World Radio Day 2021: All you need to know about significance, history and theme of day celebrated on 13 Feb

Every year World Radio Day (WRD) is celebrated on 13 February. The day was proclaimed by the member states of UNESCO in 2011 and subsequently adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2021 as an International Day. According to UNESCO, radio is a powerful medium for celebrating humanity and constitutes a platform for democratic discourse. One of the most widely consumed medium at the global level, radio has the ability to reach out to the widest audience, in the process having the ability to shape a society’s experience of diversity and providing a platform for everyone to be represented and heard. According to UNESCO, On the occasion of World Radio Day 2021 (WRD 2021), UNESCO calls on radio stations to celebrate this event’s 10th anniversary and the more than 110 years of radio. The theme of World Radio Day 2021, “New World, New Radio”, will highlight the services rendered by the radio medium throughout the crisis. The year 2021 will see WRD being divided into three main sub-themes as well. These include: “Evolution: The world changes, radio evolves. This sub-theme refers to the resilience of the radio, to its sustainability.” “Innovation: The world changes, radio adapts and innovates. Radio has had to adapt to new technologies to remain the go-to medium of mobility, accessible everywhere and to everyone; “Connection: The world changes, radio connects. This sub-theme highlights radio’s services to our society—natural disasters, socio-economic crises, epidemics, etc.” According to the United Nations, the theme New World, New Radio is an ode to the resilience of radio and is a tribute to its capacity for perpetual adaptation. UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, on the occasion of World Radio Day has stated that as the world celebrates the tenth anniversary of World Radio Day, the past year has highlighted the extent to which radio, this young medium, developed some 110 years ago, remains essential to contemporary societies. According to Azoulay, UNESCO has harnessed the radio’s potential by producing royalty-free audio messages in 56 languages and offering them to radio stations around the world to counter false rumours. A way in which news and information can reach the widest audience in the world, the radio was invented before the television and the internet. According to a report on BBC, the first radio news programme was broadcast on 31 August, 1920, by station 8MK in Detroit in the US. Subsequently, during World War II, radio became an important way for the military to communicate as well as for the general broadcasting of information. Nowadays, radio has also become one of the prime mediums to enjoy music across the world.