Podcast Ecosystem from Producer to Lıstener
Dr. Aylin Dağsalgüler
Dr. Mürüvet Esra Yıldırım
Duygu Temel
Rıfat Özcan
Executive Summary
With the sounds of radio, the images of television, and the decentralized structure of the internet, we are surrounded by media messages from all sides. At any moment, a message may appear on a screen, and the view we’re looking at on the road might be blocked by a billboard. In an environment where so many messages appeal to various emotions, podcasts offer a world of content for us to engage with through our ears. They are listened to by 22% of internet users worldwide.
This research focuses on listeners’ experiences of podcast listening, their motivations for tuning into podcasts, the significance they attribute to podcast consumption, their perspectives on interacting with producers and fellow listeners within the podcast universe, the challenges they encounter, and the experiences, motivations, revenue models, issues, and solutions faced by podcast producers. To achieve this, focus groups and face-to-face interviews were conducted with both creators and listeners. We interviewed six podcast producers of varying ages and professional backgrounds/education levels, as well as eleven podcast listeners of different ages and educational backgrounds residing in five different cities.
This report presents primary data collected from both producers and listeners within the podcast ecosystem.
About Researchers
Aylin Dağsalgüler graduated from Celal Bayar University, Department of Turkish Language and Literature. She completed her master’s degree in International Communication at City, University of London. She received her PhD degree in Radio-Television-Cinema at Istanbul University. Since 2005, she has been working at Istanbul Bilgi University, Faculty of Communication, Department of Media. She teaches courses on political economy of media, network society, television culture and audience studies as well as project production for the media and conducts academic studies in these fields. Since 2009, she has worked on the establishment of 5 different programs within the Faculty. She conducted an EU-funded project and took part in two projects supported by the Istanbul Development Agency. He worked as a co-executive in the Poynter Institute MediaWise Turkey Digital Media Literacy project. Between 2015 and 2022, he served as the Assistant Dean at Istanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Communication. In addition to her academic studies, she prepared and presented a 45-episode chat program about TV series called Diziwiz on BİLGİ Faculty of Communication YouTube channel RGB with her students.
Mürüvet Esra Yıldırım holds a BA in History from Boğaziçi University, an MA in Criticism and Cultural Studies, and a PhD in Modern Turkish History from Atatürk Institute. In 2017, İletişim Publications published her book Kurmak Yeni Bir Hayat Kurmak/Kadınlar Anlatıyor: Fatherhood, Marriage and Divorce, published by İletişim Publications in 2017. In 2019, she was awarded the Young Social Scientist Award given every two years by the Turkish Social Sciences Association. She has written children’s books for National Geographic’s licensed publishing house in Turkey. She was introduced to the autobiography writing technique called Guided Autobiography (GAB) developed by Prof. James Birren and as the first person from Turkey to receive this training from the Birren Center, she is trying to bring this technique to Turkey under the name of Guided Autobiography (ROB). Using this technique, she was a content consultant for an autobiographical stage performance called Twelfth House. The Twelfth House team was awarded the Special Jury Award of the Theater Critics Association in 2022 and the Üstün Akmen Selection Committee Special Award in 2023. She recently wrote The Sick Man’s Daughter: Selmin Zeki Hanım (1884-1922) will be staged in 2023. She is currently busy preparing her doctoral thesis for publication.
Duygu Temel completed her bachelor’s degree in Journalism at Marmara University and her master’s degree in Media and Communication Studies at Galatasaray University. Temel is currently working on her PhD thesis at Galatasaray University Media and Communication Studies program and is currently preparing her dissertation on the political economy of podcasting in Turkey.
Rıfat Özcan is the founder of Podcaster App, Turkey’s first global podcast app. He is also one of the founders of the Open Data Association and has a podcast program called Politicast. Özcan, who draws on his academic background in journalism, political science, international relations and sociology, is a graduate of Istanbul University.