Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T09:16:46.510Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Social epistemology in broadcast news interviews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2002

ANDREW L. ROTH
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Pomona College, 420 N. Harvard Ave., Claremont, CA 91711-6397, [email protected]

Abstract

This article investigates how participants in broadcast news interviews display their orientations to a social distribution of knowledge regarding newsworthy events and actors. Interviewers treat the nature, grounds, and limits of interviewees' knowledge as accountable matters. The article employs single-case and quantitative analyses to show that, in and through the design of their questions, interviewers distinguish between (i) interviewees as subject-actors who are responsible for direct, first-hand knowledge of their own conduct; and (ii) interviewees as commentators who, on the basis of indirect, second-hand knowledge, are entitled to opinions about third parties' conduct. This distinction serves as a basis for the production of interviewees' responses as talk that expresses either matters of fact or points of opinion. The article examines how these aspects of question design establish relevancies for interviewees' responses and, ultimately, shape news content.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)