News from the interview society

During the 20th century, the interview has evolved in such a way that it has become the dominating form for talk and text production in the mass media (i.e. in newspapers, radio, television). This book introduces the Interview Society as an innovative, provocative and challenging concept to understand the construction of news, the use of language, and the power of journalism in contemporary media society. It focuses on the journalistic interview and on the techniques for the representation of utterances, talk and conversation, and combines theories of the public sphere, news journalism, and the interview as a form of interaction. It relates discursive techniques on a micro level to institutional and cultural condi tions on a macro level, with regard to journalism and the media public sphere, and takes a historically point of departure with the intention of pinning down important tendencies in the development of modern journalism during the 20th century. Without being nation-specific, it presents findings from a number of empirical studies from five different countries and various genres. The book is structured in relation to four main themes: (1) Historical perspectives, (2) Practices of inter viewing and institutionalised interaction, (3) Quoting and editing, (4) New arenas and new forms of interaction.