The design of questions in news interviews and news conferences has proven to be an illuminating window into the tenor of press-state relations. Quantitative studies have charted aggregate variations in adversarial questioning, but less is known about variations in the intensity of adversarialness within any particular question. Such variation is captured by the vernacular distinction between “hardball” versus “softball” questions. Hardballs advance an oppositional viewpoint vigorously, while softballs do so at most mildly. In this paper we investigate recurrent language practices through which journalists modulate the oppositionality of a question, thereby either hindering or facilitating response. The objective is to better understand how adversarialness is enacted in direct encounters between politicians and journalists.
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2024. Using formulations to maximize differences of opinion during televised climate change panel interviews. Journalism
Len-Ríos, María E., Rico Neumann & Solyee Kim
2024. Challenging Politicians on Race in Interviews: Social Dominance Orientation, Perceived Journalistic Credibility, Bias, and Appropriateness. Journalism Practice 18:2 ► pp. 413 ff.
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2024. ‘Softballs’ for ‘Hardballs’: The congenial political interview on right-wing partisan TV news outlets. Journalism
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2023. The Visible Politics of Intersubjectivity: Constructing Knowledge as Shared to Manage Resistance in News Interviews. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 42:5-6 ► pp. 544 ff.
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2023. “Hypophora” and “question cascade” in Cantonese political discourse: the stance triangle and the use of rhetorical moves and utterance final particles. Text & Talk 43:5 ► pp. 647 ff.
Alroumi, Abdulrahman
2022. Assessments and actions: Instances from Arabic broadcast political interviews. Journal of Pragmatics 191 ► pp. 211 ff.
Alroumi, Abdulrahman
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Feng, Debing
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Heritage, John
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2019. Mental health disclosure in the public eye: accounting for and managing absences from professional sporting competition. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 11:4 ► pp. 435 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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