Media audiences and the game of controversy

On reality TV, moral panic and controversial media stories

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7512450
AutoresDaniel Biltereyst (0000-0001-5954-1547, Ghent University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2004
Volumen5
Número1
Páginas7-24
Fecha de publicación2004-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Media Practice (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1468-2753 • E-ISSN: 2040-0926
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1386/jmpr.5.1.7/0
OpenAlexW2343686357
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas12

This article looks at the atmosphere of controversy or the perfume of scandal around reality TV. In order to grasp the feeling of controversy, we first look at the social and moral issues treated by reality programmes, where we try to introduce some positions in the overall reality TV debate. In a second step we argue that the controversial nature may reside in the intentional production or simulation of a (possible) moral panic, where we bring in recent reconfigurations about this critical sociological concept. One of the ideas here is that the old moral-panic model — what can be seen as a spiral effect produced by the interaction of the media, public opinion, interest groups, moral guardians and the authorities — needs to be adapted to a postmodern (media) environment. In this context we make a distinction between the moral- and media-panic concept. A third, more empirically based step in the attempt to understand the perfume of scandal deals with an audience study on how young people perceive new factual television and reality TV, including ‘extreme’ or more controversial forms of it

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Feeling · Media studies · Moral panic · Order (exchange · Postmodernism · Reality tv · Social reality · Social science · Sociology · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Media Studies and Communication · Psychology · History · Philosophy · Social Psychology