New Roles, Old Rituals: The Mobilization of the Listener Community Based on the Example of Radio 357

Abstract

This article analyzes the community of patrons of the Internet radio station Radio 357, based on 13 in-depth interviews with the station’s listeners and a former station employee. Material from the online forum of the studied community is also analyzed. The text aims to present the members of a radio community who became involved in financing a new Internet radio station through online fundraising. An attempt is made to explain the listeners’ motivations for their unique scale of involvement in this new media initiative. The research questions relate to the characteristics of the Radio 357 audience community and the role that radio plays for them. The foundations built by many years of participation around the former station and the sense of injustice intensified by its symbolic collapse became the driving forces to fight for the continuation of their previously cultivated radio practices and traditions, already incorporated within the new station.