Archive for: Текстови објављени у часопису Култура на страном језику

The style of expression in various media is a particular field of scientific research. Clarity of style implies that expressions appropriately convey certain information, but in reality programmes there are no essential facts that need to be expressed clearly. This implies the possibility of impairing the clarity of style and the use of a non-public lexical stock,such as vulgarisms. The increasing use of vulgarisms is evident in the reality programmes of Zadruga and Parovi, which are aired on the two Serbian commercial television stations with national frequency with the highest viewership, ratings and the longest daily and annual broadcasting times. Exploring the role of vulgarism in these shows provides a deeper insight into the editorial policies, discursive rules and creative freedoms of those who decide what is said and how it is said in the media. In this paper, a comparative study of the two most viewed reality programmes was made and several certainties regarding vulgarisms occurring on one or the other programme were highlighted,with a contextual review of the social, moral and creative role of expression in the reality programmes.

This paper provides an analysis of cultural, psychological and communication patterns that could be used to explain popularity and receptivity of the audiences that consume reality programmes. These programmes have started broadcasting in 2006, through the format of Big Brother. They have gained great popularity since then, and the number of viewers has not decreased. In order to better understand the phenomenology of reality programmes, closely analysed their characteristics, especially concerning their format, both the selection and characteristics of reality programme participants, the dramaturgy and the wider social context these shows are realized in. The authors are dealing with specific characteristics of this television form,communication processes that lead to the desired “outcomes” necessary for increasing the viewership, by tendentiously directed roles and behaviour patterns (conflict, sexual content) as well as with possible psychological perspectives that could, to a certain extent, explain the motivation of the audience to engage in the consumption of such content (watching the content, commenting on social networks, voting, favouring certain participants). Some of the psychological explanations for the popularity of such programmes could be found in the high level of identification with the participants who externalize most intimate contents of their inner worlds, and also in the complete equalization of the private and public sphere, as well as in the analytical concept of a Shadow that is related to the inferior and in acceptable parts of the human nature. Our Ego recognizes such content as “someone else’s”and connects it more frequently with the behaviour of others than with our own behaviour. Very often, the bearers of those projections are representatives of the so-called marginal groups, therefore the selected participants of reality shows “provide” the space for Shadow projection.Finally, we analysed the wider social context suitable to sustain and„nourish” this form of public discourse. This is actually a relational and contextual question that opens a space for understanding of the needs that underlie the collective dipping into naked privacy and primary processes of the group that we observe through reality programmes. 

The author starts from a hypothesis that the contemporary understanding of live broadcasting as a special argument of objectivity should not be explained by the assumption that the public is insufficiently informed about the existence of media manipulation and its possibilities, but by the general need to find strong foundations of the real, which, faced with almost hopeless search, resists any rationality. In the age of the destabilized real, reality becomes fully absorbed not only by the real but also by the constructed events. In the text, a paradigmatic manifestation of this process is recognized in the rise of reality programmes. The reality of reality programmes is actually the reality of constructing events that annihilate reality itself – which could be called a negative reality. In spite of the fact that this is an unauthentic or constructed reality, by occupying the space of the real, its rendering in the text is identified with the process of demiurgic creation, and the media industry is identified as a kind of demiurge of the new so-called media age. The depersonalization and industrial foundations of this contemporary demiurge are viewed in regard to the development of the vision of unauthentic living, and with the emergence of negative reality that erodes the very space of the real.

The popularity of reality television programmes, combined with the non-ethicality of the production of most of reality shows, has prompted several citizen initiatives for the abolition of this format, widely labelled as “voyeuristic”. The fact that the last such initiative from 2019 managed to collect 50,000 signatures, justifies validity of the research objective to deconstruct the techniques of presenting this phenomenon in the media, together with the discourse strategies of online platforms users when presenting their views about the reality programmes and the petitions to abolish them. The basic investigative method was critical analysis of the discourse, combined with the descriptive method. The corpus consisted of 110 texts, and 236 accompanying comments,sourced from the Google sites, placed over a period of five years: from the beginning of the first campaign until the last and the most effective one (2015-2019). Results of the investigation are the following: there is a small critical mass of media literate citizens in Serbia who are capable of identifying all the negative as well as the positive aspects of this format; only those media that can be labelled as professional and critical did follow the campaigns; the texts about the reality programmes contained evaluation of the format as well as public debates about enforcing limitations for broadcasting of such programmes, based on the violation of the Serbian Journalists Code of Ethics. The evaluation also referred to the process of collecting signatures, which is the reason why those texts were posted occasionally and not continually.The media were focused mostly on the “scandals” that accompanied reality shows. It is also important to emphasize that the online media were not additionally engaged in offering support to the campaign for the collection of signatures in favour of a better regulation of reality programmes in Serbia.