To Örebro University

Podcasting and podcast listening have evolved into activities with significant social impact potential. According to Spotify (2024:4), 42% of Swedes listen to podcasts at least once a week, and more than half of the listeners feel such a strong sense of community with the podcasters that they consider them friends (Acast 2024).

This CA-based study of 40 Swedish conversational podcasts aims to identify how Swedish podcasters create interactional intimacy and achieve an intimate public, defined as “a porous, affective scene of identification among strangers” (Berlant 2020:viii). The podcast medium's capacity to foster a ‘hyper-intimacy’ (Berry 2016) between participants and listeners – linked to individual and mobile listening, technological accessibility, and the content and format of the podcasts – has been cited as a reason for its growing popularity (Berry 2016; Swiatek 2018; Spinelli & Dann 2019). This study aligns with Euritt’s (2023) perspective of podcast intimacy as socially constructed discourses rather than an inherent quality of the medium. The analysis builds on two of Adler Berg’s (2023) analytical parameters: intimacy in what is said (e.g. topics’ breadth and sensitivity, subjective or personal information) and in how it is said (e.g. non-lexical vocalisations).

Preliminary findings suggest that regardless of the podcast's focus (e.g. sports, humour), podcasters share their experiences of pleasures and pains using similar emotional wording and non-lexical vocalisations. However, differences in emotional intensity seem to be closely related to the participants' perception of their target audience, as expressed through epistemic presuppositions and frames of reference.

References:

Acast (2024). Podcasting trends in established vs. emerging markets: Acast's global report for international podcast day - September 30th, 2024. Acast.

Adler Berg, F. S. (2023). Analysing podcast intimacy: Four parameters. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies [Advance online publication]. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565231220547

Berlant, L. (2020). The female complaint: The unfinished business of sentimentality in American culture. Duke University Press.

Berry, R. (2016). Part of the establishment: Reflecting on 10 years of podcasting as an audio medium. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 22(6), pp. 661-671. Euritt, A. (2023). Podcasting as an intimate medium. London: Routledge.

Spinelli, M. & Dann, L. (2019). Podcasting: The audio media revolution. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Spotify (2024). Poddrapporten 2024. Spotify.

Swiatek, L. (2018). The podcast as an intimate bridging medium. In Llinares, D., Fox, N. & Berry, R. (eds.) Podcasting: New aural cultures and digital media. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 173-187