BGU: Exploring the World of Student-Led Radio Media
BGU: Exploring the World of Student-Led Radio Media
January 7, 2025
Negev Development & Community Programs, Social Sciences & Humanities
BGU Radio station on the Ben-Gurion University campus in Beersheba.
The Jerusalem Post – In the center of a hallway on the lower floor of a student administration building, various students stop, pull out their phones, and take quick selfies, all at the same spot – in front of a thoughtfully crafted wall featuring a large mirror encompassed by artwork and a bright sign reading “BGU Radio.”
On the other side of the hallway, intentionally reflected in the mirror, is the recording studio of BGU Radio, a student initiative started at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) in Beer-Sheva that now features four divisions – podcasting, live broadcast, educational outreach, and a new video division. It is supported by the entrepreneurship center of BGU, Yazamut 360.
“I love it because I get to learn something literally every day because I’m here at the university working on projects that are actually interesting,” said Yael Goldfinger, who studied conflict management and communications and joined the radio about two years ago.
A main goal of BGU Radio, she said, is to “create some root for development, for our careers, and where we see ourselves in the future.”
Boaz Ukelson, head of new media at BGU Radio, said universities want students to have practical experiences and learn the skills of the profession, but it can be difficult to create such opportunities.
Radio can be therapeutic, as well, Goldfinger said, explaining how, when carrying out the project recording October 7 testimonies, she offered people chances – which they took her up on – to just speak and listen to themselves talk, with no recording devices turned on.
At the station, each semester typically begins with about 50 people, and the year ends with about 80 to 100, not including guests or listeners.
Aspects of the radio include the freedom for students to express themselves and for the station to contribute to help the university achieve its goals, explained Buzi Raviv, the co-founder and director of BGU Radio.
“One of the goals is teaching,” he said, “so we offer innovative teaching, using the media tools that we have here, [whether] it’s podcasting, live radio broadcasting, or videos. Anything that will be in the future, we will adopt it and use it to achieve these goals.”
A COVID-era joint initiative by Raviv and a professor of philosophy resulted in alternative classes and exams via podcast. For a Zen Buddhism class, the professor made a podcast in place of a lecture, the discussion of the class was about the episode, and the students received grades based on their responses and dialogue.
“This is just one course. We already contributed to 35 courses,” said Raviv, noting that the student response to the initiative was “amazing.”
“So, in the case of the Zen Buddhism course, it was only 30 students who were attending this class, and the podcast was aimed at those 30 students, but we have already more than 400,000 listeners for that podcast.”
“The lesson is not to be the most successful podcast in Israel, but to be accurate to the needs of that class that we offer the course for,” he added.
“This interaction, it’s like youth movement interactions, but around the radio and media, and it’s really meaningful because we meet diverse populations,” Raviv said. “We touch the Bedouin society, we touch the religious society and the secular society, we meet them, they come here to visit, they meet each other”.
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