Audience attitudes towards the modern audio apps and the forms of interaction with them: a case study of Clubhouse app (a field study)

Author

]Department of Sociology, Faculty of Women, Ain Shams University.

Abstract

The study aimed to identify the attitudes of the Egyptian public towards modern audio applications, and what are the patterns and forms of interaction with those voice applications, by studying a relatively recent audio application that appeared during the Corona period for voice communication through it during the ban. It is a Clubhouse application.  The study used the survey methodology and relied on the theories of uses and gratifications & the theory of the public Sphere, a questionnaire was applied to a sample of 122 individuals who use this application, in addition to interviewing (12) females and males who spend daily time using this application.
 
The main results of the study:
- The most important audio applications used by the respondents came the SoundCloud application, followed by Spotify, then traditional radio stations, but they see that the Clubhouse application surpasses SoundCloud and Spotify because they broadcast songs only, while Clubhouse discusses different topics and displays various contents and information in different fields and different points of view.
- The most important reasons for using audio applications were that they "can be listened to while performing any work" by 86.9%, followed by "ease of use" by 51.6%, and then "effortless" by 44.3%.
- The most important topics that respondents prefer to listen to in the Clubhouse application are "educational and cultural" topics, then social topics, followed by human development topics, which is confirmed by the results of the qualitative study, where the majority of the interview sample use it in learning languages and acquiring information in various social, political and sports fields, in addition to people's interest in recent psychology and human development topics. 
- The results confirmed the validity of the hypothesis that there is a statistically significant correlation between the intensity of use of the Clubhouse application and attitudes towards the application, and towards the topics presented in it, as well as towards the people who manage the application rooms.

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