My research lies at the intersection of language, interaction, and mass communication.  I apply the methods of conversation analysis to forms of broadcast talk such as news interviews and presidential news conferences.  Since news and public affairs discourse is increasingly organized around spontaneous interactions rather than scripted narratives, I am interested in what the study of interaction can reveal about journalism, press-state relations, and the public sphere.

Beyond the domain of broadcast journalism, 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 ordinary conversation and the organization of interaction per se — what Erving Goffman termed the interaction order - as an institution in its own right and a locus of human sociality.