'Oh goodness, I am watching reality TV'

Abstract

One of the most striking challenges encountered during the empirical stages of our audience research project, `Making Class and the Self through Televised Ethical Scenarios' (funded as part of the ESRC's Identities and Social Action programme), stemmed from how the different discursive resources held by our research participants impacted upon the kind of data collected. We argue that social class is reconfigured in each research encounter, not only through the adoption of moral positions in relation to `reality' television as we might expect, but also through the forms of authority available for participants. Different methods enabled the display of dissimilar relationships to television: reflexive telling, immanent positioning and affective responses all gave distinct variations of moral authority. Therefore, understanding the form as well as the content of our participants' responses is crucial to interpreting our data. These methodological observations underpin our earlier theoretical critique of the `turn' to subjectivity in social theory (Wood and Skeggs, 2004), where we suggest that the performance of the self is an activity that reproduces the social distinctions that theorists claim are in demise .

Jamie Oliver and Cultural Intermediation

“…I offer some insights into the ways that media figures such as Jamie Oliver are woven into a personalised relationship with individuals and how these personal relationships are brought to bear in social exchanges as Jamie Oliver enters, figuratively speaking, everyday interactions. In common with Skeggs et al (2008), emphasis is placed upon the way individuals produce their identities through the focus group encounter rather than relying on reported behaviours and opinions as the sole source of data. To make the conjoining of audiencing and cultural intermediation more clear, J O propriated or rejected, how they are personalised, and how they are spoken about as concrete forms of social practice.…”

“…Here Maud talks about her view that Jamie Oliver presents his real life and how that is appealing in class terms: One of the key ways that an intermediation takes place here is through the formation of a parasocial relationship to Jamie Oliver. Broadly defined, this concept refers to the way individuals form imaginary relationships with distanciated figures, often, but not exclusively those who appear on television and other media formats (Piper, 2012, Bonner, 2010, Skeggs and Wood, 2008. In this case Maud can be seen to form a relatively direct identification with Jamie Oliver based on a recognition I arguably aligns herself much more with a notion of working class selfhood.…”

“…This leaves open the dia are implicitly calling D of food media engagement. For example Skeggs et al (2008) have talked about the way audiences of TV ce their identities through talking about their viewership. It is for that reason that the terms of debate around their role as cultural intermediaries should be broadened to include the way they enter social dialogue regardless of whether or not they have a significant bearing on social taste or culinary activity.…”

Cultural sociology and new forms of distinction

“…However, Bourdieu failed to provide much empirical evidence as to how this aesthetic was practically applied to popular realms 3 (Prior 2005). In recent years, though, a number of researchers have sought to explore aesthetic differentiation in previously unexplored fields -probing film, rock music, food, humour, reality television and fashion (Regev 1994;Johnston and Baumann 2009;Entwistle and Rocamora 2006;Skeggs, Thumim, and Wood 2008;Kuipers, 2015;Baumann 2007) as well as more unlikely performances of distinction through 'bad' television watching (McCoy and Scarborough 2014) and salsa music taste (Bachmayer, Wilterdink, and van Venrooij 2014).…”

ViewingThe Biggest Loser: modes of reception and reflexivity among obese people

“…Commentators also attribute meanings and effects to TBL that research with this audience can elaborate and complicate. This article situates TBL in the context of critical scholarship on obesity and reality and makeover TV and seeks to build on previous reception research (Dover and Hill 2007;Hill 2000Hill , 2005Sender 2012;Skeggs, Thumim, and Wood 2008), particularly that which questions the "wholesale seduction of media analysts by ideas about governmentality" (Skeggs and Wood 2012, 4).…”