Podcasts and Public Voice

• In Event: Futuring through Form: Multimodal Scholarship and Public Engagement

Abstract

Academic writing is often accused of being insular and inwardly focused—far removed from the daily discourses and social networks of those who sit outside of the academy. The critique is warranted; the specificity of the profession and the goal of building knowledge requires writing to a narrow audience with its own language, norms, and expectations. Accordingly, the incentive structures of higher education overemphasize metrics of exclusivity, like publication in highly selective journals. However, most academics—especially those in the field of education—wish to create work that has impact in the world beyond specialized conferences and journals. The outcomes of research and academic work call for a broader and more public audience, wherein “the public” is not a singular or monolithic audience, but a set of diverse stakeholders beyond the traditional confines of academic readership—editors, reviewers, and disciplinary peers.

Podcasting as a valuable tool for scholarly communication to multiple publics is well established: in the past two decades, podcasts have emerged as a media form suited to making academic products accessible to lay audiences (Akanegbu, n.d., Hagood, 2021, Naff, 2020). However, as this mode of scholarly production in academia is nascent, there are limited templates or best practices for how institutions can develop infrastructure for the creation, support, and promotion of podcasts.

In this paper, we reflect on nearly a decade of multimodal and public scholarship at our institution and showcase four recent podcasts produced about specific areas of research: popular culture, play, and education; curricular design in public spaces; dance, embodiment, and storytelling; and research on the prevention of gun violence. Each podcast translates research and scholarship into forms that extend, widen, and broaden conversations. Further, the practices, expertise, and resources cultivated by [blinded] have supported both the translation of research and the dissemination of that work to public audiences. Combined, these podcasts have over 14,300 downloads since December 2019, in dozens of countries. We articulate specific methods used to ground complex topics for public audiences, and highlight the implications of the different approaches used by each presented podcast. Beyond examining content alone, we explore broader questions of scholarship, circulation, and institutional responsibility. What obligations do universities bear in leveraging podcasts as vehicles for public discourse? How might institutions systematically integrate transmediation across multimodal formats, recognizing both public engagement and scholarly contribution? Through these inquiries, we seek to understand how experimentation, intellectual freedom, and the loosening of disciplinary boundaries can expand our research questions and forge new pathways toward knowledge production and dissemination.

Higher education, which is very much at a crossroads, has the opportunity to sow public engagement more intentionally into its quotidian practices, and podcasts offer one form of public scholarship through which academic work reverberates beyond the university walls. Their unique design and genre affordances can be readily leveraged, but doing so requires institutional investment in production and recognition of podcasts as legitimate scholarly outputs. Without such support, public scholarship risks becoming like the proverbial tree falling in a forest—unheard and unseen.

Authors

• Joseph Riina-Ferrie, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Jacqueline A. Simmons, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Sarah M. Gerth van den Berg, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Nathan Holbert, Teachers College, Columbia University

• OreOluwa Badaki, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Azsanee Truss, University of Pennsylvania

• Sonali Rajan, National Development and Research Institutes, Inc.