Podcasting Paranoia: Aesthetics, Politics, and Community in American Fictional Podcasts

In the public debate, paranoia is often regarded as a sign of delusional thought. This project challenges this idea by focusing on how in twenty-first century American fictional podcasts, the paranoid style has a creative and political potential. By innovatively combining a close reading of these fictional podcasts with ethnographic research into both podcast producers and listeners, this project investigates the social and political functions of the paranoid style in podcasts. This provides new insights in how an upcoming artform responds to the political problems of the ‘age of conspiracy,’ and how that inspires virtual fan communities.