Visualizing Radio Communities in Interwar Europe

Saturday, January 7, 2012: 9:00 AM
Chicago Ballroom G (Chicago Marriott Downtown)
Jennifer L. Spohrer, Bryn Mawr College

Visualizing Radio Communities in Interwar Europe

My talk will examine ways that radio broadcasting was graphically represented in radio magazines and other documents in interwar Europe. Depictions of radio networks and communities in this period emphasize the geographic location and the nationality of broadcasters and listeners. I argue that these representations point to a profound unease about the transnational and geographically diffuse nature of radio broadcasting, and a desire to domesticate it by framing listeners as national communities and channeling international broadcasting through networks of linked national broadcasters.