Good Contact in Spite of Static

Advocating a Radio Geopolitics Assemblage Approach Through Analysing the Lindberghs' 1931 North Pacific Flight

Bibliographic Data

ID3948438
AuthorsAlison Williams (0000-0002-2494-1468, Newcastle University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume30
Issue4
Pages1879-1906
Publication date2025-08-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2025.2456016
OpenAlexW4406851756
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited57

In the summer of 1931 famed US aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne, flew their Sirius aircraft from Washington DC, westward across northern Canada, Alaska and the Bering Strait to Japan and China. Although touted as a vacation, they were in fact surveying for Pan American Airways’ first trans-pacific air route, an endeavour that would further project US power across the Pacific. This paper uses this example to advance a way of thinking about the capacities of radio to be geopolitical beyond the popular culture mass-media broadcaster focus on much extant work on radio geopolitics. Two examples, focusing on Anne Lindbergh’s role as radio operator for this flight, are used to bring assemblage thinking and radio geopolitics together to advocate for the creation of a radio geopolitics assemblage, which provides a way to engage with how different uses of radio can be inculcated in the projection of power across space

Archaeology · Economic geography · Geography · Geopolitics · Political science · Politics · Aviation History and Innovations · Law · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis · Space exploration and regulation · Geology

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