Sound Bites

A sound bite is an authentic mediated representation of an uninterrupted segment of audible speech. As such it can occur in all media involving audio and is a key component of material news cultures. During the past decades, one of the most widely replicated findings in a wide range of countries has been that the number of sound bites is shrinking. This has attracted attention from journalism scholars and the general public because shrinking sound bites are indicative of a move toward more interpretive or even interventionist models of journalism and because they have well-documented detrimental consequences for the quality of public discourse that journalism helps to construct.