Managing Agenda Setting in Pakistani Political TalkShows: A Functional Analysis of Interruptions

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the functional performance of interruptions in political news interviews. The selected sample for this study consists of approximately 200 minutes of recordings of political news interviews from the public state owned channel PTV World. The methodological framework for this study comes from Conversation Analysis. The analytical framework for the analysis has been developed from a study of literature pertaining to interruptions. At the initial level of analysis all interruptions are identified for their function (cooperative, disruptive and neutral), finally a qualitative exploration is carried out to see what purpose these serve in the specific format of news interviews. The findings reveal that a significant number of interruptions (80%) are of the disruptive nature. This result implicates that the interruptions by anchor are being used for controlling talk and significantly setting the agenda of the discussion within the political news interview and impacting the political view of the audience.