Reality/Television

Reality TV’s impact on television programming and content has been well documented. In recent years, the persistence of reality television as a phenomenon has also been reflected in the number of popular and scholarly publications aimed at its investigation; several books, anthologies, and journal issues have been devoted to various aspects of this kind of programming that straddles the line between the factual and the fictional. The topics discussed in this rich field of inquiry are as varied as the mutations of the reality genre itself. They include audience studies, governmentality, surveillance, voyeurism, digital consumption, ritual, gender, race—the list goes on.