Hardballs and softballs

Clayman, Steven E.; Fox, Matthew P.

doi:10.1075/jlp.16.1.02cla

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As we saw, the introduction in the program directly questioned the strategy of the authorities and let the MD explain her expertise. The enabling approach from the NRK is also clear from the character of the questions, which are mostly of the type known in conversation analysis as softball questions that advance adversarial viewpoints ‘at most mildly or half-heartedly and in a way that eases response’ [( Clayman and Fox, 2017 ), p. 20].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This negative framing is enhanced through hardball questions from the host. According to conversation analysis such questions ‘advance an adversarial viewpoint vigorously in a way that is ostensibly difficult to counter’ [( Clayman and Fox, 2017 ), p. 20]. In facing the program’s negative framing of the policy and the ethos of the authorities, the two representatives maintain their calm.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Expert ethos and the strength of networks: negotiations of credibility in mediated debate on COVID-19

Kjeldsen

Ihlen

Just

et al. 2021

Health Promotion International

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Summary For public health promotion to succeed, popular support is necessary and the chosen policies and measures have to be perceived as legitimate by the public. In other words, health authorities need to build on and sustain established trust when they recommend a certain policy. When the policy is criticized, this trust is challenged, and the authorities enter into a negotiation of credibility (ethos). In this article, we research a particular instance of such negotiation, drawing lessons for health promotion and for COVID-19 communication. We study a Norwegian television debate in which an MD presented harsh criticism of the health authorities’ chosen crisis response in the early phase of the pandemic. Unpacking the rhetorical constitution of the expert ethos of the MD and of the health authorities, respectively, we find that representatives of the authorities are more open to participation and better at connecting to everyday experiences than the MD, who primarily builds her expert ethos on mastery of scientific language and methods, combined with alarmist rhetoric. Further, we identify main tenets of the public’s reception of the debate through an analysis of 1961 tweets that commented on the program. The analysis indicates that public health authorities might maintain high levels of trust by rhetorically cultivating their positions within institutional and (social) media networks of expertise.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expert ethos and the strength of networks: negotiations of credibility in mediated debate on COVID-19

Kjeldsen

Ihlen

Just

et al. 2021

Health Promotion International

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Romaniuk (2013) shows how pursuing answers to simple polar questions allows interviewers to highlight and simplify contentious issues and hold interviewees accountable for those issues (see also Clayman and Loeb, 2018). Clayman and Fox (2017) found that even questions that are characterized as “simple” can be a resource for interviewers to mobilize more adversarial, or “hardball”, questions (p. 33–34). Heritage (2002) found that interviewees treat questions framed with a negative interrogative such as “Don’t you …?” at the beginning of the turn, as taking a position, rather than information seeking, partly because the negative formulation of the question strongly projects agreement and a particular preferred, and therefore expected, response.…”

Section: Interaction In News Interviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Visible Politics of Intersubjectivity: Constructing Knowledge as Shared to Manage Resistance in News Interviews

Hepburn

Potter

Caldwell

2023

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper describes one practice of “resistance” to challenging interviewees in television news interviews. Interviewers use turn medial tags when working with field reporters to display shared knowledge to an overhearing audience. In contrast, analysis focuses on examples in which tag questions are issued midturn, e.g., “You put your finger on the button didn’t you.=when you said …”. In this practice knowledge and understanding are built as shared in the face of resistance from high-status and highly experienced interviewees. The syntactic reorganization of different elements within individual turns, combined with the possibility of manipulating the sequential positioning of an utterance, allow intersubjectivity to be invasively and coercively re/built through displays of mis/alignment across turns and sequences of talk. We explore the implications of this for how resistance can be understood. Our analysis also contributes to a politics of intersubjectivity and, more specifically, interknowledgeability.

show abstract

“…Although affiliated news interviews have been common practice in broadcast news for about two decades, extant studies still centre on other interviews such as adversarial (or accountability) interview (Clayman and Fox, 2017; Heritage and Clayman, 2010; Hutchby, 2016; Rendle-Short, 2007; Tolson, 2012). The most influential research comes mainly from Montgomery (2006, 2007, 2008), in which he explores the discourse structures, practices and genres of the interviews.…”

Section: Affiliated News Interviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Achieving discourse truth in doing affiliated news interviews

Feng

2021

Journalism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In affiliated news interviews, interviewees are both reporters and commentators, thus often caught in the dilemma of whether to interpret or report. Based on Stephen J. A. Ward’s theory of pragmatic objectivity, this article responds to this question by proposing a concept of discourse truth and applying it to the analysis of affiliated news interviews collected from BBC News at Ten. It is found that journalists in such interviews tend to achieve a sense of discourse truth through three primary discourse practices, including achieving journalistic authority, emphasizing authenticity of news and displaying journalistic neutrality. These practices are in turn realized through a variety of discourse strategies such as identity credentials, personalization, modality, third-party attribution and metadiscourse expressions. The results show that objectivity can be maintained through discourse truth, even when news is interpreted. Discourse truth can reflect the authenticity of talk to some extent. It is, however, not the fact itself, but the reality constructed in the news.

show abstract

Hardballs and softballs

Cited by 18 publications

References 29 publications

Expert ethos and the strength of networks: negotiations of credibility in mediated debate on COVID-19

Expert ethos and the strength of networks: negotiations of credibility in mediated debate on COVID-19

The Visible Politics of Intersubjectivity: Constructing Knowledge as Shared to Manage Resistance in News Interviews

Achieving discourse truth in doing affiliated news interviews

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About