A paper presented at ISOJ by Monica Chadha, Alex Avila, Homero Gil de Zuñiga, University of Texas at Austin sought to answer: Who listens to podcasts?And are they engaged with politics?
Quite rightly, they defined a podcast as an audio programme that you subscribe to, rather than audio downloaded from the net.
The study found that podcasts were most popular among people in their thirties and in their fifties.
In a lightning fast presentation, Chadha said podcast users tended to be highly educated and enjoy high incomes. But the study also found that minorities were more likely to use this technology.
In terms of genres, entertainment shows were far more popular then news
The research also looked at political engagement, as internet use for news have been shown to increase political engagement.
Chadha said they found that people who used podcasts were more likely to be engaged politically.
The study is a first step towards understanding who uses podcasts. Clearly one avenue for further research is why?
PDF