How the imagined audience is involved and represented in TV news broadcasts

Abstract

This study uses data collected from prime-time TV news broadcasts on the three most popular Czech TV channels. The aim is to analyze how the imagined audience is addressed and how it is represented. Closer attention is paid to the format of “vox pops” and the tendency to categorize the speakers involved in news broadcasts. The findings show that the imagined audience is involved in the news discourse in conformity with the tendency towards conversationalization and consumerization. The boundaries between the format of vox pops and other interviews and sound-bites are blurred. The speakers are often classified into categories and also represent various categories of the imagined audience. There is a tendency not to present the speakers as completely anonymous and emphasis is put on their experience with the events on which they comment.