James A. Kelley
 

This paper is a case study of the construction of identities in an American presidential primary debate interview broadcast on a cable news network (The Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate held on 15 January 2008 at the Cashman Theater in Las Vegas, Nevada on MSNBC). This debate was chosen for study as a deviant case in which interviewees (IE) were asked to prepare a question and present it to one of the other participating IEs. This asks them to consider the institutional role of interviewer (IR) as well as their conventional role as IE. In addition it gives IEs an unobstructed opportunity to set the agenda and dictate identities vis-à-vis other participants. Much has been written about the construction of IR neutrality in institutional settings, but less about how asymmetries are created and resisted in the same settings. This paper seeks to take a step in that direction by asking: What can IE efforts at questioning tell us about how questioning can be used to create identities? How are questions used to establish asymmetries? How are these efforts resisted? Analysis reveals a complex interplay of institutional convention and strategic political action that results in the creation of an individual voice.