Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2008. / Includes abstract. Title from first page of PDF file (viewed February 3, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Seong-Hun Yun / Despite its increasing use and potential benefits for college education, podcasts have been little studied in the literature of the use and gratifications theory. To explore podcasts use among college students, this study investigated their motivations to use and their use behavior/attitude with respect to the medium. Based on a survey sample of 636 college students at a Midwestern university, this study found that students may have six motivations for podcasts: 1) Voyeurism/Social interaction/Companionship, 2) Entertainment/Relaxation/Arousal, 3) Education/Information, 4) Pastime/Escape, 5) Habit, and 6) Convenience. Of the six identified motivations, Education/Information clearly showed that podcasts have become widely used among students as an appealing medium for their school work. Moreover, as similar as the cellular phone study, this study identified a Fashion motivation for podcasts use. Lastly, this study found and discussed noticeable differences and similarities between podcasts and television regarding users' motivations, the interrelationships among motivations, and the predictive relationships between motivations and use behavior/attitude.

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The purpose of this essay was to examine the experience of loneliness as well as the strategies used to manage loneliness as described in Swedish podcasts. Swedish podcasts concerning the experience and managing of loneliness were picked using a strategic selection based on several criteria relating to the questions posed by the study. To analyse the empirical data a qualitative content analysis was used, combined with a theoretical framework based on the dramaturgical perspective and stigma theories of sociologist Erving Goffman. The experience of loneliness was found to be paradoxical in nature due to its social and relational elements. The interviewees throughout the study appeared to compare and relate their experience to that of other people. Furthermore, the study found loneliness to be heavily reliant on social interactions and thus did not exist in a vacuum of social isolation. Several coping methods were identified and in turn grouped as either constructive and active or counterproductive and passive.

I denna studie har vi undersökt hur manliga och kvinnliga innehållsproducenter av fyra svenska true crime-podcastprogram har representerat gärningsperson, offer och deras anhöriga. I studien undersöktes också hur producenterna uttryckt personliga åsikter och hur de använt sig av musik. Att kritiskt granska producenterna är relevant eftersom tidigare studier har visat att de har ett stort inflytande på både samhället och sina lyssnare. Genom en semiotisk textanalys studerades innehållet i podcastprogrammen utifrån teorierna kunskapssociologi, genus och representation. Resultatet visar att manliga och kvinnliga innehållsproducenter representerade de involverade i mordfallen på liknande sätt men att det finns skillnader i hur manliga och kvinnliga innehållsproducenter uttryckt personliga åsikter. I de studerade podcastprogrammen har vi också identifierat två underkategorier i true crime-genren, ”pratprogram” och ”dokumentär”. / In this study, we have examined how male and female content producers of four Swedish true crime podcasts have represented perpetrators, victims and their relatives. The study also examined how producers expressed personal opinions and how they used music. A critical review of these producers is relevant because previous studies have shown they have a great influence on both society and their listeners. The content of the podcasts was studied based on the theories of Sociology of Knowledge, Gender and Representation, using a Semiotic Text Analysis. The results show that male and female content producers represented those involved in the true crime cases in similar ways, but that there are differences in how male and female content producers expressed personal opinions. We have also identified two subcategories in the true crime genre, namely "Talk Show" and "Documentary".

The popularity of true crime podcasts has increased in recent years. The majority of truecrime content consists of stories with female victims and male perpetrators, and can therefore be described as portraying men’s violence against women. This study aimed to identify what discourses about men’s violence against women that are constructed in true crime podcasts. The study has utilized critical discourse analysis, focusing on three dimensions of men’s violence against women: the female victim, the male perpetrator and the nature of the violence. The results of the study showed, among other things, that the male perpertrator was constructed as a deviant being, striving for sexual satisfaction. At the same time, the female victim was idealised, described as beautiful and caring. The podcasts also constructed a discourse of men’s violence against women as primarly consisting of phsysical and sexual violence. The results of the study have been analyzed using Connell’s theory on gender, which demonstrated that true crime podcasts reconstruct many gender norms that confirm the prevailing gender order. Furthermore, the results have been analyzed using Rafter’s theory on popular criminology, which presents true crime podcasts as an important dimension of our cultural understanding of crime. From the perspective of popular criminology, the discourses found in the result of this study contribute to the understanding of our society’s political direction and implementations of policies regarding men’s violence against women. / <p>2022-01-31</p>

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This study aims to investigate topic choices of humour as well as how humour is conjointly constructed in podcasts, with particular focus on the similarities and differences between men and women in both same- and mixed-gender groups. Six podcasts were chosen to be investigated through two different methods: 1. instances of humour were categorised based on the topic of the humour and 2. conversation analysis (CA) was used to analyse the contributions of the different groups of participants with a focus on the pragmatic force and the discursive effect of the contributions. The pragmatic force of the contributions could be supportive or contestive and the discursive effect could be maximally collaborative or minimally collaborative. This study found that the similarities were greater than the differences between same- and mixed-gender groups, regarding both topic choices and how the humour was constructed; however, there were some differences between the groups regarding both aspects. Men tended to make more self-deprecating jokes while women made more jokes about Personal Anecdotes; furthermore, contestive and minimally collaborative humour was more common in groups involving men. This study indicates that podcasts can be an important area of research for future studies regarding humour and gender.

The reproduction of the gender system and gender hierarchies is a well-researched area in society. However, there is a lack of research on gender relations in Swedish churches, more specifically in the Pentecostal movement. The aim of this essay is to use qualitative content analysis to examine four Christian podcasts known in the Swedish Pentecostal movement, to discover if they reproduce and/or challenge gender roles, hierarchies, and heteronormative sexuality. The essay identified three main categories: gendered characteristics, non-normative sexuality, and family life. The findings suggest that gender is reproduced in the four podcasts on different levels, both implicitly and explicitly, for example by assigning gender-specific characteristics to men and women and explaining that women are the weaker sex that men must take care of. The pastors/preachers in the podcasts also speak in a heteronormative way, excluding other sexualities or declaring other sexualities as sinful. Finally, the podcasts express the different roles of men and women in the home and family, with women being the caregivers and men being the authoritative influences needed to lead a family. Even though the national board of the Pentecostal movement in Sweden is explicitly concerned with gender issues, the essay shows that more needs to be done to influence preachers and pastors in the movement. The churches are active in many societies and reach many children in the communities with different activities. Therefore, it is important for teachers and other adults to be aware of the attitudes and perspectives on gender and sexuality that young people encounter in their everyday lives, and the essay can provide insight into the reproduction of norms in society. The findings of the essay can help teachers to create a more inclusive and stereotype-free classroom.

Longform spoken dialog is a rich source of information that is present in all facets of everyday life, taking the form of podcasts, debates, and interviews; these mediums contain important topics ranging from healthcare and diversity to current events, economics and politics. Individuals need to digest informative content to know how to vote, decide how to stay safe from COVID-19, and how to increase diversity in the workplace. Unfortunately compared to text, spoken dialog can be challenging to consume as it is slower than reading and difficult to skim or navigate. Although an individual may be interested in a given topic, they may be unwilling to commit the required time necessary to consume long form auditory media given the uncertainty as to whether such content will live up to their expectations. Clearly, there exists a need to provide access to the information spoken dialog provides in a manner through which individuals can quickly and intuitively access areas of interest without investing large amounts of time. From Human Computer Interaction, we apply the idea of information foraging, which theorizes how people browse and navigate to satisfy an information need, to the longform spoken dialog domain. Information foraging states that people do not browse linearly. Rather people “forage” for information similar to how animals sniff around for food, scanning from area to area, constantly deciding whether to keep investigating their current area or to move on to greener pastures. This is an instance of the classic breadth vs. depth dilemma. People rely on perceived structure and information cues to make these decisions. Unfortunately speech, either spoken or transcribed, is unstructured and lacks information cues, making it difficult for users to browse and navigate. We create a longform spoken dialog browsing system that utilizes automatic summarization and speech modeling to structure longform dialog to present information in a manner that is both intuitive and flexible towards different user browsing needs. Leveraging summarization models to automatically and hierarchically structure spoken dialog, the system is able to distill information into increasingly salient and abstract summaries, allowing for a tiered representation that, if interested, users can progressively explore. Additionally, we address spoken dialog’s own set of technical challenges to speech modeling that are not present in written text, such as disfluencies, improper punctuation, lack of annotated speech data, and inherent lack of structure. We create a longform spoken dialog browsing system that utilizes automatic summarization and speech modeling to structure longform dialog to present information in a manner that is both intuitive and flexible towards different user browsing needs. Leveraging summarization models to automatically and hierarchically structure spoken dialog, the system is able to distill information into increasingly salient and abstract summaries, allowing for a tiered representation that, if interested, users can progressively explore. Additionally, we address spoken dialog’s own set of technical challenges to speech modeling that are not present in written text, such as disfluencies, improper punctuation, lack of annotated speech data, and inherent lack of structure. Since summarization is a lossy compression of information, the system provides users with information cues to signal how much additional information is contained on a topic. This thesis makes the following contributions: 1. We applied the HCI concept of information foraging to longform speech, enabling people to browse and navigate information in podcasts, interviews, panels, and meetings. 2. We created a system that structures longform dialog into hierarchical summaries which help users to 1) skim (browse) audio and 2) navigate and drill down into interesting sections to read full details. 3. We created a human annotated hierarchical dataset to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of our system’s hierarchical text generation performance. 4. Lastly, we developed a suite of dialog oriented processing optimizations to improve the user experience of summaries: enhanced readability and fluency of short summaries through better topic chunking and pronoun imputation, and reliable indication of semantic coverage within short summaries to help direct navigation towards interesting information. We discuss future research in extending the browsing and navigating system to more challenging domains such as lectures, which contain many external references, or workplace conversations, which contain uncontextualized background information and are far less structured than podcasts and interviews.