Reality Tv » (1st Edition)

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.