Mobilizing Research Knowledge in the Digital Age
I first became interested in radio as a means of knowledge production in 2012, when I was invited to participate in Island Vision Radio, a community radio initiative trying to re-link the communities of Fogo Island in the wake of substantial social and economic changes on the Island. It was amazing to see how communities came together to tell their stories, not only to themselves, but also to each other and the world, just as they had done in the late 1960s when the Island also faced serious social and economic upheaval. The echoes of Challenge for Change, and the Fogo Process films were all around us as inspiration, and also in the physical reminders, such as the Fogo Island Cooperative Society, who sponsored the event, and the Fogo Island Central Academy, who hosted our broadcasting equipment, both organizations that can trace their existence back to the fist experiences on the island with participatory media.
In the time since then, I have been involved with other community and small-scale radio projects on and around Fogo Island, as well as taking part in a radio documentary production course with the award winning producer Chris Brookes of Battery Radio, through Memorial University’s Research Centre for Music Media and Place (MMaP).
I feel passionately about the role of radio in research, not only as a means of mobilizing knowledge, but as a way of meaningfully engaging research participants in the process. Traditional research mobilizing has come in the form of written words, theses and journal articles, and these will form the bulk of the research product, but to this I’d like to add more. The spoken word, and aural landscape can be incredibly evocative, and can represent people and places in a way completely different than can be accomplished with a written description. And with the availability of digital handheld audio recording equipment and cheap editing software, coupled with the ease of uploading and sharing audio on the Internet, this format also holds to potential to be incredibly inclusive to researchers looking to integrate new media into their research outputs.
The fishery in Newfoundland and Labrador has had a long history with radio, including the institution of “The Fisheries Broadcast”, which has been broadcasting on CBC radio since 1951. I want to engage with that history by using the radio documentary format to tell some of the stories that have come out of my research into the shrimp industry. I have been collecting sounds and interviews all throughout the research process, in Canada, Denmark and the United Kingdom, in the hopes of being able to produce a series of short documentary pieces that can showcase different perspectives, and highlight the connections that span an industry, and an ocean.
Atlantic Sound is the first documentary completed in this series, and fittingly begins with the experiences of the captain and crew of an inshore shrimp vessel working in NAFO area 3K, off the north east coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
Listen to the first audio documentary, "Atlantic Sound."