Department of Media and Visual Arts2024-11-0920230163-443710.1177/016344372311595402-s2.0-85150869590https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14288/10699This paper focuses on the radio’s novelty years in 1920s Turkey to examine how the functions of wireless technology as a material artifact are negotiated in ways that fashion a national auditory. Most studies on radio’s history prioritize sound, eliding people’s tinkering with the wireless as a technical object. Based on archival research and oral history interviews, I suggest that early radio as a material object required as much of its listeners’ attention as did the broadcast content. In young Turkey’s war-torn economy, the only affordable way to listen to radio was learning how to assemble a receiver. Few owners of manufactured radios also learnt how to fix frequent problems. To form a passive national auditory, the state monitored the cultivation of these technical skills by banning transmitter-construction while encouraging assembling/fixing receivers. In addition to the body’s visceral/affective capacities, then, nation-states also discipline technical skills while forming a national auditory.CommunicationSociologyJournal Articlehttps://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85150869590&doi=10.1177%2f01634437231159540&partnerID=40&md5=bf3e1e0478f850d77322c023cdf0dd57954133200001Q18845