Critical Thinking Activity #2: Analysis of Reality Show and News Show - Dancer 17
Once_UponATime
Chapter8-Dancer17.pptxPotter, Media Literacy, 9e. © SAGE Publishing, 2019
Chapter 8
Media Content and Reality
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Key Idea: The media spin reality to make it appear more exciting and thus attract people away from their real lives
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Potter, Media Literacy, 9e. © SAGE Publishing, 2019
Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Reality
One of the most difficult concepts to define in any context
Requires a complex judgment
Differs across individuals
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Reality TV Part 1: Introduction to Reality TV
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Complex Judgment
Distinction between real and media world essential to gain control over media effects
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Complex judgment: Magic window
Television
Showed literal reality
Children initially vulnerable to many negative effects till they learned to tell the difference between reality and fantasy
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Magic Window
For a long time, people believed that television held a window up to the actual world when it covered real events and real people.
Until children were able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, they were vulnerable to negative effects.
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Complex judgment: Magic window
Adult discount
Skepticism developed in children about the literal reality of media messages, and they were better able to distinguish reality from fantasy
Age of application varies from 12 and above
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As children accumulate more experience with the media, they increase their skepticism and fully embrace the adult discount by about age 12.
Other research suggested that children base their perceptions of reality not on the accuracy of portrayals or information but on the probability that something could occur in their lives.
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The Moment Bill Hader Realized Reality TV was Fake
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Complex judgment: Multiple dimensions of reality
Judgment criteria
Factuality
Perceptual persuasiveness
Social utility
Identity
Emotional involvement
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Multiple Dimensions of Reality
While the beginning point of judging reality is usually with an assessment of whether a portrayal actually happened, people frequently use more criteria to judge reality.
People may judge one criterion as realistic while judging the others as unrealistic.
The criteria include:
Factuality: Does the message show what actually happened? This is the idea of magic window which asks: Is the media message an accurate, unadorned view through a window on actual events and people?
Perceptual persuasiveness: Does the media message present characters and settings that look real?
Social utility: Does the media message portray social lessons that can be used by people in their everyday lives?
Identity: Does the way characters are portrayed in media messages lead people to believe that those characters are very much like people in their everyday lives?
Emotional involvement: Does the media message engage people’s feelings so they are pulled into the action and feel it is really happening?
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Complex judgment: Multiple dimensions of reality
Judgment criteria
Plausibility
Typicality
Narrative consistency in an independent manner
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Plausibility: Does the media message portray something that could happen?
Typicality: Does the media message portray something that usually happens?
Narrative consistency: Does the plot of the story make people believe that the sequence of actions is believable?
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
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The surprising spread of Idol TV
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Complex judgment: Differences across individuals
Can vary widely even among people of the same age and experience.
Children less capable than adults in making certain kinds of judgments about reality; become more sophisticated with age.
Wide range of sophistication in making reality judgments across adults.
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Differences Across Individuals
Judgments of reality can vary widely even among people of the same age and experience.
Voort (1986) reports that perceptions of reality and the degree of identification with characters vary substantially at any given age.
Adults wrote to the coast guard telling them to rescue the cast of Gilligan’s Island.
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Reality TV Part 2: Hosts and Judges
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Organizing Principle: Next-Step Reality
Next-step reality
Message is presented as reality to resonate with the audience’s experience and make it have the potential to be useful in everyday situations, but has an extra added ingredient that takes it one step outside of the audience’s everyday existence
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Organizing Principle: Next-Step Reality: Audiences’ Perspective
Audience search for media messages with two characteristics
(a) plausible and probable in real life
(b) present something more than what the person experiences in his or her daily life.
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Audience’s Perspective
People expose themselves to the media to find messages that they cannot get in real life for two main reasons.
It is impossible for them to get those messages in real life.
The costs of getting those messages in the media are far lower than the costs required in real life.
Audiences search for messages that have two general characteristics.
Messages must appear real.
Messages must present a little more than everyday reality.
This is what is meant by next-step reality.
People want media messages that are not the same as their everyday lives, but they also must not be so far removed that they are not relevant.
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Reality TV Part 3: Reality vs. Scripted TV
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Role of Reality in Media Content Formulas
Organizing Principle: Next-Step Reality: Programmers’ Perspective
Producers of media messages retain the appearance of a high degree of reality, but are one step removed from reality to keep them interesting
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Programmers’ Perspective
Producers of media messages anchor elements of their messages in reality and tweak them a bit to make them interesting.
With fiction, producers take ordinary settings and typical plots and slowly deviate from normal situations one step at a time, so the audience does not get lost.
Next-step reality also works for persuasive messages because programs use typical problems and take a step of faith into the solution.
With information-type messages, the next-step reality comes from journalists carefully selecting what gets reported and what gets ignored.
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Reality TV Part 4: The Audience's Role
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Reality Programming as a Genre
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Reality shows are popular because
Appeal to public’s interest in following real people as they struggle and succeed in competitions
Ordinary people and not actors attain a specific level/position in life
Reality shows are
realistic to some extent
successfully growing over years through knock-offs and spin-offs
Preferred by TV programmers as they are less expensive than other TV shows
Reality Programming as a Genre
Reality programming became a recognizable genre in 2000.
Characteristics of reality programming include real, non-scripted people in unordinary situations.
Survivor is one of the most popular reality television shows.
Although the characters are real, non-scripted people, they are more attractive and more prone to conflict than ordinary people.
The audience sees only 2% of what is actually filmed.
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Why Is Reality TV So Popular?
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Reality Programming as a Genre
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Spin-off Series and Knock-off Series
Similarities
Television shows in a series
Progression of episodes using the same settings and characters (or real people)
Copy formulas used by a previously successful television series
Knock-offs and spin-offs are responsible for the growing number of reality programs.
The spin-off series is produced by the same people who produced the previously successful television series on which the spin-off is based.
The knock-off series is produced by different people who are copying the formula used by other people who produced the successful television series on which the knock-off is based.
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Reality Programming as a Genre
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Spin-off Series and Knock-off Series
Differences
| Spin-off series | Knock-off series |
| Produced by the same people who produced the television series on which the spin-off is based | Produced by different people copying the formula used by the producers of the television series on which the knock-off is based |
| Real Housewives franchise (spin-off of “The Real Housewives of Orange County”) | Hardcore Pawn (knock-off of “Pawn Stars”) |
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Reality TV Part 5: Confessionals and Producers
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Reality Programming as a Genre
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There are many subgenres of reality programming.
Documentary style: Cameras record what happens in everyday life. (Big Brother, Jersey Shore)
Reality-legal: People’s behavior is recorded as they deal with legal problems. (The People’s Court, Cops)
Reality competition/game show: People compete for some prize as one or more contestants are eliminated each episode. (The Bachelor, Top Chef)
Self-improvement/makeover: Viewers are amazed as a real-world person or object is drastically improved. (Extreme Makeover, Pimp My Ride)
Social experiment: People are put in unusual situations and a camera records their reactions. (Wife Swap, Secret Millionaire)
Hidden camera: People’s actions are recorded without their awareness. (What Would You Do?, Cheaters)
Supernatural/paranormal: People are put in frightening situations that purportedly involve paranormal forces. (Scariest Places on Earth, Ghost Hunters)
Hoax subgenre: People are fooled to believe something false and their reactions are recorded. (Hell Date, Punk’d)
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The Importance of Media Literacy
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Two worlds: Real and media world
Media world
Advantage--Enables us to experience and get information about the real world
Disadvantage--Blurs the borderline between real and media world
Higher level of media literacy
Helps us to be flexible and aware
Enables us to tell the two merged worlds apart
The Importance of Media Literacy
Next-step reality is fundamental to media literacy.
Do not ask, “How real are media messages?”
Ask, “Which elements in this message reflect reality and which elements are removed from reality in some way?”
The key to media literacy is to be flexible and aware.
Being flexible means being willing to traverse the entire spectrum of messages and being willing to enjoy the full range of messages.
Being aware means thinking about where you are in the spectrum and knowing the different standards of appreciation to apply to different places on the spectrum of reality
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How Reality TV Changed the World | #ChangedTheWorld
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Summary
Clearly, the issue of reality entails more than making a simple decision about whether something actually happened. People are able to think in terms of degrees of reality, and when they are assessing the degree of reality, they consider more than one dimension. It is also important to understand that there is not a huge gap between children’s ability to perceive reality accurately and adults’ ability. This is a trap into which adults frequently fall. Being in this trap gives those adults a false sense of security that they do not need to think carefully about the reality of media messages because they are no longer children and therefore are protected by the adult discount. Because the degree of belief in reality is associated with higher negative effects, adults are vulnerable, as are children (Potter, 1986; Rubin, Perse, & Taylor, 1988).
The most useful way to think about reality is with the “next-step reality” organizing principle. This focuses your attention on the degree to which media messages are both real and fantasy. This then sets up more important questions: Which elements in the message do I regard as real, and how did I arrive at that perception? Which elements in the message do I regard as fantasy? To what extent am I attracted to the fantasy and willing to try to make it my reality? Keep these questions in mind as you read through the next four chapters on different types of media content.
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