Discovering the Hidden Listener: An Empirical Assessment of Radio Liberty and Western Broadcasting to the USSR during the Cold War

By R. Eugene Parta

This overview of the impact of Western radio and Radio Liberty—from the listeners' perspective—addresses questions of audience size and listening trends over time, listeners' demographic traits and attitudes, and more. Based on more than 50,000 interviews with Soviet citizens, the book sheds light on what these broadcasts meant to listeners as the USSR moved toward a freer society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780817947330

R. Eugene Parta

Russell Eugene (Gene) Parta retired as Director of Audience Research and Program Evaluation for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague in 2006. Previously, Mr. Parta was Director of Media and Opinion Research of the RFE/RL Research Institute in Munich and earlier Director of Soviet Area Audience and Opinion Research of Radio Liberty in Paris. He has worked in the field of international broadcasting audience research since 1969. He served as Chairman of CIBAR (Conference on International Broadcasting Audience Research that brings together researchers from over 20 international broadcasting organizations). He is a graduate of St. Olaf College and the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University and has been a visiting research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on two occasions as well as at George Washington University. Mr. Parta was an Osher Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University in 2004 researching his earlier book Discovering the Hidden Listener: An Assessment of Radio Liberty and Western Broadcasting to the USSR During the Cold War and a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution in 2017-2018 researching this book in the RFE/RL Corporate Archives. He is co-editor with A. Ross Johnson of Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Book preview

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