Music radio stations from the “On Air” to the Online : Identifying media logics in the content and formats of Radio FIP on its digital platforms

Abstract: Internet and digital media have profoundly reorganised the radio landscape by giving birth to new formats and patterns of radio listening. Today, traditional radio actors systematically use online platforms to diffuse their programs and communicate with their audience. This master thesis offers a case study and examines how Radio FIP, a French music station of public service, uses its digital devices to diffuse its program and produce content online. On the basis of existing researches on radio and radio diffusion online, and with the help of the concepts of format, media logics and hybrid media system, the author of this paper defines two logics of traditional radio and radio online used as reference in order to analysis the influence of media logics on the station’s material and formats online.   Observation of Radio FIP’s website and social media pages on Facebook and Twitter showed  a clear influence of radio online logics in the visual and informative extra content, the additional audio offers through online webradio streams, the promotion of non linear and asynchronous formats of radio listening’s and the incorporation of networked media frames. At the same time, logics of traditional radio prove to be also very significant with the pre-eminence and promotion of the station’s on air broadcast on digital devices and the reproduction of traditional radio patterns of temporality, music prescription and vertical communication on social media platforms. The coexistence of the two logics in Radio FIP online platforms characterises the station’s digital apparatus as a hybrid media space, and opens up new research trails for better understanding what influence the content formats of radio stations diffusing online.