Martin Spinelli, the UK’s first professor of podcasting, plans to turn the medium into a positive force in the 21st century.
Working outside the classroom, the scientist created a podcast that helps improve food distribution amid devastation in the earthquake-hit northwest Syria, supporting farmers in the war-torn region.
Back in the UK, another of his podcast projects is helping alleviate the media-driven mental health crisis for children and is the first podcast to be used as part of a school curriculum.
For Spinelli of the University of Sussex, the success of these ventures is a testament to the power of the “very intimate” environment we normally experience through the buttons in our ears.
“Many studies show that people’s engagement just by listening is stronger and more pronounced than when they listen and watch.”
At the heart of his work is kindness, which is too often absent from media content, especially on social platforms.
Excessive use of social media has a devastating effect on children’s mental health, manifesting itself in anxiety, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts. The lockdown has exacerbated a crisis recognized in a government green paper back in 2017.
Judge is a children’s sci-fi adventure series that Spinelli developed with another academic, Lance Dunn of the University of Brighton, to address this issue. It is supported by the PSHE Association, a charity that supports teachers and schools with resources to teach Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE).
Since its inception, the Key Stage 2 curriculum has been taught in nearly 100 UK primary schools for ages 7 to 11.
Podcasts and comics JudgeThe young protagonists take on a series of manipulative robots equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), which encourages them to embrace more positive values.
Control characters in Judge the names are Jeff, El-on and Zzzax. The last one is completely different from [Meta founder] Mark Zuckerberg,” Spinelli jokes.
Jeff and El-on are not believed to be related to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Twitter owner Elon Musk. This battle for the future of AI seems timely.
The popularity of AI chatbot ChatGPT, a robot with remarkable speaking and essay skills that has set the app speed record to reach 100 million users, raises new questions about the impact of AI on young people’s lives.
“AI is not going anywhere,” said Spinelli, a former radio producer. “The trick is to make it positive and find a way that kids can relate to it.”
His motivation stems in part from the social media vulnerability of his own son, Leo, who was four years old when he nearly died in a car accident that killed his mother, Spinelli’s wife Sasha. Spinelli wrote about the tragedy in a touching book, After the crash.
Judge voiced by West End musical star Carl Queensborough. Hamiltonand Bafta winner Emily Burnett.
Based on a gaming website, it’s primarily designed to entertain children, and its messages of kindness, well-being and healthy media eating are “rooted deep under the surface,” says Spinelli.
The screenwriting team, led by Hannah Berry, used the results of the project’s creative workshops with children who shared their concerns about the use of media.
He also gained insight into children’s relationships, emotions and social skills through research conducted at the University of Sussex’s CRESS laboratory.
Judge teaches children “not to let social status go to their head.” Spinelli says that simple messages about a threat from a stranger are too simplistic. “Trust in people is generally better for your well-being than constant surveillance.
“Hopefully we can instill in kids the ability to open up to new people and be aware of the manipulation going on online.”
Agricultural Voices of Syria is another Spinelli podcast project that fulfills an important need. Together with Mirela Barbu, a lecturer in logistics at the University of Sussex, she is improving food security in the part of Syria hit by the earthquake earlier this month.
The podcast and accompanying YouTube videos, recorded in Arabic by Syrians trained via Zoom, have trained hundreds of local farmers on irrigation, hydroponics, food storage and animal husbandry.
Spinelli has dedicated himself to podcasting since being intrigued by the popular crime podcast Serial in 2014.
At the time, he and Dunn were co-authors. Podcasting: the audio media revolution, academic volume as well as supporting podcast just for your ears inspired teaching podcasts in hundreds of courses around the world.
Spinelli became a podcasting professor in 2021, but he’s not hiding in an ivory tower. “I like to impress,” he says.
Source: I News
I am Moises Cosgrove and I work for a news website as an author. I specialize in the market section, writing stories about the latest developments in the world of finance and economics. My articles are read by people from all walks of life, from investors to analysts, to everyday citizens looking for insight into how news will affect their finances.