Using Welcome to Night Vale as a case study, this paper investigates the aesthetic, social, and political functions of the paranoid style in podcasts. This provides new insights in how upcoming art forms respond to the political problems of the ‘age of conspiracy,’ and how that inspires virtual fan communities.
Cities of Sound is an official Panel of the 2021 Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association
Citation:
Nitjtmans, Hanne, “Podcasting Paranoia: Aesthetics, Politics, and Community in American Fictional Podcasts” Mp3. Cities of Sound: Podcasting as Public Texts, Media and Performances. 2021 Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association Conference https://anchor.fm/citiesofsound/episodes/Hanne-Nijtmans—Podcasting-Paranoia-Aesthetics–Politics–and-Community-in-American-Fictional-Podcasts-e1a5i7n
Abstract
Using Welcome to Night Vale as a case study, this paper investigates the aesthetic, social, and political functions of the paranoid style in podcasts. This provides new insights in how upcoming art forms respond to the political problems of the ‘age of conspiracy,’ and how that inspires virtual fan communities.
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Cities of Sound is an official Panel of the 2021 Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association
Citation:
Nitjtmans, Hanne, “Podcasting Paranoia: Aesthetics, Politics, and Community in American Fictional Podcasts” Mp3. Cities of Sound: Podcasting as Public Texts, Media and Performances. 2021 Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association Conference https://anchor.fm/citiesofsound/episodes/Hanne-Nijtmans—Podcasting-Paranoia-Aesthetics–Politics–and-Community-in-American-Fictional-Podcasts-e1a5i7n
This paper explores what happens when a hit podcast like S-Town (2017) reclaims a traditional, written form as its model of production, construction and distribution.
Ella Waldmann is an alumna of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and of Sciences Po Paris. As part of her MA Program in English she was a visiting student at Columbia University in the City of New York. She is currently a PhD candidate at Université de Paris, Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Cultures Anglophones (LARCA), where she is working on a thesis on podcasts as literary objects, with a focus on the podcast S-Town.
Cities of Sound is an official Panel of the 2021 Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association
Citation:
Waldmann, Ella 4 – Ella Waldmann “This must be fiction: Examining the Implications of S-Town’s Novelistic Turn”” Mp3. Cities of Sound: Podcasting as Public Texts, Media and Performances. 2021 Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association Conference
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McHugh, Siobhan. ‘The Narrative Podcast as Digital Literary Journalism: Conceptualizing S-Town’. To be published in Literary Journalism Studies, Vol. 13, Nos. 1 – 2, December 2021.
Ora, Rebecca. ‘Invisible Evidence: Serial and the New Unknowability of Documentary: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media’ in Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media, 107‑22, 2018.
Fiction podcasts deserve further attention as a form defined by particular production, distribution, and listening practices. Two-Up Studio’s 2015 fiction podcast Limetown, while now an example of the “Golden Age” of podcast fiction, highlights the possibility of fiction podcasting to blur the line between truth and fiction.
Annamarie Carlson is a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric at Indiana University-Bloomington. They have an MA in English Literature from Northern Arizona University. Annamarie’s scholarly interests can usually be found at the blurry intersection of narrative, culture, and media, all broadly conceived. To put it another way, they are fascinated by the interplay of the stories we tell, the technologies used to tell them, and the relationship of stories and technologies with whatever it is we mean when we say “culture”. They have a creative as well as an academic interest in podcasting, audio fiction, and video games.
Music by: Kevin McCleod. (incomtech.org)
Citation:Carlson, Annamarie. “T2- Annamarie Carlson – “Reports of Violence Erupted Today”: Limetown and the Potential of Podcast Fiction.”” Mp3. Cities of Sound:City of Sound: Podcasting as Public Texts, Media and Performances, n.d https://anchor.fm/citiesofsound/episodes/3–Annamarie-Carlson—Reports-of-Violence-Erupted-Today-Limetown-and-the-Potential-of-Podcast-Fiction-e1a4so7
Black podcasts exist as a new form of digital media that is quickly growing in popularity but remains understudied. This research explores Black podcasts as a tool for critical media literacy through the observation of the Tea with Queen and J. (TWQJ) podcast through the lens of Black cyberfeminist theory.
Cities of Sound is an official Panel of the 2021 Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association
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This paper briefly presents a podcasting-specific definition of intimacy and how it can be used as a framework for understanding podcast mediation. But also, its a chat cast. and there’s an ASMR halfway through
Alyn Euritt is a doctoral candidate at the Universität Leipzig, where she studies the cultural construction of intimacy in American podcasting. She has published on podcasting in terms of publics in Participations, Popular Communication and Gender Forum and the relationship between podcast chat and intimacy in kommunikation@gesellschaft.
Cities of Sound is an official Panel of the 2021 Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association
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