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Reel Politics: Reality Television as a Platform for Political Discourse
Editor: Lemi Baruh and Ji Hoon Park
Date Of Publication: Apr 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1915-2
Isbn: 1-4438-1915-8
In the mid-1980s, Neil Postman claimed that television made entertainment the natural format for the representation of all experience. While Postman’s argument still is pertinent to a description of contemporary television shows, it also seems increasingly more accurate to argue that “reality-based” entertainment is quickly becoming the referential format for televisual representations of our experience in the 21st century. Chapters in this edited volume explore reality television’s place within contemporary media landscape in terms of its potential for political engagement. The authors engage with a variety of issues such as politics of authenticity and performance, audience reception of political issues, ethics and media regulation, politics of self-presentation, modernity, and collective identity. The diversity of perspectives and issues presented in this book cautions readers both against quickly dismissing reality television’s potential as a platform for political discourse and against subscribing to the celebratory rhetoric regarding the democratic potential of reality television. Reel Politics: Reality Television as a Platform for Political Discourse furthers our understanding of the semiotic openness of the reality text and the variations in social, cultural and political contexts across which the reality television genre formulas migrate.

Lemi Baruh (PhD, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication) is Assistant Professor in the Department of New Media at the Faculty of Communication, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey. His research interests include new forms of mediation, political discourse, identity, surveillance, privacy—especially pertaining to social psychology of attitudes about privacy—and culture of voyeurism. His research has been published in journals such as Communication Research, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and New Media and Society. Most recently, Lemi Baruh edited a volume (in Turkish) that focuses on social issues concerning interactivity, social media and advertising (Doğan Kitap, 2009).

Ji Hoon Park (PhD, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication) is Assistant Professor in the School of Media and Communication at Korea University. His research interests include cultural studies, documentary film, reality television, minorities in the media, and audience research. His academic interest in minorities in the media is reflected in his practice of documentary film-making. He directed and produced documentary films, such as “When the West Brings Civilization Back to Africa” (88min, 2008), “Latina, Rome, and Their Family” (25min, 2004), and “I Am Who I Am: My Life as a Transsexual” (53min, 2003). Park’s current research focuses on the representation of Africa in the Western media.

“This book delivers even more than it promises. In accomplishing its mission—to analyze the international eruption of Reality TV and to debate its pros and cons—this book confronts fundamental questions of media research. It asks, for example, how television genres evolve; whether their content relates to the zeitgeist; what gratifications they provide; whether they contribute to (or undermine) deliberative democracy; and how they cause new and old media to ‘converge.’”

—Professor Elihu Katz, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

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