On and off the air: radio-listening experiences in the San Vittore prison

Abstract

This article examines the results of a research project we conducted on social uses of radio in the San Vittore prison, Milan, Italy. Our aim is to survey and understand the everyday practices of radio consumption by such a special audience as that of prison inmates. Although the use that’s being made of radio in prison is mature and aware, it is mostly neglected by the medium itself, for being considered a scarcely interesting share of the market. Not only has this research traced a map of listening habits, but it has also explored the medium’s role in the emergence of tensions among cultural flows in and out of the listening context, the prison, thus making it possible to understand the dynamics of the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ as related to radio use.