Radiocracy

Abstract

The history of radio from the early pre-broadcasting period shows how transmitted music and talk have been caught up in the evolution of contemporary citizenship. The article discusses Bertolt Brecht’s experiments in public radio in the 1920s, and argues that commercial radio can also be seen to have contributed to the self-identification of ‘imagined communities’. Internationally, despite the ascendance of other broadcast and communications media, radio continues to be used in a variety of community-building developmental situations, providing remote, marginal and disenfranchised communities with low-cost, low-tech public space. Radio remains one of the pillars of civil society, combining entertainment and democracy, sound and citizenship. This article is a modified version of the welcome address that launched the ‘Radiocracy’ conference.