Reality Television's Construction of Ordinary People

Carpentier, Nico

doi:10.1002/9781118599594.ch19

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…In turn, the subject position of the ordinary person can be seen as the constitutive outside of the expert and the media professional subject positions. Although the frontier between experts and media professionals on the one hand and ordinary people on the other is not rigid but contextually dependent (see, e.g., Eriksson & Thornborrow, 2016, on the rise of the "ordinary expertise"), traditional media representations of ordinary people tend to articulate them as non-elite, while experts and media professionals are positioned as societal elites, with different forms of capital (Carpentier, 2014). In this representation, ordinary people are opposed to experts and media professionals (by being disarticulated from expertise and knowledge), to celebrities (by being disarticulated from fame), and, more generally, to the category of newsworthiness (Syvertsen, 2001;Turner, 2010).…”

Section: The Construction Of the Subject Positions Of Experts Ordinar...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“How is he entitled to say this?”: Constructing the identities of experts, ordinary people, and presenters in Swedish television series on climate change

Filimonov

Carpentier

2022

Nordicom Review

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In this article, we analyse mediated representations of elite and non-elite voices about climate change, by juxtaposing two Swedish non-fiction television series: one narrates the work of environmental scientists, the other discusses climate change with diverse citizens in a vox pop format. We argue that the discursive practices of these programmes reproduce the antagonistic subject positions of experts and ordinary people, allocating them radically different positions of power in relation to climate change. Whereas the experts are presented as actors of change with the knowledge to solve the crisis, ordinary people are shown as passive recipients of advice and moral judgment, in need of change. In addition, we highlight the role of media professionals in these articulations. The article shows how these subject positions support persuasionist strategies, but also how the elite/non-elite juxtaposition tends to exclude the latter from a meaningful engagement on equal terms.

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Section: The Construction Of the Subject Positions Of Experts Ordinar...mentioning

confidence: 99%