Teen Moms: Violence, Consent, and Embodied Subjectivity in Middle English Pregnancy Laments

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carissa M Harris
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
Unplanned Pregnancy ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
Embodied Subjectivity ◽  
Gendered Power ◽  
Manuscript Context

Abstract This article examines power and coercion in five Middle English and Middle Scots lyrics voiced by pregnant, abandoned singlewomen. It focuses on the language of consent and embodiment in these pregnancy laments, arguing that they both protest and normalize masculine violence in heterosexual erotic relations, highlight the various factors that undermine young singlewomen’s consent, articulate acute dissatisfaction with gendered power inequalities, and demonstrate the devastating consequences of sexual ignorance. It explores the different ways that we can read these lyrics when considering issues of voice, audience, performance, and manuscript context. The essay closes by linking the popularity of medieval unplanned pregnancy narratives to modern-day reality television programming, arguing that the trans-historical popularity of these stories merits further exploration.

Crimesploitation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kaplan ◽  
Daniel LaChance
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
Folk Knowledge ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Crimesploitation is a kind of reality television programming that depicts nonactors committing, detecting, prosecuting, and punishing criminal behavior. In programs like Cops, To Catch a Predator, and Intervention, a real-life-documentary frame creates a sense of verisimilitude that intensifies the show’s emotionally stimulating qualities and sets it apart from fictional crime stories. Crimesploitation programs create folk knowledge about the causes and consequences of criminal behavior and the purposes and effects of criminal punishment. That folk knowledge, in turn, reflects and reinforces two ideologies that legitimized the ratcheting up of harsh punishment in the late-twentieth-century United States: law-and-order punitivism and neoliberalism.

Police, Media, and Popular Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyce McGovern ◽  
Nickie D. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Reality Television ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Citizen Journalism ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
The Public ◽  
Police Organizations ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Communications ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between the police and the media is complex, multidimensional, and contingent. Since the development of modern-day policing, the police and the media have interacted with one another in some way, shape, or form. The relationship has often been described as symbiotic, and can be characterized as ebbing and flowing in terms of the power dynamics that exist. For the police, the media present a powerful opportunity to communicate with the public about crime threats and events, as well as police successes. For the media, crime events make up a significant portion of media content, and access to police sources assists journalists in constructing such content. But the police–media relationship is not always cosy, and at times, tensions and conflicts arise. The increasing professionalization of police media communications activities has further challenged the nature and scope of the police–media relationship. Not only has the relationship become more formalized, driven by police policies and practices that are concerned with managing the media, but it has also been challenged by the very nature of the media. Changes to the media landscape have presented police organizations with a unique opportunity to become media organizations in their own right. The proliferation of police reality television programming, together with the rise of social media, has served to broaden the ways in which the police engage with the media in the pursuit of trust, confidence, and legitimacy; however, this has also opened the police up to increasing scrutiny as citizen journalism and other forms of counterveillance challenge the preferred police image.

scholarly journals Watching reality from a distance: class, genre and reality television

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 697-714 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fredrik Stiernstedt ◽  
Peter Jakobsson
Keyword(s):  
Reality Television ◽  
Social World ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Distance Class ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
Social Elite ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Detailed Picture

The cultural significance of reality television is based on its claim to represent social reality. On the level of genre, we might argue that reality television constructs a modern day panorama of the social world and its inhabitants and that it thus makes populations appear. This article presents a class analysis of the population of reality television in which 1 year of television programming and over 1000 participants have been analysed. The purpose of this analysis is to deepen our understanding of the cultural and ideological dimensions of reality television as a genre, and to give a more detailed picture of the imaginaries of class in this form of television. The results bring new knowledge about the reality television genre and modify or revise assumptions from previous studies. Most importantly, we show that upper-class people and people belonging to the social elite are strongly over-represented in the genre and appear much more commonly in reality television than in other genres. This result opens up a re-evaluation of the cultural and ideological dimensions of the reality television genre.

Emotional Responses to Social Comparisons in Reality Television Programming

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicky Lewis ◽  
Andrew J. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Reality Television ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Target Group ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Social ◽  
Specific Comparison ◽  
Comparison Target

Abstract. In recent years, the viewing of reality television has become increasingly prevalent among television audiences. However, little is known about the psychological processes at work when viewing these programs. This study examined how social comparisons to cast members influenced emotional responses to reality television programming. Participants (N = 231) were cued with a specific comparison target group and placed in a situation of self-image enhancement or threat. Afterwards, participants watched a clip from a reality television program and then reported their emotional reactions to it. The manipulations of comparison target group and self-image affected both the direction of social comparisons made and their associated emotional responses. Participant gender also influenced social comparisons to the cast members and resulting emotional responses to the content. Although we were unable to compare the social comparison-related emotional responses to reality programs with those of scripted programs, the results of this study bring to bear the associations between specific emotional responses and the types of social comparisons that take place when watching reality television programming.

scholarly journals Reality/Television

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Reality Television ◽  
Audience Studies ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

Reality TV’s impact on television programming and content has been well documented. In recent years, the persistence of reality television as a phenomenon has also been reflected in the number of popular and scholarly publications aimed at its investigation; several books, anthologies, and journal issues have been devoted to various aspects of this kind of programming that straddles the line between the factual and the fictional. The topics discussed in this rich field of inquiry are as varied as the mutations of the reality genre itself. They include audience studies, governmentality, surveillance, voyeurism, digital consumption, ritual, gender, race—the list goes on.

scholarly journals Reality/Television

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Reality Television ◽  
Audience Studies ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
Scholarly Publications ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

Reality TV’s impact on television programming and content has been well documented. In recent years, the persistence of reality television as a phenomenon has also been reflected in the number of popular and scholarly publications aimed at its investigation; several books, anthologies, and journal issues have been devoted to various aspects of this kind of programming that straddles the line between the factual and the fictional. The topics discussed in this rich field of inquiry are as varied as the mutations of the reality genre itself. They include audience studies, governmentality, surveillance, voyeurism, digital consumption, ritual, gender, race—the list goes on.

Behavioral Journalism in Health and Risk Messaging

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfred McAlister
Keyword(s):  
Health Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Diffusion Of Innovations ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Community Organization ◽  
Unplanned Pregnancy

Behavioral journalism is a term used to describe a theory-based health communication messaging strategy that is based on conveying “role model stories” about real people and how they achieve healthy behavior changes. The aim is to stimulate imitation of these models by audiences of their peers. Theoretical foundations for the strategy itself are in Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory and Everett Rogers’s model of diffusion of innovations, but it can be used flexibly to convey various kinds of theory-driven message content. Behavioral journalism emerged as an explicit health communication technique in the late 1970s and was developed as a distinct alternative to the social marketing approach and its focus on centrally generated messages devised by experts. It has been used subsequently to promote smoking cessation, improvements in nutrition and physical activity, avoidance of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancy, reduced intergroup hostility, advocacy for healthy policy and environmental changes, and many other diverse health promotion objectives. Formats used for behavioral journalism include reality television programs, broadcast and print news media, printed newsletters for special audiences, documentary film and video, digital and mobile communication, and new social media. Behavioral journalism is intended for use in concert with community organization and actions to prompt and reinforce the imitation of role models and to facilitate and enable behavior change, and its use in that context has yielded many reports of significant impact on behavior. With citations of use growing steadily in the past two decades, behavioral journalism has proven to be readily adaptable to new and emerging communication technologies.

scholarly journals Book Review: The Bizarre World of Reality Television

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Colleen Lougen
Keyword(s):  
Community College ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Reality Television ◽  
Rapid Progression ◽  
Television Programming

The Bizarre World of Reality Television explores the origins, rapid progression, and quirky contents of reality television programming. Written by Stuart Lenig (Columbia State Community College), this unique and compact work is an entertaining read that dissects reality television through a post-modernistic lens, detailing the economic, cultural, and social factors.

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