The Power of the “Audience-Public”: Interactive Radio in Africa (2018).

_{Srinivasan, S. and Diepeveen, S. : ‘The Power of the “Audience-Public”: Interactive Radio in Africa’. The International Journal of Press/Politics 23, no. 3:289-412, 2018}

Scholars studying media and politics generally acknowledge that audiences and publics are constructed but often fail to explain how their uncertain and imagined nature underpins their political significance. Interactive broadcast media offers a useful empirical perspective for exploring why this might be the case. The merging of new digital communication technologies with traditional radio and television is reshaping how news media can influence citizen-state relations. This is particularly evident in Africa, where mobile phones and increasingly diverse media environments have fostered the growth of popular and widespread interactive talk shows. Audience participation transforms the media space in which political communication occurs. Through a comparative analysis of interactive shows in Zambia and Kenya, this article examines what audience involvement means for the political dynamics and potential of radio and TV broadcasts. It demonstrates how the indeterminate nature of the audience serves as the foundation for competing conceptions of power, authority, and citizenship among participants, including politicians, media professionals, and audience members. The power of the “audience-public,” created through interactive broadcasts, is argued to emerge from the interactions among these participants in public discussions, each of whom projects multiple and conflicting visions of the elusive audience to serve various interests.