PRODUCING BIOETHICS RADIO – NEW MEDIA AND BIOETHICS PEDAGOGY
ROBESON, RICHARD
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION
Prof. Richard Robeson
Department of Communication
Wake Forest University.
Producing Bioethics Radio — New Media and Bioethics Pedagogy
Synopsis:
This paper details a strategy by which a class of undergraduate Communication majors learned audio production while in the process also learning critical and analytical skills in bioethics.
Producing Bioethics Radio — New Media and Bioethics Pedagogy
RICHARD ROBESON
Adjunct Professor of Practice – Bioethics, Department of Communication
Bioethics Faculty, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
WFU Center for Bioethics, Health and Society
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC USA
HAWAII INIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES ON ARTS, HUMANITIES, SOCIAL SCIENCES AND EDUCATION HONOLULU, HI 8-11 January 2016
The Spring 2015 semester, a new course in the Department of Communication at Wake Forest University (WFU) saw the introduction a highly innovative approach to bioethics pedagogy. Titled “Producing Bioethics Radio, “ the course, designed and taught by this author, brought bioethics and internet radio together for the first time at WFU, while also re-introducing radio production to the Department of Communications undergraduate curriculum for the first time in over twenty-five years.
The extraordinary capabilities of current digital technology combined with the exceptionally low cost of both hardware and software platforms make high-quality audio easily available to anyone with access to a computer or a smartphone. Even though video has garnered much of the attention devoted to what for lack of a better term might be called the “democratizing” influence of modern technology (from YouTube, to citizen activists recording instances of police misconduct, to the July 2015 film “Tangerine,” which was filmed entirely on the iPhone 5), audio has experienced a comparable trajectory, such that the term “radio” has acquired an entirely new definition. Whereas in the past, the reach of a radio signal was determined by a combination of signal strength, FCC licensure and atmospheric conditions (AM) or physical obstructions such as buildings of topographical features (FM), the internet now gives radio (i.e., “internet radio,” “podcasting”) a reach that has until very recently been unimaginable.
This paper details a strategy by which a class of undergraduate Communication majors learned audio production while in the process also learning critical and analytical skills in bioethics. As might be expected, the range of available topics and subject areas is almost without limit, from the historical and theoretical foundations of bioethics, to some of the signature cases that helped to define the field, to more contemporary issues such as the place of social media in bioethics inquiry.
The presentation of the paper will include some of the commentaries/analyses that students were required to write, record and edit, which will in turn facilitate discussion of the pedagogical imperatives of combining two fields, radio and bioethics, into a single discipline that is not so much journalistic as scholarly, including the demands of ’writing for the ear.” Of particular note is that the content in every instance — the case examples that will be a part of the paper as well as those which will not — is exclusively bioethics.
“Producing Bioethics Radio,” can thus be regarded as an adoptable and/or adaptable model for bioethics pedagogy at any given level of education, and also an innovative means of engaging our new and unprecedentedly accessible media.