Postdoctoral Fellowship - Capturing Listeners: International Radio, Religion, and Reception, 1931-1975

捕获听众：国际广播、宗教和接收，1931-1975美国国家科学基金会博士后奖学金项目概述学者们对美国宗教广播的历史起源和跨国流动的关注相对较少。该项目以技术历史为基础，重点关注二战后传教广播工作的一个方面：在世界各地分发廉价无线电接收机的项目。利用私人收藏的大量新档案资源，该项目开发了两个最大的传教士接收器分发计划的案例研究，以及福音派开发传教士晶体管接收器的项目。它实证地展示了国际宗教广播公司如何通过捕获过程将发展中国家接收机的短缺转变为对美国宗教节目的接受度。采用最近STS研究的用户启发式，该项目说明了捕获如何涉及一个复杂的，经常有争议的过程，因为传教士依赖于国家听众来操作接收器，因为听众从无线电媒介宗教中获得了自己的一套含义。俘获听众认为，在战后时期，每天收听传教电台的例行公事有助于福音派宗教在许多发展中国家合法化，为1970年后福音派在亚洲、非洲和拉丁美洲的复兴铺平了道路。目前的博士后建议寻求在两个方向上扩大关于接收国际宗教广播的工作，以准备出版一本书稿。首先，该项目通过仔细审查在广播公司档案中发现的一组罕见的广泛听众来源来评估传教士捕获的有效性。这些显示了传教士的受众研究方法和受众概念，以及听众的皈依报告，是如何随着接收器技术的变化而变化的，并证实了广播公司在听众中复制福音经验的成功。其次，构建二战后国际宗教广播和接收的比较政治经济学，该项目分析了传教士广播以及美国之音在冷战初期设立的宗教和接收器分配计划；展示了宗教作为在国外推广美国价值观的工具的灵活性，以及在晶体管收音机出现之前，美国广播公司在海外的接收需求所构成的限制。目前的博士后建议在几个领域具有明显的智力价值。首先，它考察了国际广播的一个重要领域，这个领域很少受到学者的关注。其次，通过将接收作为捕获的问题提出问题，该研究突出了无线电材料基础设施的重要性。第三，传教无线电活动的研究为美国文化在国外的影响开辟了一条重要的渠道。第四，该研究增强了对发展中国家在向晶体管收音机市场过渡的历史过程中特定受众经验的理解。第五，它通过研究学者们以前没有探索过的VOA活动领域，增加了对VOA的现有学术研究。作为一个跨学科的研究，这项工作将在不同的学者群体之间建立桥梁。它将为一个多元文化、媒体饱和的社会中的政策制定者提供视角。它将增进公众对传统宗教团体如何积极利用现代媒体和信息网络提供的机会来促进其事业的了解。

Capturing Listeners: International Radio, Religion, and Reception, 1931-1975NSF S&S Postdoctoral Fellowship - Project SummaryScholars have paid comparatively little attention to the historical origins and transnational flowsof American religious radio. Grounded in the history of technology, this project focuses on one prong of the post-WWII missionary broadcasting effort: the project to distribute inexpensive radio receivers around the world. Employing extensive new archival sources in the private collections, the project develops case studies of two of the largest missionary receiver distribution programs, as well as the evangelical project to develop a missionary transistor receiver. It demonstrates empirically how international religious broadcasters transformed the shortage of receivers in the developing world into receptivity for American religious programs through a process of capture. Employing the user heuristic from recent STS studies, the project illustrates how capture involved a complicated, often contested, process, since missionaries relied on national listeners to operate receivers and since listeners derived their own set of meanings from radio-mediated religion. Capturing Listeners argues that the routine of everyday radio listening to missionary stations helped to legitimize evangelical religion in numerous developing countries during the postwar period, paving the way for the revival of evangelicalism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America after 1970. The current postdoctoral proposal seeks to extend work on the reception of international religious broadcasting in two directions in preparation for publication of a book manuscript. First, the project evaluates the effectiveness of missionary capture by scrutinizing a rare group of extensive listener sources found in broadcaster archives. These show how missionary audience research methods and conceptions of audiences, as well as listener reports of conversion, shifted along with changes in receiver technology and confirmed broadcaster success in reproducing evangelical experience among listeners. Second, constructing a comparative political economy of international religious broadcasting and reception during the post-WWII era, the project analyzes missionary radio alongside the religion and receiver distribution programs instituted by the Voice of America during the early Cold War period, demonstrating the flexibility of religion as a vehicle for the promotion of American values abroad as well as the constraints which reception demands posed for American broadcasters overseas prior to the advent of the transistor radio.Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact The current postdoctoral proposal possesses clear intellectual merit in several areas. First, it examines a significant area of international broadcasting that has received remarkably little attention from scholars. Second, by problematizing the question of reception as capture, the study highlights the importance of radios material infrastructure. Third, the study of missionary radio activity opens up an important channel for the influence of American culture abroad. Fourth, the study enhances understanding of the experience of selective audiences in developing countries during the historical transition to the transistor radio market. Fifth, it adds to existing scholarship on the VOA by examining areas of VOA activity not previously explored by scholars. As a cross-disciplinary study, this work will build bridges between diverse groups of scholars. It will provide perspective for policy makers in a multicultural, media-saturated society. It will enhance public understanding of the dynamic ways in which traditional religious groups seized the opportunity afforded by modern media and information networks to promote their cause.