The outline below may be useful as a starting point for activists or organizations that might be interested in digitizing and monitoring talk radio on a large scale.
Why it’s needed
For three decades, broadcasting on hundreds of radio stations using public airwaves, political talk radio has operated as an undemocratic media monopoly that is immune to factual challenge and is practically invisible to those who don’t listen to it. It has largely escaped analysis and its effects on American media and politics are not factored.
Recently it has even been suggested that talk radio is being influenced by foreign interests, predating and now paralleling social media election interference.
A Center for American Progress study in 2007, The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, concluded that the massive dominance/monopoly of conservative/Republican talk radio is
due to structural imbalances—not popular demand
It is a propaganda operation.
and
1,700: Number of commercial talk radio stations nationwide.
50 million: Number of listeners who tune into news/talk radio each week.
and
of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners reveals that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming is conservative, and 9 percent is progressive.
Those numbers haven’t changed such since the study in 2007. 91% is a conservative estimate based on 257 stations. Estimates including larger numbers of stations puts the proportion higher.
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” George Bush, May 24, 2005.
Paul Matzko is the author of “The Radio Right: How a Band of Broadcasters Took on the Federal Government and Built the Modern Conservative Movement.” In a NYT Oct. 9, 2020 op ed Talk Radio Is Turning Millions of Americans Into Conservatives. The medium is at the heart of Trumpism.
Yet talk radio still somehow manages to fly below the national media radar. In large part, that is because media consumption patterns are segregated by class. If you visit a carpentry shop or factory floor, or hitch a ride with a long-haul truck driver, odds are that talk radio is a fixture of the aural landscape. But many white-collar workers, journalists included, struggle to understand the reach of talk radio because they don’t listen to it, and don’t know anyone who does.
Moreover, anyone who wants to make an effort to understand talk radio runs into a barrier immediately: Because of the ocean of content, one must listen to it at great length, a daunting task for anyone not already sympathetic with a host’s conservative views. The time commitment suggests the depth of listener loyalty.
If you have an interest in monitoring talk radio on a local or small scale (in the state of Georgia, or the country of Georgia) this previous diary might help. Or here is a shorter version at fakenewsradio.org.
The outline below suggests opportunities for software developers with respect to automating the recording, transcription, analysis, and presentation of talk radio content in forms that can be analyzed.
The outline was adapted from a crowdfunding campaign I was thinking about but decided against. I couldn’t get past the social media, ‘perks’, and communication required.
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Using artificial intelligence to monitor political talk radio
Goals:
- Record selected samples of political talk radio shows.
- Transcribe those recordings. Artificial intelligence now allows much faster and more accurate transcription. A few years ago that would have been too expensive and time consuming.
- Use modern text analysis tools to analyze those transcriptions to identify and quantify patterns and repetition.
- Rank and publish the most repeated names, issues, topics, memes, etc., of national, and where possible, local interest.
- Develop methods and software to help individuals and organizations automate the recording, transcription, and analysis of talk radio content they may be interested in.
- Explore possibilities for altering transcriptions so they can be made available for public research interest.
- Help social media companies identify foreign political interference that may correlate with talk radio repetition. Identification of interference in one medium may help identify and predict interference in the other
- If there is interest, spin off for-profit monitoring services for political, media, advertising interests, etc.
- Assist where developed methods and software may be useful in other countries.
- Encourage software developers to facilitate the monitoring of talk radio content.
Individuals and organizations interested in results and/or related software may include:
- political candidates and organizations and their supporters
- news and media organizations and researchers
- academic
- social media companies looking for foreign interference and trolling operations
- institutional and think tank researchers in political science, media, business
- the advertising industry
- polling companies
Selection of stations and shows
Radio stations and talk shows to be sampled will be influenced by size of audience, geographical importance and signal reach, political importance, location and timing of events, funding, and similar factors.
A few major national hosts dominate hundreds of major stations and influence and enforce opinions of local hosts on national and local issues and events. High levels of repetition are expected and will allow extrapolation to reduce sampling.
Of particular interest will be repetition of disinformation that relates to recent and current events with political implications, such as primaries and elections, and important issues. Political campaigns may want to monitor an opponent’s use of talk radio.
Transcriptions could be searched for candidate names and particular issues. Political campaigns and supporters may want to respond to attacks and factual errors by calling shows or alerting local media.
National: Monitoring of influential national talk shows, some continuously and some periodically and/or randomly.
For example, 10 national shows x 3 hours/show x 5 days = 150 hours x $5/hour = $750/week x 4 weeks = $3,000/month or $36,000/year.
Local: Initial sampling of small numbers of local shows and stations. Local shows generally include more apolitical programming than national shows. The number and location of those shows sampled (city, state) will shift depending on newsworthy events. As funding increases more monitoring can be added.
For example, 1 station x 2 selected hours/day x 5 days = 10hours/week x $5/hour = $50/week/station, or $200/month/station. Any combination of 20 local talk shows or stations or states = $4,000/month or $48,000/year.
Local monitoring can be reduced after facilitating software has been developed and made available to political campaigns and their supporters.
Equipment and expenses would include:
- software
- hardware
- internet access
- transcription of 1000s of hours at $5/hr and under
- text analysis
- data storage
- software development
- legal and technical consulting
- related infrastructure and human resource costs
Transcription
Commercially available transcription services have approached under $5/hr. Services could be selected for accuracy, speed, and cost as well as ease of use relative to data storage and transfer, and ease of integration into text analysis.
What are hundreds of radio stations saying about your favorite candidates?
Are your candidate's opponents and their representatives getting free time on radio shows? What are they saying to those audiences? What is that worth as political advertising? Can what they say be used by your candidate in political advertisements or debates? Are hosts and callers repeating mischaracterizations, exaggerations, and disproven rumors about political candidates? Are callers repeating the same lies on different radio shows in different states?
What are radio hosts/stations saying about issues such as:
- global warming
- COVID 19, mask-wearing, shutdowns
- use of US military
- election interference and contested results
- national and local emergencies
- health care reform
- media reform
- election reform
- racism
- immigration
- protests and protestors
- supreme court nominees
Are foreign interests using US political talk radio?
Is it possible for foreign interests to use political talk radio to inject disinformation and influence perception of political events and issues in the US? Are foreign interests calling and emailing shows and using other methods to influence hosts who reach millions of listeners?
How does talk radio repetition correspond with foreign interference on social media, and can it be used to identify such interference?
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These and other questions cannot be answered without monitoring political talk radio.
This recent diary might help:
The biggest political mistake in history. It's the radio, stupid.