|
The table can be accessed from the box immediately to the right. This table was drawn up as part of the work informing “Jonestalk: The specificity of Alan Jones” (Crofts and Turner 2007). In particular, it informs Section 3 of that article. Across the two days of Jones’ broadcasts of 13-14 October 2005, it tabulates data to answer questions about how political and how partisan his programme is, and about how callers respond to his agenda. The table shows all of the topics he covers in his own “solo” address to the mike and in his interviews with invited guests on his chosen topics. (It thus excludes his regular spots with US and UK correspondents, and with his regular Economics and Sports correspondents, as well as listeners’ calls and Jones’ talk with them, totals of which are supplied in Table 1 of Crofts and Turner (2007). To show the weighting given to various topics, the timings include interviewees’ words as well as Jones’ in the interviews he conducts.) Interviews are detailed both to indicate the kinds of interviewees Jones uses, and to explain some of the reason for the length of some items. It ranks these topics in terms of the time devoted to each over the two days, and note the number of mentions each topic receives. It categorises the news group which the topic instances. The categories of news content employed here are based on those devised for the Agenda Analysis in Turner et al (2006): Politics, Social Issues, Crime, Consumer Affairs, Entertainment and Sport. (Respective abbreviations in the table are: ‘POL’, ‘SOC’, CRI’, ‘CON AFF’, ‘ENT’, ‘SPO’.) Given the need for finer specification in the present analysis, we disaggregated the “Other” category using John Langer’s groupings in Tabloid Television: the Especially Remarkable, Victims, Communities at Risk (respectively abbreviated as ‘REM’, ‘VIC’, ‘COM RISK’; the sample afforded no examples of Langer’s Ritual, Tradition and the Past) (1998: 35). It became necessary in trial coding exercises to add the category of Community (abbreviated as ‘COM’). Whereas all other categories foreground what Roman Jakobson (1960) called the referential function of language--that which describes a world out there: a key function of news media--our last category foregrounds another of his linguistic functions. This is the “conative” (not the phatic, as some sociolinguists would have it), whose “orientation towards the addressee” well describes talkback’s community service function (Jakobson 1960: 355). Forgotten listener emails read out on air exemplify this responsiveness to its real and imagined communities. Additionally, it codes the kind of stance Jones adopts towards the topic concerned. Jones’ “take” or stance on his topics was coded in five ways, the first four mutually exclusive, the last a supernumerary inflection applicable across any of the others (though actually not, in our sample, to the fourth one).
Codings of Jones’ partisan stances are made on the basis of the principal emphasis expressed in the item concerned, and exclude any opposite unless it is given equal prominence. Thus on October 13 and 14, while the frequent attacks on the NSW Government and the RTA imply a pro-motorist position, Jones’ talk never explicitly accords this position equal prominence. Yet all items on likely Federal cuts to the mental health helpline, depressioNet, give equal emphasis “pro” mental health sufferers, and “vs” Government meanness and/or lavish expenditure on the refurbishment of Parliament House. Following the same tenet of the principal emphasis, a second or third target of attack or support is mentioned only if it is accorded equal status. Some exceptions of interest are footnoted in the table. In restating or referring back to a given topic, Jones may, firstly, shift the focus of his partisanship, as he does on Sydney road tunnels (see the section on partisanship below). Secondly, he does not necessarily maintain the same approach. He may move between partisanship and neutrality, as is seen in his comments on the Federal Government’s industrial reform legislation being promulgated at the time. The designation of multiples-–eg “x3”-–indicates how many of the topics mentioned more than once are approached by Jones from an Informational, Neutral, Partisan, Celebratory and/or Caring stance. The objects of Jones’ partisan and celebratory stances are noted in the next column. There are “N/A” (not applicable) notations for Neutral and Informational stances because they do not take sides, no notation for his Caring stance, because its objects are evident from the topic description. The table quantifies also the responses of Callers to the agenda set by Jones’ talk. The tripartite categorisation of Supportive/Neutral/Critical represents a development from the Opinion/Information split applied in Turner et al (2006). There, the coding of data depended on the predominant emphasis of the call: whether primarily opinion or primarily information. The calls which we there coded Agree/Disagree with Host are here respectively subsumed under the coding categories of Supportive/Critical vis-à-vis the partisan or celebratory stances Jones adopts. The present analysis adds to these two the category of Neutral vis-à-vis Jones’ position. So those calls which we previously coded as Information are here coded in terms of whether the information they offer is Supportive of Jones’ expressed partisan or celebratory stances or Critical of them or Neutral in regards to them. The Neutral coding is also applicable on occasions when a caller supplies neutral information relative to a topic on which Jones adopts a Neutral or Informational stance. On the one occasion when a caller phones expressing a view on a topic about which Jones adopts a neutral or informational stance (Schapelle Corby’s sentence, ranked 34th= below), it is marked “N/A”. References Jakobson, Roman (1960) “Closing Statement”, in ed Thomas Seboek, Style in language, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Langer, John (1998) Tabloid Television: Popular Journalism and the ‘Other News’, London: Routledge. Turner, Graeme, Elizabeth Tomlinson and Susan Pearce (2006) "Talkback Radio: Some Notes on Format, Politics and Influence" in Media International Australia, 118. |