Overview

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.

Analysis of Reality TV Formats

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.

Theoretical Perspective

The author enlists critical social theory to examine how the appeal of the real is deployed as a pervasive but false promise of democratization.