Situational irony in Australian prison radio
Humour as a tool for coping and resistance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12522452 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Roya Arab (0000-0003-4936-3075, The University of Queensland, corresponding author), Heather Anderson (0000-0002-4530-1435, Griffith University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-08 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Media International Australia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1329-878X • E-ISSN: 2200-467X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1329878x251403575 |
| OpenAlex | W4417134026 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 38 |
This article examines the use of humour in a selection of prison radio shows in Australia. Prison radio consists of radio and other audio that involves incarcerated people and their communities, either produced inside prisons – limited to and targeting a prison-based population – or produced outside of correctional centres and broadcasting to a wider public. Drawing on approximately broadcast content from Jailbreak , Beyond the Bars , and Radio Seeds , we identified 30 humorous instances, of which 17 were best understood as examples of situational irony. Through a thematic analysis, we argue that situational irony in prison radio serves as both a coping mechanism and a subtle form of resistance, which gives a platform to narratives of desistance from crime and improving the quality of life condition inside prisons. Situational irony provides a humorous framing of the incongruities and restrictions inherent to prison life. While humour was not frequent across the data set, it offered moments of agency, levity, and collective resistance. This study contributes to growing scholarship on prison radio and suggests the need for further research into the editorial constraints that shape humour and expression in carceral media
Coping (psychology · Framing (construction · Irony · Narrative · Prison · Project commissioning · Scholarship · Situational ethics · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Humor Studies and Applications · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies
Humorous Texts
Laughter in Interaction
Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience
Raising the Civil Dead
Pedagogy, Pleasure and the Art of Poking Fun
The Jailbreak Health Project – incorporating a unique radio programme for prisoners
Radio behind bars – The Polish case
Emotion and performance
Humor and resilience
Humor as a coping mechanism
Sharing a laugh
Desistance Upon Release From Prison
That Doesn’t Leave You’
Theorising the many faces of prisoner radio
Towards an Analysis of Natural Conversation and the Sense of Heheh
Ethnopragmatic perspectives on conversational humour, with special reference to Australian English
A burgeoning field of research
Marking the Carceral Boundary
The Ethnography of Prisons and Penal Confinement
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |