Question design and the construction of populist stances in political news interviews

This paper focuses on the relationship between journalism and right wing populist discourses in the context of broadcast news interviews. We analyse a specific feature of question design in which the public is invoked as a source of opinionated positions in adversarial interviewing. Analysing data from a range of socio-political contexts, we identify a shift in adversarial questioning along a scale of ‘soft’ populism, that is the attribution of views and concerns to a generic public ‘in crisis’, to ‘hard’ populism, where interviewers construct hypothetical scenarios in which populist positions are attributed to ‘some people’. We argue that the democratic role of journalists as public watchdogs, holding politicians and public figures accountable on behalf of the public, is challenged by this normalisation of populist moral order discourses in a routine journalistic practice, both drawing on and contributing to the propagation of populist agendas and anti-democratic populist rhetoric.

Multisemioottisen tekstin jäsentyminen

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan verbaalisen ja visuaalisen kielen yhteistyötä audiovisuaalisessa multisemioottisessa tekstissä. Tarkastelun kohteena on 40 haastattelu-uutista, jotka on lähetetty Yleisradion puoli yhdeksän uutisissa. Haastattelu-uutisesta analysoidaan tarkemmin uutistoimittajan puhumaa selostusta ja sen oheista kuvaa – jaksoa, joka edeltää haastateltavan puhetta kuvatilassa. Aihetta lähestytään teoreettisesti ja metodologisesti systeemis-funktionaalisen (SF) kieliteorian ja siihen läheisesti liittyvän visuaalisen suunnittelun kieliopin keinoin. Artikkelissa keskitytään SF­teorian metafunktioista tekstuaalisuuteen ja vastaavasti visuaalisen suunnittelun kieliopin sommitteluun. Analyysi osoittaa, että televisiouutisten verbaalinen ja visuaalinen kieli toimivat saumattomassa yhteistyössä siten, että molemmilla on omat tehtävänsä. Verbaalinen kieli välittää pääosin informaation, mutta kohtauksen kuvalla on merkityksenannossa keskeinen asema. Informaationkulussa verbaalisen informaatioyksikön teema–reema-rakenteen vaihtelu lankeaa yksiin visuaalisen informaatioyksikön tutun ja uuden kanssa, kun kuvassa havainnollistetaan viestiä käyttämällä sommittelun rajausta. Jos selostuksen teema–reema-rakenteen aikana kuvassa esiintyy kohde, jolla on visuaalista huomioarvoa, kuvan elementit korostavat sitä toistamalla mainitun teeman aihetta, mutta reeman sanomaa ei erikseen visualisoida. Multisemioottisessa, audio­visuaalisessa tekstissä voidaan verbaalisen kielen leksikaalisen koheesion ohella puhua visuaalisesta koheesiosta. Kuvan sommittelussa käytetään toistoa fokusoimalla samoja kuvaelementtejä ja rajataan eri osia kokonaisuuksista. Yhdeksi haastattelu­uutisen erityispiirteeksi osoittautuu demonstratiivipronomini tämä, erityisesti paikallis­sijaiset muodot tässä ja tästä. Demonstratiivin korrelaatti voi audiovisuaalisen tekstin sisällä sijaita paitsi verbaalisessa selostuksessa myös suoraan kuvan elementissä tai toiminnossa, jota korostetaan rajauksella. Artikkeli osoittaa, että television haastattelu-uutinen on konventionaalinen ja professionaalinen teksti, joka on rakenteeltaan vakiintunut. Sen välttämättömiä rakenne­osia ovat uutistenlukijan ingressistä ja toimittajan puheen sanan ja liikkuvan kuvan yhteistyössä muodostuvat jaksot, jotka päättyvät studion ulkopuolisessa tilassa toteutettuun haastatteluun. Jaksot rakentuvat pienistä yksityiskohdista, joilla jokaisella on merkityksensä ja funktionsa uutiskokonaisuudessa. Forming the structure of a multisemiotic text: analysis of televised news interviews This article deals with the fusion of verbal and visual language in audiovisual and multisemiotic texts. The analysis focuses on forty news interviews broadcast during the eight-thirty evening news on Yleisradio (the Finnish Broadcasting Company). The reporter’s speech and its enclosed frame, i.e. the sequence which precedes the interviewer’s speech, are here analysed in close detail. The subject is approached theoretically and methodically using the principles of of systemic-functional grammar (SF) and of the closely related theory of visual design grammar. This article focuses on the textuality of SF theory’s metafunctions and on the design of visual design grammar respectively. The analysis shows that both the verbal and visual language of a news broadcast function in collaboration, both having their own unique roles. The verbal language is mainly responsible for transmitting information, whereas the associated visual scenes also play a major part in providing meaning. Within the flow of information, the interplay of the theme and rheme is also manifested on screen, whereby new information presented verbally is subsequently represented visually as new elements that can be highlighted and topicalised through the judicious use of framing and cropping. If a visually noteworthy element appears during the theme-and-rheme structure of the narrative, the elements of the enclosed frame indicate the subject of a given theme by repeating it. The rheme message is not separately visualised. When discussing the audiovisual text, we can talk not only about the lexical cohesion of verbal language but also about visual cohesion. In composing enclosed frames, for instance, repetition can be used in focusing the same visual elements or cropping out certain parts of a wider picture. A specific characteristic of the verbal language in news interviews seems to be the use the demonstrative pronoun tämä (‘this’) and especially the use of its local cases tässä (‘here’) and tästä (‘from here/about this’). In an audiovisual text, the antecedent of the demonstrative pronoun can be located not only in the narrative but also directly within the elements of the enclosed frame or in functions highlighted in the enclosed frame by framing. The article shows that television news interviews form a conventional and professional text with an established structure. Their essential parts are the periods that consist of the newsreader’s introduction, the sequences consisting of the reporter’s words, and the moving images that end up in an interview outside the studio.

The types and functions of humor in the work of a United States Senator

This study investigates the role interactional competence plays in the performance of political roles by examining the use of humor in events such as speeches, election campaign rallies, press briefings and televised news interviews. In this case study of a prominent United States Senator (the late Senator Edward Kennedy), twenty publically available video recordings from the C-SPAN online archives are analyzed using a conversation analytic approach. Two main types of humor were found in these data, self-deprecatory humor and humor that criticizes others. Three main functions of humor were identified (subtle self-promotion, managing challenging political and interactional situations, and creating solidarity with an audience). The results of this study contribute to our understanding of how humor can play a role in doing the work of a Senator.

Achieving discourse truth in doing affiliated news interviews

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.

Is Gender a Driver of Topic Choice? A Comparative Keyword Analysis of Political Cable News Interviews

Cable news networks have become an increasingly important source of political news in the United States. They wield considerable influence on public opinion, particularly in relation to current issues involving social roles and gender dynamics. This study offers insights into how the choice of topic in political cable news interviews may be influenced by the gender of participants. A corpus of 40 political cable news interviews was compiled and analyzed on the basis of various combinations of male and female interviewers and interviewees. Corpus software was implemented to extract keywords that were then grouped to identify prominent topics according to gender. Topics discussed exclusively among male participants were more issue oriented (i.e., immigration, healthcare, the economy, and gun control) as compared to those discussed exclusively among female participants that were more in social nature (i.e., personal matters, the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, and tech giants in the context of social justice). Results showed that topics emerging from the female participants’ discourse were aligned with some widely held perceptions of women’s speech. At the same time, other features of the female participants’ speech appeared to be driven largely by their professional and institutional roles, and thus, not aligned with stereotypical perceptions. The findings have implications for the role of media and cable news in contemporary American society in avoiding the perpetration of gender-related topic bias.