Journal article
Queer (in)frequencies: SiriusXM's OutQ and the limits of queer listening publics
Feminist media studies, Vol.18(2), pp.249-263
03/04/2018
DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2017.1315735
Abstract
On February 23, 2016, OutQ, the nation's only LGBT-focused satellite radio station, ceased broadcasting. This essay theorizes a queer listening public as intentionally imagined as such and concomitantly taken up as a queer listening public by queers. It utilizes in-depth interviews with OutQ founder John McMullen, and OutQ show hosts Frank DeCaro, Romaine Patterson, and Michelangelo Signorile, as well as posts from Facebook Fan Pages, to explore the ways OutQ was both imagined and functioned as a queer listening public. Using the interview data, the essay argues that a queer listening public functions in three ways. First, it creates a specifically queer space for queer listeners, almost at the exclusion of heterosexual listeners. Second, it creates a queer affective community where events important to LGBT citizens can be "felt" in a communal, mediated space. Third, a queer listening public seeks to create a national/transnational queer listening public for geographically isolated queers. Additionally, this essay argues that in the cessation of OutQ, SiriusXM practiced what I call queer dispersal, a term deployed to describe the ways marketable aspects of queer life, like entertainment and music, are dispersed and hegemonically incorporated into mainstream media properties.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Queer (in)frequencies: SiriusXM's OutQ and the limits of queer listening publics
- Creators
- Alfred L. Martin - University of Colorado Denver
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Feminist media studies, Vol.18(2), pp.249-263
- Publisher
- Routledge
- DOI
- 10.1080/14680777.2017.1315735
- ISSN
- 1468-0777
- eISSN
- 1471-5902
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 03/04/2018
- Academic Unit
- African American Studies; Communication Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9984309754802771
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