Reinventing the news? The discourse of UK news podcasts

Modell, Maxwell 2025. Reinventing the news? The discourse of UK news podcasts. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis examines the rise of news podcasts in the UK and their role in reimagining journalism, focusing on evolving norms of news presentation and how they are legitimated. Three complementary case studies support this analysis. Case 1 concerns the meta-journalistic discourse of news podcasts and how practitioners negotiate the boundaries of best practice in industry discourse. 11 episodes of meta-podcasts (podcasts about podcasting) are explored using thematic discourse analysis, finding news podcasts are discursively constructed as an innovative journalistic genre that can remedy flaws of broadcast news, such as stale news presentation, lack of depth and overly rigid impartiality regulations. Cases 2 and 3 focus on the micro discourse analysis of news podcasts as interactionally co-constructed media texts within the tradition of broadcast talk. Case 2 studies six episodes of BBC’s Newscast and Global’s The News Agents to examine the norms and practices of the news chatcast subgenre. The case finds many characteristics of established modes of news broadcasting persist, packaged in a more informal and conversational format that accentuates aesthetic liveness. Additionally, hosts utilise personal talk sequences to enhance their self-branding as ‘celebrified’ journalists in a personality-driven podcast market. Case 3 investigates the remediation of political radio phone-ins into asynchronous podcast question-and-answer segments where listeners send in emails that the host reads-and-responds to. Independent monologue podcast Roll Politics with Steve Richards is used as a case study. Richards produces his monologue as synthesised dialogical, inserting liveliness and interactivity into a participation framework devoid of liveness. At the same time, the segment is used to produce strong affective ties with the audience who are discursively produced as an intimate listening community. Overall, the thesis argues that news podcasts represent a repackaging of news for a medium that values authenticity and sociability rather than a wholesale reinvention of news.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Acceptance
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Funders:	ESRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 May 2025
Date of Acceptance:	April 2025
Last Modified:	30 May 2025 14:41
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/178577

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