Youth radio as ‘social object’: the social meaning

of ‘free radio’ shows for young people in France

Hervé Glevarec
CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE, LILLE, FRANCE

The radio landscape in France has one unique and distinctive feature. The
most popular music radio stations aimed at young people broadcast ‘free
radio’ shows for several hours in the evening. This type of talk show for
teenagers does not exist on television and is rarely found on radio in other
European countries (Turner, 1993).
The ‘free radio’ shows for young people, which have existed for more
than ten years,1 are talk programmes broadcast live in the evening (9 p.m.
to midnight). Listeners call in to pose a problem, recount their experi-
ences, talk with the presenters, ask for advice, etc. The ‘free radio’ shows
have teams of presenters, each with its ‘leader’ – in 2002–3 these were
Difool on Skyrock, Max on Fun Radio and Maurad on NRJ (pronounced
‘énergie’). Typically, the programmes consist of a number of different
sequences, games, group telephone conversations, live link-ups with
sporting events, music, advertisements . . . in other words, very different
programme ‘frames’. In 2001 there were ‘free radio’ shows on three
privately owned national radio stations, Fun Radio (groove 44 percent,
dance 24 percent, rap 23 percent), Skyrock (rap 61 percent, groove
29 percent), NRJ (pop/rock 25 percent, groove 22 percent, dance 20 per-
cent, French popular song 16 percent), and on one public service station
(Radio France) for young people and students, Le Mouv’ (pop/rock
79 percent).2 Other national radio stations also feature ‘free radio’ shows,
but these are aimed at a young adult audience, as in the case of Europe
2. The teams of presenters are of a different kind from those of earlier
years when the ‘expert model’ was common (such as in the programme
Lovin’ Fun on Fun Radio in 1992, where a doctor and a presenter
presided jointly) (Rui, 1995; Cardon, 2003). We no longer find a doctor

Media, Culture & Society © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks
and New Delhi), Vol. 27(3): 333–351
[ISSN: 0163-4437 DOI: 10.1177/0163443705051747]
334 Media, Culture & Society 27(3)

or expert giving advice, but a team of presenters who hold discussions

with the callers.
While these programmes are close to an already well-known genre, the
reality show (Livingstone and Lunt, 1992; Mehl, 1996), these ‘free radio’
shows on young people’s radio explicitly target a teenage audience and do
so with a notable verbal and moral liberalism – there is a lot of talk, and
extremely crude talk, about sex. This is very different from the British
situation studied by Buckingham and Bragg (2004). Is France really far
less ‘uptight’ that Britain? Verbally explicit sexual material is widespread
in France, but particularly prevalent on the radio.3 Since 2001, the ‘free
radio’ shows in France have become a ‘public problem’, in Gusfield’s
sense (1981): some pro-family organizations accuse them of pornography,
sexism, of undermining ‘human dignity’. Since the beginning of 2004 the
French media regulatory body, the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel, has
required that ‘programmes liable to upset listeners under 16’ be broadcast
only between 10.30 p.m. and 6 a.m.4 This aspect will not be discussed
specifically in the present article (Glevarec, 2003).
The sociological interest of these radio shows, which are the most
popular among young people in France, lies in the fact that they are the
only spaces where teenagers speak and are visible in public. At school,
teachers do not normally talk about such subjects, and in the family, young
people express most appreciation for these programmes at the very age
when they most strongly manifest a distancing both from their parents
(Glevarec, 2003) and from television (Médiamétrie/French Ministry of
Culture, 1996/7).
The 15–16-year-olds whom we met in 2000 say that these programmes
deal with ‘young people’s problems’: sex and relationships, problems of
teenage identity, drug use. In the 1940s, Herta Herzog (1944) studied the
effect of radio serials on their female listeners. The issues that these
programmes addressed for the listeners appeared to be ‘how to deal with
things’.5 Fifty years later, the ever-present question on young people’s ‘free
radio’ shows is ‘knowing about the risks if you embark on such and such a
practice (drug use, law breaking, sexual relationships, etc.)’ (Glevarec with
Choquet, 2003). It is generally not just about expressing oneself (Crisell,
1994), but about knowing what is reasonable behaviour in life or in public.
This illustrates the place now occupied by these programmes in the social
apprenticeship and socialization of young people.6
In a context where the passage from childhood to adulthood is becoming
de-institutionalized, young people’s radio and its ‘free radio’ shows are
taking on responsibility for issues relevant to this age-group, as well as to
social situations involving the confrontation of adolescents with the social
sphere, with other people, parents, sexual partners, institutions and their
representatives, the social order. Radio listening is a defined moment, a
moment of transgression and an individualized practice. The radio listening
Glevarec, Youth radio as ‘social object’ 335

of adolescents is a ‘moment of passage’, by analogy with the ‘rite of

passage’ theorized by Van Gennep (1969). This ‘adolescent radio moment’
is in fact quite different, in terms of its content, from adolescents’
consumption of television and other media.
Adolescence is described in European societies both, by certain sociolo-
gists (Galland, 2000), as a distinct and fleeting moment, and, by others
(Buckingham, 2000), as a situation where frontiers with the adult world are
increasingly disappearing.7 Is this an ‘adolescent moment’ or ‘the end of
childhood’? The ‘free radio’ shows are at the intersection of two social
realities: radio creates social categories of age within adolescence and at
the same time exposes children to ‘adult secrets’. The Skyrock station itself
constructs a category of pre-adolescents – what they call the ‘pyjamas’.
Around 9 p.m., Difool, the leading presenter on the Skyrock ‘free radio’
show, rings a kind of bell which means that the ‘pyjamas’ should go to
bed, as riskier subjects are about to be broached. ‘Pyjamas’ are under-15s.
Far from abolishing distinctions, young people’s radio shapes the frontiers
within childhood and between childhood and adulthood. The radio shows
categorize their audience, notably setting up between pre- and early teens
and older teenagers a symbolic frontier which, of course, invites its own
transgression but which is nonetheless a categorization.
This article draws on a reception study based on 50 interviews carried
out in 2000–1 with 15–16-year-old listeners. It illustrates three aspects of
‘free radio’ shows: (1) the characteristics of young people’s radio listening;
(2) the characteristics of the ‘radio text’; (3) the four main social meanings
of reception by young people. The third aspect draws on the idea that we
have no a priori knowledge of what these radio stations and their ‘free
radio’ shows are (music? media? discourse? verbiage? soliciting? etc).
We shall try to respond to the question: what kind of ‘social object’ is
radio for young people? An analysis of young people’s reception of youth
radio needs to adopt a hermeneutic approach, in the sense of hermeneutic
sociology (Quéré, 1992, 1994, 1999). There are two main ways of defining
a ‘social object’: from the institutional or juridical point of view (what it is
in law) and from the social point of view (what it represents for
individuals). The concept of a ‘social object’ evokes the ‘semantics of
action’ (Ricoeur, 1977) – although here it is not a question of action –
which considers the way in which individuals describe their actions
(motivation, agency . . . ), and the ‘hermeneutic argument’ (Quéré, 1999)
which considers that social reality reveals itself through and by means of
interpretation:

Here I understand interpretation in the strongest sense of the word – to interpret

is to consider something as being this or that, and thus to give it a direction and
also to illuminate, to decipher, to explain a meaning or a coherence which do
not appear clearly. (Quéré, 1999: 16)
336 Media, Culture & Society 27(3)

This concept allows us to describe and to objectify, from a comprehensive

viewpoint, the meaning that radio has for young people.
This approach has nothing to do with a textual hermeneutics (or content
analysis) of media texts. Neither is it an approach in terms of coding/
decoding or of usage. It is not a question of understanding listeners’
interpretation of the ‘radio text’, as Janice Radway (1984) did in her study
of the meaning that the reading of romantic novels had for young working-
class housewives,8 but rather of understanding the kind of ‘social object’
that these ‘texts’ represent in the lives of individual young people, along
the lines of Nick Couldry (2000) when he asks the question: what is a text
if it is considered as a ‘social object’? What is ‘hermeneutic’ here is not an
erudite reading of the text but the social meaning it has for the young
listeners. Such a reading cannot be a decoding (Morley and Brunsdon,
1999) because of the very nature of the text of the ‘free radio’ shows,
which is neither a fictional proposition (like a film or soap opera) nor a
realistic proposition (like a news programme or documentary), but a
‘cultural form’. This ‘cultural form’ is not exactly a genre (with its own
rules and codes) (Corner, 1986), both because it has some characteristics of
the ‘ordinary’ conversational nature of radio described by Scannell (1996)
and because, even if it is a kind of ‘order of interaction’ (Goffman, 1983),
it will be ‘shaped’ and its order transgressed by the participants.
The ‘free radio’ shows are spheres of discourse. Their ‘text’ is a
conventional structure – the callers talk to the presenters on the telephone.
The ‘text’ of the ‘free radio’ shows is a sphere of discourse that is very
different from a news or documentary report, or from fiction.9 That is why
it is relevant to discuss this reception in terms of a ‘social object’, since it
is an object marked by the reflexive (modern) regime of the media (Eco,
1985), by the self-production of the programmes’ frame, and by a certain
textual continuity with the world.

A world of their own and a fleeting moment of listening

Several studies have shown that radio evokes enormous interest among
14–16-year-olds, alongside the great value attached to sociability by this
age group (Jouet and Pasquier, 1999; Pasquier, 2003). This interest in radio
(and a decreasing interest in television) is intense but fleeting. It decreases
in 17–19-year-olds and even further in those over 23 (Larmet, 2003).
Adolescent listening to ‘free radio’ shows is a kind of parenthesis in the
trajectory of radio listening; it begins at perhaps 12 years old and ends by
about 16. It lasts for a defined period of time. Sometimes it is very intense,
then this intensity decreases or the focus moves to other kinds of radio or
other interests. The radio stations cease to respond to ‘young people’s
problems’ and lose their interest for teenagers as they get older.
Glevarec, Youth radio as ‘social object’ 337

The listeners who called in were older. We didn’t have the same mentality and
their problems weren’t the same as mine. Now I don’t listen to that kind of
thing any more, although really it might be more relevant to me. I don’t like it
any more, so I don’t listen. It’s true that at the time it wasn’t really my age
group, when I was in cinquième [12–13 years old]. The ones calling in were
more like from the lycée [16–18 years old]. (Delphine, 16)

When I first started listening, I was 13 and given those who call in are often
between 17 and 20, 21, it’s true we didn’t really have the same problems. I’m
just beginning, bit by bit, beginning . . . to identify with them. (Richard, 17)

What the pre- and early-teen youngsters find when they listen to these
‘free radio’ programmes is others, often older, recounting their experiences.
This age gap reflects a desire to know on the part of the younger listeners.
There is a subjective paradox in young people’s listening: they say they
listened to these shows when they were too young, but when they are no
longer too young they begin to lose interest. They listen to the ‘free radio’
shows as part of their aspiring to grow up, and later reject it because it
infantilizes them.
Radio is mainly part of the ‘bedroom culture’ (Livingstone, 2002), that
space where adolescents can express their identity, exercise some personal
control and direct from a distance their relationship with family and
friends. Radio listening is mostly a solitary activity (Glevarec and Pinet,
2003), often done with the door shut, often on a Walkman, sometimes in
the dark, lying on the bed. Radio listening is, however, affected by a
relationship that goes beyond the bedroom and involves the parents.
Adolescents listen to the radio, but not always with parental approval.
Parents criticize them for having the radio on too loud or for too long, for
listening in the dark, on their own with the door shut.
‘When I want to be really on my own, I put it on quite loud,’ says
Carine, 16. Etienne has installed his radio on the shelves above his bed. He
always shuts the door when listening to the radio. He often listens in the
dark. Clément has a speaker turned towards his bed-head so he doesn’t
have to turn the sound up high and his parents don’t ‘moan’.
At one time, when I was hiding from my mother because she didn’t want me
listening to the radio late at night, I had a Walkman plugged in to the radio, and
it was quite different listening through headphones . . . because you’re really
alone, and the sound comes straight into your ears. (Richard, 16)

Young people’s radio listening helps them to feel independent. We know

that audio equipment, such as CDs, cassettes, radios, are the pieces of
media equipment that children are most likely to have just for themselves
(Pasquier, 2003; Octobre, 2004).
However, at the same time, their listening is a form of collective
participation. While radio listening is a solitary pastime, it is also a
‘listening with’, a listening which ‘brings together’ (Dayan and Katz,
338 Media, Culture & Society 27(3)

1991). Young people use the word ambiance (mood or ‘scene’) to describe
the collective they say they belong to and take part in. The characteristic
aspects of their radio reception seem to be an essential condition of
‘participation’ and feeling of ‘being there with them’. ‘Really, what they do
is they are like friends,’ says Faı̈za. ‘They get phonecalls and that. They try
and solve problems together. Or they talk about something together.
Really, it’s easy going because it’s that kind of a mood.’ The word mood
describes the type of friendly relationship between presenters and listeners.
Mood is one aspect of the different kinds of ‘social object’ constituted by
the ‘free radio’ shows: a state of mind (easy-going) a kind of social bond
(‘friends’), a social configuration (‘being able to talk freely’), a collective
(‘together’), a place (‘a mini salon’ and ‘a place where you live at the
same time’). One condition for this atmosphere is the live broadcast, which
helps to construct the ‘co-presence’ and the feeling of ‘being right there’.
In this way, the ‘free radio’ programmes construct themselves as a
‘social occasion’.

The metatextuality of radio and the play on different frames

The radio text is metatextual. Young people’s radio really has more
elements of metatextuality than of intertextuality (Bennett and Woollacott,
1987; Fiske, 1987). ‘Metatextuality is the relationship, more often referred
to as the “commentary” which unites a text with another text that it talks
about’ (Genette, 1982: 11). Young people’s radio ‘talks about’ television,
magazines and other radio programmes. The metatextuality of radio
indicates a type of relationship between ‘texts’, that is to say a structure of
the relations between different media. ‘Youth’ radio constructs this space
on the margins, particularly in relation to television, which is positioned
‘centrally’. Television occupies an ‘institutional’ position, whereas radio
has something of a background position.10 Radio thus has all the time it
needs to weave a relationship of distance with this ‘centre’ (legitimate by
virtue of the image, but institutional), a relationship of criticism, mockery
and ‘talk about’. For example, French reality television shows (on the
French stations M6 and TF1) are, each time they are broadcast on
television, the subject of comments both serious and ironic from radio
presenters who ‘tune in’ live on their programmes and get listeners to
comment and give their views on participants in the television pro-
grammes. Young people’s radio shows function like anterooms or like the
wings of the media stage.
The ‘free radio’ shows are a play on the frames and spheres of
transgression of social conventions. In this they make use of the radio
hoax. Goffman (1974)11 describes the hoax as a ‘fabrication’. The radio
hoax is a genre specific to radio, as it relies on the absence of the visual
Glevarec, Youth radio as ‘social object’ 339

evidence that might enable listeners to ‘investigate’ pragmatically the

reality of what is going on;12 there is a sociological aspect to the hoax that
lies in its use of social mockery. The hoax functions as a form of
mockery by setting up an opposition of ‘us’, the listeners, and ‘them’, the
adults. We shall use two examples to illustrate this: the ‘two-ended
phonecall’ hoax on Skyrock and the false debates at the expense of an
individual on Fun Radio.
The ‘two-ended phonecall’ hoax consists of the Skyrock presenters
simultaneously ringing two home phones and ‘listening in’ on the air to the
ensuing conversation with no opening between the two protagonists (a
telephone call where neither party has called the other). Both parties will
then demand to know why the other has called them. This interaction may
degenerate into mutual insults. The presenters repeat the ‘two-ended
phonecall’ experiment several times, making fun of the protagonists,
laughing at them and imitating them between calls.
The ‘two-ended phonecall’ has two results: it leads to the transgression
of social conventions and highlights adults’ otherness. It violates the
common rules for opening a polite conversation (Sacks and Schegloff,
1973). It also mocks the people called (referred to by the Skyrock
presenters as the ‘families’): adults, strangers, people with an accent, men
and women who become annoyed, try to assert themselves, threaten to call
the police. The ‘two-ended phonecall’ constructs a difference between
these (uncouth) adults and the young (listeners).
The ‘false debates’ on Fun Radio consist of co-opting a somewhat naive
adult and making him or her the presenter. Listeners then call in to make
fun of him of her.
Every three weeks, you get the debates with Gérard, the funniest programme on
the station [Fun Radio]. It goes out between midnight and two in the morning.
The presenter [Gérard] suggests a subject for debate and asks the listeners what
they think about it. Mostly they don’t give serious answers. They come out with
a lot of bullshit. The presenter takes it all seriously. I just love that programme,
I’m always recording it. Once I was with some mates and we tried to call in.
(Maxence, 15)

Inviting Gérard to take this role is inviting someone from another world,
the world of the beaufs (an evocative French expression for conventional,
petit-bourgeois, ‘super-straight’ people), in order to confront them with the
world of the young. The humour is at Gérard’s expense insofar as the
dominant symbolic model here is that of the young people. Unused to
the social habits of the young radio listeners, his habitus is that of the old-
fashioned working class (he talks loudly, easily loses his temper, inter-
rupts people and has an unfashionable accent). The listeners have a laugh
at his expense.
Radio as a medium exploits its dual nature as both conversation and
device, both text and frame, both conversational exchange and social
340 Media, Culture & Society 27(3)

interaction. We see that the ‘free radio’ shows on ‘youth radio’ construct
themselves within an ambiguous frame. They display characteristics of
both serious conversation and transgressive hoax. From a very general
point of view, the ‘free radio’ shows are produced within a ludic and
generation-specific frame, where social transgression has so far been
accepted. By the same token, the presenters are not presenters in the usual,
institutional sense of the term. They have an ‘in-between’ function,
between the institutional space and that of friendship; between two social
roles, that of presenter and friend, or presenter and switchboard operator.
On ‘youth’ radio the presenters are known by first names, nicknames or
diminutives (on Fun Radio, Max and Melanie in the evening and Martin in
the morning; on Skyrock, Difool, Romano and Marie; on NRJ, Maurad; on
Le Mouv’, Jessica and later Emilie). As their listeners get older, radio
programmes begin to use the surnames or civil status of their presenters
(Cauet on Europe 2, for example). The presenters of ‘youth’ radio are thus
not defined by their civil status, but by a name, which evokes the sphere of
friendship or family. ‘Youth’ radio is characterized by a stripping away of
the presenter’s role. On the one hand the presenters engage subjectively
with their subject (these are not journalists);13 on the other hand, people
outside the team of presenters, for example the switchboard operators, also
speak on air. Those who speak on air are neither strictly in a professional
role nor strictly outside that role: their role is configured as that of an
‘ordinary person’. Young people’s radio programmes are always provoking
this play on roles and frameworks of interpretation.14
Each of the ‘free radio’ shows has its own format. On the Skyrock
station the listener is a ‘co-presenter’. The device of the ‘free radio’ on
Skyrock aims to construct an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. The listener is strongly
urged to participate in the ‘free radio’. The presenters on Fun Radio focus
on the team and the main presenter, Max, in a device where the listener is
more of a partner in the game, hoax or debating contest than an
interlocutor. He or she is lampooned, sometimes even abused. The
programme’s framework is sometimes unclear for the caller, who may be a
‘primary’ or ‘secondary’, or a ‘primary’ or ‘fabricated’ participant
(Goffman, 1974). This is the case with Gérard and the other recurring adult
figures lampooned by Max in his ‘free radio’ show. On NRJ, in the
framework of the ‘free radio’ show broadcast between May 2002 and
October 2003, listeners functioned as a support for other listeners. NRJ’s
Maurad took the opposite role from that of the low-key presenters and
impersonal presentation style prevalent on the station. The model for his
show, ‘Parental Agreement Required’, was that of a show very much
focused on the performance of the presenter as facilitator, play leader,
counsellor, quite unlike the ‘collective’ model characteristic of Skyrock.
From Skyrock to NRJ, by way of Fun Radio, the ‘free radio’ device has
been variable in its attitude to listener participation, with a ‘contract of
Glevarec, Youth radio as ‘social object’ 341

communication’ ranging from the collective model (Difool, Marie,

Romano, etc.) to the master-presenter model (Maurad), with the duo of
Max and Melanie on Fun Radio somewhere in between. The ‘text’ of the
various radio shows is clearly related to the type of reception characteristic
of different groups of young people.

What kind of ‘social object’ is youth radio for young people?

As stated above, in responding to the question: ‘What kind of “social

object” is radio for young people?’, we want to focus on ‘reception’. A
‘social object’ is based on a ‘seeing as’. Drawing on our field study, we
want to reconstruct four types of social object based on four types of
reception. This amounts to considering that these are to some extent not
only mutually exclusive, but equally that they are based on heterogeneous
interpretations or ‘institutions of meaning’. This approach poses a number
of questions: what ‘consistency’ do these objects have in the social world?
Are these forms of reception mutually exclusive? Here we must clearly
reply that the sociologist does not find these ‘social objects’ categorized as
such in public statements, but reconstructs them on the basis of different
forms of reception. It is the sociologist who ‘sees’ and subjects them
‘under a certain description’ (Anscombe, 1957/2000). To paraphrase Louis
Quéré (1994: 22), we can then say that a form of reception is subjected to
‘a certain kind of description which depicts, categorizes and names it’.15
This approach is at the same time hermeneutic in its method but
reconstructive in its analysis. Our question here is not what use young
people make of radio programmes or how they interpret them, but what
they represent for these young people.

Radio as ‘common sphere’

How are the ‘free radio’ shows characterized? A certain group of young
people characterize them as ‘a conversation in a group of friends’.
Q: How do you understand those people who phone in to the radio and talk
about a personal problem?

A: I think it’s because maybe they haven’t got anyone they can talk to about it
or anyone who can help them, or maybe it’s about wanting to tell other
people, to show themselves.

Q: Do you ever think: ‘How can they talk about that on the air? That’s not
everyone’s business?’

A: No.
342 Media, Culture & Society 27(3)

Q: Don’t you ever think that?

A: No, because really even if it’s people that you can’t see, that you don’t
know, it’s as if it was a conversation with a group of friends and, well, with
your mates when you talk maybe it’s not necessarily about interesting things
but, well, no one really minds. (Marlène, 16, middle class)

So, what is this ‘conversation with your friends’? It is neither an already

familiar ‘object’ – a political discussion, a debate of a radio game – or
completely invented. ‘Conversations with your friends’ already exist but –
by definition – these are neither produced within the public sphere nor
publicly defined. We shall refer to this form as a ‘common sphere’, a
particular way of constructing a ‘public sphere’. What are the character-
istics of this ‘common sphere’, a public sphere characterized as a
community of friends? This configuration of ‘free radio’ emphasizes a
friendly sphere of sharing experiences and opinions and the game of
question and answer between presenters and callers. How, then, does this
object relate to the principles of ‘publicness’ deemed to be the conditions
making possible a public sphere that always refers to a symbolic third party
(Quéré, 1982)? On the one hand, as we have seen, the presenters are not
neutral:
Maybe I wouldn’t actually call them mates, but well maybe they’re a bit more
than radio presenters because they’re quite accessible and then, well, they put
quite a lot of themselves into the programme too, because they give their own
opinions. They don’t just act as mediators between two listeners. (Marlène, 16)

This ‘common sphere’ offers the possibility of the social and linguistic
transgression mentioned above. It is a friendly forum for interaction, and
also has the particular characteristic of suddenly departing from the
Kantian principle of rationality, but without thereby falling into the
category of that which is partisan.
Once there was someone who phoned in, he was 17 and he was saying: ‘You’re
always against racists’, and then well he was defending the racists. He was a
real fascist and once or twice it sent shivers down your spine to know there are
people who are racist like that and it does exist. . . . There was just one time
when I think they reacted badly, as I was saying just now there was this young
guy who was a bit of a fascist in a way and they said to him: ‘Well, you’re
pissing us off!’ And then they hung up on him and I think they shouldn’t have
done that, they should have talked to him and shown him he wasn’t necessarily
right and tried to make him change his mind a bit, rather than . . . because
hanging up on him didn’t help him. (Marlène)

Here Marlène is critical of too clear a closing off of this ‘friendly’ public
space. However, this ‘common sphere’ is not a private sphere, nor is it
configured as such by the listeners, since it has clear qualities of
‘publicness’. The characteristic here which is traditionally associated with a
Glevarec, Youth radio as ‘social object’ 343

public sphere is that people are not recognized and thus avoid relationships
where people know one another. In short, one of the characteristics of this
type of sphere is that one can to put forward a view which is not then
traceable to a particular source. This sphere is truly public when the caller
is not relating a personal experience but putting forward a view.
Q: What was it you would have liked to say when you thought about calling in?
What would you have talked about? Did you want to talk about a personal
problem? Or ask a question?

A: No, it was maybe to say what I thought about, it was a discussion too. I
wanted to join in. It was about drinking. I wanted to say what I thought.
(Marie, 151⁄2, middle class)

The ‘free radio’ shows, when established as a ‘common sphere’, represent

a configuration which is partly included also in the two following forms,
but not in the fourth.

Radio as quasi-institution

In this configuration, radio functions as a mediation between the listeners

and the social world. Reception is meaningful and radio has relevance for
the young person. Radio functions within a symbolic order, taking its place
as a ‘significant other’. Reception is referential, that is to say that it relates
what is heard to ‘real life’ and not to the device (Liebes and Katz, 1994). It
is thus possible for the young listener to consider calling in to the radio
programme to talk about a problem, or simply in order to become visible
or ‘exist’ via this space. Reception is ‘meaningful’ because the ‘free radio’
shows constitute a ‘third party’ that is taken seriously and that offers an
alternative space to that of parents or school.
A: These people who call in, they have a problem. They talk to Difool, the tutor
on Skyrock. They talk to Difool and Difool tries to sort out their problems.
Say, someone will call him and tell him their problems, and that person will
say what their problems are and leave a number. Then Difool calls this
number and tries to sort out their problems with the person. Like, there’s this
guy and he’s got a girl pregnant and she’s left him and every time he phones
her she hangs up on him. He asks if they can phone her for her, for him, and
try and sort things out.
Q: And what kind of advice do they give?

A: ‘You should go and see her father and talk about it’, all that kind of advice.
‘You should be honest.’ All that kind of advice really to sort it out. Because
really the person’s frightened to go and see him, that’s why he phones Difool,
and Difool gives him advice about what he should do, he advises him.
(Youssef, 15, Troisième [fourth year of secondary school], working-class
background)
344 Media, Culture & Society 27(3)

It seemed to us that the ‘free radio’ shows on Skyrock had this social
and symbolic meaning for their listeners from a working-class background.
In particular, Skyrock assigns meaning to the experience of certain
young people from an immigrant background. What allows us to think of
the programmes as an institution is that they have a function of estab-
lishing rules.
The fact that radio has this role does not mean that the young listeners
become ‘alienated’, even though they might describe Difool as an a ‘tutor’
(as Youssef does). On the contrary they ‘work with’ the device in two
ways: by imagining themselves both in the place of the caller (learning
about themselves through the testimony of another person evoking prob-
lems they might encounter themselves) and in the place of the presenter
(responding to the question: what is the best thing to do in the caller’s
situation?) (Glevarec with Choquet, 2003).

Q: Do you always agree with him?

A: No, not always.

Q: For example? Are there times when you don’t agree?

A: Yeah, there was this guy, he’d got an Arab girl pregnant and she had older
brothers. And the guy phones Difool because the two older brothers are
looking for him, and Difool said to this guy: ‘You should go openly and see
her father’ [laughs] . . .

Q: What would you have said, if you were in Difool’s place?

A: No, don’t go and see him. You don’t go and see her father. You try first to
see the girl and, well, I don’t know. It’s really difficult. (Youssef)

It must be acknowledged that for some young people from a working-class

background and from immigrant families (at the time of the interview
Youssef was living with his unemployed mother in Tourcoing, an industrial
town near Lille), Skyrock is a significant space in which they may become
visible. We may say that in this case Skyrock is a kind of ‘institutional’
space. It is perhaps significant here that the music mostly listened to by
boys from a working-class and immigrant background is the rap and
groove played on Skyrock. ‘Institution’ refers here to an authority that
delivers norms of behaviour recognized by a social group.

Radio as ‘social occasion’

In this configuration reception represents both an experience and a form of

participation. Radio is here configured as a companion in life and a
Glevarec, Youth radio as ‘social object’ 345

moment of relaxation. Listening to ‘free radio’ is being with others and

taking part in an event. Listeners take part in ‘free radio’, perhaps phoning
in or sending emails. The relationship is, by implication, a partnership.
Mathieu, 15, in the première S (sixth year of secondary school, science
stream), in Toulouse, whose father is a financial executive, says of the ‘free
radio’ on Fun Radio:
If you listen a bit in the week, you really have to keep listening, because I
listened one evening ages ago and I got hooked from the first evening, really
straight away. . . . There’s a mood. They really know how to make programmes.
There isn’t just one presenter talking, there’s lots of people, there’s the
assistants on Fun Radio, there’s the listeners if they want to join in . . . they do
lots of sketches too and they’re always funny, it’s not just . . . Skyrock isn’t
always funny compared with other programmes.

NRJ and Fun Radio represent the movement towards radio configured as
‘social occasion’.
Radio here contributes to a joining and a form of collusion; it implies a
kind of exclusion of the uninitiated. It functions less in the register of
subjective issues or public problems than in that of bringing together peers
who have something in common. In the ludic, detached and transgressive
mode, the mood helps us to understand what configures this object.
You have to be regular listener to get into the mood, I think even to like the
programme you really have to listen every evening to really get into the mood.
They often have really good stuff. But there are some people who don’t listen
every evening and they don’t really understand but if you listen every evening I
think it’s a really good mood, it’s like being with your friends. And then the
mood, they make a lot of jokes, there are some really funny things, they’re
having a joke, but they’re having a joke about people and they are the only ones
who know, that is the people they’re having a joke about, there’s just the
presenter and a listener [who know]. Or they do these telephone hoaxes, all this
is every evening with the listeners taking part. You even get listeners who
phone in and they are still part of the mood, it’s like a bit of a community. . . .
For example, with my mate who told me I should listen, now we really get on
better, we start talking about it straight away in the morning. When you know
someone listens to this programme you straight away have something to talk
about, you can laugh about it straight away because it’s something . . . it makes
you feel closer. (Mathieu, 15)

Here radio is configured as an aid to identification, a means of distinction

and bonding. It is a sociocultural object, a form of reception which creates
‘forms of collective action’ (Pasquier, 2004).

Radio as device

To conceive of radio and ‘free radio’ shows as ‘devices’ is to criticize, in a

Foucauldian sense, an apparatus of control. Reception here is distant and
346 Media, Culture & Society 27(3)

oppositional. Young people criticize the recurrence of sexual subjects and

the biased or manipulative device of the ‘free radio’ shows. The adverts,
the incomplete snatches of music, the strategy of keeping the listener
waiting are all criticized. This kind of reception often appeared to us
to be characteristic of girls. Radio shows as a whole can be perceived in
this light.
Fatima, 151⁄2, from a self-employed middle-class background, is
extremely critical and distant towards the ‘free radio’ programmes and their
presenters.
Everyone talks about these ‘free radio’ shows and people’s problems. It’s a
station that a lot of people listen to [Fun Radio] so there are a lot of different
people on it and it’s a bit like the same problems keep coming up on the station,
and always the same answers, always the same . . .

In fact, what Fatima is criticizing is a device for capturing the listener.

‘And as well, on these radio stations they give a lot of prizes away, so
often that encourages people to call in.’ Fatima seems to be looking for a
forum for the exchange of different opinions, and to find that provided by
the ‘youth’ radio stations too trivial:
What I’d be interested in would be debates on fairly ordinary subjects but that
you could really talk about, so you could have a real exchange between several
listeners and a presenter and not these ‘I’m phoning the radio to tell a joke’ or
‘I’m phoning the radio because I’ve got a headache.’

The key here to listener investment is whether it is serious or trivial. The

idea of being more concerned with other things (‘I think there are other
things in life apart from that,’ says Delphine) is to be viewed in the context
of the other centres of interest of the young listeners. We then find a
critique of the cultural and intellectual value of these programmes.
A: Skyrock, well I think the presenters are hopeless. . . . There’s a programme in
the evening with Difool. It stoops really, really low. Most of the things they
talk about, it’s all, sorry, all about sex. The subject is just that, really. People,
well it’s free radio, they phone in with their problems and that. It’s hopeless,
really. There are young people who listen to that. Because, as well, there isn’t
any radio for young people where you get anything else. . . . I think there are
other things in life apart from that, even if it’s true that with that age-group
you tend to think a lot about that. But there are other things, I don’t
know. . . . They could talk about the news, a bit more about the problems
happening at this moment. But, I don’t know, in the week I don’t watch TV
much any more because I’m a weekly boarder at school. They could talk
about that or about the good films that have been on, or that are on at the
moment, or reviews, those sorts of things.
Q: When you say it stoops really low, in what way?
A: Well like even just the vocabulary they use. I don’t know, it’s not thoughtful
at all, it’s basic. Even if they only talk about that, the way they talk about it,
Glevarec, Youth radio as ‘social object’ 347

I mean anyone can make a radio programme like that. But, well, the more it’s
like that the less I listen to the radio.
Q: Radio in general or Skyrock?
A: Skyrock. I’ve never listened that much to NRJ and those. I remember my big
Skyrock phase was in cinquième [second year of secondary school, 12–13
years old], in cinquième it was all Skyrock, all the time and I liked it, but
well now I think I’ve grown up. (Delphine, 16, middle class)

For Delphine this critical view follows a period of listening more or less
characterized by the apprenticeship function that these ‘free radio’ shows
seem to have for a certain age group. We can note, then, that the social
configuration of the ‘free radio’ shows varies depending on the stage of the
young person’s development.

Young people’s radio: between socialization and politics

The ‘free radio’ shows, as social objects, are differently constituted

depending on the situation of young people. ‘Free radio’ is subject to
different types of reception, where four variables come into play: age, sex,
social and educational position, and family situation (with respect to the
‘quality’ of the relationship with parents). The difficulty of describing in
sociological terms the reception of ‘free radio’ stems from the fact that it
intersects with two different things: the ‘moment of adolescence’ and
‘social experiences’. It both satisfies a certain desire to know about adult
issues and rules of behaviour, and brings together in a particularly effective
way certain radio shows and certain experiences and tastes.
Are the ‘free radio’ shows ‘social objects’ or merely ‘texts’? Is recourse
to the notion of a ‘social object’ when speaking of the reception of these
shows ‘using a sledgehammer to crack a nut’? We might reply in the
affirmative were it not that the ‘free radio’ shows seemed to us to be just as
significant as they are for their listeners. We need to note that the ‘free
radio’ shows are programmes for young people and not programmes for
everyone seen through the eyes of young people. So these programmes are
‘serious’ and not subject to a ‘camp’ reading (Gripsrud, 1995).
For this reason an oppositional reading that is ‘referential’ and an
oppositional reading that is ‘critical’ (metalinguistic) (Liebes and Katz,
1994) are not critical forms of a similar social nature – they differ just as a
‘text’ differs from a ‘device’. An oppositional reading of a referential kind
is problematic with this genre of open programme, which is neither pre-
written fiction nor news reporting. Since they are themselves spheres of
pluralistic discussion, the ‘free radio’ shows provoke an oppositional
reading which is not referential (as in: ‘Sue Ellen in Dallas is immoral’),
but critical (‘They only talk about sex, it’s just to make you phone in’).
348 Media, Culture & Society 27(3)

Adolescents differ here from adults by virtue of the little moral content of
their criticism of the free radio shows. Their criticism, where it exists, is
not about the values carried by the ‘free radio’ shows but about their
device for capturing the listener.
The encounter of adolescents with contemporary musical and interactive
radio has much in common with what has been said about social moments
of ‘passage’. For adolescents, radio is both an agent of socialization to
adulthood and an agent of socialization to the public sphere. With respect
to this role, it does indeed appear that the presenters have their place
alongside family, peer group and school. Their contribution is part of how
young people apprehend the world. What Difool on Skyrock, Max on Fun
Radio and their co-presenters are doing is promoting respect for difference
and different ways of behaving (Macé and Lapeyronnie, 1994; Rui, 1995)
and making individuals conscious of their responsibilities. This socializing
dimension has been too little conceptualized in the field of cultural studies.
The ‘free radio’ shows highlight the considerable entanglement of
the private and the public – of concern for self and social responsibility.
They also tell us something about a process of socialization and parti-
cipation in the public sphere that increasingly takes place from a very
young age. Their analysis also indicates that, for the younger generations,
there is a further symbolic – and structuring – sphere alongside those of
family and school.

Notes

This article was translated from French by Jean Morris.

1. Since Lovin’ Fun on Fun Radio in 1992 (Dauncey and Hare, 1999).
2. FM radio stations that also broadcast on line: www.nrj.fr; www.funradio.fr;
www.skyrock.com; www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/lemouv. The spread of musical
genres – percentage of tracks played – on the various radio stations cited is
measured by the private company Yacast.
3. This difference is remarkable. Why is there no ‘free radio’ of this kind on
British radio? In France, radio programmes about sex date back to the late 1960s
(Cardon, 2003).
4. Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel, decision of 10 February 2004.
5. For example, learning to think positively, to make others take responsibility,
or even taking up complete formulas for behaviour, like ‘Don’t hit your children,
make them go without something’ (Herzog, 1944).
6. The study by Livingstone and Bovill (2001) makes little reference to radio,
which is treated as part of the music media. Such assimilation is no longer possible
in the case of France. No less remarkably, little mention is made of ‘generational’
or ‘teenage’ issues in relation to the media. Of the 14 items (‘favourite topics’)
suggested to teenagers (war, crime, comedy . . .) (Livingstone and Bovill, 2001:
147) none relates to ‘young people’s problems’.
7. By means of the media (Meyrowitz, 1985).
Glevarec, Youth radio as ‘social object’ 349

8. ‘My account of what romance readers do to a text in the process of

constructing an interpretation is just such a guess’ (Radway, 1984: 350).
9. Personal testimony is the description that best fits young people’s statement
of what interests them in the ‘free radio’ shows. Personal experience is the basis of
what is held in common and of the discourse that can be held on a ‘problem’ or
‘question’ posed on the programme (Glevarec, 2003; Mehl, 2003).
10. Radio has occupied this institutional position since its origins, as shown by
P. Scannell (1996) in his study of the ‘eventfullness’ created by (BBC) radio
around (British) national events.
11. It is not insignificant that radio often appears in Goffman’s work, since its
framing is particularly open to ‘fabrication’.
12. Radio has always exploited the potential for hoaxes. Everyone knows about
the panic provoked by Orson Welles radio production of The War of the Worlds.
13. ‘It’s, well, because the listeners call in to talk about their own lives, so why
not the presenters?’ says Sophie, 14.
14. Chalvon-Demersay and Pasquier (1990) have also shown the interplay of
public image and real person that is at the heart of what links young television
viewers with TV presenters or the actors in children’s serials. Magazines and TV
reviews are spheres that reinforce the idea of the presenter or actor as a real person.
If there is a common characteristic of ‘youth’ radio, this is perhaps that it puts
elements of the real person on the air.
15. ‘All individuation of events implies selection, since the concrete diversity of
a happening only becomes such a determined event by virtue of the description
chosen, within which its concrete elements become the manifestation of one single
event of a particular type.’ (Quéré, 1994: 25)

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Hervé Glevarec is a researcher at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific

Research) working on the different kinds of French radio (public, commer-
cial and community) and their national and local audiences. His recent
publications include France Culture à l’œuvre, dynamique des professions
et mise en forme radiophonique (Paris, 2001) as well as chapters in
O. Donnat (ed.) Regards croisés sur les pratiques culturelles (Paris, 2003)
and O. Donnat and P. Tolila (eds) Le(s) Public(s) de la culture: politiques
publiques et équipements culturel vol. 1 (Paris, 2003) and articles in
Réseaux, The French Journal of Communication and Informations Sociales.
Address: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Ifresi-Clersé, Lille,
France. [herve.glevarec@univ.lille1.fr]