Page - 39 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Patricia Jäggi | Cosmopolitan Noises 39 emigration. In short, the Swiss Shortwave Service evolved from a remedy for homesickness into a trigger for wanderlust and a cultivator of a positive image abroad. The scholarly discourse about international broadcasting is influenced by the political du- ality of East and West and the problem of jamming. The Eastern Bloc countries in particular tried to stifle the free circulation of radio waves by using jammers (Spohrer 2010, 101), where- by a radio transmitter was set to the same or adjacent frequency as the broadcaster that would be disturbed in order to hinder the circulation of propagandistic information. The result was an absurd situation wherein, for example, listeners in the GDR were not even able to receive the only radio broadcast from the GDR itself (Classen 2013, 331-343). Through the lense of political conflict, radio historians focus on the official institutional agenda, which was largely influenced by ideological and political issues (Somerville 2012). Radio and Cold War historians mainly attribute political propaganda – in the sense of geopolitical aggression – to the medium. That is why other effects of these cultural diplomatic relations between countries, such as the enabling of new listening experiences, have not been given the attention they are due (Bade- noch et al. 2013, 361-374). The archives of the Swiss Shortwave Service, with its programmes, listener letters, strategy papers, and my personal listening experiences thus became alternative sources for experiential- ly reconstructing radio listening. In the first phase of research I focused on some of the 700 extant recordings from the period of interest (1950 until 1975). However, during my work in the sound and paper archives of the Swiss international radio, some limits became apparent, prompting a second phase of my research, which took place in the ether. Using historical radio sets, I aimed at approaching the experience even closer. Listening as research method Radio scholar Golo Föllmer describes the lack of an inclusion of the affective side which is also the side of experience in the analysis of radio. He writes that until now radio analysis has only focused on content and structure such as the number of words, music and jingles, openers, and other elements of design. In doing so, the Anmutungsqualität – the ‘quality of impression’ – was left aside. Föllmer also uses the term Gefühlstönung, which could be translated as ‘emotional tinge’. According to Föllmer, Anmutung is part of the stylebook and design of radio. The quali - ty of speakers’ voices and their way of speaking play a role, as well as the technical production and layout of the sound material, such as the recording practices, sound editing, and mixing. Föllmer positions the Anmutungsqualität on the side of editorial and production practices in radio and somehow excludes the listener (Föllmer 2013). The concepts of Anmutung and Gefühlstönung overlap strongly with concepts of atmos - phere. The aesthetic practices in radio design that Föllmer discusses relate strongly to Gernot Böhme’s discussion of the ‘making of atmospheres’. Föllmer’s argument places Anmutung only on the side of production (of the object), whereas Böhme sees atmospheres as a phenomenon that transcends the subject-object dichotomy (Böhme 2017, 16). Atmospheres, in his view, come into existence not only through being produced, but also through being perceived: an atmosphere is sensed and becomes a reality in the perceivers; simultaneously, the objects of per- ception radiate atmospheres and are sometimes explicitly designed to do so (Böhme 2017, 20). By looking at both the production and the reception side of the experience I tried to capture