How do podcasts affect American politics? Our weekly podcast on democracy in America. This week, we examine why Americans are turning to podcasts for their news, and what that means for America’s democracy.
Posted by Sine_Fine_Belli
How do podcasts affect American politics? Our weekly podcast on democracy in America. This week, we examine why Americans are turning to podcasts for their news, and what that means for America’s democracy.
Posted by Sine_Fine_Belli
4 Comments
The irony about podcasts in my opinion is that the least political oriented they are. the most likely they are to have a reach on the political opinions they *do* give.
For me the reaons are two-fold:
-Non-political podcasts are more popular outright ergo, having a chance to reach a bigger audience.
-The people who consume political podcasts are the kind of people who already have a defined number of positions and less likely to budge on them, plus they usually seek political podcasts whose hosts are already in common ground with them in most positions. People don’t normally spend hours listening to somene whose opinions are opposite to theirs to be swayed.
So, a podcast doing a podcast about podcasts about other political podcasts and their impact on said podcasts.
If I never hear another podcast ever again it’ll be too damn soon
I’ll copy paste my standard podcast comment:
I always find it funny when I read (on Rneoliberal) that in America the podcast environment is full on right to far-right pipeline for young men watching Rogan or whoever, I mean, because in France it’s typically seen as something for middle-aged persons and something quite boring.
I had to look up what were the most listened podcasts and a lot are podcasts versions of existing radio talk shows or documentary. Lots of history (and some famously bad enough to feed that sub for a century) often repurposed from radio, lots of boring “culture” (random author promoting his book/screenplay/play for an hour) stuff, some of trivia games and fun facts. One or two apolitical news flash emissions. Some political humor stuff, but far from the most popular. “Celebs” stuff and obviously the most important, loads and loads of true crime, lots of it that was already on radio since 1980.
A smaller part is turned towards a younger audience, like I’ve seen some “young entrepreneur” stuff with the famous “education sucks actually, buy my skillset training and make money” guy everyone sees on youtube these days, and some Muslim stuff typically targeted towards young progressive but faithful muslim women
In fact I wonder if podcasts aren’t just mostly seen as a way to listen to the radio without the adds, at least that’s how my mom seems to use it.