Introduction
Sound is a multidimensional force. Often depicted as a linear wave with peaks and valleys, its resonances are experienced in a space as vibrations.Footnote 1 Sound is often interpreted as ephemeral—fleeting, if unrecorded, and therefore relying on the memory of the receiver. It is subject to the interpretation of listener(s) and thus socioculturally constructed as much as it is acoustically interpreted. In this article, podcasting, as a technology of sound, is examined for the way its content resonates with listeners in Africa, with and beyond the physical aspects of hearing. In 2022, the authors queried listeners in focus groups to better understand podcast consumption and attitudes towards podcasting in urban Ghana. Utilizing a multimodal approach to grounded-theory and media analysis, this research also examined the production practices and impact of Sincerely Accra (SA), a popular cultural affairs talk-show that was often mentioned by participants in the focus group pool, and has become notable internationally as an exemplar of contemporary African podcasting.
Theorizing from focus group discussions and drawing analysis from interviews with the host and producers, this article develops the concept of deep listening to characterize the affective ties that podcasts can develop with their audiences, or what in reception/critical media studies is often referred to as its interpretive community (Lindlof Reference Lindlof1988; Morley Reference Morley, Seiter, Borchers, Kreutzner and Routledge2013). Our notion of deep listening reflects existing theory on intimacy in podcasting (Euritt Reference Euritt2023; Adler Berg Reference Berg and Sørine2023), theory regarding sonic affect in listeners (Oliveros Reference Oliveros2005; Buzzarté and Bickley Reference Buzzarté and Tom2012), and the comments by our research participants: the Ghanaian podcast listeners in this study often used the emic term nkɔmɔ (Akan-TwiFootnote 2 for “deep conversation”)—a term which indexes the notion of collective, “deep” reflection. We advance deep listening as a useful concept for understanding the experience of sonic resonance, affective-exchange, and listener intimacy for Sincerely Accra and perhaps for other podcasts and aural media in Africa and beyond.
Research on podcasting as a new media phenomena in Africa has largely focused on the producers, hosts, and content (Alegi Reference Alegi2012; Hodapp Reference Hodapp2021; Royston Reference Royston2023; Ebada and Fox Reference Ebada and Fox2023). This article contributes to knowledge of its impact and practice by presenting the perspectives of listeners and their descriptions of aurality, which we foreground in our analysis. As audience studies—a subfield of media studies that explores the various ways in which people engage with media content—remains underexamined throughout the field of African media studies (cf. Willems and Mano Reference Willems and Mano2017; Englund Reference Englund2011; Spitulnik Reference Spitulnik, Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod and Larkin2002; Barber Reference Barber1997), this article seeks to address oversights in the qualitative research literature by listening to consumers in this important region of the Global South. Although deep listening is a concept used primarily within music performance (Oliveros Reference Oliveros2005; Back Reference Back, Ogborn, Blunt, Gruffudd and Pinder2014), it has found application in environmental ethics (Koch Reference Koch2019), indigenous and leadership studies (Brearley Reference Brearley, Voyageur, Brearley and Calliou2015), and increasingly in psychology and social work. This paper advances the concept as an emic description—a term that is expressed and understood within the audience’s language and culture (Haapanen and Manninen Reference Haapanen and Manninen2021). “Deep” is also an in vivo term that is utilized by SA’s host and thus reflective of the language of the podcast’s interpretive community.
Africa’s podcasting landscape
Podcasts are important points of media analysis, especially for African studies researchers, whose work has historically been founded on the exploration of oral literatures. Oral texts—recorded as oral history, language, and translations; as naming systems, titles, and personal address; or as folkloric conventions such as proverbs, poetry, storytelling, and songs, among other genres—have been core to the development of African studies as a scholarly field, and in some ways perhaps uniquely so (Reindorf [1895] Reference Reindorf2007; Finnegan [1970] Reference Finnegan2012; Vansina Reference Vansina1965; Okpewho Reference Okpewho1992). Despite the enthusiasm for podcasting’s use as a democratizing media in early research (Krishnan and Wallis Reference Krishnan and Wallis2020; Fox and Karianjahi Reference Fox and Karianjahi2021), the endurance of radio as Africa’s primary mass media, and the relatively high costs for internet on the continent have, in part, explained a lag in adoption during the period of 2014 to 2018 when podcasting emerged and flourished elsewhere.
Since 2018 with the expansion of podcasting away from Apple’s market-dominant platform—most importantly on Android devices, and via Spotify, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, ListenNotes, and other apps—African podcast content became immensely more available outside of local and regional outlets on the continent (Karianjahi Reference Karianjahi2021; Africa Podfest Reference Podfest2021). Podcasting has developed into a robust culture industry in Africa since that time, with on-demand, streamable, and downloadable audio programming becoming ascendant on digital platforms for existing broadcast radio, mega-church outreach, and education and public affairs programming, and for born-digital outlets, both locally hosted and now accessible primarily on Western content services. Sound Africa,Footnote 3 Afripods,Footnote 4 and the Nairobi-based African Podcast Festival (see Africa Podfest Reference Podfest2021) are among the growing number of production companies, platforms, and startups that have promoted home-grown audio podcasting focused on African audiences and local-language speakers in the past several years. This is in contrast to commercial and diplomatic efforts by organizations such as the BBC, RFI, and Voice of America, which have been active in promoting Africa-themed content since the global explosion in podcast consumption in 2014 and earlier (Royston Reference Royston2023).
While podcast consumption has typically been (over)identified with smartphone-use globally (Morris Reference Morris2024), Africa’s diverse mobile phone and mobile computing industry has allowed for access in different modes. It must be stated from the outset that where public broadcast radio is available, this remains the dominant form of consumption for news and entertainment media (Moyo Reference Moyo2012; Brooke Reference Brooke2024). “Feature phones,”Footnote 5 which dominate the cellular use on the continent, often possess FM receivers, which in part also explains the lag. Africa remains primarily a mobile internet-first mediascape, and access costs for wireless broadband, though varying by country, remain among the highest in the world (Alliance for Affordable Internet [A4AI] 2022). Still, access to any broadband internet has put podcasting content within the reach of many potential listeners.
In our focus groups, participants helped further elucidate this media ecology with their descriptions of various methods for accessing podcast content. While the mobile phone remained the dominant interface, participants described utilizing a “metered approach” (Donner Reference Donner2015) to accessing podcasts, choosing to download content via WiFi at universities or workplaces where media-rich internet content could be accessed cheaply. Users described storing audio files via their devices to access the content later, typically during their commutes or for use in their leisure time. This contrasts with the practice of on-demand “streaming” of episodes and podcast content over wireless internet while listening, as is typical in the West/Digital North, and in some urban areas in Africa where WiFi and public internet can be more available (Morris Reference Morris2024).Footnote 6
Podcasting has become more ubiquitous on the continent often through radio broadcasters, and through partnerships with established media and commercial brands (Adeyemi Reference Adeyemi2022). In Accra, Ghana, enterprising local radio stations and media companies such as CitiFM, MyJoyOnline, GhanaWeb, and UTV/PeaceFM utilize podcasting extensively in their promotion and distribution of on-air audio and video broadcasts, as well as shows specifically produced as audio podcasts for non-broadcast use. These offerings can be found across a range of platforms including the broadcasters’ websites, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Podcasts can also be increasingly accessed via Boomplay, an African audio-platform headquartered in Nigeria that boasts over 95 million users (Dredge Reference Dredge2024). The player comes standard on Transsion devices, which are made by a Chinese-owned company that dominates many markets on the continent under the brands Tecno and Infinix (Avle Reference Avle2022). Reliable statistics on the consumption of podcasting on the African continent are hard to come by, but the 2021 report by the commercial survey firm GeoPoll found that audiences were growing in countries such as Kenya. However, 75 percent of the 2,000 young mobile-users polled did not know what podcasts were and did not access them. A similar figure was reported for South African digital media users in the same time period (Edison Research 2019).Footnote 7
In an op-ed for United Nation’s African Renewal newsletter, podcasting advocate Josephine Karianjahi described the opportunities and struggles of a media-form and industry still emerging on the continent in 2021. Karianjahi, the co-founder of the African Podcast Festival and a social entrepreneur, in a personal reflection described the need for “reworking the [Western] podcast model for Africa” by utilizing ascendant platforms such as WhatsApp to distribute programs, for example. She stated:
Podcasting in Africa remains hard. Often funded from personal savings, a podcast production often drains African podcasters, many who had hoped that podcasting would one day become their livelihood. For example, podcast production can cost anywhere from $1,000 per episode to $12,000 for a full season of 12 episodes. Even then, there are also national podcast registration costs in some countries, as well as annual licenses. Across languages and regions, their tenuous success is subject to various country-specific taxes, regulations, and access to electricity. (Karianjahi Reference Karianjahi2021)
It should be stated that podcast practices across the fifty-four or more nations and polities on the continent encounter different technical challenges that result in different forms and aesthetics according to their specific media ecologies. Yet, Karianjahi’s experiences mirror testimony from podcasts producers interviewed for this project, and in other published reports (Royston Reference Royston2023; CNN 2021). The challenges are such that even when they are moderately successful, many podcast productions do not last more than two seasons (Africa Podfest Reference Podfest2021).
Sincerely Accra: A case study for understanding African podcasts’ sonic affordances
Despite the costs for both consuming podcasts and making them profitable enterprises, there have been a few sustaining successes in the podcast industry on the continent: The Gold Coast Report (GCR) is a podcast production company that has produced more than twenty different original programs since 2017. Sincerely Accra has been one of the network’s flagship programs in that time, following its development as a student-project at Ashesi University College. SA repeatedly came up with podcast listeners queried in our focus group, and thus emerged as a case study warranting further analysis. In October 2022, shortly after the authors conducted interviews with listeners and the hosts of the show, Spotify—one of the leading global media platforms for podcasting—named the show among its inaugural group of awardees for its newly created Africa Podcast Fund. Prior to this, SA was voted by Spotify as the most popular podcast show in Ghana (Oluwole Reference Oluwole2022). As we discuss further in our findings, SA’s use of familiar internet and street banter (including slang and Pidgin), and the use of popular- and traditional-cultural references using sound clips, were among what our participants stated most endeared them to the show. In comparison to other podcasts, especially Western programming, listeners in the focus groups often touted SA’s culturally relevant sonic aesthetics. These sentiments were often noted in the show’s use of prerecorded musical “bumps” between segments, the use of archival songs, and the incorporation of audience participation, including on-the-spot field interviews (called “vox populi” on the show), a popular convention in Ghanaian broadcast media. SA was recognized alongside shows such as Nipe Story (Kenya) and I Said What I Said (Nigeria), and ten more. In its award announcement, Spotify stated that their fund is part of an effort to “pay close attention to the many storytellers and entertainers across the African continent and use [its] platform to amplify and empower creators” (Spotify 2022).
Driven by our focus groups’ comments on SA’s singular sound, we utilize a sound-focused content analysis or close-listening (Galloway Reference Galloway2023; Royston and Ogoti Reference Royston and Ogoti2023) to help us understand the appeal of the show and to interpret the structure of its aural praxis. Sincerely Accra is a fast-paced, culture podcast, driven by music, humorous samples, and host Joseph Nti’s ebullient, slang-filled monologues, with sound design by the show’s producer Kwame Asante Ofori. It is a multilingual production, spoken primarily in English, with ample use of Twi, Ga, Ghanaian English and Pidgin, and pop culture and internet lingo. Sonically, it has a bright, high-pitched timbre similar to FM radio broadcasts, but its short-format and at times raunchy content mostly draw from the culture of independent podcasting. A typical episode during this research study ran from 30 to 40 minutes long (with later episodes running 60–70 minutes).
Each episode starts with a cacophonous introduction, filled with African pop music references and street sounds mixed together by Ofori. These moments are followed by a salutary monologue from Nti describing current events and the theme of the episode. This segment is typically followed by a vox pop in which a topical question is posed to people in various public settings (responses typically in English and Twi) (e.g., an episode in August 2019 posed “Should Ghana spend US$100 million on a national cathedral?”Footnote 8). A summary monologue follows, addressing the vox pop’s often salacious and exuberant sound bites. There is a less regular listener-write-in/advice segment drawing from queries sent via social media. A final segment features listener shout-outs and a very short closing from Nti. Interviews with celebrities, entertainers, and public figures are occasionally featured in the program. Each segment of the show is followed by a short musical bridge that references the last bit or foregrounds the next topic. For instance, the song “Yen Ara Asaase”/“Our Beloved Homeland” is played as an intro to the vox pop segment of Season 2 Episode 3 titled “National Cathedral Or…”. Nti’s delivery includes spurts of laughter, comical asides, and raucous slang as he greets listeners to the show, occasionally employing pet names and teasing the audience. “Hello kitty-booms and kitty-bons [sic]. I’m your host Joseph Nti, I can’t wait to get into this gig!” begins the same episode, followed by Nti’s distinctive laugh and an exclamatory yelp. As we argue more in-depth later, one of the ways that SA is distinctive among other Ghanaian podcasts is the way the show produces an inclusive dynamic between the podcast show’s listeners, the show’s content, and its producers through the sonic techniques described above. These elements are also reflexive, incorporating forms of audience address, audience feedback, and audio reference to cultural and popular media that generate and draw upon listeners’ shared experiences. Nti often uses direct- and secondary-address (e.g., “Listen bitches!” and “You know what it is!”), and audiences are made to feel as though they are part of an intimate, personalized discourse. He often uses the label “Sincerities” to brand his audience, using it as a term of endearment during episodes and in listeners’ engagements with the host on social media. These tactics, we argue, create layered modes of affective-exchange between Sincerely Accra’s listeners; the role of both sampled music and audience address factor heavily in the listeners’ sense of being part of the imagined or interpretive community for the podcast as our participants discuss in the section below. Beyond the generalized discourse in podcasting focusing on the ways producers create intimacy (Adler Berg Reference Berg and Sørine2023), the rest of this paper focuses on the emic experiences of these forms of sonic affect through the notion of nkɔmɔ or deepness in Ghanaian audio culture.
Methodological approaches: Audiences and new orality
With a focus group discussion, podcast content analysis, and interviews with producers as our primary data, we ground our approach within André Brock’s concept of Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA), initially developed for exploring Black discourse in spaces on Twitter and other social media. Brock argues for a “critical approach to internet and new media technologies, one that interrogates their material and semiotic complexities, framed by the extant offline cultural and social practices its users engage in as they use these digital artifacts” (Brock Reference Brock2018, 1013). CTDA is utilized here mainly to reconcile preferences and habits of listeners as they are shaped by Ghana’s larger media ecology, and the emergence and growth of podcasting in Ghana, in Africa, and for podcasting globally. Using this approach, we generate descriptive theory, utilizing insight from respondents and drawing on our work as media studies scholars and Africanists who have conducted long-term research into Ghana’s media ecology (Royston Reference Royston, Raiford and Raphael-Hernandez2017, Reference Royston and Ogoti2023, Reference Royston2025). The authors for this paper include a Ghanaian media researcher fluent in Akan-Twi and other Ghanaian languages, and a Black diasporan media scholar with extensive experience researching internet practices in the region. This paper’s focus on deep listening as an analytic, emerged from the interest to provide local and South-centered framings for engagement with African media content, decentering Eurocentric and Western frames for media analysis. For instance, the attentiveness to sound as a primary way of knowing, co-equal to logocentric modes, follows a praxis that Alexander Weheliye (Reference Weheliye2005) has described as “sonic Afro-modernity.” We complement existing critical media approaches by drawing from the emic descriptions of our research participants. Our preliminary analysis led us to ask more pointed questions about the role of new orality for listeners. We thus iterated upon our research interests, utilizing grounded theory methods (Charmaz Reference Charmaz2006; Glaser and Strauss Reference Glaser and Strauss1967), sometimes referred to as the “phronetic” (Tracy Reference Tracy2018). In examining the reception of podcasts by Ghanaian youth, this article contends with the following questions: How is listener affect mediated via the resonant sounds and oral messages coming from producers in this podcast series? Or more succinctly, how does acoustic resonance promote affective-exchange? We sought to understand what elements of sound and orality allow podcasters and their audiences to develop a sense of their interpretive community.
Beginning in August 2022, we collected and analyzed oral interviews with podcast listeners in Ghana’s capital, Accra, and via group video-chat. These interviews were in the form of focus groups with three different groups and a total of twenty respondents, mostly young professionals and graduate students from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.Footnote 9 Focus groups are a useful method of qualitative analysis here, allowing for researchers to generate participant responses to questions in a social environment (Frith Reference Frith2000; Merton Reference Merton1987). Focus group discussions allow social actors to interrogate each other’s responses, eliciting greater discussion about common experiences or their positions of knowledge. The social nature of focus groups can alleviate some of the inherent power imbalances between research participants and researchers, which is consistent with a decolonial, Africanist approach towards media and cultural studies research (Willems and Mano Reference Willems and Mano2017; Srinivasan, Diepeveen, and Karekwaivanane Reference Srinivasan, Diepeveen and Karekwaivanane2019), though it may also pose other social constraints. As radio studies scholar Margaret Amoakohene argues, “Using focus groups in audience research replicates the normal ways through which audiences attend and respond to the media, and discuss media content with others in their immediate environment” (Amoakohene Reference Amoakohene and Kwansah-Aidoo2005, 138). Despite their sometimes limited sample size, Amoakohene and others contend that the group interaction in focus groups can yield richer information than large surveys or individual interviews, even when the same participants are used (MacDougall and Fudge Reference MacDougall and Fudge2001).
Participants were recruited from the researchers’ existing networks within online communities, primarily WhatsApp groups focused on young professionals living in Ghana, and students from the University of Ghana, including majors and graduates from the journalism and media production disciplines who might have greater exposure to podcasting. We solicited participation of regular podcast listeners and utilized snowball sampling from our initial group of respondents. We did not limit participation to youth or young people, but most of those who participated in our focus groups were college-aged students or young professionals living in Accra, Ghana’s cosmopolitan capital. As part of our focus group sessions, participants listened to audio from episodes of the show. They were asked about their favourite SA episodes and researchers played excerpts to further explore listeners’ connections, utilizing the technique of media elicitation or prompting with research participants (Harris Reference Harris2015; Tinkler, Fenton, and Cruz Reference Tinkler, Fenton and Cruz2022).
The snowball sample was intentionally limited to Ghanaians living in Ghana, as opposed to those in diaspora, so as to specify the research case within a target population of users in the local African media ecology, and given the general dearth of research on continent-based podcast listeners. The demographic used here is often described as “African youth,” a social distinction that marks those without significant traditional/cultural titles, and/or social status, under the age of forty (Van Gyampo and Anyidoho Reference Van Gyampo, Anyidoho and Thompson2019; Strong and Kelly Reference Strong and Kelly2022). This demographic is not comprehensive for all Ghanaians, but rather maps to the global demographic of lead-users or early adopters with respect to innovations in information and communications technologies (van Greunen and Veldsman Reference Van Greunen, Veldsman, Hostettler, Besson and Bolay2018). In separate research reports, the average demographic for podcast audiences in Kenya was 25–35-year-olds, whereas the dominant demographic for listeners in South Africa was 13–25-year-olds, further substantiating our focus (Africa Podfest Reference Podfest2021, 18; Edison Research 2019).
Research on African podcasts has largely documented the unique aesthetics, technology, and discursive innovations of producers and hosts, while also focusing on content. As researchers, it is important that we are also attentive to the sonic elements of texts and audio media’s “historical and social power” in Africa (Newman and Sacks Reference Newman and Sacks2023). This includes our attention to sonic texts or aural artifacts (such as recordings or live events), but also to the sociotechnical elements of the environment that shape sound and give space a sonic quality. With a focus on audiences and reception (Hall Reference Hall, Hall, Hobson, Lowe and Willis1980; Morley Reference Morley, Seiter, Borchers, Kreutzner and Routledge2013), this paper attempts to highlight key themes and interests of African podcast users themselves through focus group interviews. This approach privileges audiences’ podcast-listening habits, favourite shows, and perceptions about podcasting as it relates to radio. We coded responses from our focus group interviews, proceeding from initial, preliminary coding to focused codes, utilizing a discourse analysis scheme that included descriptive codes, in vivo codes, and eclectic coding (Saldaña Reference Saldaña2015). The responses were annotated using three cycles of coding to sift out the various themes, discussion points, and key moments. By the end of the process, several metacodes ran through all three focus groups, which were drawn from such earlier codes as listening habits, themes, and demographic information.
The metacodes or discourses inspiring this article focus on the notion of “deep/deepness,” derived from primary codes as intimacy, mood, affect, and relatability as described by our Ghanaian interviewees. Some of our research participants responded to the question about their podcast preferences by emphasizing their topical interests in shows (e.g., business and technology, culture and entertainment, spirituality), which reflected their sociocultural context (Ghana, urban, “Afropolitan”), manners of address (English, Twi, translanguaging and code-switching), philosophical disposition (religious, atheist, “Pan-Africanist”), and life aspirations (career, self-help, “capacity-building”). The responses reaffirm the circuit and inter-relatedness of Brock’s notion of the ways that cultural and social affinities shape media users’ perceptions and engagements with various forms of media (Brock Reference Brock2018).
An Africanist approach to deep listening
After coding comments for recurrent keywords and emerging themes in the focus groups, our analysis suggests that SA and other favored African podcasts among the respondents facilitate the exchange of affect (Papacharissi Reference Papacharissi2014; Royston Reference Royston, Raiford and Raphael-Hernandez2017) via the specific Ghanaian aural aesthetics used by Nti and Ofori, the culturally specific audio content of these podcasts, and the sense of nkɔmɔ produced among listeners. We can describe the aural experience of this as affective resonance, that is, the ways that sound reverberates within the physical body and with the preexisting sentiments of its recipients (McDonnell, Bail, and Tavory Reference McDonnell, Bail and Tavory2017; Schwartz Reference Schwartz1974; Ettema Reference Ettema2005). In our focus groups, this was expressed by research participants’ description of the impact of SA’s content and the show’s sonic qualities and tactics. This sense of affective resonance is recurrent in the literature on podcasting, where notions of the medium’s in-ear “intimacy,” on-demand access, and private consumption practices constitute dominant aesthetics and affordances given to the technology (Berry Reference Berry2016; Swiatek Reference Swiatek, Llinares, Fox and Berry2018; Sienkiewicz and Jaramilla Reference Sienkiewicz and Jaramillo2019). These qualities have often been described as podcasting’s sense of intimacy, often seen as inherent to the medium, especially in news reports and by practitioners themselves. However, as Euritt (Reference Euritt2023) argues, intimacy as ascribed to podcasts is not necessarily “native” or static, but rather emerges as a quality and a social construction of the medium. Adler Berg (Reference Berg and Sørine2023) takes this critique further, arguing that the notion of intimacy in podcasting has largely been under-theorized, and instead provides parameters for assessing the ways intimacy, which she interprets as parasocial relationships (Schlütz and Hedder Reference Schlütz and Hedder2022) and personal “closeness,” are experienced in the audio medium. The four-part schema goes as follows: First, intimacy reflects the listening circumstances surrounding the medium (e.g., in-ear headphones; solitary consumption). Secondly, intimacy is created by what is said (relatability and relevance of the content). Thirdly, intimacy reflects how it is said (voice, affect). Finally, intimacy is reflected by cross-media interactions, which reinforce listeners’ and podcasters’ sense of community and belonging, such as networked social media and parasocial interactions, that is, the media of their interpretive communities (Adler Berg Reference Berg and Sørine2023, 1424). The notion of deep listening that we explore in more detail below is analogous to these approaches to intimacy, but in our view emerges as a culturally relevant analytic to podcasting reception in Ghana, given the attention to sonic affective-exchange that we describe in our analysis.
For context in Africa, we draw on the work of sound studies theorist Samuel Adesubokan who describes a similar sense of mediated resonant affect in radio broadcasts and asserts that such aural techniques in these media move beyond the purely symbolic, metaphorical, or immaterial notions of sound. He states:
[R]adio permits embodiment, as listening makes proprioceptive attuning with the self possible. And this is the phenomenon we experience when we say, for example, that something we hear is “moving” or makes us tap our fingers, nod our heads, and even shake our bodies in dancing. Although this is generally true of sound, radio in particular, as a technology of sonic dissemination, makes the dynamic of listening, interiority and embodiment possible in a network of aural communities across locations. (Adesubokan Reference Adesubokan2023, 431–32)
As we explore in the discussion section, podcast listeners in Ghana described a similar experience of interiorizing sonic affect in their reception of the media, which can be likened to a feeling of resonance (McDonnell, Bail, and Tavory Reference McDonnell, Bail and Tavory2017; Ettema Reference Ettema2005). Whereas the comments section and algorithmic-sidebar features of YouTube, for example, have facilitated opportunities to continue sociality within platforms, producer-listener interactions that Adesubokan and our respondents describe via radio and podcasting go beyond the act of hearing to construct interpretative communities via digital audio with culturally centered listening practices.
The notion of deep listening is used across humanist disciplines as a description, practice, and pedagogical form of sound-focused artwork and media production. Of note is the work of sound artist, music teacher, and environmental ethicist Pauline Oliveros (Reference Oliveros2005), who developed a practice of deep listening within the discipline of music composition. For Oliveros, musicianship requires listening to the entire auditory environment during performance. Mindfulness and connection to both the natural world and inner psychological states are at its core. Oliveros writes, “Deep Listening is a practice that is intended to heighten and expand consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible” (Reference Oliveros2005, xxiii). We use deep listening in this article to describe the ways Ghanaian podcast consumers and producers engage in a reciprocal process of content production, interpretation, and meaning through the emerging use of this form of new orality, inspired by Oliveros’s work, and from in vivo comments from podcast listeners using the Akan-Twi term nkɔmɔ. The notion of deep listening, developed here and by other theorists, provides a critical analytic for cultural studies researchers and humanistic social scientists, especially for sound studies research in Africa, and likely in other contexts. Through a humanistic interpretive frame, this research explores the experience of aural affective-exchange between show producers and podcast listeners. Our study asks: how does this sense of deep listening help construct an interpretive community between participant-listeners and the podcasts’ producers?
Findings and discussions
In our focus group interviews, we found that local Ghanaian podcasts like Sincerely Accra produced deep affective connections between the show hosts-producers and the audience through their resonant messages and themes, and their vernacular linguistic and sonic aesthetics. Our analysis of the focus group conversations demonstrate that these connections were established on two levels: the first manifests in listeners’ descriptions of the deep sentiments and emotions they experienced while engaging with SA, and the second, in the show’s use of audience participation and inclusion in its programming format.
Connecting audiences through affective-resonance
During focus group sessions with participants in Ghana, interviewees intimated a strong sense of connection with the host and the show’s content as their attraction to the show. Listeners talked about SA introspectively, and often described how elements of language and music, and Nti’s presentation of each episode, were important to them. One participant, Yaaya, expressed that the show evoked a profound sense of cultural familiarity, saying, “I felt it was like, it was home. It’s relatable. I get the context. But you listen to these other foreign [Western] ones, and you’re trying to put two-and-two together to follow the conversation” (interview, Accra, July 23, 2022). For Yaaya, there is minimal need for translation as a Ghanaian listener since the podcast is presented within the idioms of Ghana’s contemporary language and media, including urban street slang, humor, and code-switching between English and Twi. Yaaya later talked about SA’s use of musical “bridges” between segments and stated that the use of traditional music, highlife pop songs, and anthems (“Our Beloved Homeland”) gives her a sense of nostalgia. “The song tells a story. And then it just sends me back to when I was little with my dad. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve experienced this before,’ and this podcast is taking me back.” Amba, another interview participant in the same group, referenced the show’s ability to “uplift your soul” as its main draw. She described SA as an essential part of her repertoire of “pick-me-up” podcasts, citing one of Nti’s humorous catchphrases: “You are 30-something [millennial], wo ne Gen Z fuɔ pre,” (“you’re competing with the Gen Zs”). This catchphrase is often cited and used by the show’s listeners, many of whom identify as Generation Z and Millennials.
In our second focus group discussion in Accra, listeners of SA articulated the psychological benefits of engaging with the podcast, especially in the context of the increasing socioeconomic challenges in the country. After a record period of growth starting in 2008, Ghana has experienced a wave of economic shocks in the post-COVID-19 era, including rising energy and gas prices, inflation, and currency devaluation, in part due to its foreign debt commitments (World Bank 2025). Solomon, a graduate from the University of Ghana, Legon, shared this perspective:
If you don’t have something like a podcast keeping you going, keeping you entertained, you are going to drown in the country. Suffering! That is why I listen to Sincerely Accra. He [Joseph Nti] will go on about how prices are increasing. He did this episode where he was asking his friends to describe Nana Addo [former president of Ghana], I was like, ‘Bro, this [frustration] is me. This man is killing me. (Interview, July 27, 2022)
This statement underscores the podcast’s role in providing not just entertainment, but also a form of social commentary and relief amid the country’s economic hardships. Solomon’s reflections on his relationship with the podcast demonstrate the layered ways in which affective connections between podcast listeners and show content manifest through social and aural resonance (McDonnell, Bail, and Tavory Reference McDonnell, Bail and Tavory2017). The show not only affirms listeners’ concerns about Ghana’s dire economy at the time, but also provides a much-needed escape from daily turmoil. In doing so, it affords listeners an opportunity to connect with the pain of the show’s producers and other listeners over a shared social reality. Solomon’s insights also highlight the unique discourse approach of SA in that it is effective in creating meaningful connections and interpretive communities with its audience who hold “shared interpretations of reality” (Tshabangu Reference Tshabangu2021, 6). Satirical statements, humorous asides, and familiar musical references draw on the sentiments of youth facing similar economic and social challenges in their lives.
When asked what the host Nti brings to the show that particularly resonates with him, Solomon elaborated: “He says it like a Kwaku Ananse story. He talks and makes the podcast like wo ne obi anya nkɔmɔ’, like, somebody you are having a conversation with … in Kumasi we say it like wo bɔ nkɔmɔ. That’s how he does it” (interview, July 27, 2022). The reference to the spider figure of West African folklore, Ananse, denotes modes of address and oral traditions specific to Ghana and the region. Like the show host Nti, Solomon code-switches between English and Twi. Solomon’s use of the idiomatic expression, “wo ne obi anya nkɔmɔ,” which loosely translates to “having a deep conversation with someone,” suggests a deep level of rapport and a horizontal relationship, where listeners and the show’s host are engaged in a conversation. This dynamic enhances the show’s relatability among the listeners we interviewed, making them feel as though they are part of a dialogue rather than passive recipients of information. Solomon’s word choice, in particular, serves as an entry point for the affective ties built between listeners and creators. He opted for the Akan-Twi word nkɔmɔ, meaning “deep conversation,” instead of kasa, which means “to talk,” which might otherwise imply listeners are passive or target recipients. This word choice highlights the ways the audience’s experiences and emotions are central to SA’s discourse. Similar to Adler Berg’s notion of intimacy as produced through how and what is said, SA seemingly produces a dialogue with its interpretive community, even in their physical absence (Adler Berg Reference Berg and Sørine2023).
Additionally, the connection Solomon makes between the show’s dialogic character and the Akan popular saying wo bɔ nkɔmɔ reveals another layer of resonance. In literal terms, wo bɔ nkɔmɔ denotes the “cracking open” of something, in this case, a topic of conversation. The saying, thus, implies that a deep topic has been broached and by implication, needs to be dissected, opened, or discussed further, as captured by the Twi verb bɔ, which literally means “to break” or “crack open” (as in a nut) (Dolphyne Reference Dolphyne1996). Metaphorically, wo bɔ nkɔmɔ conveys the sense of going deeper into something or beyond the initial layers, to uncover what lies beyond. As another participant stated, “The [African] podcasts I listen to, sometimes they’re deep and make you, like in-your-feelings…” (interview, Accra, July 23, 2022). This linguistic interconnection reveals how Ghanaian listeners make sense of what they hear through the lens of their culture. For Solomon, who is originally from Kumasi—the cultural capital and seat of the Asante kingdom—a deeper engagement with the show’s content reveals its continuity with African oral practices (e.g., Ananse tales, storytelling, proverbs, gossips, riddles, etc.) that are key features of indigenous modes of communication.
Put differently, Nti’s mode of engagement with the show’s listeners is on par with one of the many ways Akan peoples of Ghana engage in dialogue; it is a calculated presentation of ideas and facts, with an emphasis on conversation and delving deeper into what has been broached (Yankah Reference Yankah1989). Our focus group participants’ accounts of their listening practices, including the meanings they make about the aural qualities and content of the show, demonstrate the podcast’s role in establishing a meaningful connection with its audience, enhancing its impact and relevance in their lives at an emic level. Inarguably, Solomon’s comments about the conversational characteristics of the show affirm Oliveros’s notion that deep listening influences the auditory consciousness of listeners, which inspires them to make critical deductions about what they hear, including how that auditory content is transmitted to them (Oliveros Reference Oliveros2005).
Democratizing an audio format through collaboration
Having discussed how the podcast’s consumers, the show’s content, and its producers engage in an aural affective-exchange, it is also important to identify the specific production tactics that make this experience of resonance possible. Royston (Reference Royston2023) in his description of African podcasts prior to 2018 documented typically linguistically “formulaic” structures. Entrepreneurship programs, for instance, prioritized promotional and “schematic” narratives, using, at times, rehearsed stories for their brands. In the case of religious programming, programs were largely expository or didactic. These approaches, in some cases, drew from narrative techniques often associated with African storytelling such as repetition, or innovated newer “dialogic formulas” such as the use of a set list of questions (Royston Reference Royston2023, 2468). Other times, the basic question-and-answer interview was standard.
A key quality that endeared participants of our focus group to SA and other African podcasts like it is the way that its audio programming is co-constructed, that is, utilizing audience participation in diverse ways. As described earlier, the show’s programming (including “vox pops” and write-in segments) demonstrates a reflexive practice in the development of its audience and discursive community. When SA launched in 2018, it was one of the few podcast shows under the GCR network, and arguably in Ghana, to deviate from the predominant Q&A dynamic. SA’s programming includes listener shout-outs, guest interviews, and lately, pop-up shows with live audiences. In an interview with the host Nti in 2022, he addressed the show’s initial growth from a series of online shorts to its current longer format. He stated that listeners have been crucial to the content from early on:
In the beginning, we [did] the vox pops; we come, I share my opinion on [their quips] and then we move. So, it was very, very short, 10–15 minutes. A lot of people were saying, “Oh, it’s not enough. It’s not enough.” Just like you, I listen to a lot of American podcasts. And one thing about me is, I’m always trying to take inspiration from places. And I was like, you know, just to bring the fans along, we need to start doing some things like, for example, let’s shout out some people who talk about us. Let’s ask for listener letters. Let people write to us. That way they will feel like they are part [of it]. (Interview, Accra, July 24, 2022)
Much of the show’s character and appeal relies on its content being generated with audience and listeners in dialogue. This sense of podcasting as participatory and democratic was evident in comments by our focus group participants, who tended to view radio, by contrast, as “fixed” or “closed.” Across all three focus groups, participants used words like “guided,” “scripted,” and “filtered” to describe traditional terrestrial radio programming (even as some of SA’s participatory techniques such as listener shout-outs draw from typical radio production). In comparison, our participants stated that podcast programming in general was a more “youth”-driven media; that its format was “freer” and more “open” to young people’s perspectives and voices, including “woke” viewpoints, vulgarity, and slang. Belinda, a lecturer at a university outside of Accra, in her thirties, echoed these sentiments in the focus group session, stating:
You take a Ghanaian podcast like Sincerely Accra, or Nami podcast and you realize that how the story is being told, the kind of issues that are being discussed, right, and how they tried to bring some form of participation in the discussion … [P]odcasting has given people the liberation that broadcast, traditional broadcast isn’t giving. So, like I said, there’s no gatekeeping when it comes to podcast content; the people themselves and the stories that they want to tell are the ones that sort of propagate on these podcasts. But then in traditional media, you find that there’s more gatekeeping. (Interview, Zoom video-chat, July 29, 2024)
As of 2025, SA is characterized by hour-long episodes, live show recordings, and video productions on YouTube and TikTok. Nti and Ofori endeavor to make listeners feel like they are integral to the show. Listener shout-outs have proven to be highly affective. In one specific instance, a participant from the first focus group session, Natasha, selected an excerpt from the show, which we played out loud. In it, Nti gives her a shout-out at the request of her friends. On the show, Nti stated:
I run into so many people. It’s crazy. I have a long list so I’m just going to get right into it. Tasha [Natasha from the focus group] your friends Teresa, Amba, Esther met me at Jollof Festival. They took a picture with me, and they sent it to you, and you were mad that, the one time you didn’t show up to a thing, they met me, who you adore. So, Tasha I said I’m going to tell the story because I want you to know that I know you exist. And knowing that you exist, and you love the show, and knowing you are rooting for us and everything, baby girl, you deserve a mention… (Sincerely Accra 2022)
While listening to the playback and observing our focus group members, Natasha seemed giddy, despite having heard the episode numerous times before. She said she was happy with the shoutout, and her contentment mirrored what others said about such exchanges engendering strong connections to the podcast. As the participant Solomon stated, “One thing about podcasts is [that] whenever I’m listening, it feels I am in there with the conversation” (interview, Accra, July 27, 2022).
Guest appearances have become a distinct part of the show in more recent years. These guest interviews have attracted significant listenership for the SA show, another reason why the producers extended the episode lengths from half an hour to hour-long sessions, according to Nti. Many of the guests featured over the years have been described by Nti as “people of interest”—musicians, bouncers from nightclubs in Accra, students, cast members from popular Ghanaian TV shows, and in a special case, a TikTok influencer who was featured because listeners insisted he has a striking similarity with Nti. During our listen-in session of the first focus group conversations, Yaaya chose an episode featuring Nti’s interview with noted pop musician, Mzbel. Yaaya described the interview as ”deep level," suggesting that Nti and the producers had done extensive background research, demonstrating nkɔmɔ. As Yaaya states:
It felt like we know Mzbel, but then she was unveiling herself to us. It was entertaining. The host was able to connect with the interviewee on a deep level. He knew his stuff, it wasn’t like he was guessing, he had done his research, yeah proper research. So, it was like, he knows his stuff, and he knows this person, and so he’s able to touch on issues that any other day the artist hasn’t really shared with people. (Interview, Accra, July 23, 2022)
Yaaya’s reflections on this episode confirm the ways in-depth interviews with these “people of interest” resonate with the show’s listeners, many of whom make direct guest requests to the show’s producer and host through social media. Yaaya’s assessment of the interview reveals an emotional investment in the topic, and is reflective of deep interest in the show, despite the costs involved in accessing such podcast content.
Conclusion
Rather than simply adopting the conventions of American or European programmers from the Global North, as Audrey Gadzekpo (Reference Gadzekpo2018) and others have argued, African media producers have always been adept at making new media their own. According to Gadzekpo, producers in the colonial era “transgressed the limitations of editorial control of production in order to make radio more relevant and lasting for its African audiences” with hybrid indigenous and foreign programming formats and aesthetics (Reference Gadzekpo2018, 179). Podcast producers and hosts like Joseph Nti and GCR’s spate of more than twenty programs glocalize new media tools in ways similar to Ghana’s colonial-era radio pioneers. By creating a horizontal sonic space that promotes listener collaboration and participation, and by using African forms of orature that draw on oral tradition and existing radio culture, Nti and his listeners continue to contribute to podcasting that is quintessentially of urban Africa. Consider further the role that the non-sonic elements of the show, such as its online iconography, play: the thumbnail-picture for the show on GCR’s website and streaming platforms illustrates Ghana’s popular commercial minibus—the trotro—rocking from side-to-side on a bumpy Accra road. The show’s name appears on the back window of the bus, and in our view, ties the discursive nature of the podcast to Ghanaian oral culture such as proverbs and axioms. These often appear on the back of trotros in cities throughout the country and in other locales in West Africa. The cacophony of sounds that introduces the podcast—its sonic ID—appears to be recordings of bus drivers’ mates shouting for destinations within Accra at a busy depot. Setting the soundscape for the podcast in such a manner signals its glocalized nature. The podcast, including its visual elements, thus engenders an interactive world of engagements and discourse between producers, content, and listeners.
These aesthetics are grounded in both familiar and new digital terrain. In our focus groups, some of the interview participants conceded that while podcasting is “not a technology that we [Africans] built,”Footnote 10 its similarity to discursive practices in Ghana, such as storytelling, and its use of local radio production techniques, signal it as part of a continuum of African media practices, rather than a foreign import. Yaaya’s statement that SA generates deep feelings of “home” demonstrates the ways podcasting’s resonant qualities ultimately allow for its recontextualization in Africa. As researchers, such comments are productive in helping us to understand the ways theory can emerge from the inclusion of audience’s perspectives, an often under-studied component of qualitative research of media on the continent. As notions of intimacy and audience engagement have become a central point of discussion for examining digital audio consumption, the analysis in this article points to the ways in which hosts and listeners value such transcultural notions of intimacy and ”going deep” in Ghana.
In this project, we foreground aural techniques of description in order to properly contextualize the practices of deep listening exercised by SA’s audiences and other African podcasts. In so doing, we hope to extend the awareness about podcasting in Africa as more than just a digital production channel, and to show how integral podcast listeners are to the uptake of this new media. These listeners’ perceptions, conceptions, and descriptions of engagements with specific kinds of shows and how they impact and fit within their daily lives testify to the fact that there is still more to be understood and learned about podcasting in Africa. The continuities between production and reception are constructed through deep listening. These continuities manifest in how producers such as Nti and Ofori create a co-constructive format, incorporating listeners’ interactions with podcast as content, and the effects of this reflexive practice, as seen in how listeners incorporate the podcast show in their own sociocultural worldview. As Amba stated during one of our focus groups, “Podcast has become a part of me” (interview in Accra, July 23, 2022). In saying this, Amba and others have become part of the medium’s interpretive community. This, and other comments from research participants, served as the basis from which the idea of deep listening developed for this article.
As an analogous or culturally relevant description of the notion of intimacy as discussed in podcast and other communications literature, deep listening is a specific observational term to our case in Ghana. The emic concept nkɔmɔ, we suggest, describes a specific cultural context and understanding around deep listening that emerged from African podcasting practices. Like Takahasi’s (2009) exploration of parasociality specific to Japanese language and media, we believe deep listening, constructed through linguistic and culturally specific media practices in sound, identifies culturally relevant frames that listeners bring to media. Yet, these can also serve as broader rubrics for non-African media phenomena, or sonic practices that construct interpretive communities with similar aesthetics to those used by Sincerely Accra. Furthermore, deepness as explored in African podcasting or via listening techniques pioneered (Oliveros Reference Oliveros2005) and others are especially important concepts to explore in our current moment, as forms of “deep” computational analysis are becoming privileged in the fields of computational analysis. Initiatives such as Google’s AI division DeepMind, or the generative AI tool DeepSeek by the firm Hangzhou, both utilize the approach of “deep learning” (multilayered neural networks), and are in some ways displacing other forms of knowledge. Our use of deep listening as a form of digital humanities analysis foregrounds the usefulness of paying close attention to a sonic text’s constituent elements (audio arrangement, sound sources/samples, production, environmental sound, and audience), as well as the sociotechnical and cultural context of its digital orality beyond such machine-driven analysis.
For SA, we identified sound techniques as well as socially resonant commentary that signal and co-construct these forms of membership among our focus group listeners. The show’s interpretive communities are produced by the layers of shared meaning that listeners bring to or take away from their encounters with podcasts (Zelizer Reference Zelizer1993; Tshabangu Reference Tshabangu2021), in this case, the media cultures of podcasting, African podcasts in particular, and the influence of Ghana’s media ecology broadly. As the comments elicited via the focus group and group-listening portions of our research sessions demonstrated, the affective-exchange between listeners and hosts, their discursive affinities, and the emotional intimacy with sounds and themes on the show enhanced an experience of nkɔmɔ. These comments, in our view, demonstrate the ways that African podcasts as a sound medium co-produce sentimentality in both the producers and consumers, a practice we describe as deep listening.
Open access
