New audio culture in digital public relations: Podcast channels in higher education

The increasing number of social media users in recent years has affected the public relations work of institutions; platforms that provide fast, cheap and easy to use have taken an important place in these studies. Today, while institutions care about social media, they are also trying to show their presence in alternative channels. Podcast platforms, whose recognition and usage rates have increased thanks to the new investments made by Spotify in recent years, is one of these channels. The research aims to examine the public relations studies conducted at universities through podcasts. As a result of the document analysis, the list of universities with podcast broadcasts was determined. Institutional publications were selected with the purposeful sampling method and the research group was formed. The examined publications were coded with the content analysis method. In addition to the studies in the literature, the coding scale has taken its final form by listening to podcast broadcasts. As a result of the study, general trends in the use of podcasts by universities were revealed; it has been determined that 26 institutions (18 are foundation universities and 8 are state universities) out of 208 universities in Turkey have institutional podcasts. Foundation universities have more publications than state universities. With 279 publications, Yeditepe University is the institution with the highest number of publications. As a result of the content analysis; It has been determined that the institutions mostly produce publications with the function of informing, the promotion function comes second, the social relations function is the third, and the publications with the function of integration with the city are the fourth. It has been observed that there are publications for academic reputation in the last place and the number of publications is quite low. Podcast publishing is developing in our country. The fact that universities have rich human resources in producing content and the majority of their target audience is young make it a useful channel for podcast publishing. It is predicted that it will be used more in public relations activities in the future with the increase in the number of institutions broadcasting on the platform and the diversity of publications.