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New audio media textbook seeks to advance audio media studies and listening skills

A new book by Iben Have addresses the upsurge in audio media with a new textbook that provides theoretical and analytical tools on digital audio media aimed mainly for a higher education audience.

Photo: Iben Have


A sound wave has washed over the Danish and international media landscape in recent years. We stream and download audio files like never before. The podcast in all its diversity has revitalized the radio, and all over the world all age groups have opened their ears to digital audio books, audio newspapers and sound-based relaxation and meditation applications.
This ‘sound wave’ is addressed in a new book Lydmedier. Teori og analyse (in English: Audio media. Theory and analysis) published by Iben Have, Carlsberg Monograph fellow at AIAS and Associate Professor at the Department of Media Studies at Aarhus University. 
The book offers an introduction to modern digital audio media and presents concepts and approaches to how we can analyze them. Audio expressions and sound media require different analytical methods than those we apply in the analysis of images and text due to the fleeting nature of sound and as the sense of hearing works differently from the sense of sight.
The aim of the book is to get the reader to open their ears and become an analytically attentive listener who gets a richer experience and a more qualified understanding of the digital audio media. The book is particularly suitable for teaching within higher education in media and communication studies, but can also be used in high schools and upper secondary education and by others interested in digital audio media.