Talk Radio, Discourse
Radio was the first electronic mass medium. It became a prominent part in people's every day experiences and in the discursive practices of mass media that followed in its wake. Moreover, radio was instrumental in creating communities around it and it has a central part in the public sphere. Key features of radio discourse include: intentionality, sociability, performativity, interactivity, and liveliness. There are many radiophonic genres; foremost among them is the phone-in, in which an ordinary person calls in to a program to talk with a host in front of the audience. The structure and features of phone-ins are illustrated to demonstrate how an institutional setting is achieved. 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
History of Media and Communications; 
language and social interaction; 
media and society; 
public participation; 
radio
Talkback, Community and the Public Sphere
This paper explores the relationship between the audience of commercial talkback radio and the actual existing democratic public sphere in Australia. Drawing upon Anderson's (1987) notion of an imagined community and Warner's (2002) discussion of publics, the paper suggests that two different but entwined modes of address operate around the talkback audience. The first centres on the active creation of an imagined community brought into being and maintained through host and caller interaction, whilst the second, which is dependent on this prior formation, involves the audience being treated as a political public within the public sphere.
‘The whole nation is listening to you’: the presentation of the self on a tabloid talk radio show
This article focuses on callers’ experiences of participating on a tabloid talk radio show. The performative dimension of calling was found to be central. This is an aspect of participation on talk radio shows that has been largely neglected by previous studies. Callers have concerns about how they manage their self-presentation on-air. They are aware of both the host and the listening audience, and try to control the impression they ‘give off’. Callers to The Gerry Ryan Show are central players who, together with the host and the production team, contribute to the staging of debate in this on-air forum. Concerns about performance were found to be secondary for those who rang the show with a problem. These callers tended to prioritize instrumental goals such as problem-solving or support-seeking.