Hybridity as challenge in televised election campaign interviews

This thesis contributes to on-going discussions amongst academics on broadcast political discourse with respect to the multiplicity and transformation of institutional roles and relations in political news interviews. The thesis has as a starting point the way hybridity in broadcast talk challenges “traditional” standards and participants’ identities in political news interviews. Adopting a conversation analytic perspective, it examines how these modified standards and identities shape political news interviews at a micro and a macro level. At a micro level, this thesis investigates episodes of adversarial talk in one-on-one 2012 Greek election campaign interviews, in terms of the turn-taking system and power relations between participants. Doing so, it points to changes in political news interviews (a sub-genre of which is the election campaign interview). In particular, the thesis explores and discusses how, through their hybrid (antagonistic) practices, Greek politicians and journalists transform the televised election campaign news interview into an antagonistic arena where the winner is the one who shows that s/he plays the game of televised news interview in a fair way. At a macro level this thesis contributes with empirical, micro-analytic evidence to wider debates related to politics and media communication by discussing the significance of both participants’ hybrid practices regarding: 1) how (mainstream) populism as political style, becomes manifest and 2) the epistemology of TV journalism in relation to its knowledge producing practices. It is argued that the collaboratively produced hybrid practices identified promote antagonistic politics as the norm and legitimise mainstream politicians’ populist performances