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Not playing the game: political talk, hybridity and performance

Smith, Angela and Higgins, Michael (2024) Not playing the game: political talk, hybridity and performance. Journalism. ISSN 1464-8849 (In Press)

Item Type: Article

Abstract

This article looks at two prominent news interviews by non-political actors; one an accountability interview and the other part of a panel discussion. It shows how the exchanges contest the conventions of the journalistic interview, deploying a range of unorthodox verbal and non-verbal tactics. The accountability interview, broadcast on Sky News and posted on X (Twitter), includes a heightened performative component, using a variety of techniques to foreground verbal and embodied incredulity. This attracted widespread public and journalistic comment, and produces a manner of engagement that evades conventional language analysis. Performance is a still more prominent factor in the second example, which analyses an appearance by a professional comedian on a BBC political discussion programme. This sustains a comedic persona based upon an enactment of mock-sincerity, contesting the conventional forms of mediated political talk and commentary. Together, these performances are assessed in the context of increasing hybridity in broadcast news, and the article suggests their significance extends beyond their status as sharable media spectacle, such that they show how popular forms of performance can challenge the institutional norms of neutralism.

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More Information

Depositing User: Angela Smith

Identifiers

Item ID: 17578
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849241254958
ISSN: 1464-8849
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/17578
Official URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/146488492...

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Angela Smith: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2013-8395

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 26 Apr 2024 12:01
Last Modified: 24 May 2024 10:15

Contributors

Author: Angela Smith ORCID iD
Author: Michael Higgins

University Divisions

Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries > School of Media and Communications

Subjects

Culture > English Language and Literature

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