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Reacting to Reality Television
The unremitting explosion of reality television across the schedules has become a sustainable global phenomenon generating considerable popular and political fervour.
The zeal with which television executives seize on the easily replicated formats is matched equally by the eagerness of audiences to offer themselves up as television participants for others to watch and criticise. But how do we react to so many people breaking down, fronting up, tearing apart, dominating, empathising, humiliating, and seemingly laying bare their raw emotion for our entertainment? Do we feel sad when others are sad? Or are we relieved by the knowledge that our circumstances might be better? As reality television extends into the experiences of the everyday, it makes dramatic and often shocking the mundane aspects of our intimate relations, inviting us as viewers into a volatile arena of mediated morality.
This book addresses the impact of this endless opening out of intimacy as an entertainment trend that erodes the traditional boundaries between spectator and performer demanding new tools for capturing television's relationships with audiences. Rather than asking how the reality television genre is interpreted as 'text' or representation the authors investigate the politics of viewer encounters as interventions, evocations, and more generally mediated social relations.
The authors show how different reactions can involve viewers in tournaments of value, as women viewers empathise and struggle to validate their own lives. The authors use these detailed responses to challenge theories of the self, governmentality and ideology.
A must read for both students and researchers in audience studies, television studies and media and communication studies.
eBook
Fighting for Reliable Evidence
Once primarily used in medical clinical trials, random assignment experimentation is now accepted among social scientists across a broad range of disciplines. The technique has been used in social experiments to evaluate a variety of programs, from microfinance and welfare reform to housing vouchers and teaching methods. How did randomized experiments move beyond medicine and into the social sciences, and can they be used effectively to evaluate complex social problems?Fighting for Reliable Evidenceprovides an absorbing historical account of the characters and controversies that have propelled the wider use of random assignment in social policy research over the past forty years.
Drawing from their extensive experience evaluating welfare reform programs, noted scholar practitioners Judith M. Gueron and Howard Rolston portray randomized experiments as a vital research tool to assess the impact of social policy. In a random assignment experiment, participants are sorted into either a treatment group that participates in a particular program, or a control group that does not. Because the groups are randomly selected, they do not differ from one another systematically. Therefore any subsequent differences between the groups can be attributed to the influence of the program or policy. The theory is elegant and persuasive, but many scholars worry that such an experiment is too difficult or expensive to implement in the real world. Can a control group be truly insulated from the treatment policy? Would staffers comply with the random allocation of participants? Would the findings matter?
Fighting for Reliable Evidencerecounts the experiments that helped answer these questions, starting with the income maintenance experiments and the Supported Work project in the 1960s and 1970s. Gueron and Rolston argue that a crucial turning point came during the 1980s, when Congress allowed states to experiment with welfare programs and foundations, states, and the federal government funded larger randomized trials to assess the impact of these reforms. As they trace these historical shifts, Gueron and Rolston discuss the ways that strategies for resolving theoretical and practical problems were developed, and they highlight the strict conditions required to execute a randomized experiment successfully. What emerges is a nuanced portrait of the potential and limitations of social experiments to advance empirical knowledge.
Weaving history, data analysis and personal experience,Fighting for Reliable Evidenceoffers valuable lessons for researchers, policymakers, funders, and informed citizens interested in isolating the effect of policy initiatives. It is an essential primer on welfare policy, causal inference, and experimental designs.
eBook
Show Sold Separately
Highlights the trailers, merchandising and cultural
conversations that shape our experiences of film and
television It is virtually impossible to watch a movie or
TV show without preconceived notions because of the hype that
precedes them, while a host of media extensions guarantees them a
life long past their air dates. An onslaught of information from
print media, trailers, internet discussion, merchandising,
podcasts, and guerilla marketing, we generally know something about
upcoming movies and TV shows well before they are even released or
aired. The extras, or \"paratexts,\" that surround viewing
experiences are far from peripheral, shaping our understanding of
them and informing our decisions about what to watch or not watch
and even how to watch before we even sit down for a show. Show
Sold Separately gives critical attention to this ubiquitous
but often overlooked phenomenon, examining paratexts like DVD bonus
materials for The Lord of the Rings , spoilers for
Lost , the opening credits of The Simpsons ,
Star Wars actions figures, press reviews for Friday Night
Lights, the framing of Batman Begins , the videogame of
The Thing , and the trailers for The Sweet
Hereafter . Plucking these extra materials from the wings and
giving them the spotlight they deserve, Jonathan Gray examines the
world of film and television that exists before and after the
show.
eBook
Remembering British television : audience, archive and industry
\"This original book asks how, in an age of convergence, when 'television' no longer means a box in the corner of the living room that we sit and watch together, do we remember television of the past? How do we gather and archive our memories? Kristyn Gordon and Joanne Garde-Hansen explore these questions through first person interviews with tv producers, curators and archivists, and case studies of popular television series and fan communities such as 'Cold Feet' and 'Doctor Who'. Their discussion takes in museum exhibitions, popular televison nostalgia programming and 'vintage' tv websites\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Since When Is Fran Drescher Jewish?
“Since when is Fran Drescher Jewish?” This was Chiara Francesca Ferrari’s reaction when she learned that Drescher’s character on the television sitcom The Nanny was meant to be a portrayal of a stereotypical Jewish-American princess. Ferrari had only seen the Italian version of the show, in which the protagonist was dubbed into an exotic, eccentric Italian-American nanny. Since When Is Fran Drescher Jewish? explores this “ventriloquism” as not only a textual and cultural transfer between languages but also as an industrial practice that helps the media industry foster identification among varying audiences around the globe. At the heart of this study is an in-depth exploration of three shows that moved from global to local, mapping stereotypes from both sides of the Atlantic in the process. Presented in Italy, for example, Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons is no longer a belligerent, alcoholic Scotsman but instead easily becomes a primitive figure from Sardinia. Ironically, The Sopranos—a show built around Italian-Americans—was carefully re-positioned by Italian TV executives, who erased the word “mafia” and all regional references to Sicily. The result of Ferrari’s three case studies is evidence that “otherness” transcends translation, as the stereotypes produced by the American entertainment industry are simply replaced by other stereotypes in foreign markets. As American television studios continue to attempt to increase earnings by licensing their shows abroad, Since When Is Fran Drescher Jewish? illuminates the significant issues of identity raised by this ever-growing marketplace, along with the intriguing messages that lie in the larger realm of audiovisual cultural exchange.
eBook
Bachelor nation : inside the world of America's favorite guilty pleasure
Draws on interviews with producers and fans to present a behind-the-scenes look at the reality television phenomenon and explores the show's cultural influence and significance.
Book
Empowerment evaluation in the digital villages : Hewlett-Packard's $15 million race toward social justice
Empowerment Evaluation in the Digital Villages analyzes a $15 million community change initiative designed to bridge the digital divide in East Palo Alto, East Baltimore, and San Diego. Involving a partnership between Hewlett-Packard, Stanford University, and three ethnically diverse communities, this initiative enabled its constituencies to build their own technology-oriented businesses, improve their education systems, and improve their economic health. While examining this large-scale, multi-site case, Fetterman highlights the potential for empowerment evaluation to build local capacity and sustain improvements within communities. He provides deep insights into key steps in empowerment evaluation by exploring the way that each of these phases took place in the digital villages. Additionally, the text provides evaluators with real-world stories and practical advice from the front lines. The Digital Village case also demonstrates the social value of combining corporate philanthropy, academic prowess, and community empowerment—highlighting the role of evaluation in this process.
eBook