TY - BOOK ID - 445914 TI - Reacting to reality television : performance, audience and value AU - Skeggs, Beverley AU - Wood, Helen PY - 2012 SN - 9780415693707 9780415693714 9780203144237 9781136502408 9781136502446 9781136502453 0415693713 0203144236 0415693705 PB - London Routledge DB - UniCat KW - televisiegenres KW - Mass communications KW - Sociology of culture KW - Reality television programs KW - Television viewers KW - Social aspects KW - Psychological aspects KW - Attitudes KW - Psychological aspects. KW - Social aspects. KW - Attitudes. KW - Reality television programs - Social aspects KW - Reality television programs - Psychological aspects KW - Television viewers - Attitudes UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:445914 AB - 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. ER -