Audio strategy
Audio can be an effective tool in campaigning and advocacy. This guide examines the uses of audio, what makes effective campaigning content, and how to strategise about using audio in your organizing work.
Creating an excellent audio piece is no longer the preserve of media experts. Today everybody can potentially make an audio piece, so long as you have some basic equipment and a little background knowledge. Using audio for campaigning and advocacy is a growing phenomenon, but it takes planning to make a piece innovative and effective.
This guide looks at how you can create an audio work that is powerful and useful to you and your audiences. There are many different kinds of audio pieces, ranging from in-studio discussions, talk shows and phone-ins; to in-the-field recordings of events such as a rally. Other popular formats are documentaries or features that combine various recordings — such as interviews, background sounds, music and narration.
All these types of programming can now also be distributed as podcasts, i.e. as downloadable audio feeds you can subscribe to online. These segments can be used for many different types of campaigning or education. It is a great way to reach a mass audience — both those who may listen to radio stations and people who listen to audio online.
When someone listens to your programme, they are engaging with the content in an intimate way — just you and them. Radio/audio has the power to be both private and public; intimate and broad-based. It can reach large amounts of people who may not otherwise be exposed to your message and provide them with compelling and personal details.
Integrating audio with other content
Using audio for advocacy case study: Radialistas (Peru)
The organisation Radialistas Apasionadas y Apasionados is a not-for-profit NGO based in Lima, Peru. They use radio to promote communication through democratic, free, accessible content concerned with human rights, race and sexuality.
Radialistas is an audio production centre with services targeted to radio professionals around the world, but with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean.
The online audio in Spanish and Portuguese can be downloaded for podcast or rebroadcasting.
One of the best aspects of audio programming is that it can be used to supplement and support other media and communications outputs. In your campaigning strategy you may have print products — ad space in newspapers, or flyers and brochures — and events, such as a public meeting. Audio can support and amplify all these outputs — it can repeat and reinforce your print content, it can be a feature at an event, or can extend the event by recording it and making this recording a feature of another media output.
Multiple platforms
The term that new media strategists use to describe this is ‘multiple platforms’ — this refers to the ability to put your message or content out via as many routes as possible at the same time, online and offline: playing a recording via local and even national broadcasters can be augmented by also making the recording available online as a podcast download, as a streaming web file, as a transcript, and even with video and photo clips, all linked with easy-to-navigate web links.
All these platforms mutually reinforce and benefit each other — they literally amplify your message. In on-air radio programming, mixing audience participation with audio recordings is also a powerful way to engage and involve people in your campaign or advocacy programme. Your target audience can be encouraged to call in to a live programme and have their say — and if well-planned, this format can complement pre-recorded and in-studio content.
Checklist
Using audio for advocacy case study: The December 18th Campaign
In 2006, The December 18 Campaign developed an audio campaign to celebrate International Migrants Day. Nearly 50 radio stations from 27 countries participated, and over 42 programmes were gathered in languages as varied as Chinese, Baha, Spanish and Kazak. The campaign secured over 1700 visitors to the website on December 18, and hundreds of audio files were played and downloaded from the site.
Radio marathon coordinator Myriam Horngren is convinced that audio is extremely useful for advocacy, especially on migration issues.
“There are many migrant and diaspora radio stations or shows around the world both online and offline, which shows that it is definitely fulfilling a need and so we are able to outreach to them,” she says. “Most people in the world have access to radios (unlike television or the net) and even in developed societies people listen to radios online whilst working, at home whilst doing other activities and in cars or other mode of transport... so podcasting now is used widely. Also most radios in the world communicate in the local language which means outreach to a wide audience is possible.”
Here's a checklist of things to consider while planning your audio project.
Audience
Producing informative and entertaining audio is an effective way of reaching different audiences. People like to listen to other people and other situations — whether it is via radio, online or in person. Rural audiences use radio more than any other media, particularly if it is in their own local language; people who are not literate also find audio a powerful way of finding out information and learning; and increasingly youth who have access are ‘switched on’ to online audio.
Cost
The cost of making audio is relatively low. It involves access to a digital recorder, and then access to software for editing the sounds into a distributable piece — and both these resources can be shared, and accessed by each producer on a temporary basis. It is also possible to record sound using old style tape recorders (such as a Sony Walkman) and feed this analogue sound into a computer, which converts it into digital sounds for editing. You can learn about how to do this in the guide to using Audacity.
Person time
Audio pieces normally range from 30 seconds (the length of most radio or TV ads) to five minutes (the length of most news items on a radio programme). Documentaries and longer features, however, may be up to half an hour in length. The time needed to make an audio piece can be generally calculated as an hour for every block of five minutes of broadcast time.
Skill levels required
For gathering audio, simply being able to get the sound right — through listening to your interviewee and adjusting sound levels as they speak — is all that is required. Most community radio volunteers learn to record sound well within a few days of practice. The editing stage requires a higher skill level, but it is also increasingly accessible to the beginner.
Timeline
The ‘1 hour for every 5 broadcast minutes’ rule is not a scientific assessment but one based on many radio producers’ experience. At least half of this time is taken by sourcing and recording the piece, along with going through the content and making decisions about what to use and what to leave out, and then additional time distributing it to listeners.
Hardware resources
Using audio for advocacy case study: Transparency Radio Broadcasts (Thailand)
Since 2001, Transparency Thailand (TT) has produced a series of radio shows dealing with the problems of corruption and the lack of transparency in government and business circles. The shows were aired on a major Bangkok radio station with an audience of over one million people. Later, TT was invited to broadcast an additional 15-minute radio slot on the country’s military radio network. This has allowed for coverage on more than ten other radio stations in many more remote and rural areas of Thailand.
Over the first two years of the initiative, the shows have been aired more than 100 times, and over 200 guest speakers have appeared from various government agencies, independent organisations, the private sector, academic institutions and civil society groups. The radio station has agreed to continue supporting the programme by providing assistance and airtime.
Recorders
Although digital recorders are increasingly the norm, either an analogue or digital recorder will do the job. Whichever you use, when you input it into your computer it will be converted to digital sound, which you can then edit with free digital sound editing software. You can use a minidisk recorder, any type of digital recorder, a professional-grade analogue recorder, or a simple “walkman”-style cassette recorder. If you plan to pitch your piece to on-air radio broadcasters, you should not use a mini-cassette recorder, because the sound they produce is not broadcast quality. Two important factors that distinguish recorders from each other is the presence of a time counter and the ability to adjust sound levels. Neither are necessities, but both are extremely helpful.
Note that you'll need a special converter to get your analogue sound into digital format to edit on the computer.
A microphone
It’s best to have an external microphone so you can put it as close to the sound source as possible. Any standard microphone, uni or omni directional, will do. Many recorders have a built in microphone that is often more than sufficient for nonbroadcast quality recording but may not produce clear enough sound for radio play. If you have to use a recorder with a built-in mic, be sure to hold the recorder as close to source of the sound as possible — if it is an interview, hold it relatively close to the person’s mouth.
Headphones
You will need a set of headphones so as to gauge sound levels as you record. The headphones enable you to hear the sound exactly as it is being recorded, and therefore exactly as the audience will hear it.
Steps to great audio
Follow the steps below to achieve fantastic audio!
Step 1 — Planning
Creating great audio is not only about sound levels. Planning what you want to produce is the first vital step, and you should revisit your plan throughout the process of making the audio, to make sure that you are still producing what you planned to produce.
Your plan should answer the following questions: Who is this for? and What is it trying to achieve?
Identify your audience. What is the key message? What do you want listeners to learn / feel / do? What are the barriers to this audience hearing this message?
Step 2 — Choosing a format
Choose the right format for your audience and message. Here are some common formats for you to choose from.
Panel discussion — an interviewer with two or more contributors
Phone-in — recording of contributors on the phone; usually used in studio-based context. Note: be careful about legal restrictions about recording people in the phone, this is illegal in some countries, even if the person has given permission.
Single interview — with an interviewee and interviewer Feature — with voice, background sound, narration and other elements mixed together
Dramatic — this is a broad category and can include theatre, music and other entertaining formats
Informative — a piece that primarily conveys information, in the same way as a public service announcement or advert provides educational information
Endorsement — using a well known person to convey a message, such as a leader or a celebrity
Using audio for advocacy case study: HIV/AIDS audio pieces from OneWorld Radio
OneWorld Radio collected a selection of audio pieces made by young people for World AIDS Day, with the aim of make these pieces available for community radio broadcasters around the world and for online listeners globally. The content was gathered through a competition called UNICEF/OneWorld Radio Prize. Awards are presented for the best feature (up to six minutes) and the best Public Service Announcement (PSA).
Examples of audio produced in 2007 include:
Step 3 — Choosing a style
Choose a style for your audio piece that suits your audience and your message.
Formal or informal — do you want to use humour and familiarity as tools to reach your audience, or do you want to convey information by invoking authoritative sources and “experts”? The most obvious example of the formal style is a news item, in which the emphasis is put on the authority of the information.
With a narrator or without — do you want to let the voice of your contributor(s) be the whole audio piece, as many ‘oral history’ productions do, or do you want to incorporate a “presenter” voice to draw the pieces together for the audience?
Step 4 — Setting up the recording
Whether you are doing an interview or capturing raw sound, you need to take time to test the sound levels before you actually start recording. Background sound, such as the hum of an air conditioner, might not have been noticeable before you started recording, but once you have your headphones it can suddenly sound very loud.
Some background sound can add to the atmosphere, but some can be purely distracting. If the noise is a problem, ask it to be silenced, or if necessary move to another location. There is nothing worse (and it happens a lot) than to come back with unusable recordings simply because it felt too awkward to doing anything about it at the time.
If you are doing an interview, take time to test your contributors’ voice for loudness and clarity, and make any necessary changes — such as adjusting the sound levels, repositioning the microphone, or changing the seating arrangement or general environment.
You can also use this “test period” as a way to break the ice — people are often nervous about being recorded and uncomfortable speaking into a microphone, but you can take steps to ensure that they are as relaxed as possible. Welcome them, perhaps make a joke, and then tell them that you will ask a few ‘trailer’ questions that won’t be recorded. ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ is a standard first question to break the ice, and also to test voice levels.
For some sorts of interviews, you may want to prepare the interviewee(s) in advance by discussing what sort of questions you are going to ask. Especially if the recording is being played live, or if you hope to use the interview without much editing, this is time well spent.
Step 5 — Reviewing your material
One of the most important steps in producing audio is to listen back to your recording and make notes or a full transcript of what was said and where the good sounds are located. If you do this in shorthand, it is called a “log.” This step takes time, and a frequent mistake made by audio producers of all experience level is hasty logging. This can result in a great deal of wasted time! Time spent reviewing and logging your content is time well spent.
A log can take a number of forms depending on what works for you, but at minimum, be sure to record the time of each new paragraph or new sound (make sure to start your playback at 00’00”), and then additionally the time when there is a good bit of speech or background sound. Note the start time, the first few words, the last few words, and the end time for each section that you like. For example: INTRO (00’20”): “I believe the most important aspect is …… OUT: …………………everyone should know this”. (00’50”)
If your recorder does not have a counter button, you can use a stopwatch to capture these times. You might also want to write notes to yourself such as “overview” or “part 3 — significance” to help you remember what part of your story this sound connects to.
If you set up your log as a table, you can make a column for such notes, and if you do a fuller transcription you can just insert them in the text with a consistent flag. However you choose to do it, think of this step as identifying the building blocks that you are later going to go back to when you edit or mix.
Step 6 — Editing and “packaging” content
Once you have your building blocks identified, you can go back and start putting your piece together. This may entail recording additional clips of narration to bridge certain themes.
Even if your piece has only three sections — for example: a three-sentence intro, a two-minute interview, and a conclusion pointing to where listeners can learn more — you still want to have identified these three pieces and thought through how they are going to fit together. In this stage, it is important to consult back to the priorities you identified in Step 1 to keep yourself on track.
Step 7 — Usage and distribution
If you create an interesting and engaging audio piece, you can make this available to radio stations as well as to online distributors — for example advocacy websites. The Internet enables online audio to be used and accessed around the world usually at no extra cost to the distributor or user; this makes it a powerful media and advocacy tool that is difficult to block or censor. An audio piece can have a long shelf life, particularly if it is not dated by a reference to a time or event.
The ability to reuse an audio piece is strength of the resource; it can be archived in an online audio database, and it can be repeated on radio shows in new and different configurations. In order to successfully distribute content to both online or on-air sources, advance research and relationship-building work is necessary.
Step 8 — Evaluation
It can be a major challenge to evaluate the success or impact of an audio piece. You can obtain data about who listened online from programs that tally website hits and downloads, and radio stations also have tools to assess audience size. But evaluating the impact and effectiveness requires focus groups, questionnaire and other methodologies being applied to groups of listeners if these can be identified and such data collection arranged. You could prearrange for a number of people to listen to the audio and give you their feedback.
Common problems
Using audio for advocacy case study: Radio Spots Campaign (Brazil)
In 2002, TI Brasil1 asked a São Paulo-based radio station to regularly air short anti-corruption spots aimed at awareness-raising and behavioural change. The initiative — called “Say No to Corruption” — airs radio spots four times per day, two during the prime time noon news programme. At least nine other Brazilian radio stations approached by TI Brasil replicated the initiative soon thereafter. According to the creators, the tool was only possible because TI Brasil wrote the spots themselves. To inform an even larger audience about the campaign, they also asked about 800 people (200 of whom are journalists who are informed on a weekly basis about TI Brasil’s activities) to tell other people in their communities about the campaign.
Local organisations in provinces were also invited to take part in the initiative. There were no costs involved as the TI Brazil managed to reach the pro bono cooperation of their media allies and partners.
Here are a few common mistakes to avoid!
Straying from your plan
Getting lost and creating something very different from what you planned can be a common problem in creating audio because there are many factors that are not always under your control. For example, an interviewee may not be saying exactly what you expect them to say, may be less articulate than you hoped, or background sound may have given you a problem.
Not going with your gut instinct
Go with your gut: if it sounded good to you first time then it will sound good to your listener. It’s a common mistake to ignore these feelings when you need to include more content or topics. But if it does not sound right you should not use it. If you need to, use narration rather than trying to stretch or mixed up sounds that just do not work. ‘If in doubt, leave it out’ is an old saying in radio broadcasting that every new producer is taught.
Producing earnest but boring content
A common mistake is to make earnest, dull audio pieces, especially if the issue in focus is particularly serious. Just because the topic is serious does not mean the audio piece needs to be dull. Use music, sound effects, and actuality (background sound) to spice it up. Un-attributed clips of comments by people on the street — called “vox-pops” — are popular in broadcasting and can give any piece colour and diversity.
Glossary
Many of these definitions have been drawn from Wikipedia. Article references thanks to Sound Delivery.
Actuality — background sounds and music that get edited into an audio piece, e.g. crowd noise if you are covering a rally or birdsong if you are using that for an environmental piece.
Audio — sound, in the context of broadcast and online sound recordings, production and distribution.
Analog recording equipment — sound recording technology that preceded digital, for example reel-to-reel tape machines.
Analog telecommunications — include traditional telephony, radio, and TV broadcasts.
Broadcast — the distribution of audio and/or video signals that transmit programmes to an audience; mainly thought of in terms of radio and TV transmissions.
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) — any form of data exchange across two or more networked computers. More specifically, those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats (i.e., instant messages, e-mails, chat rooms) between two or more individuals. Online audio is an important format.
Content — refers to all the various elements in an audio piece, including interview content or other main voice content, linking narrative and actuality.
Digital audio — uses digital signals for sound reproduction. Digital audio encompasses audio whenever it is in computerized form; including analog-to-digital conversion, digital-to-analog conversion, storage, and transmission.
Digital audio player (DAP) — a devise that stores, organizes and plays digital music (or other audio) files. It is more commonly referred to as a MP3 player (because of the ubiquity of the MP3 format), but DAPS often play many additional file formats.
Electronic media — media that utilizes electronics or electromechanical energy for the end user (audience) to access the content. This is in contrast to static media (mainly print media), which is most often created electronically, but doesn’t require electronics to be accessed by the end user in the printed form. The primary electronic media sources familiar to the general public are better known as video and audio recordings, distributed online, via CD-ROM etc. Most new media is in the form of digital media. However, electronic media may be in either analog or digital format.
Formats — audio formats refers to the type of programme or production, for example a talk show format, an interview format, a feature format. For audio distribution on the Internet distribution formats includes online audio, podcasting, streaming.
Multimedia — communications that incorporate multiple forms of information content and processing.
MiniDisc (MD) — is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage device initially intended for storage of up to 80 minutes of digitalized audio. Today, it has developed into a general-purpose storage medium in addition to greatly expanding its audio roots.
Microphone — an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound pressure into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as tape recorders, live and recorded audio engineering, in radio and television broadcasting and in computers for recording voice, and VoIP.
New media — a term describing media that can only be created or used with the aid of computer processing power. It is a form of media that includes some aspect of interactivity for its audience and is usually in digital form. The distinction between “new media” and “old media” is difficult to identify since over the last decade many old media enterprises have started to expand into producing new media.
Podcasting — a media file that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers.
Portable media players (PMP) — a self-reliant electronic device that is capable of storing and playing files in one or more media formats.
RSS — A family of web feed formats used to syndicate digital content, such as podcasts.
Soundbites (soundbyte) — a very short piece of content edited or extracted from a longer interview that is viewed as particularly relevant or revealing.
Streaming audio — is audio available via the Internet as a continuous ‘stream.’ Often refers specifically to a “live stream” — i.e. content that is continuously received by an end-user while it is being delivered by the provider.
Transmission — in general information theory, transmission is taken to mean the complete process of communication of information via a channel, such as a radio broadcast transmission; but increasingly via new technology channels such as Internet.
Voice over IP (VoIP) — also called “Internet telephony,” “Broadband Phone,” and “Voice over Broadband” — this is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network.
Links & resources
Organisations
AMARC — the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (known by its French acronym) is an international network of community radio members, with links to global campaigns and resources.
Indymedia — a network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.
Itrainonline’s Multimedia Training Kit — a free collection of training materials for audio producers from a range of communication NGOs.
Media Trust — a UK-based charity ‘ bringing together the media industry and charities.
OneWorld Radio — a network of NGOs and community radio members, with online audio archive and resources.
Sound Delivery — a non-profit sector communications and training company.
Readings
Some selected readings collated by Sound Delivery:
Credits
This guide was written by Jackie Davies, Communication for Development Consulting. jackiedavies2 at yahoo.co.uk