The latest call for articles for InMedia, The French Journal of Media Studies is just out. We invite abstracts for contributions to the issue “The Art of Podcasting: experimenting with a new medium” edited by Dr. David Lipson and Ella Waldmann.

InMedia, Issue 12.1: "The Art of Podcasting: experimenting with a new medium"

Editors

Edited by David Lipson and Ella Waldmann 

Argument

The trajectory of podcasting from niche phenomenon to mainstream medium has been thoroughly documented by a growing body of literature on the subject (Berry 2016; Bonini; Bottomley 2015). Podcast studies have now become an established field, documenting and interrogating the potentialities of this medium, at the crossroads of various disciplines: media and cultural studies, sound studies, aesthetics, sociology, journalism studies, education, etc.

From the various and sometimes competing definitions of podcasting that coexist, we have chosen to focus on its aesthetic conception. Indeed, this issue of the journal InMedia aims at interrogating the formal, aesthetic, and narrative dimensions of podcasting. Therefore, the primary focus will be on narrative productions in the broadest sense of the term, echoing the definition of “crafted audio” given by the podcast specialist and oral historian Siobhan McHugh (2017) and recently studied by Neil Verma (2024). Narrative podcasts are based on elaborate storytelling, stemming from individual and sometimes seemingly random life stories (like Jonathan Goldstein’s Heavyweight, Ira Glass’s This American Life, or Daniel Alarcon’s Radio Ambulante, for example) or on ‘obsessive’ investigations (like the Serial productions, or The New Yorker’s In The Dark). Nonfiction productions occupy a predominant space in this scene – a tendency worth analyzing in itself – so much so that fictional podcasts like TANIS, Rabbits or The Black Tapes tend to draw on the conventions and codes of the investigative genre. Narrative podcasts (fictional and nonfictional), require extensive editing, pre- and postproduction, as opposed to the relative – if only apparent – spontaneity of conversational podcasts. However, this call for papers does not exclude considering dialogic productions where storytelling remains central, such as The New York Times’s The Daily or Chad Kultgen’s The Necessary Conversation.

By looking at these story-based podcasts, we wish to respond to the call for a “critical theory of podcasting” by Jonah Weiner, who wondered as early as 2014: “what kinds of stories, and storytelling, might arise from this new medium?” More than ten years later, we believe that the necessary hindsight has been gained and has enabled us to reflect on the art of podcasting.

Firstly, can podcasting be considered an art form? If so, what is the specificity of podcasts in terms of form and content? From the myriads of podcasts that are produced every year, which ones are being recognized as proper “works of art,” and based on which criteria? S-Town, for example, was the first podcast to receive a Peabody award for its “novelistic” structure: its literary aesthetics seemed to have seduced audiences and critics alike. We invite contributors to examine the landscape of podcast criticism by focusing on the critical vocabulary and frames of reference (film? literature? radio? music?), of existing initiatives like RadioDoc Review, blogs and reviews, or specialized sections of magazines like Vulture. More generally, it calls for reflection on the art of writing about podcasts, which could also take the form of an aesthetic or poetic analysis of a specific production.

Podcasts are often associated with popularity, and by now they are considered a mainstream medium: how does the popularity of the medium play into its relationship with “art” and “artfulness”? This leads to exploring so-called “experimental” podcasts that break boundaries in terms of form and content, and that work with the specificities of the medium, for example, Radiotopia’s The Heart, or Nick Van der Kolk’s Love+Radio. They create new forms of storytelling and listening experiences that can be destabilizing, upsetting, and at times even shocking. One possible axis could be analyzing these productions in relation to the notion of avant-garde, and possibly how they circumvent censorship and regulation.

Questioning the notion of “avant-garde” art in return, raises the question of the “newness” of podcasts: since its emergence in the 2010s, the field of podcast studies has vigorously debated over the question of the specificity of podcasts, and its distinction from radio: is it really a new medium? Or is it only the latest reinvention of radio? Does it merely remediate older forms, like radio dramas? This seminal debate might benefit from focusing on the aesthetic and artistic dimension of podcasting.

Podcasts, like radio, are said to be a “blind medium”, or at least a nonvisual one: we invite contributors to go beyond this assumption by interrogating the visual dimension of podcasts, by studying for example podcasts with a visual extension (a video recording of the podcast, “cover art”, or websites like the first season of Serial which had a very elaborate webpage featuring extensive visual content – maps, diagrams, photos, archives…); but also productions dealing with visual arts like cinema (for example the podcast You Must Remember This) and how they overcome the obstacle of “blindness”; more generally, by reflecting upon the evocative power of sound, its ability to create mental images and representations.

Podcasting has also renewed the genre of journalism, reinventing long-form reportage in a sonic form. In this context, we wish to interrogate how narrative podcasts navigate the thin line between fiction and nonfiction: what are some of the practical, ethical, and deontological risks of blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction, as it was explored for example in the French podcast Une si belle histoire? This could lead to delving into some “borderline cases,” where artistic license has led producers to veer away from the facts, the most notorious example being probably The New York Times’s retraction of its hit podcast Caliphate (2018).

Finally, this issue is also interested in a more hands-on approach, where the “art of podcasting” is also understood as a craft. We are interested in hearing from audio professionals, producers and educators: how have they adapted to the podcast “revolution”? How are they training the future generations of audio producers and storytellers?

We welcome individual proposals – dealing with but not limited to—the following thematic areas around podcasts:

• Nature and status of the medium
• Genres and contents
• Poetics and aesthetics
• Storytelling
• Documentary
• Voice and sound
• Reception and audience
• Representation and representativity
• Performance

Although the journal InMedia is written entirely in English and this call for papers mentions primarily US-produced podcasts and English-speaking sources, the contributions are by no means limited to English-speaking podcasts. On the contrary, opening the field to non-anglophone productions could expand the field of podcast studies, which has so far too often been reduced to the anglosphere.

Submission guidelines

Proposals of no more than 300 words and a short bibliography should be sent both to David Lipson (lipson.fr[at]gmail.com) and to Ella Waldmann (ellawaldmann[at]gmail.com) before April 15th, 2026.

Publication schedule

• Submission deadline of abstracts and short bio: April 15^th, 2026
• Final manuscript due: September 4^th, 2026
• Transmission of reviews: December 4 ^th, 2026
• Revisions and resubmissions: January 2027
• Publication date: April 2027

The Journal follows The Chicago Manual of Style, fifteenth edition, “notes and bibliography” system.

Evaluation

Double Blind 

Bibliography

Articles

Berry, Richard. “A Golden Age of Podcasting? Evaluating Serial in the Context of Podcast Histories.” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22/2 (July 3^rd 2015): 170-78.

———. “Part of the Establishment: Reflecting on 10 Years of Podcasting as an Audio Medium.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 22/6 (December 1^st 2016): 661-71.

———. “Podcasting: Considering the Evolution of the Medium and Its Association with the Word ‘Radio.’” Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 14/1 (April 1st 2016): 7-22.

———. “Will the iPod Kill the Radio Star? Profiling Podcasting as Radio.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 12, no 2 (May 2006): 143-62.

Bonini, Tiziano. “The Second Age of Podcasting: reframing podcasting as a new digital mass medium.” Quaderns del CAC 41 (July 1st 2015): 23-33.

Bottomley, Andrew J. “Podcasting: A Decade in the Life of a ‘New’ Audio Medium: Introduction.” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22 (July 3^rd 2015): 164-69.

Dowling, David O., et al. Kyle J. Miller. “Immersive Audio Storytelling: Podcasting and Serial Documentary in the Digital Publishing Industry.” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 26, no 1 (2 janvier 2019): 167‐84.

Gill, Patrick. “Listening to the Literary: On the Novelistic Poetics of the Podcast.” In The Novel as Network: Forms, Ideas, Commodities, Tim Lanzendörfer and Corinna Norrick-Rühl eds, 163-79. New Directions in Book History. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Hammersley, Ben. “Audible Revolution.” The Guardian, February 12^th 2004. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/feb/12/broadcasting.digitalmedia.

Hancock, D., et L. G. McMurtry. “‘I Know What a Podcast Is’: Post-Serial Fiction and Podcast Media Identity.” In Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media, D. Llinares, N. Fox, and R. Berry eds, 81‐105. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

McHugh, Siobhán. “Editorial: Podcasting as the New Space for Crafted Audio.” RadioDoc Review 3/ 1 (2017): 1-5.

———. “How Podcasting Is Changing the Audio Storytelling Genre.” Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 14/1 (April 1^st 2016): 65-82.

Potts, John, et Virginia Madsen. “Voice-Cast: The Distribution of the Voice via Podcasting.” In VOICE: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson and Theo van Leeuwen eds, 33-60. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2010.

Sterne, Jonathan, et Jeremy Morris. “The Politics of Podcasting.” The Fibreculture Journal 13 (2008). http://thirteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-087-the-politics-of-podcasting/.

Weiner, Jonah. “The Voices: Toward a Critical Theory of Podcasting.” Slate, December 14th 2014. https://www.slate.com/articles/arts/ten_years_in_your_ears/2014/12/what_makes_pod casts_so_addictive_and_pleasurable.html?via=gdpr-consent.

Books

Bottomley, Andrew J. Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020.

Dann, Lance and Martin Spinelli. Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Euritt, Alyn. Podcasting as an Intimate Medium. Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture. London; New York: Routledge, 2023.

Hilmes, Michele and Andrew J. Bottomley, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Radio and Podcasting. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.

Lindgren, Mia and Jason Loviglio, eds. The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies. Routledge Companions. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022.

Llinares, Dario, Neil Fox and Richard Berry, eds. Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media. New York: Springer, 2018.

McCracken, Ellen, ed. The Serial podcast and storytelling in the digital age. Routledge Focus on Digital Media and Culture. New York; London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.

McHugh, Siobhán. The Power of Podcasting: Telling Stories through Sound. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.

Morris, Jeremy Wade and Eric Hoyt, ed. Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021.

Verma, Neil. Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2024.

Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew, ed. Critical Approaches to Welcome to Night Vale: Podcasting between Weather and the Void. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.