By Amplify Network Date: Aug 30, 2022 Tags: Podcasting, Peer Review

“Why Podcast?“ is a three-part podcast miniseries written and produced by Stacey Copeland and Hannah McGregor that asks: why does podcasting lend itself to the communication of scholarly knowledge? And what new possibilities does podcasting open up, especially for those of us interested in publicly accessible or community-engaged scholarship?

The open access web text opens with an audio letter titled: Episode 0, “Dear Kairos Readers“. This trailer of sorts is intended to help you navigate the miniseries and introduce you to the authors and the context surrounding this work.

Episode One, “Podcasting as Publishing,” connects podcasting to the early promises of Web 2.0 technology via the logics of the RSS feed, points to podcasting’s inherently open access ethos, and draws out its links to the rise of scholarly blogging. It concludes by turning to the podcast Can’t Lit as an example of the informality, spontaneity, and accessibility facilitated by podcasting.

Episode Two, “Sound-Based Scholarship,” addresses the unique affordances of podcasting as an audio medium, including its ability to produce intimacy, to layer in affect, and to explore the politics of voice. Drawing on examples including The Heart and Another Round, this episode demonstrates how podcasts can build space for queer and Black feminist knowledges that are often excluded from conventional scholarship.

Episode Three, “Making Podcasts Count,” turns to the structural barriers that continue to discourage academics from experimenting with podcasting, including aesthetic gatekeeping and a lack of accessible models, alongside the challenge of assessing and valuing non-traditional outputs. Drawing on the example of The SpokenWeb Podcast, the episode demonstrates how facilitating a DIY, maker-based, and community ethos in scholarly podcasting embraces the radical potential of the medium to transform how academia conceives of expert knowledge.

We are overjoyed to share this new publication from our Amplify Podcast Network research team. Special thanks go out to the Editorial Board at Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy for their enthusiastic engagement in an audio form of open peer review for this publication. Thanks to Erin Kathleen Bahl, managing editor, and the Tier 2 peer review team Harley Ferris, Bill Hart-Davidson, Ames Hawkins, Alexandra Hidalgo, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, and Kyle Stedman. You can listen to their peer review discussion and learn more about it in the Appendix of the “Why Podcast?” web text.

Citation: McGregor, Hannah, and Stacey Copeland. 2022. “Why Podcast?: Podcasting as Publishing, Sound-Based Scholarship, and Making Podcasts Count.” Kairos 27 (1). https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/27.1/topoi/mcgregor-copeland/index.html.