Steven Clayman
Biography
My interests span the organization of human interaction and its interface with social institutions. Most of my research has focused on interactions between journalists and politicians in broadcast news interviews and presidential news conferences. I am interested in how these interactions are organized, and what their study can reveal about journalistic norms, press-state relations, political communication systems, and sociopolitical contexts.
Beyond this domain, I am interested in how interaction works in a variety of institutional environments and occupational settings ranging from medicine and law to public safety and commerce. More broadly still, I am interested in conversational interaction as a topic in its own right and an elementary form of self-other relations and sociality.
Publications
The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures on the Air, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002 (co-authored with John Heritage).
“Questioning Presidents: Journalistic Deference and Adversarialness in the Press Conferences of U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan.” Journal of Communication, 2002 (co-authored with John Heritage).
“Historical Trends in Questioning Presidents 1953-2000.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 2006 (co-authored with Marc Elliott, John Heritage, and Laurie McDonald).
“When Does the Watchdog Bark: Conditions of Aggressive Questioning in Presidential News Conferences.”American Sociological Review, 2007 (co-authored with John Heritage, Marc Elliott, and Laurie McDonald).
Talk in Action: Interactions, Identities, and Institutions. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010 (co-authored with John Heritage).
“The Micropolitics of Legitimacy: Political Position-Taking and Journalistic Scrutiny at the Boundary of the Mainstream.” Social Psychology Quarterly, 2017.
“The Ethnomethodological Lineage of Conversation Analysis” (co-authored with John Heritage and Douglas W. Maynard). In DW Maynard and J Heritage (eds.) The Ethnomethodology Program: Legacies and Prospects, 2022.
“Dispatching First Responders: The Dispatchers’s Operational Role in Radio Encounters with Field Officers” (co-authored with Heidi Kevoe-Feldman). Discourse and Society, 2023.
“Making Arrangements: A Sketch of a “Big Package”” (co-authored with John Heritage). Research on Language and Social Interaction, 2024.
“Examining Prospective Jurors: Sensitivities of Probing for Racial Bias” (co-authored with Matthew Fox). Contexts, 2024.
Awards & Grants
Grants
National Science Foundation 2001-2003
Project Title: The Evolution of Questioning in Presidential News Conferences
Goal: To chart historical trends in president-press relations over the last half-century, and to isolate the social factors that explain variations in the aggressiveness with which journalists question the president.
