Networked Assemblages and Geopolitical Media: Governance, Infrastructure and Sites in BBC Radio

Abstract

The development of radio as a communication and broadcasting technology has been vital to popular, formal and practical geopolitics. This paper contributes to the nascent literature on assemblage thought in geopolitics by considering radio as a historical iteration of “the media”. Through this dialogue, it is suggested that British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio is both a material and discursive assemblage, operating at multiple scales, sites and intensities of governance. The paper argues that radio cannot be seen simply as a vehicle for producing popular geopolitical imaginaries, nor as a neutral military or cultural diplomatic tool. Contributing to the use of assemblage and actor–network thought in historical-popular geopolitics, the paper begins by articulating the benefits of certain elements of these theoretical registers to the sub-field in general, before moving onto a series of empirical fragments from the archive to illustrate these abstractions in a more concrete manner. First, it does so by considering the early governance and regulation of radio in the 1920s, then the forces producing the BBC’s Middle Eastern Relay network during the late 1960s. The paper concludes with a further call to take materiality seriously, particularly in future popular geopolitical research dealing with media networks.