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.
- ISBN10 0742527476
- ISBN13 9780742527478
- Publish Date 14 October 2003 (first published 7 October 2003)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 26 January 2021
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
- Imprint Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 272
- Language English