Seán Finnan is a PhD candidate in the TU Dublin School of Media. His research focuses on independent DIY internet radio stations and is interested in their facilitation of cultural exchange, the online listening environments they create and the wider ecologies of artistic and media practices they engender. His work interrogates the possibilities of DIY internet radio and the possibilities latent within them as sites of collaborative media making. His research interests includes alternative and community media, DIY music culture, critical net cultures, and radio.

He is currently working as a Research Assistant alongside Dr. Caroline O'Sullivan and Andrea Cleary on a Live Music Mapping Project of Dublin's live music venues.

He is an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland scholar. His research is currently funded by the Irish Research Council.

Seán is one of the founders of Dublin Digital Radio, a community internet radio station established in Dublin in 2016. He has worked as a curator/producer on numerous shows including the electronic music festival Alternating Current and ddr.'s An Avant Garde Public Service Broadcaster, a speculative symposium that sought to reimagine public service broadcasting for the digital age through workshops and panel discussions. He has recently worked as a co-writer on the award winning short film 'A Few Can See', a film by Frank Sweeney which examines the legacy of broadcast censorship of the conflict in the north of Ireland and political movements during this era.

He is a former journalist, working with the Dublin Inquirer as a City Reporter covering issues around the smart city, homelessness and planning. His music journalism has been published in DJ Mag, District Magazine, and Refraction. He was a former associate editor of rabble, an underground magazine in Dublin.

Publications

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2023/1019/1411806-internet-community-radio-ireland-history/

Conference Presentations