Virtual Radio Ga-Ga, Youths and Net Radio: Exploring Subcultural Models of Audiences

By Andrea Baker, 2012

Primarily based on a transnational study of college students’ net-radio consumption practices, this book uncovers two types of audiences (radio online or net-only radio audiences) and a three-tiered net-radio subculture (conservatives, swingers, and radicals), which is determined by users’ taste distinctions and how much power they have over their net-radio consumption and production practices. It contends that net-radio, its synergy with radio and music journalism and youth subcultures is not a trivial flash in the pan, but an important and ongoing social-cultural and global phenomenon. In doing so the book contributes to cultural studies research on the Internet.