Radio studies beyond broadcasting: Towards an intermedia and inter-technological radio history

Abstract

Examining radio development over a long time span from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, in this article, we claim that radio history is broader than the history of broadcasting only. We suggest looking at radio history through the perspective of intermediality and inter-technology, drawing on five different examples: radiography, radiotelegraphy/radiotelephony, radar and satellites, radiomobile/mobile phones with regard to radio spectrum and packet radio networks, such as Wi-Fi. We demonstrate how and why these (and other) technologies should be considered parts of radio studies even though they do not represent classic examples of radio broadcasting. Overall, this intermedia and inter-technological perspective on radio history offers new ways of rethinking and reformulating the confines of radio studies, as well as contributes to a greater field of media studies.

“The real ethernet”: The transnational history of global Wi-Fi connectivity

“…Second, the development of the Wi-Fi standard highlights the central theme in the history of technologies and telecommunications: their relationship with the radio and the telephone. The history of Wi-Fi is also deeply intertwined with radio spectrum management and other radio-based technologies, thereby making it a part, broadly speaking, of radio studies ( Rikitianskaia and Balbi, 2020 ). Like many technologies that were inspired or driven by innovations in telephone research (see, for example, Sterne, 2012 ), Wi-Fi emerged from the notion of using telephones in public spaces and both simultaneously and oppositely approaching telephones as a medium of voice.…”

“…Some historical overviews of the creation of Wi-Fi standards can also be found scattered in various works on the history of networks, standardization processes, and Internet history (e.g. Abbate, 1999 ; Balbi and Magaudda, 2018 ; Greenstein, 2012 ; Mackenzie, 2010 ; Milgrom et al, 2011 ; Rikitianskaia and Balbi, 2020 ; Russell, 2014 ). Thanks to these accounts, there is some fragmented understanding of the history of the Wi-Fi networks through its peculiar entanglement with the history of computing, the Internet, networks, and digital media.…”