We placed together four interviews that are each concerned with technology and questions of access to digital music files. In each case, an interviewer, backed by a publication interviewed people on both sides of the debate about how music and other forms of entertainment are produced and distributed now that personal computers and the web have become widely popular tools.
The interview formats are familiar: there is an introduction to the person and the issues, followed by some form of question and answer. The questions asked and their lengths vary, as do the answers and their lengths. Where the interviews were published vary: two are from online magazines that are (for now) best known in their print form (Rolling Stone and Business Week), while the other two are from online publications that got their start after the digital age took off and were designed to take advantage of this new technology.
What is said in the interviews, however, varies. As you read, consider the circumstances that shape the responses of the person being interviewed—and her or his attitude toward file sharing—and how the attitude of the interviewer shapes the questions being asked and how the person being interviewed is presented.
Here are the interviews:
Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview
RIAA victim talks to p2pnet
How Copyright Law Changed Hip Hop: An interview with Public Enemy’s Chuck D and Hank Shocklee
Lawrence Lessig: The “Dinosaurs” Are Taking Over
Here are questions to encourage you to compare these interviews rhetorically:
- Compare the introductions to these four interviews. Do they set up the physical surroundings of the interview in the same way? Do they describe the physical look and sound of the interviewee in the same way? Does the character of the interviewer, his or her interests, concerns, or positions on the issue, emerge in the same way in each? How do these descriptions set you up, as a reader, to read and understand? What attitudes do they encourage you to pick up?
- In each case, as the interview unfolds, do you always sense the physical presence of the interviewer and interviewee? How is that achieved (if it is achieved)?
- In each case, who is being interviewed? What is their role in the issue being discussed? What experience or authority do they have that attracted the interviewer to them in the first place?
- The ethos of each, the interviewer and interview, usually stand out in an interview, though sometimes one stands out more than the other (usually the interviewee, but not always!). Compare the relationships between the interviewers and interviewees in each of these four pieces. Do they all stand out in the same ways? What might explain the differences you observe from interview to interview?
- These interviews address an issue or set of issues that emerged after the “PC revolution,” as one interviewer put it. Do any or all of the interviews seem dated at the time you are reading this? In each case, does the interviewee take the same broad or narrow temporal view of the issue (looking past and future)? Do the interviewees take the same broad or narrow spatial view of the issue (looking only domestically or also internationally)?
- Do all the interviews address the issue of file sharing with the same intensity? Do the interviewer and interviewee agree in each case (that is, is their agreement in position on the issue a part of the the way the interview is presented in each case?)?
Does the actual time and place of the interview, its location, time of day and year, play a role in the way the interview is presented to the reader in each piece? Explain any differences you observe.
- Do these interviews approach the issue(s) from the same perspective or angle? If they differ, how do they do so, and is this related to the publication outlet and its presumed readership?
- In an interview, the interviewer asks questions and sometimes has to preface a question with a statement or two. At one extreme this can begin to sound more like a conversation than a question-and-answer interview. How similar are the four interviews in this respect?
- How do you think the very different visual presentations of these interviews affect how you read? Which visual presentations focus your attentions on the interview and which on the context of the webpage? How and why?
