Time and Space in Early Norwegian Radio. Technology, Textuality, and Discursive Roles and Relations

Abstract

The present article takes its points of departure in medium and modernity theory (Meyrowitz 1985), as well as in the research on the special meaning patterns in developed broadcasting referred to as “para-social interaction” (Horton & Wohl 1956) and “flow” (Williams 1974, Ellis 1982). The empirical focus is on the early years of radio broadcasting in Norway (1925-1940). Through a detailed analysis of the relation between radio’s production and distribution technologies, on the one hand, and the formation of the medium’s textuality and discursive roles and relationships, on the other, the article assesses which stage in the fostering of a new sense of time and place Norwegian broadcasting had reached when the 1930s ebbed out. It is shown that very little in the way of the “blurring” of traditional distinctions between here and there, live and mediated, personal and public had become realities in the Norwegian context of the 1930s.