (a follower of @radiodeejay, accessed on June 9, 2015): ‘19+2. I lived three apocalypses. Dream out loud. Emma's lover. Student.'; @ilmercurio85 (a follower of @radio3tweet, accessed 9 June, 2015): ‘Graduate of @Cafoscari (University of Venice, Ed.) and @ScuolaHolden (a private creative writing school, Ed.). I write for @make_in_italy and @startup_italia. I love stories of innovation and @radio3tweet. I wake up with #primapagina'.

5. A famous international pop rock music band from Australia.

6. A famous Italian pop music singer.

7. Here are some examples of particularly phatic Tweets analysed by Papacharissi and de Olivera: ‘Proud of you Egyptians!' or ‘Good morning sunshine … Good morning my sweet lovely Egypt'. In the specific article ‘Affective News and Networked Publics', Papacharissi and de Fatima Oliveira study the above-mentioned practices of storytelling during the Egyptian ‘revolution' of 2011.

8. Accessed on 6 June, 2015.

9. See: http://www.deejay.it/news/deejay-ten-in-15mila-fra-i-coriandoli-viola/433633/?ref=fbpj and: http://www.deejayten.it/classifiche/. Accessed on 9 June, 2015.