Umeå University's logo

This dissertation provides a novel analysis of Swedish radio broadcasting by applying digital signal processing techniques to archived audio from 1980 to 1999—a critical era marked by the shift from a monopolistic public service to commercial competition. By directly examining recorded radio sounds, the study reveals the auditory consequences of this transition, offering new insights beyond traditional, text-focused media analyses. Utilizing the extensive Swedish broadcasting archives, the research employs computational methods to dissect radio soundscapes, enriching and challenging prevailing narratives in media and communication studies. The analysis thus expands our understanding of audio as historical data.

Introducing a methodological approach termed 'signal archaeology,' the dissertation merges principles from media archaeology with cultural analytics, treating audio data as historical sources detached from strict temporal constraints. Through detailed analyses of themes such as silence, diversity, programming, and dynamic range, the research demonstrates how radio aesthetics evolved, driven by concepts like entropy from information theory, which informed notions of sonic quality and diversity. However, as demonstrated, while the overall variety of sounds increased significantly, these changes are more readily observable through frequency-based analysis than through examining their distribution over time. This indicates that variation impacted the overall sonic profile of radio more than its temporal flow. By focusing on empirical audio data, the research encourages a reevaluation of the sonic heritage of Swedish radio and inspires further methodological debate in media and cultural studies. Ultimately, the findings indicate that while technical innovations and organizational restructuring have shaped Swedish radio along expected historical lines, its sonic patterns also evolve non-linearly – foreshadowing future media trends in ways that both align with and diverge from conventional trajectories.

This study explores the dynamic variations in Swedish radio broadcasting from 1980 to 1998, focusing on amplitude. The analysis examines volume variations across the three main public service channels to identify patterns in music and speech. P3, the youth channel, shows a marked increase in amplitude, reflecting the influence of the global “loudness war.” P2, which focuses on classical and world music, reaches a plateau during the 1990s. P1, the spoken word channel, displays a complex pattern of rising and falling amplitudes, correlating with a reduction in music content. Additionally, the article demonstrates the methodological possibilities of signal processing in radio studies.

Solemn voices echo through the speakers, the clatter of glass and bursts of laughter give way to loud applause. These are some of the sounds captured on the gramophone recording of the Social Democrats' annual congress in 1969. The Party Congress was an important arena for political thinking in 20th century Sweden, yet we know relatively little about how it functioned. This article analyses the form of the party congress by studying sound recordings from the Social Democratic Party, The Swedish Association of Christian Social Democrats, Social Democratic Women in Sweden, and the Communist party, between 1968 and 1978. What was going on at these meetings and how can audio data supplement the understanding provided by the texts of the minutes?

The party congress was a nexus for party political discourse. Decisive decisions were made, ideas were exchanged, and lines of conflict were drawn. Precisely for this reason, historical research has repeatedly consulted the congress minutes to study the circulation and development of political ideas. However, the minutes provide a limited understanding of the form of the meeting itself. The preserved audio recordings can instead contribute to our understanding of the arrangement of the meetings; who was allowed to speak for long and who was interrupted. Automated signal processing offers the possibility of exploring this rich material on a large scale. It also enables granular inspection and curated close listening. In this way, the digital analysis methods of today enable research to move along the scale of the data set. By bringing together machine processing and human listening, it is possible to gain new insights into the Party Congress and better understand one of the central environments in which Swedish social democracy took shape.

This article explores the significance of scale within the field of audioanalysis. The introduction of digital signal processing methods is today enabling large-scale processing of recorded sound, which in turn provides access to vast amounts of unexplored audiovisual data. It is now possible to zoom the sounds of our past. In order to highlight both affordances and limitations of these new methods, this article studies 5000 hours of Swedish radio from the 1980s. By adopting computational tools from bioacoustics, linguistics and musicology it be-comes possible to study trends and developments in the acoustic style of broad-casting. This provides insight into the changing characteristics of public service media in the era of de-monopolization. However, to achieve these insights, the historian needs to practice the sonic scales.

This article proposes a methodological approach to the analysis of large-scale radio archives. By collecting and measuring silences in broadcasting, the analysis explores stylistic differences within the Swedish media monopoly in the 1980s. This period marks the last decade of the Swedish public service monopoly and offers rigorous data on the development of mass media without deregulated economic competition. In 1993 Sweden became one of the last European countries to allow commercial radio, nevertheless, during the decade prior, competition was introduced from within the monopoly. At the time, Swedish radio featured several separate channels. This analysis focuses on the longstanding flagship channel P1, and its main competition, P3, which was considered a more youth-oriented alternative. Prior research has stressed the independent and different character of these two channels, subscribing to a depiction of a harmonically diversified media system. By analyzing the very audio data preserved from the broadcasting, it is possible to explore such stylistic divergences, as well as similarities, on a quantitative level. What unique features can be detected by studying the very signal, and are there homogenous tendencies beyond these differences? In order to approach this question, I propose a simple method: collecting silences. By means of basic signal processing, the amount of silence in broadcasting can be extracted and comparatively studied. Once data on the pauses and gaps in the broadcasting has been extracted, both the total amount and the number of occurrences can be analyzed. Moreover, the method can be applied both to the overall structure and on separate sections within the broadcasting, to achieve a more granular understanding. In doing this, it is possible to achieve new knowledge on the style and pace of broadcasting, and how these matters changed throughout the decade. The aim is both to render new insights into Swedish media history and to suggest new ways for digital humanities to integrate the vast potential of audio analysis.

Sverige var ett av de första landen i världen att genomföra heltäckande arkivering av nationellt massmedieinnehåll. Resultatet är en unikt omfattande samling arkiverade ljud, som med varje dag växer exponentiellt. Trots detta är ljudarkivet en av de minst utnyttjade källorna i kulturhistorisk forskning. Mot denna bakgrund reflekterar följande artikel kring frågan: Vilka grundläggande problem innebär ljudarkivet som källa? Artikeln sammanfattar den internationella forskningsdebatten kring ljudarkiv och föreslår en problemtaxonomi för framtida ljudforskning. De problem som det inspelade ljudet innebär kan delas upp i enhetlighet med de tre aristoteliska kunskapskategorierna: techne, fronesis och episteme. Genom att sortera ljudarkivets mångfacetterade problem i dessa tre kategorier kan vi tydliggöra och särskilja olika hinder, samtidigt som vi kan studera deras inbördes relationer. Artikeln hoppas på så sätt utgöra ett underlag till en fortsatt interdisciplinär diskussion kring ämnet, och bidra till en reviderad status för arkiverat ljud.

How can silence be studied, and what can we learn from it? This article explores the so-called ‘modernization’ of Swedish Public Service radio by pertaining to pauses, halts and the absence of content. By applying computational analysis to the broadcasting archive, radio can be explored on a larger scale than previously affordable. The article argues that it is possible to understand the rhythm between more and less dense content by studying the distribution of silence in time. The analysis focuses on how varying degrees of silence are distributed throughout the day in broadcasting by the Public Service Program 1 (P1). Sweden was one of the last western, democratic countries to undergo broadcasting de-monopolization. However, in order to stimulate a modernization process, competition was introduced within the state monopoly before the proper commercialization of radio in 1993. Though the actual effect of this process remains disputed, the last decade of the Swedish radio monopoly is considered a significant media historical period of transition. Whilst the organizational structure endured, public discourse witnessed a clash between new and old ideas concerning the very essence of radio. The period thus enables the study of radio in transition.

To grasp the potential effects of these debates and organizational changes on the very content of radio, this study takes its cue from the overlooked but essential matter of silence in the radio medium. Tracing the changes and trends in a set of sample weeks from 1980 to 1989, the results indicate both how the amount of silence diminished and its rhythm became more uniform. Whilst providing insights into the style of Swedish public service radio, the work is also intended to inspire new, creative ways of researching sound media.