Between Adversarialism and Cooperation: Rhetorical Strategies of Interviewers and Interviewees in Presidential Elections

ABSTRACT

This article aims to examine the rhetorical strategies employed by interviewers and interviewees to understand how adversarialism unfolds in television broadcasts. While most studies to date analyze a single interview or compare how the same interviewer confronts several interviewees, we capture how different panels of interviewers address adversarial questions in the same program format. We use mixed methods to assess nine interviews with Brazilian presidential candidates on the Roda Viva program aired during the 2018 elections. The results reveal that the structural characteristics of Roda Viva reduce the opportunities for equivocation gaps. In addition, while media professionals adopt a more assertive stance toward candidates (seeking to deauthenticate them), some interviewers from outside journalism offered the interviewees moral support. In turn, politicians avoided tricky questions and criticized the media coverage when placed in “embarrassing” situations. We also discuss how adversarial questions may help populist candidates since they use such opportunities to play the victim's role and attack the interviewers’ credibility. Besides scrutinizing the media's performance in a non-Western setting, the paper contributes to the work of journalists, candidates, and political consultants by highlighting which rhetorical elements favor or harm the efficiency of those participating in such interviews.

KEYWORDS:

• Political journalism
• adversarialism
• elections
• debates
• television
• public opinion

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Deivison Santos and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article. Dr. Marques and Dr. Miola express their deepest gratitude to the Michigan State University for the research opportunities offered in East Lansing, especially Dr. Tim P. Vos, Dr. Johannes M. Bauer, and Dr. Keith N. Hampton. They also acknowledge the English teachers and friends working for the VETP (MSU) and the Friendship House: Larry Woods, JoAnn Woods, Karen Carpenter, Mary Hennessey, Steven Stowe, Tom Almer, Dan Winter, Jen Garmon, Tim Miank, Paul Schleusener, and Marion Schleusener.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/world/americas/brazil-online-content-misinformation.html.

2 https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/materias/2022/06/15/jornalistas-denunciam-aumento-de-ataques-a-imprensa-durante-governo-bolsonaro.

3 https://www.estadao.com.br/politica/senador-alessandro-vieira-debate-presidente/.

4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DPUOhKUmaQ.

5 https://cultura.uol.com.br/noticias/659_roda-viva-nas-eleicoes-serie-com-presidenciaveis-soma-mais-de-16-milhoes-de-visualizacoes-nas-redes.html and https://telepadi.folha.uol.com.br/visto-por-maiores-de-50-na-tv-roda-viva-e-redescoberto-por-mais-jovens-na-web/.

6 https://politica.estadao.com.br/noticias/eleicoes,nao-houve-golpe-militar-em-64-afirma-bolsonaro-no-roda-viva,70002423000 and https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/lupa/2018/07/31/bolsonaro-roda-viva/.

7 https://www.dw.com/pt-br/a-elei%C3%A7%C3%A3o-da-instabilidade/a-46061485.

8 https://m.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2016/03/1746600-lula-critica-imprensa-na-apuracao-da-lava-jato.shtml and https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2021/07/bolsonaro-atacou-imprensa-87-vezes-no-primeiro-semestre-de-2021-aumento-de-74-diz-entidade.shtml.

9 https://datafolha.folha.uol.com.br/eleicoes/2018/10/1983550-desejo-de-mudanca-e-rejeicao-ao-pt-alavancam-candidatura-de-bolsonaro.shtml.

10 “Centrão” is the parliamentary coalition gathering parties with no solid ideological orientation but willing to negotiate political advantages with those running the Executive Power (Nery and Mueller 2020).

11 In this case, we considered the words referring to the interviewees’ short biography presented at the beginning of each show.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Brazilian National Scientific Council (CNPq) (310724/2020-1 and 406504/2022-9) and by the Brazilian Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) (001, 23038.009168/2013-81, and 88887.478242/2020-00).