Article

Radio As Resonance Chamber: Sounding Counterhegemonic Aural Imaginaries of Community on US Airwaves

Adriane Pontecorvo

Published in: Ethnomusicology Ireland 11 (2026)
Pages: 94-109 | Published Online: 19 June 2026
https://doi.org/10.64208/DAAH6632

Abstract

Couched in the nationalist language of “America First”, the Rescissions Act of 2025 cut billions of dollars of federal funding from the US government in international aid and non-commercial media. Though these areas seem disparate, both are aligned in their investments in a more expansive sense of community that counters that espoused by the conservative Republican Party dominant in US national politics since the 2024 election cycle. In this article, I listen to a musical performance on one US community station as an example of how community programming can impact aural imaginaries of space, place, and belonging. In analysing this case, I argue that community radio has the potential to counter insular notions of community by rejecting mass media echo chambers in favour of open-ended resonance chambers.

Keywords: community radio, media geographies, mass media, American studies, culture industries, non-commercial media

Author: Adriane Pontecorvo | ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1057-7025

Adriane Pontecorvo holds a PhD from the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University in Bloomington. A community radio programmer since 2011, her research focuses on complex social-sonic-spatial systems of community radio and critical potentials for their mobilisation in the twenty-first-century United States.