The main theoretical framework used in this work is influenced by Goffman, where each media encounter is viewed as a three-way participation framework involving the broadcaster, interviewee and audience, all of whom shape the interaction. The spoken media interactions are analysed from this viewpoint to illustrate how they are managed, how pseudo-relationships are established and maintained and how ‘others’ are created. O’Keefe brings together methodologies of discourse analysis, conversation analysis and corpus linguistics allowing the media extracts to be explored from different perspectives whilst providing multiple insights. will appeal to students and researchers of applied linguistics, english language and media. Anne O’Keeffe is Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the Department of English Language and Literature, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland.