1st Edition

The Politics of Reality Television Global Perspectives

Edited By Marwan M. Kraidy, Katherine Sender Copyright 2011
    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    240 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Politics of Reality Television encompasses an international selection of expert contributions who consider the specific ways media migrations test our understanding of, and means of investigating, reality television across the globe. The book addresses a wide range of topics, including:

    • the global circulation and local adaptation of reality television formats and franchises
    • the production of fame and celebrity around hitherto "ordinary" people
    • the transformation of self under the public eye
    • the tensions between fierce loyalties to local representatives and imagined communities bonding across regional and ethnic divides
    • the struggle over the meanings and values of reality television across a range of national, regional, gender, class and religious contexts.

    This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students on a range of Media and Television Studies courses, particularly those on the globalisation of television and media, and reality television.

    Chapter 1. Introduction: Migrating Genres, Travelling Participants, Shifting Theories Katherine Sender PART 1: PRODUCING IDENTITY Introduction Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt  Chapter 2. Real-izing Exploitation Mark Andrejevic  Chapter 3. When Reality TV is a Job Francois Jost  Chapter 4. Just Be Yourself – Only More So: Ordinary Celebrity in the Era of Self-Service Television Laura Grindstaff  PART 2: LABORING THE SELF  Introduction Adrienne Shaw  Chapter 5. Governing Bodies Gareth Palmer  Chapter 6. Globalizing Lifestyles? Makeover Television in Singapore Tania Lewis  Chapter 7. Reacting to Reality TV: The affective economy of an "extended social/public realm" Helen Wood and Beverly Skeggs  PART 3: PERFORMING THE NATION  Introduction Oren Livio  Chapter 8. Commercial Nationalism on Balkan Reality Television Zala Volcic and Mark Andrejevic  Chapter 9. World Citizens ‘a la Française’: Star Academy and the Negotiations of ‘French’ Identities Fabienne Darling-Wolf  Chapter 10. Reality Television and the Making of Mobile Publics: The Case of Indian Idol Aswin Punathambekar  PART 4: MIGRATING ECONOMIES  Introduction Tara Liss-Marino  Chapter 11. New Industry Dynamics: Lessons From Reality TV in Norway Yngvar Kjus  Chapter 12. Continental Reality Television and the Expansion of South African Capital Sean Jacobs  Chapter 13. Making Populations Appear Nick Couldry  Chapter 14. Reality Television in New Worlds Marwan M. Kraidy

    Biography

    Marwan M. Kraidy is Associate Professor of Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life (2009) and Hybridity, or, The Cultural Logic of Globalization (2005).

    Katherine Sender is Associate Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her books include Business not Politics: The Making of the Gay Market (2004) and Makeover Television and its Audiences (forthcoming).

    Exemplifying the vibrant scholarship on reality television, this collection tests the field's first generation of theory and initiates cross-cultural analysis of this globally pervasive television genre. Summing Up: Recommended.
    -- CHOICE, September 2011 (R. W. Morrow, Morgan State University)