Decolonial Methods in Podcast Production Studies: Reflections From Practice-Led Research

Abstract

This article presents and discusses qualitative decolonial methods to research the production of podcasts. Examining podcast production as a global field of study rooted in American/Western logic we discuss how researchers may experiment with new methods and approaches to analyzing podcast production that challenge such roots. We present and discuss the use of decolonial and embodied methodologies and theoretical approaches to podcast studies as a way to promote methods of inquiry that take full advantage of podcasting as an aural medium. We ask our readers to consider questions such as, how may feminist-inspired embodied listening help us better grasp the potential of podcast productions? How can we build critical methods of inquiry for podcasting that favor intentional listening and audio coding while using qualitative data analysis software? How may we build intrinsically inclusive methodologies so that researchers can shed light on the truly diverse set of actors engaging in podcast production today? Our analysis draws upon reflections from our work as educators, scholars, and podcasters and offers a brief overview of the works of other leading scholars in the field.

Critical, embodied methods in podcast production studies: Reflections from practice

With podcast studies still emerging as an established field of academic inquiry, we see a need to critically examine dominant methodological approaches that have been under-examined for their ontological relationships to Western colonial paradigms. The four authors have each conducted podcast studies from various theoretical perspectives while using multiple methods that attempt to move the field away from problematic media/communications approaches that have tended to prioritize text-based knowledge. Here we present a series of theoretical underpinnings and qualitative approaches to researching podcast production that we have used in the past and offer reflections on how they may help others keep podcast production studies a burgeoning and inclusive field. In this paper we use the phrases “podcast production studies” and “podcast studies” interchangeably as a reminder that the authors, as academic podcast researchers, are also participants in podcast production—we are all involved in various projects as podcast creators—and are particularly attuned to considering production methods, approaches and techniques in our scholarly analyses of podcasts.

So far, podcast studies have relied on traditional qualitative approaches such as ethnography, interviews, and content analysis, but also on innovative and adapted methods such as auto-ethnography and collaborative storytelling (e.g., Wiles et al., 2011). As the scholarly study of podcasting continues to grow, researchers are still discovering the intricacies and particularities of a medium whose producers continue to push to new forms.

We favor approaches that acknowledge the positionality of researchers and their agency and propose methodologies that will help steer the study of podcasting away from the traditional/patriarchal canon of communication studies and towards inclusive and decolonized research practices. In this paper, what we offer is an introduction to a sample of approaches, not exhaustive, that aims to spark critical methodological discussion in this emerging field of inquiry.

The article is divided into three sections. The literature review summarizes key concepts in the literature on decolonizing the academy, podcasting and diversity, and listening as method. In the section “Critical methods in theory and practice,” we explore different visions for decolonizing podcast studies; discuss listening-centered feminist methods; reflect on the value of interviewing diverse audiences; draw lessons from a feminist pedagogy podcast classroom; and explore the value of audio-coding methods. The third and last section, “What's been done… and where do we go from here?” gathers recent examples of decolonizing research methods in podcast studies and suggests a way forward for the field of study.

Literature review

Decolonization in the academy

The term decolonization can spring to mind a range of actions, understandings, and emotions depending on the context the research is embedded in. From 2015 student protests in South Africa to the 2016 establishment of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry in Canada, decolonization has entered public debate across activist rallies and government debates and into the university classroom. The term is meant to signal ongoing efforts to “‘undo’ the legacies of colonialism” (Jansen, 2019, p. 1). The rise of decolonization in popular vocabulary signifies a distinct moment in our global history. However, it also represents a uniquely multifaceted undertaking as various regions, countries, and university systems look to free themselves from colonial supremacy. It is equally important to avoid using decolonization simply as a metaphor in place of diversity and inclusion (Lechuga & Aswad, 2024).

While decolonization is a political concept across various contexts, our focus here is primarily on the decolonization of knowledge production—what is gathered and how it is shared and valued in the academy. In particular, as podcast researchers, we are interested in deconstructing how decolonization can inform the design and application of research methods, similar to what others have done by banding together in Transnational Research Collectives (Atallah et al., 2022). Jansen argues that “‘doing decolonisation’ as a radical act means thinking differently about the university and what is taught beyond the formal curriculum” (2019, p. 9). Within podcast production studies, we ask, what decolonial approaches are already in development and why? Where might decolonial knowledge inform a researcher's methodological approach? Podcast studies is still a relatively new and growing field of research and, as such, is at an opportune moment to build a collective body of literature with decolonial pursuits at the forefront.

Colonization is, in brief and complete terms, the physical exploitation of appropriating Indigenous land and the symbolic devaluation of the “empirical validity of Indigenous methods, voices, and traditions” (Au, 2023, p. 681). Throughout history, Western research conducted within a colonial framework has systematically collected, represented, and categorized all aspects of Indigenous knowledge, including their social, cultural, linguistic, and natural systems. This process created the systematic objectification and exploitation of Indigenous peoples and other historically marginalized communities. The university as an institution has played an important role as the intellectual basis for exploitation, ideological training for the elite, and as a developer of technologies of control and categorization (Guzmán-Valenzuela, 2023). In podcast production studies, these colonial logics continue to manifest in the lack of racial and geographical diversity across media and communication literature.

Podcasting and diversity

Podcasts are still a relatively new popular medium for information and entertainment, and understanding the preferences, motivations, and behaviors of diverse and historically marginalized listeners is essential for podcast research. Behavioral theories across the social sciences almost exclusively derive from samples based in so-called WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies, leaving out the vast majority of people (Henrich et al., 2010). Studies in the field of Communication fare no better. A recent survey of the literature in the sub-field of interpersonal communication found that white participants make up 57 percent of all samples; 69 percent of all participants (disregarding race) are based in the United States (Afifi & Cornejo, 2020). As the authors write, the problem with this approach is “flawed embedded assumptions that the white American college perspective is universal” (Afifi & Cornejo, 2020, p. 15–16). Thus, to honestly and comprehensively approach an understanding of contemporary podcast audiences, the field must move beyond white and U.S.-based samples.

While diversity and representation in podcasting are an integral first step toward decolonial action, we must also attend to how our choices in method and approach impact what is considered ‘rigorous’ or ‘credible’ research in academia and by whom. Scholars such as Maracle (2016) and Justice (2018) have written that the privileging of text as the more credible form of knowledge sharing is entangled in “settler-colonial ideologies of elitism and capital T-truth” (McGregor & Copeland, 2022). Dutta (2022) asks what the imperatives of researchers committed to decolonial work are, considering their role as one rooted in solidarity with movements and peoples fighting against colonial powers. Following decolonial and feminist podcast studies works such as those by Woods & Fitzgerald Ralston (2023) and Fox et al., (2023), we have chosen to draw on broader discourses of qualitative methods to delve into the importance of identity politics and diversity in specifics, not as tokenism but rather to propose podcast production studies practices that thoughtfully attend to discourses of decolonization, anti-racism, embodiment, and positionality for researchers and research communities.

Listening as method

In thinking through questions of positionality and embodiment in a decolonial framework, how the listening ear drives conventional approaches to hearing, editing, mixing, and listening across predominant practices within podcasting becomes an essential aspect of podcast studies. Similarly, in research methods, these default modes of listening and producing knowledge can manifest in the biases of familiar patriarchal, white, and Western universalizing narratives across the social sciences and the humanities.

In phenomenology, for example, feminist theorist Sara Ahmed (2020) has pointed to the problematic absolutions and universalization of experience in the writing of Heidegger and Husserl at the foundation of this philosophical approach. Pushing back against universalizing notions of experience, Copeland's research (2022) applies a reflexive mixed-method approach to the study of podcast production by drawing on this concept of a feminist-embodied ear grounded in what Sterne (2022), Voegelin (2021) and Berland (1984) term political phenomenology. Political phenomenology actively considers how one's positioning in the world shapes our embodied experiences and how that political condition (cultural, economic, geographical, ideological) “opens the world to use in different and not entirely symmetrical ways” (Voegelin, 2021, p. 152). At its core, phenomenology explores various aspects of human experience, such as perception, emotions, memory, time consciousness, intersubjectivity, embodiment, and the relationship between the self and the world. Political phenomenology brings the critically reflexive aspects of this experiential and embodied work to the forefront.

Listening as a technique and as an approach to scholarly inquiry can be found across a variety of notable contemporary media and cultural studies texts (Ceraso, 2018; Robinson, 2020; Sterne, 2022), but in applying it in conversation with decolonial discourses and feminist media studies, we aim to highlight a few methods that researchers can use to build more critically reflexive approaches to the study of podcast production. Learning to listen with a critical-embodied ear changes what we listen for and how we collectively conduct our research.

Critical methods in theory and practice

In Atallah et al. (2022), a group of researchers with direct connections to four research collectives speak of the importance and “transformative power of transnational stories and embodied knowledges,” and argue that research collectives can act as “constellations of co-resistance” against colonialism (Atallah et al., 2022, p. 682). In 2023, we planted the seeds of a potential research collective as we gathered with scholars from all geographic regions in the world to reflect on what decolonization might look like from the perspective of podcast studies.

We begin this section with a summary of the discussions held during a workshop conducted by the authors during the 2023 International Communication Association Pre-Conference on Podcast Studies in Toronto, Canada. The session, which we called “Stop the Madness: Decolonizing Podcast Studies,” involved six small-group discussions with podcast scholars from around the world. The four authors of this paper worked together to formulate and deliver the workshop; we also counted on the support of two other workshop moderators who collaborated during that session, our colleagues Nana aba Duncan, Associate Professor and Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies at Carleton University, and Hannah McGregor, Associate Professor and Director of Publishing at the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology, Simon Fraser University. The summary below gathers reflections that participants in the workshop shared with regard to researcher positionality and reciprocity, the politics of sampling, and considerations of the podcast as a medium and research method unto itself.

Following this summary, we turn to our reflections on how we have each recently approached podcast production research projects by experimenting with critical embodied methods of inquiry informed by our decolonial thinking. First, Stacey Copeland discusses the power of listening-centered feminist media methods. Then, Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez reflects on his approach to interviewing members of diverse audiences. Kim Fox follows, offering reflections on what she calls the feminist podcast classroom. Finally, Gabriela Perdomo explains how coding that foregrounds audio over text transcripts in podcast studies may offer avenues for decolonized methods.

Decolonizing podcast studies—the workshop

The methodologies we use as researchers to examine podcast production now can have a tangible impact on the future of the field in terms of who gets listened to. In May 2023, the authors of this chapter conducted a workshop on decolonizing podcast studies during the International Communication Association's Pre-Conference on Podcast Studies in Toronto, Canada. Approximately 60 scholars participated in the workshop, which sought reflections on what it means to decolonize research practices in the still-emerging field. The conversation and collaborative spirit of this event inform our contributions shared throughout this paper. For that, we thank everyone who participated and who continues this work beyond what we can include in this collective contribution.

The key focus of the workshop was the question of methods and considerations about how we devise and implement scholarly research, from the research design stage to sampling, to community engagement and co-authoring practices. The participants, all of them podcast scholars, gathered in six groups of approximately 10 people each and answered prompts that aimed to spur the idea of a decolonized practice of podcast studies. The following sections are summaries of those responses.

Positionality and reciprocity

Workshop participants identified researcher positionality and reciprocity as two key areas where decolonizing work may occur. This begins with an understanding that the researcher will conduct research with a subject or community rather than on them to challenge what has been a traditionally extractive relationship between researcher and research subject. It follows that researchers must transparently position themselves with respect to the community or subject with which they wish to engage. This positioning may look, for example, like providing biographical information about one's identity as a settler wanting to engage with Indigenous knowledges and offering a statement of acknowledgment of the power imbalance that this circumstance represents and how the research design addresses this.

In the same vein, a goal of reciprocity may contribute to decolonizing the research process. Participants proposed devising research designs that consider ways of giving back to communities and individuals involved in their projects. This reciprocity might entail simple built-in steps in the recruitment process—or even before—asking research participants what they would like to see as a result of the study, or considering collaborative research methods including, for example, co-creating the research questions and engaging participants in the project-design stage. These reflections echo recent considerations of how the concept of reciprocity may be expressed in podcasting and podcast studies, such as Wilcox et al. (2023) inquiry into the relationship between podcast journalists and Indigenous communities. In their peer-reviewed podcast, the authors speak about their experiences teaching undergraduate journalism students to consider “the roles of reciprocity and respect in their conduct as journalists and community members” when producing news podcasts (Wilcox et al., 2023).

Other considerations include minding the pace of the research project—slowing down might lead to more meaningful collaborations and deeper community engagement. Questioning the need for solo authorship may also bring an opportunity to better engage with research subjects. Co-authorship could potentially prevent traditional/colonial impulses such as single/egocentric authorship, extractive work, or the gatekeeping of knowledge.

Sampling

Understanding that research design is not unlike the process of gatekeeping and editorial decision-making at a news organization, workshop participants identified sampling as a key moment where decolonizing work may be possible. Sample size and sampling, in general, can impact the kind of study researchers carry out. As Atallah et al. (2022) write, we must intentionally transgress “colonially configured borders by centering transnational stories and embodied local knowledges that might be called ‘niche’, ‘less significant’ or ‘marginal’ in colonial academic tradition” (p. 682). The scholars in the workshop spoke of the importance of being mindful of not being swayed by audience numbers, for example, and avoiding the pull of overly popular podcasts as objects of study. Another key recommendation is to proactively choose to listen beyond the English-speaking world of podcasting as a way to challenge the tendency to prioritize Anglo-American productions. Similarly, encouraging research by non-English-speaking scholars and addressing barriers to publication by non-native speakers is also part of understanding how language colonization has deeply impacted academia at large including media/communication research. Participants proposed co-authorship and publishing in languages other than English as an intentional way of expanding and democratizing podcast studies not only in how we sample data but also on a human level regarding the sampling of researchers we support as a growing global field of study.

The medium is/as the method

A third major consideration stemming from the workshop relates to podcasting as a medium that elevates orality. As several researchers have noted, this centering of sound over text is critical for understanding how podcast-production research can steer away from colonial frames and limitations. Selecting research methods that include listening, as opposed to textual and visual forms of inquiry, is key to honoring the aural power of podcasting and re-centering orality as not subordinate to textual knowledge. It also has the power to challenge patriarchal colonial modes of knowing, as critical cultural sound studies scholars such as Stoever (2016) and Robinson (2020) have shown.

Participants pointed to emerging research in Brazil where social scientists are talking about oral studies and already advancing decolonizing efforts. In the podcast research of Aline Hack (2024), for example, the author showcases how Brazilian feminists attend to topics of postcoloniality, anticoloniality, human rights, “ethnic-racial, class, and territorial struggles” through their podcast practice. Workshop participants further suggested proposing forms of oral or audio forms of peer reviewing to both preserve and foreground orality as a legitimate form of knowledge production. We are already seeing this work being further developed just as one of the authors of this article engages with in McGregor and Copeland (2022) with an audio peer review roundtable included in the appendix of their scholarly three-part audio web text. Lori Beckstead, Ian Cook and Hannah McGregor, three podcasting and peer review advocates within our field, have recently published a book continuing this conversation with concrete examples of how to reimagine peer review for scholarly podcasts in Podcast or Perish (2024). Furthermore, as mentioned in our literature review, select scholarly journals are also already opening doors to oral and aural studies and forms of peer review (see, for example, Facts & Frictions in Canada). These kinds of offerings bode well for a future in which audio publishing becomes a credible form of knowledge production that is no longer in need of text to render it so.

As facilitators of the Decolonizing Podcast Studies workshop, we appreciated the chance to think through some of the unique challenges and opportunities presented by podcast scholarship with colleagues from diverse backgrounds and geographies. Now, the authors of this article have individually worked with theoretical and methodological approaches that support the decolonization of podcast-production studies in our own unique ways. In the sections below, we offer individual reflections on our different approaches to podcast scholarship.

Stacey Copeland: listening-centered feminist media methods

Stacey: My work in queer and feminist podcasting explores applying feminist media studies to podcast production, focusing on the auditory aspects of the medium. In developing anti-racist, decolonial, and feminist-embodied listening methods I draw from a growing body of critical cultural sound studies literature from scholars like Stoever (2016) and Robinson (2020). For example, Stoever notes how normalized listening reinforces White elite masculinity as the standard, while Robinson's ‘hungry listening’ concept unveils settler colonial perceptions within normalized listening (2020, p. 15). Both reveal the gendered and racial dimensions of the listening experience tied to colonialism. It is through thoughtful engagement with decolonial and critical race theory in cultural studies, like those we aim to collectively draw out here, that intersectional feminist approaches to podcast studies can continue to develop forward. Here I thank my co-authors for their contributions to my learning as I negotiate the space I hold as a cisgender white queer settler Canadian now living in a new-to-me colonial context of The Netherlands. Building on our theorizations on listening-as-method above, I present three methods in continued development within my broader research to foster reflexivity toward more ethical podcast critique: audio diaries, reflexive thematic analysis, and listening-centered textual analysis.

Audio diaries stand out in my feminist toolkit as a method that seems to be garnering interest in the humanities and social sciences at large. This autoethnographic approach enables creative reflexivity, aligning with sound-forward principles. It integrates embodied experiences into data collection, promoting critical listening in podcast studies. Audio diaries, also known as voice notes, have gained traction in social sciences for reflecting on the messiness of fieldwork (Mazanderani, 2017, p. 80). The practice helps confront biases and capture nuanced moments sonically. This approach emphasizes personal reflection, promoting careful exploration of technology, voices, sounds, and spaces shaping audio media. Self-reflection additionally provides a sense of release or ‘catharsis’ that can be essential for studying marginalized, counterculture, and activist communities that we as researchers may also be a part of or identify closely with.

Reflexive thematic analysis (RTA), in contrast to audio diaries, provides a broader picture of my research data. For example, in my ongoing work on the politics of production esthetics and practices, this method organizes interview materials and podcast analysis into themes to identify shared experiences across various production communities. Here I draw on Braun and Clarke's (2021) framework, which guides qualitative researchers, eschewing preconceived coding in favor of interpretive coding. As RTA requires ongoing reflexivity, I must continuously address any biases I may be carrying into my research findings through code review. RTA does not rely on a pre-existing coding framework; instead, it draws upon the researcher's subjective expertise and contextual understanding to interpret the data, specifically interview transcripts, into meaningful codes. For example, as a podcast producer studying the field I am embedded in, RTA provides a productive way to speak to that situatedness. Since there is no predetermined codebook, coding becomes a generative process that necessitates ongoing reflexivity from the researcher to address potential biases through code review and theoretical grounding. Themes do not simply emerge; rather, they are derived through continuous review and clustering of codes throughout the analysis process in relation to the research question at hand.

Finally, listening-centered textual analysis puts the embodied ear into practice as a reflexive technique, attending to the researcher's positionality while focusing on the experiences and esthetics of podcasting soundwork. This method treats the podcast as a multimedia sound-first text to deconstruct and analyze the production choices within selected works and their corresponding elements of format, form, and genre. This approach resonates with my investment in political phenomenology and feminist ethics of care, positioning the researcher as a participant in meaning-making. In textual analysis, the application of semiotic theory deciphers how the signs and processes of signification exemplify the central themes depicted in the media. In the case of podcasting, the semiotics of sound must be taken into account, not only in words spoken but also in how those words are spoken and in relation to other soundings, such as music and ambient sound. Transcripts and the other multimedia elements of a podcast are also key elements when analyzing this multimodal form as a text in terms of accessibility and understanding the broader scope of podcasting culture across the senses (Ceraso, 2018). Nonetheless, learning to listen critically in the analytic process is essential to a medium with sound-first logic.

Arthur D. Soto-Vásquez: diverse audiences in interviews

Arthur: The study of podcast production should not lose sight of the role of the audience. In the era of mass datafication, it is vital to center people, noting that audiences have always exerted agency, are not passive subjects, and use media in surprising ways. As Livingston writes, “audiences are necessarily social, embedded in society and history in many more ways than through their relationship with the media, so the critical analysis of audiences cannot be satisfied with sporadic inclusion of disembodied, decontextualized observations of behavior or cherry-picked survey percentages” (Livingstone, 2019, p. 179). In the case of podcast production studies, interviews can be used to gain an appreciation of how diverse audiences receive and make meaning out of listening—allowing for unexpected possibilities.

My work focuses on understanding the perspectives of diverse podcast audiences and meeting them where they are at. Audience-centered research must include the global majority and the historically marginalized listeners and communities in podcast studies. This approach may also help avoid the issue identified by Afifi and Cornejo (2020) of extrapolating the experiences of white college students to all people—thus overgeneralizing and missing nuanced perspectives. My research centers on Latina/o/x listeners in the United States. In a recent study, my co-authors and I set out to answer the relatively straightforward question of how Latina/o/x podcast listeners used and related to the medium during the pandemic (Soto-Vásquez et al., 2022). In particular, we were curious to study the embeddedness of the medium in their daily lives and what parasocial aspect it might have fulfilled. Parasociality, or the feeling of having a close one-sided relationship with celebrities, has long been studied as an element of podcasts. For example, listeners often develop strong emotional connections with their favorite podcast hosts (McClung & Johnson, 2010). Given industry research done in 2023 that found 38% of U.S. Latina/o/xs are monthly podcast listeners (Soto et al., 2023), we were curious to learn if theories about parasocial relationships with podcast hosts also could be seen among this group of listeners.

For this project, we organized six small-group interviews with Latina/o/x college students. We asked them open-ended questions such as what were the top podcasts they listened to, where and how they listened to podcasts, and what were the qualities of their favorite podcast host. We used a close qualitative thematic analysis of the interview transcripts to uncover recurring patterns in use. Our findings were intriguing and counter-intuitive, in some ways. First, we found unique listening circumstances that might differ from other groups, including living with family in intergenerational settings and long commutes for work and school. These scenarios prompted listeners to turn to podcasts in moments of solitude during the pandemic. We also found that among the participants we interviewed, the main drivers for interest in a given podcast were identifying with their favorite hosts, youth, and gender rather than ethnic identity. We observed very few cases of our participants listening to Latina/o/x branded podcasts, with the exception of Spanish-language podcasts based in Mexico about music and true crime.

Our surprising findings can be credited in part to the open-ended questionnaire and methodological approach used in the study. We did not require students to indicate they listened to Latina/o/x- or Spanish-language podcasts. In turn, participants indicated they listened to a wide range of topics. These topics include Hockey, Internet Culture, Lifestyle, and whatever the Joe Rogan Experience can be classified as. Ultimately, we concluded this research by stating that “instead of focusing on what Latina/o/xs should want, brands should continue to use the basics of advertising and promotion by appealing to listeners’ genuine needs” (Soto-Vásquez et al., 2022, p. 334). From a perspective of researcher positionality, I identify as Latino, have a physical disability, and live in the Southwestern United States. During this study, I had to constantly remind myself that while I had my prior expectations of what Latina/o/x podcast listeners would/should listen to, the retelling of their experiences and preferences mattered more.

Listening matters in podcast studies—and not just in the act of listening to a podcast but also in the methodological approach, whether drawing from oral traditions or listening to interview participants. In each of our own ways, we, the chapter authors, articulate listening as an important research praxis that needs further thought. In looking back on my early work here, I see the possibility of pushing past interviewing diverse audiences. Instead of surveying general preferences, I am becoming interested in the interplay between text and audience, looking at how it is embedded into daily life. It can be challenging to think outside industry-shaped categories, demographics, and genres, but as our research and experience show, listeners do their own thing. In that sense, trying to guess the behaviors of any one group is perhaps less useful than methods that center the listener and follow them along.

Kim Fox: the feminist podcast classroom

Kim: My wisdom has been shaped as a result of my experience as a Black woman working in the U.S. radio industry, followed by a second career as a creative scholar which includes having taught audio production courses for two decades, 15 of those years in Cairo, Egypt. One outcome from my trajectory in academia is that I’ve honed in on my successful pedagogical techniques, including project-based learning (PBL), active and authentic learning, and feminist pedagogy. My approaches to teaching skills-based courses have been documented (Fox & Ebada, 2022), but I would like to use this space to focus on feminist pedagogy. Carolyn Shrewsbury's (1987) definition and work on feminist pedagogy has often been cited. From her perspective, this form of pedagogy is based on a holistic approach that involves building a community-centric classroom environment where critical thinking is also key. Shrewsbury lists “community, empowerment, and leadership as the pillars of feminist pedagogy” (1987, p. 8). I will share with you how these components can help build student agency and shape a productive academic environment that has resulted in measurable outcomes for student-produced podcasts in my classroom. My approach also speaks to the undoing (Jansen, 2019, p. 1), né decolonizing, of traditional approaches to teaching where the professor spends the majority of the class talking at the students.

I cannot say that I was always intentional about using feminist pedagogy. However, allowing students to think out loud when discussing taboo topics and coaching them on the language to use to provide valuable critiques to colleagues are just a few examples that hit on all of Shrewsbury's tenets for feminist pedagogy. Regarding podcast production, students pitched their ideas in a ‘safe space,’ seeking encouragement and constructive peer criticism to craft a more robust end result. This experience leads me to build on Stacey and Arthur's point on listening and how I have cultivated a classroom environment that respects listening. We position ourselves both as podcast listeners, because we listen to many podcasts and audio works in progress and as members of a course listening to class dialogue. However, this is also about being heard. Students are guided in the “roses and thorns method” of feedback: when commenting, only roses are presented first, something positive. Then the thorny comments are shared and framed as: “I wish you would have …” This approach in the feedback process inspires students to listen more thoughtfully and to think critically when speaking about their colleagues’ creative work. The confidence that students gain from this approach cannot be overstated. Their ideas are taken seriously and they receive discerning feedback and end up feeling empowered. As mentioned previously, typically, leadership in the classroom comes from the professor or instructor, but feminist pedagogy aims to have the educator act more as a facilitator of classroom activities. That means that decisions relating to class should be made collaboratively. This collective energy instills another level of confidence in students that impacts their critical thinking. With confidence comes leadership. So, you can see how the triangle of feminist pedagogy components, community, empowerment, and leadership, fit together nicely.

Long-term implications for utilizing this feminist pedagogy approach are that students will take this method with them and incorporate it when they embark on careers as media practitioners, perhaps as podcast producers. As Stacey mentioned, cultivating a caring work environment where people feel heard and seen is key to productivity.

Gabriela Perdomo: listening is the method

Gabriela: Podcasting is barely over two decades old, and those of us who study their production sit in a field of study brimming with possibilities. In recent years, it has been illuminating to share a sense of collective enthusiasm for making this field stand out as one where scholarship can push back against hegemonic, Western-centric ways of knowing. As a journalist trained in Latin America, now working in the Global North, I welcome the theoretical and practical discussions that are emerging with respect to how we can best approach the field of podcast studies. My academic work focuses on journalism podcasts and trying to discern how journalism is finding new shapes within this medium. In a co-authored study, my colleague Philippe Rodrigues-Rouleau and I set out to understand how journalists and news organizations build claims to journalistic legitimacy and authority through podcasting (Perdomo & Rodrigues-Rouleau, 2022). As my three chapter co-authors have done throughout this paper, I argue here that studying podcast productions inevitably needs to recruit listening as the primary method of inquiry.

This particular study was one of the first to analyze news podcasting as a genre. It departed from the notion that journalists attain legitimacy and authority through relational practices (Carlson, 2017)—that is, through constructing and performing their work in ways that seek to be labeled legitimate or authoritative by their different publics. This means that journalists must constantly strive to be legitimized and trusted by audiences, as well as peers. With this in mind, we listened to The New York Times’ podcast Caliphate, which first dropped in 2018, and analyzed the entire series—12 episodes in total—to see what strategies are used in the podcast to build legitimacy and authority. We intuited that our answer would only be attained through intentional listening on our part, and therefore we conducted our analysis based on direct audio coding.

Using NVivo 12, a qualitative analysis software program, we uploaded the episodes and, together in the same room, listened to each one of them attentively after the first round of individual listening. Soon, we realized that the principal strategy for building legitimacy and authority on the Caliphate podcast was a peculiar use of journalistic transparency that we dubbed performative transparency. We know from text-based research that journalists have widely adopted certain transparency devices in their work including providing hyperlinks to external sources and making themselves available for dialogue with their audiences, or even inviting collaboration with lay people for newsmaking (Karlsson, 2010). Some also disclose their personal standpoints on certain issues (Hedman, 2016). Yet we know little about how journalists are constructing and deploying transparency devices in podcasting, and know even less about how transparency can be used as a strategy to build legitimacy and authority claims.

With this focus on how the journalists in Caliphate were using journalistic transparency, we first pinpointed transparency segments from the audio files. Those were any segments where the journalists talked about themselves, where the behind-the-scenes of the investigation became audible, or discussions about journalism in general. We also included instances of transparency, such as sound checks, small talk, or joking around—elements that would not be normally visible or audible in a traditional journalistic piece. Since our study focused on journalistic transparency, we coded the audio segments of transparency exclusively and ignored what we considered to be the core reporting in the podcast, which told us the story of the fall of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. After coding the audio, we reviewed the podcast's official transcripts, which were publicly available on the podcast's main website. The entire series was coded with both researchers present at every moment and codes were categorized through dialogue and discussion.

You could say that our method instinctually led us to trust sound over text and this had an impact on our research. This method—foregrounding active listening—allowed us to really hear how The New York Times’ journalists carefully deployed transparency elements to lay claims to authority and legitimacy on the Caliphate podcast. Thanks to our method, we identified three strategic ways in which journalistic transparency was deployed in the podcast. First, the journalists included audio about procedural reporting moments, such as phone calls to verify information, or audible note-taking, that revealed parts of the journalistic process to audiences. These moments appeared to be an intentional attempt to show audiences that the reporters in the story knew what they were doing—that they had expertise. Second, the story's structure and editing ensured audiences got to know the main reporter, Rukmini Callimachi, who was carefully constructed as a character as the series advanced. She was presented as a courageous, intelligent, and shrewd journalist possessing both personal traits that made her relatable—she drinks rice milk and speaks three languages—and professional credentials that made her impressive to non-journalist audiences—she can read and understand Arabic and has extensive experience interviewing prisoners. Finally, our coding showed by featuring conversations around what it means to be a journalist between Callimachi and Andy Mills, the podcast's producer, Caliphate illustrated the complexities of journalism to the public. Again, we found that this was an intentional strategy to prove to audiences that the reporters in the podcast are clearly members of the journalistic community. Our main conclusion stated that the Caliphate podcast displays a type of performative transparency to claim journalistic authority and legitimacy. Arriving at this insight would not have been possible without our insistence on listening to the podcast and intentionally foregrounding audio as our primary source of information about the series. Even though this study focused on mainstream podcast production, our method revealed itself as an ideal approach to ensure that the field of podcast studies remains vibrantly diverse.

In my current research, which seeks to better understand the defining traits of news podcasting across several countries, my colleagues and I are intentionally designing a project that centers listening as the primary method of inquiry. For decades, even for centuries, the study of journalism has primarily relied on text-based analyses, even when researching broadcast journalism. Content analysis, which is overwhelmingly text-based, remains The King of methods in this field of scholarship. Foregrounding listening seems revolutionary by comparison because the ear can bring us to understand new dimensions of how journalists communicate, compel their public, speak to each other, and much more. Text is no longer King, nor is it enough to help us grasp the transformational effect of podcasting.

What's been done … and, where do we go from here?

We’ve outlined our decolonial and innovation podcast and production studies methods and theories, but of course, we are not the first and only scholars to consider this interdisciplinary field through different lenses. In their 2023 article, Woods and Fitzgerald Ralston argued that podcasters should integrate “feminist research methods” into their creative processes and reflexivity. They outlined some best practices to go along with their suggestion of implementing inclusivity in the production process (for example, by intentionally booking guests from diverse backgrounds).

Podcast scholars are sometimes podcast producers themselves, which opens the door to reflexive, autoethnographic, and practice-led research possibilities. While this latter approach has been popular in the Arts discipline (Smith & Dean, 2009), this is rare in media and communication studies. Exploring practice-led research in the study of podcast productions could add meaningful diversity and anti-colonial lenses to scholarship in this field, especially as podcasting is a widely accessible medium with a vast diversity of producers across geographic, social, and other demographic categories.

Podcasting is also a medium brimming with innovative approaches to knowledge production and dissemination, and scholars are using the medium to challenge hegemonic forms of knowledge. For example, we can look to projects such as The Social Work Stories Podcast examined in Fox et al. (2023) to see how academics use podcasting to engage in important conversations about Indigenous knowledge practices and culture across various communities. We can also learn from the innovative work of Wilcox and colleagues who, through a peer-reviewed podcast involving undergraduate students, discuss topics around land acknowledgements and other considerations of how to respect Indigenous intellectual property in podcasts (Wilcox et al., 2023). Of note here is also how some academic journals, such as Canada's Facts & Frictions, where this latter project was published, are now experimenting with conducting peer reviews on audio-based research—precisely what McGregor and Copeland have advocated for (2022).

Utilizing the affordances of podcasting's sound elements for both research production and the study of podcasting speaks to one of several points Tzlil Sharon (2023) recommended in her article on the future of podcast studies research. She offers many suggestions for exploring podcast audio, such as “the inspection of diverse voice delivery” (Sharon, 2023, p. 333). For instance, the study of the sonic elements in voice could include dialects and diction. Approaches like these can contribute towards decentering the Western ecosystem of podcast production and encourage scholars to venture into the global spectrum of multifaceted voices and languages that comprise the vast world of podcasting.

Another area where many innovative podcast scholars have found a rich variety of subjects to explore relates to the emotional nature of podcasting. Building on the potentiality of aural research, the affective depth of listening to the radio is part of the focus of Breton Ortega (2013). He posits that radio, and podcasting by extension, carry innate emotional components that are integral to the study of the field and as a result, should always be included in knowledge production on the topic. He emphasizes that studying how and why listeners listen and how and why creators create could elicit unique insights for scholars. As stated in Stacey's section above, there is much value in considering emotion, but the researcher's positionality and allowing space for reflexive podcasting is an expression of this view. A good example of this experience is Hannah McGregor's (2018) peer-reviewed podcast Secret Feminist Agenda (SFA), which included audio responses of McGregor's peer-reviewers as podcast episodes. The openness of the dialogue, the copious show notes, and the inclusion of transcripts provide an ideal case study for how the audio peer-review process could be executed, though it should be noted that this model is undoubtedly labor intensive. Similarly to SFA, Claire Lavarreda and Catarina Tchakerian's The Unfinished History Podcast (2022) also inserts elements of reflexivity on their podcast which challenges hegemonic narratives in the academic field of history. Both of these podcasts illustrate how scholarly podcasts can be inclusive and reflexive while upholding the peer-review process.

The few examples of podcast scholarship mentioned above are by no means an exhaustive list and we are certain that there are many more scholars and research projects worthy of mention here. We chose to highlight a handful only to show where the field of podcast production studies seems to be headed. Yet new possibilities continue to appear for those who wish to contribute to this body of literature (textual and aural).

Concluding thoughts and future research

The case studies offered here are examples and reflections on moving away from dominant methodological approaches to knowledge production in podcast studies. Beyond our own approaches, we have highlighted several other exciting possibilities for future studies and hope that our own experiences will help the field avoid some of the trappings of canonical communication/media studies. We see promise in ethnographic and auto-ethnographic approaches to podcasting, in audience-centered research, audio-led methodologies, peer-reviewed works of audio, and beyond. As we look closely at the production aspect of podcasts, there is also an opportunity to study the political economy of production, especially as major media companies continue to consolidate their programming in major North American and European markets. There is certainly also space here to consider how podcasting can fit into, shape, and define emerging counterpublics, just like Sibanda and Ndlovu's study of youth podcasters in Zimbabwe (2023) did.

More than anything, we see a key connection between our disparate forms of research and everything we learned from the scholars who shared their knowledge with us during that conference: listening. In subverting the text-based hierarchy of traditional media and communication research, we highlight the centrality of aural studies and propose re-imagining listening as a decolonizing method for working in podcast studies. The first section of this paper outlined theories and approaches to listening; the second spoke about listening to diverse audiences when conducting audience research; the third discussed how feminist pedagogy is influencing how listening plays a role in classroom assignments, practices, and dynamics; the fourth introduced a methodology that puts primacy on listening for textual analysis rather than transcripts. Our own intuition as researchers has organically led us into foregrounding the ear as our primary research tool, which echoes what so many scholars told us during our decolonizing workshop as well.

Moving forward, we hope that podcast production studies will intentionally incorporate critical and embodied methods, knowledges, and concepts that aim to decolonize and advance the field in new and more meaningful directions that can inform practice and spur creativity. What we have offered here is a small contribution towards that goal, and both as a collective and as individuals we will continue to explore and reflect on how we may offer new paths towards decolonizing podcast studies.