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The purpose of this study is to examine whether consumers are able to critically evaluate promotional content presented by a podcast host with whom they have a parasocial relationship, and how this interaction impacts the listeners’ behavioral intentions toward the advertised brand.

Using a blended theoretical foundation of Persuasion Knowledge Model and Parasocial Interaction theory, this between subjects’ experimental study examined the effects of a traditional advertisement versus a host-read promotional message for the same brand in a highly rated podcast among listeners who reported varying levels of a parasocial relationship (PSR) with the host.

Results from a moderated mediation analysis suggest that a PSR with the podcast host decreased evaluative persuasion knowledge about the promotional message presented, which indirectly enhanced respondents’ intention to seek more information about the promoted brand.

This study extends the limited research examining the effects of promotional messaging delivered by podcast hosts with whom audiences have a PSR, and how this interaction impacts the listeners’ behavioral intentions. Theoretical contributions and practical implications for podcast marketers are also discussed.

Despite the ability of podcasts to bring free quality content to the masses, studies found that podcast consumption have been identified mostly with the elite class, thus increasing knowledge gaps and digital divides. This study aims to examine whether this trend extends to non-elitist podcast genres by providing the first analysis of sport podcast demographics and uses and gratifications.

A survey was conducted among Israel’s three most popular sport podcast listeners (N = 503), examining the listeners’ demographics, consumption patterns and uses and gratifications driving them to listen to the podcast.

The analysis reveals that most listeners are secular millennials males with above average income, highlighting the elitist nature of sport podcast consumers. The analysis further revealed that information-rich groups were more likely to tune in for information acquisition whereas other groups used it more for entertainment and escapist purposes.

For policy makers and educators who wish to promote podcast-based initiatives to narrow social gaps, the analysis strengthens the notion that the podcast platform mostly attracts those who are already information rich and thus increase knowledge gaps and digital divides. For sport broadcasters, the analysis illuminates sport podcasts audiences’ demographics and their uses of the platform.

The study reflects that the podcast platform is identified with elitist listening even in non-elitist genres; thus it further increases the already wide knowledge gap and digital divides promoted by the advent of the podcast platform.

The study is the first to highlight the elitist nature of sport podcast listeners’ demographics, indicating that the podcast platform increases the knowledge gap also even across non-elitist content genres such as sport content.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2021-0684

The purpose of this research is to inspect the perceptions of MBA students regarding learning through podcasts. The author's goals are to reveal the students' attitudes toward the use of podcasts as a key learning tool in a graduate academic course, to examine the learning efficacy in this mode of learning, to inspect students' opinions regarding flexibility in learning with podcasts and to examine whether there is a different reference to podcasts as a mid-term assignment vs podcasts as a substitute for lectures.

This paper examines the learning attitudes and effectiveness of postgraduate students in business administration toward combining podcasts as an e-Learning tool. This paper also explores the flexibility of this kind of asynchronous learning. Two types of podcasts for two different pedagogical purposes were examined in the study, one as a team mid-term assignment and second as recorded lectures. The main results of this study provide significant evidence that previous experience in listening to podcasts on the Internet has a significant impact on learning effectiveness, student attitudes and learning satisfaction while using this technology. In fact, this study establishes that students that are technologically oriented and have prior experience listening to podcasts learn more in the course, have positive attitudes toward podcast technology as a learning tool, have high learning effectiveness and are satisfied with the flexibility of the asynchronous learning process.

The findings state that both in the mid-term assignment and in the course lessons as students listened to podcasts more frequently and gained experience listening to podcasts on the Internet, the students expressed more positive views toward learning using this technology, the students' learning effectiveness was higher and the students were more satisfied with the flexibility made possible by using this asynchronous technology tool of e-Learning. Moreover, the results of the study clearly indicate a positive correlation between listening to the podcast lessons in the course and the effectiveness of learning both in the mid-term assignment and in classes.

This study has some limitations. First, the findings are limited by the relatively small sample, with graduate students in an MBA program, in a course from the field of technological entrepreneurship. Furthermore, in this study, the students had partial freedom to choose the podcast for the students' mid-term assignment from a specific well-known program in the field of entrepreneurship and were not free to choose podcasts from any site available on the Internet. Although this process guided the students to use podcasts from a quality podcast program, the process also reduced the students' choice to some extent.

Academic institutions must provide the appropriate technological infrastructure for the development, creation and recording of quality podcasts by lecturers for students, in addition to training lecturers to teach through podcasts as an integral part of e-Learning advanced tools. Furthermore, institutions must financially incentivize and educationally encourage lecturers to teach at least some of the content in the course using pre-prepared podcasts.

The author's first suggestion to lecturers that wish to use podcasts as learning resources is to familiarize themselves with the technology and resources available to introduce students to the basics of podcasting and to make the students aware of the podcast's benefits. Second, the study highly recommends to integrate podcasts into the teaching curriculum in academia as early as possible in the basic courses, before the students move on to advanced courses in undergraduate studies. In this way, students in advanced courses can make better use of this technology.

As far as the author knows, this is the first study that combined two types of podcasts used for two complementary pedagogical purposes in an academic course: the first, open and available online podcasts as part of a mid-term assignment and the second type of podcasts that are recorded audio lessons as a complete replacement for course lectures. Additionally, the study sharpens the understanding that students' previous experience with technology is of great importance to learning effectiveness, as well as positive opinions and high learning satisfaction.

Podcasting is a new mobile technology application for language learning. Drawing upon the stimulus–organism–response model and the interest driven creator (IDC) theory from e-learning, this study aims to develop and test an integrative conceptual framework. This study investigates contextual and environmental stimuli effects (content richness [CR], self-directed learning [SDL] and situational interest [SI]) from a podcast English learning context on learners’ experience states (cognitive absorption [CA], pleasure [PL] and arousal [AR]) and their subsequent responses (continuance learning intention [CLI]).

Using 416 valid responses from five universities located in North Taiwan, data analysis is performed using a structural equation model.

The results show that most of the interest factor stimuli (CR, SDL and SI) have significant impacts on learners’ experiences (CA, PL and AR), which in turn affect their CLI.

The findings provide useful insights for English show podcasters and operators to invest in establishing learners’ interest factor and stimulating experiences to improve their CLI.

This paper contributes to a better understanding of students who use contextual factors of podcast English learning and how these factors influence their CLI via a framework of stimulus–organism–response and the IDC theory.

This brief report demonstrates how collaborative podcast series project to teach cultural content in English language classroom is design and implemented. This paper aims not only to facilitate speaking practice but also to build students’ cultural awareness, exercise creativity, promote critical thinking and foster learning collaboration.

This classroom observation study involved 78 students majoring English education department in a state Islamic university in East Java, Indonesia. The pedagogical intervention which facilitates this project includes extensive reading and viewing of local culture materials, interview practice project and collective reflections. After completing the project, students wrote collective reflective accounts, submitted their podcast links and followed focus group interview.

From the data analysis, it can be seen that incorporating local culture into English language learning can enhance student learning engagement, cultural awareness and tolerance, and collective reflective practice.

The finding of the study contributes to practical implications addressed to teachers and teacher educators in designing and implementing technology mediated cultural learning.

While most language departments of the university offer service-learning (SL) subjects based on language teaching, such as “Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in Local Schools” and “Serving the Community through Teaching English,” this paper aims to argue that teaching students to teach language(s) is yet to be the best strategy to serve the service recipients.

SL is widely understood as an experiential learning pedagogy that integrates academic focus, reflection and community service and is shown to be impactful. In Hong Kong, the first university that has made SL a graduation requirement is the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (the University). Considering this, new SL courses have proliferated over the past decade. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, this paper examines personal narratives from a new SL subject aiming to raise awareness of refugees in Hong Kong. The data includes students’ reflective journals, co-created personal narratives and podcasts and semi-structured interviews.

This paper finds that crafting and recording narratives of shared experiences deepens cultural understanding, cultivates empathy and facilitates language learning in a genuine setting.

Ultimately, this paper advocates a well-designed SL that combines language, content and technology as a powerful, transformational experience for both college students and service recipients.

This paper focuses on a brand new SL course, “Storytelling for Understanding: Refugee Children in Hong Kong,” offered in Semester 1, 2022–2023. The subject was developed by the two authors from a language division affiliated to the University. The deliverables were podcast recordings, co-authored and co-edited by the students and the children.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in transforming the healthcare sector, with a focus on how AI contributes to entrepreneurship and value creation. This study also aims to explore the potential of combining AI with other technologies, such as cloud computing, blockchain, IoMT, additive manufacturing and 5G, in the healthcare industry.

Exploratory qualitative methodology was chosen to analyze 22 case studies from the USA, EU, Asia and South America. The data source was public and specialized podcast platforms.

The findings show that combining technologies can create a competitive advantage for technology entrepreneurs and bring about transitions from simple consumer devices to actionable healthcare applications. The results of this research identified three main entrepreneurship areas: 1. Analytics, including staff reduction, patient prediction and decision support; 2. Security, including protection against cyberattacks and detection of atypical cases; 3. Performance optimization, which, in addition to reducing the time and costs of medical procedures, includes staff training, reducing capital costs and working with new markets.

This study demonstrates how AI can be used with other technologies to cocreate value in the healthcare industry. This study provides a conceptual framework, “AI facilitators – AI achievers,” based on the findings and offer several theoretical contributions to academic literature in technology entrepreneurship and technology management and industry recommendations for practical implication.

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether relationships with media figures can impact the psychological and sociocultural adjustment of educational tourists.

The article uses the qualitative method of autoethnography to provide a highly personalised account of the first author’s relationships with podcast hosts during his time as an educational tourist, in order to fulfil its previously mentioned purpose.

An analysis of the author’s narrative account demonstrates how he formed parasocial relationships (PSRs) with his favourite podcast hosts. These relationships increased self-efficacy, reduced stress and provided a sense of social support, which, in turn contributed to psychological and sociocultural adjustment.

By demonstrating how relationships with media figures can impact their psychological and sociocultural adjustment, this article argues that research on educational tourists should explore their PSRs, in addition to their other kinds of friendships which have already been examined.

This conversation presents reflections on heatwaves, vulnerability and adaptation in South Asia.

This is based on the Nordic Asia Podcast on Temperatures on the Rise: Adapting to Heat Extremes in South Asia.

Main themes discussed in this conversation include vulnerability and adaptation, livelihoods and cascading disasters.

This conversations adds value to the ongoing discussions on climate justice, loss and damage.