Everyman’s radio-telephone: how CB radio users mobilized West Germany’s communication culture

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the 1970s and 1980s, Citizen Band (CB) radio users explored novel mobile, fluid and network-based forms of wireless communication. This article describes the case of West Germany and places the appropriation of CB radio in its inter-medial and inter-technological contexts. Many CB radio users invented creative uses for the medium, and an engaged and predominantly male subgroup of CB radio amateurs even defined CB as participatory ‘civic radio’. In an increasingly mobile society, CB radio helped people to stay in touch with each other and to micro-coordinate their everyday lives with friends and family. This multi-dimensional analysis of CB radio use also provides a corrective to the standard narrative of a ‘mobile’ revolution that took place around the turn of the millennium, triggered by cell phones and social media applications. Mobile communication culture has a longer history, and CB radio constitutes an essential part of it.