Reality TV - (Critical Media Studies: Institutions, Politics, and Culture) by Mark Andrejevic (Paperback)

About the Book

Drawing on cultural theory and interviews with fans, cast members, and producers, this book places the reality TV trend within a broader social context, tracing its relationship to the development of a digitally enhanced, surveillance-based interactive economy and to a savvy m...

Book Synopsis

Drawing on cultural theory and interviews with fans, cast members, and producers, this book places the reality TV trend within a broader social context, tracing its relationship to the development of a digitally enhanced, surveillance-based interactive economy and to a savvy mistrust of mediated reality in general. Surveying several successful reality-TV formats, the book links the rehabilitation of 'Big Brother' to the increasingly important economic role played by the work of being watched. The author enlists critical social theory to examine how the appeal of 'the real' is deployed as a pervasive but false promise of democratization.

Review Quotes

Mark Andrejevic has written one of the most original, sophisticated, and important accounts of television in years. Its originality and importance is precisely how it explains TV by moving beyond TV-to understand TV through the Internet, to rethink the current mantra of 'interactivity, ' and to locate the latest televisual trend ('reality TV') within the long histories of surveillance that have shaped the current 'surveillance economy' and the current applications of video and other communication technologies. Through this project, Andrejevic distinguishes himself as one of the most noteworthy young scholars of media and culture.

This is a very thoughtful and perceptive study of reality TV, tracing its inscription between the technological logics of surveillance and interactivity, on the one hand, and the changing cultures of celebrity and consumption, on the other. Mark Andrejevic's account succeeds in moving beyond the anatomy of a new media form to provide a critical analysis of broader social and cultural dynamics in contemporary society.

Why has the burst of interactivity celebrated by new media not led to an increase in democracy? In his brilliant analysis of reality television, Mark Andrejevic convincingly argues that surveillance accompanies the fun and flexibility of networked communications. Just like the faux 'stars' of reality TV, we seem all too willing to be watched, to see and be seen. This book is a major contribution to a critical theory of communicative capitalism.

About the Author

Mark Andrejevic is assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa.