The Wireless World sets out a new research agenda for the history of international broadcasting, and for radio history more generally. It examines global and transnational histories of long-distance wireless broadcasting, combining perspectives from international history, media and cultural history, the history of technology, and sound studies. It is a co-written book, the result of more than five years of collaboration. Bringing together their knowledge of a wide range of different countries, languages, and archives, the co-authors show how broadcasters and states deployed international broadcasting as a tool of international communication and persuasion. They also demonstrate that by paying more attention to audiences, programmes, and soundscapes, historians of international broadcasting can make important contributions to wider debates in social and cultural history.
Exploring the idea of a 'wireless world', a globe connected, both in imagination and reality, by radio, The Wireless World sheds new light on the transnational connections created by international broadcasting. Bringing together all periods of international broadcasting within a single analytical frame, including the pioneering days of wireless, the Second World War, the Cold War, and the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the study reveals key continuities and transformations. It looks at how wireless was shaped by internationalist ideas about the use of broadcasting to promote world peace and understanding, at how empires used broadcasting to perpetuate colonialism, and at how anti-colonial movements harnessed radio as a weapon of decolonization.
Author(s): Simon J. Potter, David Clayton, Friederike Kind-Kovacs, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, Nelson Ribeiro, Rebecca Scales, Andrea Stanton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 307
City: Oxford
Cover
The Wireless World: Global Histories of International Radio Broadcasting
Copyright
Preface
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acronyms and Abbreviations
About the Authors
1: Out of the Ether: The Wireless World and New Histories of International Radio Broadcasting
Creating the Wireless World
The Nation-State in the Wireless World
Echoes of War
Decolonizing the Wireless World
The Wireless World in a Digital Age
Conclusions
2: Technologies of International Radio Broadcasting
The Origins and Evolution of Radio Technologies, c. 1900–1930
Technical (and Political) Preconditions for Connecting to the Wireless World
From Tubes to Transistors: Components for a Wireless World
Making Sets Portable and Affordable, Particularly for the World’s Poor
Conclusions
Case Study 2.1: Radio Amateurs and ‘DX-ing’ between the World Wars
Case Study 2.2: ‘Towers of Prestige’: Dutch Transmitters and Public Relations
3: Institutions, States, and International Broadcasting
The Emergence of International Broadcasting and the Centrality of the State
International Broadcasters as State Weapons of War
Broadcasting Institutions during the Cold War
Conclusions
Case Study 3.1: British Colonial Broadcasting in the 1940s
Case Study 3.2: Media (and) Revolution: Western Broadcasting in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989
4: Radio Wars: Histories of Cross-Border Radio Propaganda
Pioneers of Wireless Propaganda
Wireless Propaganda and the Second World War
Wireless Propaganda, the Cold War, and Decolonization
Conclusions
Case Study 4.1: Interwar Radio Propaganda for Arabic-speaking Listeners
Case Study 4.2: News, Propaganda, and British and American International Broadcasting during the Second World War
5: Broadcasting as Internationalism
Radio and Internationalism in the Wake of the First World War
The Inequalities of Internationalism
Music and Propaganda
A Cold War for People’s Minds: Competing Internationalisms
Radio and the Promotion of Human Rights
Conclusions
Case Study 5.1: International Broadcasting for a Pluri-Continental Nation?: Portuguese Colonial Broadcasting
Case Study 5.2: The Song of the Trojan Horse: Radio Luxembourg and Allied Propaganda at the End of the Second World War
6: Programmes, Soft Power, and Public Diplomacy
Relays, Direct Services, and Cultural Propaganda
The Sound of Violence
Soft Power, the Cold War, and Decolonization
Conclusions
Case Study 6.1: Dramatic and Literary Programming on the BBC Arabic Service
Case Study 6.2: ‘Is Everybody Happy?’: Eddy Startz’s Happy Station
7: Tuning-in to the World: International Broadcasting and its Audiences
Citizens of the World? Interwar Audiences for International Broadcasting
Occupied Listening during the ‘War of Words’
The ‘Right to Listen’: Cold War Audiences between East and West . . . and the World
Conclusions
Case Study 7.1: Listening to the BBC in Neutral Portugal during the Second World War
Case Study 7.2: Who (Else) is Listening?: RIAS in the Early Cold War
8: The Soundscapes of the Wireless World
Radio Sounds within the Acoustic Environment
Radio Sounds within the Aural Terrain of Radio Studios, Stations, and Social Contexts
Conclusions
Case Study 8.1: Costes and Bellonte’s Transatlantic Flight: Tuning-in to a Global Radio Event
Case Study 8.2: Jammed Soundscapes in Eastern Europe, c. 1948–1959
Afterword: The Wireless World in the Age of Wi-Fi
Timeline of Key Dates
Further Reading
1. Out of the Ether
2. Technologies of International Radio Broadcasting
3. Institutions, States, and International Broadcasting
4. Radio Wars
5. Broadcasting as Internationalism
6. Programmes, Soft Power, and Public Diplomacy
7. Tuning-in to the World
8. The Soundscapes of the Wireless World
Index
