Radio Is an Important, Highly Influential Political Tool

Radio is a transmission device, which sends electromagnetic signals over a long distance, to deliver information from one place to another. Often thought of as a means for communication or entertainment, the effect of radio in the political climate is often overlooked. Nevertheless throughout the ages radio has proven to be a highly influential political too. Its influence able to be recorded from the early days of radio where Hitler and the Nazi’s used it as a tool to deliver propaganda to mass audiences during world war two, to the modern day where talk-back programs and shock jock radio presenters are contributing to the shaping of not only political campaigns but our entire political climate. Since the very beginnings of radio broadcasting, radio has been used as a highly influential political tool. This epitomised by the significant role radio played in the German media during Hitler’s rise to power and his reign over Germany. Joseph Goebbels who Hitler officially appointed Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda had total control of communications media. He predicted that, "the radio [would] be to the twentieth century what the press was to the nineteenth" and that it would open new paths for Germany’s political life. (Goebbels, 1938, pp. 197-207) Hitler, and even more so Goebbels, saw the massive propaganda weapon radio could become. Effectively, Goebbels concluded that the government “couldn’t ignore the radio and it’s possibilities”, deciding it was going to be a key tool in the delivery of propaganda; Nazi Germany becoming one of the first totalitarian states to utilize radio as a propaganda tool. (Aylett, 2011)

Seeing as radio sets were too expensive for many of the Germans, Goebbel’s and the Nazi’s introduced an affordable radio called the Volksempfänger meaning " the people's receiver", so Nazi propaganda and approved broadcasts, consisti¬¬¬ng of news, propaganda, folk music and classical music could reach a mass audience. In