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The landscape of broadcast news media is constantly changing, partly under the influence of changing technology but also due to changes in the social role of television journalism. The Political Interview: Broadcast Talk in the Interactional Combat Zone takes a sociological and linguistic approach to examining these changes, focusing on the discourse practices that are associated with them. Tracing contemporary developments in the ways that interviews with politicians are conducted in a range of televised formats, Ian Hutchby analyzes increasing tendencies toward conflictual interactions that may fundamentally impact the nature of political communication and the role of news interviews in the democratic process. Training the sharp analytical lens of conversation analysis on the actual discourse of live broadcast news, Hutchby's book is both timely-addressing academic and populist concerns about infotainment, dumbing down, and political mistrust among the electorate-and relevant to a range of specialists in sociolinguistics, communication studies, political studies, journalism and media studies, and sociology.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: The Political Interview in Context
Chapter 2: Analyzing Interviews as Arenas of Language Use
Chapter 3: Total Mediatization: A Media Ecology of the Political Interview
Chapter 4: Rules of Engagement: The Conventional Political Interview
Chapter 5: "It's a Simple Question": The Adversarial Political Interview
Chapter 6: "So My Position Is...": Explanatory Answers and Agenda Contests
Chapter 7: Opinion, Emotion and Personalization in the Hybrid Political Interview
Chapter 8: Tribuneship, Objectivity and the Public Interest
Chapter 9: The Political Interview in an Opinionated World: Concluding Reflections
Appendix: Transcription Conventions
References
Index
About the Author
About the author
Ian Hutchby is honorary professor of sociology at the University of York.
Summary
This book examines the increasingly combative arena of live televised political interviewing in the twenty-first century. It draws into question not just the evasion and slipperiness of politicians but also the ethics and neutrality of journalists in a broadcast environment where “interview” can readily morph into “argument.”
