Designing the Amplifon. A locative sound medium to supplement DAB radio

Authors

  • Lars Nyre University of Bergen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5617/jmi.v2i2.985

Keywords:

radio, sound journalism, media design, communicative concern, locative information

Abstract

Radio has always had communicative concern for its listeners. It is characterized by personal address, liveness and acoustic moods that reach audiences in a variety of listening situations. Radio's communicative concern should be available for all citizens, but in fact there is rather bad reception for DAB and FM in cities due to narrow streets and other physical interference, and in addition the prominent iPhone lacks both DAB- and FM-receivers. The design project reported here aims to increase sound media's communicative concern in urban settings by 1) replacing one-way FM and DAB with two-way mobile data, 2) replacing loudspeakers with headphones, and 3) replacing the temporal news agenda with one that is locative. The article reports on the theoretical basis, design methods and empirical findings of the Amplifon prototype.

Author Biography

Lars Nyre, University of Bergen

Professor of media studies at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies

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Published

2015-08-24

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Articles