Listening protocols: This aspect of the thesis will determine the difference between rigorous and amateurish work. To thoroughly investigate the activity of an independent radio station, we must listen hour after hour for a few days or a week, and devise a sort of “program guide” that indicates what content is broadcast at what time, the length of each program, and the ratio of music to talk. If there are debates, the schedule should indicate the topics, participants, and so on. You will not be able to present all of the data you have collected, but you can include meaningful examples (commentary on the music, witty debate remarks, particular styles of news delivery) that define the artistic, linguistic, and ideological profile of the station you are scrutinizing. It may help to consult the models for radio and TV listening protocols developed over some years by the ARCI Bologna,4 in which listeners determined the duration of news presentation, the recurrence of certain terms, and so on.
Once you have completed this investigation for various radio stations, you could compare your data. For example, you could compare the manner in which two or more radio stations introduced the same song or presented a recent event. You could also compare state-owned radio shows to those of independent stations, noting differences in the ratios of music to speech, news to entertainment, programs to commercials, classical to pop music, Italian to foreign music, traditional pop music to “youthoriented” pop music, and so on. With a tape recorder and pencil in hand, you will be able to draw many more conclusions through systematic listening than from your interviews with station managers. Sometimes even a simple comparison of commercial sponsors (the ratios between restaurants, cinemas, publishers, etc.) can clarify the obscure financing sources of a given station.
The only condition is that you must not follow impressions or make imprudent conclusions such as, “At noon a particular radio station broadcast pop music and a Pan American commercial, so the station must be pro-American.” You must also consider what the station broadcast at one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, and on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
If you are investigating many stations, your listening protocol should take one of the following two approaches. The first is to listen to all the stations simultaneously for one week. You can do this by organizing a group of researchers, each one listening to a different station simultaneously. This is the most rigorous solution because you will be able to compare the various radio stations during the same period. Your other choice is to listen to the stations sequentially, one station per week. This will require hard work, and you must proceed directly from one station to the next so that the listening period is consistent. The total listening time for all stations should not exceed six months or a year at most, since changes are fast and frequent in this sector, and since it would make no sense to compare the programs of Radio Beta in January with those of Radio Aurora in August.
When you have compiled the data from the three sources outlined above, there is still much left to do. For example, you can do the following:
Establish the size of each station’s audience. Unfortunately, there are no official ratings data, and you cannot trust the station managers’ figures. The only alternative is a random sample telephone survey in which you ask participants to which stations they listen. This is the method followed by RAI, Italy’s national broadcasting company, but it requires an organization that is both specialized and expensive. This is a good example of the difficulty involved in a scientific treatment of a contemporary, topical phenomenon. You cannot rely on personal impressions and conclude, for example, that “the majority of listeners choose Radio Delta” simply because this station is popular among four or five of your friends. (Perhaps a thesis on a subject like Roman history might be a better choice after all, and it will certainly pose fewer research problems.)
Search newspapers and magazines for mentions of the stations you are scrutinizing. Record any opinions of the stations that you find, and describe any controversies.
Record the specific laws relevant to the stations’ operations, and explain how various stations follow or elude them. Describe the legal issues that arise. Document the relevant positions of the political parties on the stations you are scrutinizing, and on free radio stations in general. Attempt to establish comparative tables of commercial fees. The managers may not disclose these, or they may provide erroneous data, but you may be able to gather the data elsewhere. For example, if Radio Delta broadcasts advertisements for a particular restaurant, you may be able to solicit data from the restaurant owner.
Record specifically how different radio stations cover a specific event. (For example, the Italian national elections of June 1976 would have provided a perfect opportunity for this part of the project.)
Analyze the linguistic style of the broadcasters. (The ways that they imitate American DJs or public radio hosts, their use of the terminology of specific political groups, their use of dialects, etc.)
Analyze the influence that free radio programs have had on certain public radio programs. Compare the nature of the programming, the linguistic usage, etc.
Thoroughly collect and catalog the opinions that jurists, political leaders, and other public figures express about the stations you are scrutinizing. (Remember that three opinions are only enough for a newspaper article, and that a thorough investigation may require a hundred.)
Collect the existing bibliography on the subject of free radio stations. Collect everything from books and journal articles on analogous experiments in other countries to the articles in the most remote local newspapers or smallest Italian magazines, so that you assemble the most complete bibliography possible.
Let it be clear that you do not have to complete all of these things. Even one of them, if done correctly and exhaustively, can constitute the subject of a thesis. Nor is this the only work to be done. I have only presented these examples to show how, even on a topic as “unscholarly” and devoid of critical literature as this one, a student can write a scientific work that is useful to others, that can be inserted into broader research, that is indispensable to anyone wishing to investigate the subject, and that is free of subjectivity, random observations, and imprudent conclusions.
As we have established, the dichotomy between a scientific and a political thesis is false. It is equally scientific to write a thesis on “The Doctrine of Ideas in Plato” and on “The Politics of ‘Lotta Continua’ from 1974 to 1976.”5 If you intend to do rigorous work, think hard before choosing the second topic, for it is undoubtedly more difficult. It will require superior research skills and scholarly maturity; if nothing else, you will not have a library on which to rely, but instead must effectively create your own.
In any case, we have seen that a student can write scientifically on a subject that others would judge as purely “journalistic,” just as a student can write a journalistic thesis on a topic that most would qualify as scientific, at least from its title.
2.7 How to Avoid Being Exploited by Your Advisor
As I’ve mentioned earlier, often a student chooses a topic based on his own interests, but other times a student wishes to work with a particular professor who suggests a topic to the student. Professors tend to follow two different criteria when suggesting a topic: a professor can recommend a familiar topic on which he can easily advise the student, or a professor can recommend an unfamiliar topic on which he would like to know more.
Contrary as it may seem, the second criterion is the more honest and generous. The professor believes that his ability to effectively judge and assist the candidate will require him to devote himself to something new, and thus the professor will expand his horizons. When the professor chooses this second path, it is because he trusts the candidate, and he usually tells the candidate explicitly that the topic is new and interesting to him. Even though universities currently require professors to advise many students, and therefore incline professors to cater to students’ interests, some professors still refuse to advise a thesis on a banal topic.
There are also specific cases in which a professor is conducting a wideranging research project that requires vast amounts of data, and he decides to engage graduating students as members of a team. In other words, he orients the students’ work in a specific direction for a certain number of years. He will assign topics that work together to establish a complete picture of his research question. This approach is not only legitimate but also scientifically useful, as each thesis contributes to a larger project that is more important for the collective interest. This approach is also useful from a teaching perspective, because each candidate will benefit from the advice of a professor who is well informed on the question, and each student can use as background and comparative material the theses that other students have already written
