‘Welcome to participate!’: Host activities and caller’s position in Swedish election campaign phone-ins in the 1970s and the 2000s

Abstract

This article presents a study of Swedish election campaign phone-ins from 1970 and from the last decade (2002–2010), with a focus on how different organizations of the interaction, and the activities of the journalist/host, influence the position and power of the caller. Based on Conversation Analysis, two distinct parts of the conversations are explored: the openings of the call and the third turns following a politician’s answer to a caller’s question. The study shows that the power of the caller has decreased in recent election campaigns and this is related to changes in the mediation work by the host. Although the idea of the programs is to support citizen participation, the journalist activities tend to make it hard for the caller to establish a direct dialogue with the politician. The study contributes to previous research on callers’ positions in phone-ins, as well as the general debate about the journalistic efforts to involve citizens in various forms of broadcast communication.

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