DISCURSIVE STRATEGIES FOR EVADING ANSWERS IN CONFRONTATIONAL NEWS INTERVIEWS

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Television interview has been the basic journalists’ medium for both collecting information and informing the public for decades. The key element of the interview is information, and the basic underlying idea is that the information should be true. However, this is not always the case. In this paper we have researched the discursive strategies the interviewees occasionally use to avoid answering a question, partially or completely, i.e. to avoid providing the public with the truth about a current issue. This problem falls into the domain of Critical Discourse Analysis and Conversation Analysis. By applying those two methods we have tried to identify different strategies used for truth evasion in the corpus of confrontational television interviews. There are two general ways of evading the truth: (1) overt evasiveness and (2) covert evasiveness. Overt evasiveness ranges from explicit refusal to answer a question, which is rare, to different strategies of providing partial or inadequate answers. Covert evasiveness, which is more difficult to be observed, covers various strategies such as answering the introductory part of the question, changing the focus of the question, or even answering with a question. We can conclude that even in a Hardtalk interview which assumes direct, provocative and even hostile questions to which the public expects direct answers, the truth is not necessarily revealed. The results of a critical discourse analysis or/and conversation analysis may be of great help to both interviewees in their attempts to avoid answering sensitive questions and to interviewers and discourse analysts to be able to identify them.

THEORY OF THE TEXT AND THE NEW MEDIA

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As a generator of different possible interpretations and experience, a text has always been a virtual object. Convergence of critical theory and new media technologies has not produced a virtual text, but has only raised it to a higher level of the hypertext. The concept of interactivity is present not only as a relation between the reader and the text in the process of producing a meaning, but also as a physical change of the text during reading. Development of new media technologies has led to a large convergence and overlapping theory of intertextuality and hypertext. With hypertext it is possible to overcome resistance and physical detachment of the printed text. The boundary is moved between what is ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, to what is between the ‘center’ and the ‘periphery’. Decentralizing of the text is an important characteristic of the hypertext as the ‘center’ moves from a stable and hierarchized structure to the reader’s own interests and needs. In the center of the hypertext there is the reader, not the author. In this way, the new and revolutionary critical theories of the author, text and the reader, formulated decades ago, have found practical application and confirmation in the digitized area of the new media.

TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION, MEDIA EXISTENCE AND THE ROLE OF JOURNALISM

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New technologies and new media certainly are one of the biggest challenges for the media and journalism in their original concept and tradition. The result is a number of innovations and problems in practice, as well as a variety of predictions as their theoretical reflection. Today, the media and journalists operate in conditions that have significantly changed the entire way of their functioning, as well as the media and journalistic culture in general, and have thus influenced the fact that this moment is often seen as an epochal turning point and a fundamental change in the traditional functions of journalism and media practice, as well as their role in contemporary culture. In order to understand the current circumstances, it is necessary to recognize not only the global importance of the role of the media and the original principles of journalism, but also the actual change in practice – as comprehensively as possible – and to present implications of the so-called new technological revolution. The ultimate goal is to find the most reliable lines of thinking when it comes to the future of the journalism, which is the essence of the media world, no matter which way we look. If we try, it is necessary to observe the situation from different aspects and thus analyze global challenges and changes that have already occurred. Of course, they should not be viewed as isolated incidents, and due to their complexity still need to be observed in as much detail as possible. It seems that one of the ways to study them could be the one that we shall try to offer in this paper – through observation of: 1 Altering of the public role and position of journalists and journalism; and 2. Changing of the media and journalism everyday organizations and work. The first means an external reflection of journalism and how it affects changes in other spheres of life, and conversely, how these changes affect the public role of journalism. The other one is an internal reflection of the changes in terms of everyday journalistic (and editorial) work – the tasks and how they are carried out. Their synthesis may perhaps mean the ability to reach a valid assessment of the direction in which we will be working and reporting further. It puts the focus on the dimension of the managerial and editorial features in the media, which is always crucial in terms of their orientation and ways of working (although often ignored), and therefore the ways in which journalism occurs. That also involves one of the key issues when it comes to the media and journalism today – the question of a sustainable model of journalism and the media (in terms of business, but also in terms of quality journalism) in the 21st century.

POST JOURNALISM IN THE FOURTH TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

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This paper is considering essential changes which the new media brought to contemporary journalism, also called post journalism by certain authors. These changes are most visible in the following relations: information-source-journalist-journalism-reader/consumer. They are evident in all parts of the communication process and are related to the quality and independence of journalism, as well as its interpretability, analyticity and diversity. Despite expectations, the multi-screen society did not bring significant quality changes, the Serbian media and journalists did not find themselves in it (with rare tabloid profile exceptions), while trivial content has additionally increased the “polluted” online domain already saturated with multitudes of information. An apparent authorship crisis, inability to find a tenable business model, continuation of impowerishment, a crisis of creative industry and a domination of swallowing the content instead of creating it, has additionally complicated the professional, ethical and sociological habitat. Authors are trying to establish a relation between the causes and the consequences of all these phenomena, offering solutions and emphasizing that increasing atomization, fragmentation and segmentation of the audience, narrowing of their interests and expansion of an antisocial mood could have far-reaching consequences. Not as much for the mass media as for the society itself and for the journalism that forms its integral part as one of the pillars of the civil democratic society – both globally and locally.

EDITOR’S NOTE

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DOXOLOGY OF EMPTINESS OR WHO THOUGHT THEY SAW A KITTY CAT

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The text offers a personal commentary on the state of literary awards in Serbia. It consists of three segments. The first one deliberates on a general cultural/political context of the phenomenon of literary awards. The second one considers the media status, promotion and misuse of literary awards for commercial purposes. The third fragment briefly questions the manner of forming literary award juries and points to two key problems: selection of jury members and lack of transparency in their work.

SOCIAL MEANING OF AWARDS IN CULTURE AND THEIR AMBIVALENT EFFECT ON CREATORS

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Awards in culture are considered a significant medium of cultural policy. They affect creators in a stimulating way, encourage more people to become acquainted with a certain art piece or author, favour certain art forms or art in general, and often have an economic component as well. This paper tries to explore in greater depth the encouraging effect that awards have on the artist and connect it to the widely accepted purposes of the cultural policy of a society in transition.

THE BEST OR THE MOST READ BOOK AWARD

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This paper deals with the Most Read Book of the Year Award of the National Library of Serbia (1973-2004) that is the Best Book Award of the network of public libraries of Serbia (2005-2013). On several occasions since 1973 the fate of this award has been uncertain and in 2005 its frame significantly changed. The changes in the profile of the award provoked a strong reaction from the public. Every year, a question is raised as to the fate of this unique award and the reasons for its existence.

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF AWARDS IN SERBIA

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In the second half of the 20th century, especially during the 1960s and the 1980s, a growing number of cultural awards, particularly literary ones, marked the intellectual field ie literary art in Serbia. Among these, a special place belongs to the prizes established and given by social-political communities on federal, republic or local levels, which symbolizes the desire of the state and its parts to play the role of a modern benefactor. One of those prizes, which used to be rather prestigious over a long period of time, was the October Award of the City of Belgrade for contribution to art and science, but since 2008 it has lost its place in the culture awards nomenclature. This paper, thanks to participation of the author in the work of the jury of the October Award of the City of Belgrade for literature and translation in the period 1977-1980, reconstructs conditions under which the award was assigned, the authors and their works nominated, as well as the controversies arisen in some cases and reactions of the public. In this period, members of the jury have assessed 77 works, mostly writers’ pieces, a number of works by literary historians, theoreticians and critics, and much fewer translators. In two turns, the work of the jury was undoubtedly colored by the atmosphere of tolerance and concord in decisions on the winners, when a great role in this was played by the jury chairman, Vukoje Bulatović, the manager and chief editor of the “Politika” daily magazine at the time.

SERBIAN NATIONAL AWARDS FROM 1945 TO 1980

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State cultural policy plays a major role in the cultural life of every country, since it creates conditions for artistic work and life. This is achieved in a variety of different ways, through legal regulations and financial support for cultural institutions, projects and artists being among some. It is important to recognize that a state cultural policy never functions separately from the general policy of the state, and that every country defines its cultural policy and establishes its priorities depending on its political, social, economic, cultural and other factors. Awarding is an integral part of every cultural policy, and in this research we are also going to overview the most important Serbian national literary awards presented between 1945 and 1980. We will examine the 7th of July Award and the October Award.