ABSTRACT

In many political systems, the press conference is an institutional arrangement of public political communication, and has, as Kumar (2007, p. 255) puts it, ‘come to be regarded as part of the foundation of democratic government’. It gradually progressed during the twentieth century from controlled and confidential, off-the-record meetings between leading politicians and journalists into an arena for public accountability with great significance for the news production cycle (Eriksson & Östman 2013). A press conference takes place on the political institution's initiative to announce policies, decisions, and so on, but occasionally also for handling challenging events, such as accidents, catastrophes, or even political scandals. There are differences between national contexts, but as a communicative genre, press conferences are characterised by certain standards (see Bhatia 2006; Eriksson, Larsson & Moberg 2013; Kumar 2007). The events are typically embedded in political processes and normally announced through press releases. The two main parts of the events involve the pre-planned speech by one politician (or sometimes two or more) and a question-and-answer session in which journalists pose questions. Through the subsequent news-construction phase, journalists process these different instances of talk and other information into news items that provide the public with a chance to know about politicians' actions.