Publications by Helen Wolfenden
Social Epistemology, 2019
For centuries, universities have supported the pursuit of knowledge through the academic discipli... more For centuries, universities have supported the pursuit of knowledge through the academic disciplines while also preparing students for the professions. These two purposes are frequently in tension: hence widespread comment on the ‘theory-practice gap’. Academic work has struggled for relevance in the field. Practice academics have struggled to find a validated place for their expertise in academia – including publication in academic journals. In this paper, we follow a practice academic’s uncertain, but ultimately successful attempt to publish an article about television scheduling in the Journal of Popular Television. We find that the problem is not really about theory versus practice, or relevance versus rigour, but about profound epistemological differences. Practitioners’ knowledge needed to be translated into an epistemological form that an academic journal would find acceptable. This included translating, via the use of theory, the particular and specific knowledge of practitioners into universal, context-free discourse, and a focus on social processes rather than accounts of the agency of particular actors. Generosity and openness from both sides were important to make it work. We conclude that the practitioner gap will be a problem until universities recognise it as epistemological, and pay attention to the recruitment and use of skilled translators at the academic/practice boundary.
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Journal of Popular Television, 2017
Is Mise Michelle/I am Michelle (2011) is an hour-long television programme commissioned for BBC A... more Is Mise Michelle/I am Michelle (2011) is an hour-long television programme commissioned for BBC Alba, the BBC’s Gaelic language television channel. Filmed in the summer of 2011, the scheduling intentions were very open, as needs must where frequent replays are financially necessary. Unexpectedly, however, the programme was scheduled for the prime 9 p.m. slot on Christmas Day 2011. In the process, the programme was transformed: from ‘ordinary television’, in Bonner’s concept, to prime television. Understood originally in Lotz’s terms as ‘mainstream niche’, the programme had to carry the weight of bringing the mainstream to the niche in this high-value slot. Originally conceived as a story of ancestry along the lines of Who Do You Think You Are? (2010–), in its new Christmas clothing the programme becomes a bearer for a more universal longing for home, for family, for community and for belonging. This article explores these transformations, and the decision-making that led to them, through interviews with the primary practitioners involved in the production process, from commissioning through to scheduling. In particular, the under-researched role of scheduling in the encoding/decoding transaction (Hall [1973] 1993) gets some much needed attention.
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Since Horton and Wohl’s recognition of the para-social relationship, there has been an interest i... more Since Horton and Wohl’s recognition of the para-social relationship, there has been an interest in understanding the relationship between presenters and audiences beyond commodification models. But while the relationship has long been named, little is understood about the process from ‘inside’ the presenter experience: what audiences mean to presenters, how the relationship is constructed and becomes real in the absence of face-to-face contact when, for the most part, the presenter can only know the audience as an abstraction or a projection. This article will explore the way Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) talk radio presenters construct their audience as a dialogue partner, and the way that the on-air self is managed, in line with the corporate expectations of their employer, to achieve the appropriate symbolic indicators of friendship, sympathy, companionship, disclosure and intimacy. The findings are based on interviews with leading ABC radio presenters.
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Helen Wolfenden grapples with one of the great clichés of radio performance, the constant advice ... more Helen Wolfenden grapples with one of the great clichés of radio performance, the constant advice to “just be yourself”. This chapter explores one of the great dilemmas that face radio broadcasters, especially new ones: how to be one’s self, while performing. Wolfenden explores the notions of finding and selecting selves to be, being “authentic” and what performance for the audience means to radio broadcasters. This chapter reveals the complex nature of what happens when the microphone is turned on.
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PhD by Helen Wolfenden
Every day, radio broadcasters go into a studio, sit in front of a microphone, and talk to their (... more Every day, radio broadcasters go into a studio, sit in front of a microphone, and talk to their (imagined) audience in such a way that the (actual) audience feels addressed, and responds. Somehow effective radio broadcasters produce the indicators of friendship, sympathy and intimacy that a listening public will accept as authentic. This study asks how Australian Broadcasting Corporation talk radio presenters construct this on-air identity. It finds that this work is both more sophisticated and more authentic than orthodox answers imagine. Contrary to early assumptions, the study finds a real relationship between presenter and audience. Identity is built in the flux of that relationship: uncertain at first, more secure with time. In each interaction, fragments of information are used to create a fluid, dynamic and concurrent conception of the audience: ‘a collective mass, one at a time’.
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Conference Presentations by Helen Wolfenden
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Publications by Helen Wolfenden
PhD by Helen Wolfenden
Conference Presentations by Helen Wolfenden