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Love Island, Social Media, and Sousveillance : New Pathways of Challenging Realism in Reality TV

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Love Island, Social Media, and Sousveillance : New Pathways of Challenging Realism in Reality TV This is a repository copy of Love Island, social media, and sousveillance : new pathways of challenging realism in reality TV. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/149308/ Version: Published Version Article: L'Hoiry, X. orcid.org/0000-0001-9138-7666 (2019) Love Island, social media, and sousveillance : new pathways of challenging realism in reality TV. Frontiers in Sociology, 4. 59. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00059 Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This licence allows you to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as you credit the authors for the original work. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 02 August 2019 doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2019.00059 Love Island, Social Media, and Sousveillance: New Pathways of Challenging Realism in Reality TV Xavier L’Hoiry* Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom This paper explores the changing nature of audience participation and active viewership in the context of Reality TV. Thanks to the ongoing rise of social media, fans of popular entertainment programmes continue to be engaged in new and innovative ways across a number of platforms as part of an ever-expanding interactive economy. Love Island 2018 has pushed the boundaries of this participatory culture by exploiting new forms of digital media in order to encourage multi-platform consumption of content by the show’s fans. This paper argues that while this strategy has enabled Love Island to successfully exploit monetization opportunities, it has simultaneously created opportunities for the show’s audience to group together online and form communities of resistance which have placed themselves in opposition to the show’s producers. These fan communities have harnessed the connective powers of social media to pool together their means Edited by: Sophie Rose Woodward, and knowledge and to eventually exercise modes of sousveillance designed to hold University of Manchester, “powerful” actors to account for perceived wrongdoing on the show. Examples of such United Kingdom behavior during Love Island 2018 hint at a paradigm shift in the relationship between Reviewed by: Angela Smith, television producers and audiences and demonstrate the new pathways available to University of Sunderland, audiences as they seek to answer the perennial question of this entertainment genre: how United Kingdom real is Reality TV? David Stuart Smith, Robert Gordon University, Keywords: Love Island, sousveillance, social media, surveillance, reality TV, audience participation United Kingdom *Correspondence: Xavier L’Hoiry INTRODUCTION x.lhoiry@sheffield.ac.uk In the past two decades, considerable scholarly analysis has reviewed the growth and proliferation Specialty section: of different forms of Reality TV (Nabi, 2007; Andrejevic, 2008). With most commentators agreeing This article was submitted to that Reality TV has “moved from the margins of television culture to its core” (Orbe, 2008, p. 345), Gender, Sex and Sexuality Studies, a central theme of academic discussion has been the extent to which this form of entertainment a section of the journal truly offers realism and authenticity (Biressi and Nunn, 2005; Hall, 2009; Hill, 2014). Reality TV’s Frontiers in Sociology claims to assert a “radical inclusiveness and transparency” (Kjus, 2009: 281) is a key appeal to Received: 30 April 2019 audiences (Papacharissi and Mendelson, 2007), but the issue of realism continues to dominate Accepted: 17 July 2019 discussions and the question—for audiences and scholars—often remains: how real is Reality Published: 02 August 2019 TV (Escoffery, 2006)? Relatedly, academic discussions of Reality TV have also focused on the Citation: ways in which this televisual format has sought to generate audience participation. This, it is L’Hoiry X (2019) Love Island, Social Media, and Sousveillance: New argued, has led to the transformation of viewers from passive consumers to active participants Pathways of Challenging Realism in as part of an ever-expanding interactive economy (Andrejevic, 2004; Holmes, 2004). This paper Reality TV. Front. Sociol. 4:59. argues that the latter of these developments has recently begun to impact the former—audiences doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2019.00059 engaged within a participatory culture are increasingly querying the authenticity of Reality TV. Frontiers in Sociology | www.frontiersin.org 1 August 2019 | Volume 4 | Article 59 L’Hoiry Love Island, Social Media, Sousveillance As will be illustrated below, this process has been aided by outcomes. These forms of social engagement and participation the rapid expansion of social media in the past 15 years and were later followed by television-based programmes, most the connective power of platforms such as Twitter. So while notably The §64,000 Question, a quiz format subsequently re- social media provides television producers with considerable developed, re-hashed, and re-booted time and time again across potential for multi-platform exposure of their content as well many different countries over the next several decades. The as new pathways toward engagement with audiences, these next iteration of this growing participatory culture came in same platforms also empower individuals by bringing them the creation of popular day-time talk shows such as Oprah, in together in more cohesive fan communities who are able to share which “ordinary” people were once again tasked with generating knowledge and pool resources (Lévy, 1997). As a result, what content, this time in an increasingly politicized context as appears to have emerged are increasingly “savvy” (Andrejevic, audience members were recruited to discuss pressing social issues 2008, p. 27) fan communities who, encouraged to proactively and contribute to debates. Again, the success of this format participate with their favorite television shows and supplied with prompted many similar versions to emerge in the US and beyond, the tools to do so via social media, pursue behaviors perhaps replicating the format in which a participatory platform fronted unforeseen, unexpected and ultimately damaging to these very by a pseudo-political host encouraging audience members to same shows as they challenge Reality TV’s claims to realism contribute to debate, initially in person in the studio but, as time and authenticity. Love Island 2018, in which the show’s fan went on, via telephone, text, email, and of course in recent years community mobilized online to exercise modes of surveillance— via social media (Kjus, 2009). or more accurately sousveillance (Mann et al., 2003)—as part Despite these televisual formats offering pathways in which of their interaction and engagement with the show, serves as a the public could participate in these programmes, the nature particularly salient example. of this participation was heavily regulated, and the agency The paper begins by briefly tracing the historical development of audience members and viewers at home remained limited. of attempts to elicit viewer engagement across different forms of For one thing, individuals selected to participate were often popular entertainment, culminating at the turn of the twenty-first carefully chosen and their image curated to exploit particular century with the introduction of Reality TV shows such as Big characteristics or to chime or clash with the sensibilities of Brother. Next, the paper briefly discusses notions of authenticity home audiences (Anderson, 1978). But what also marks out and realism in the context of Reality TV and audience audience participation in these contexts as compared to that expectations. The paper then considers how a contemporary which Reality TV would later claim to offer is that participants form of Reality TV, Love Island, has pushed the boundaries engaging in quizzes and talk shows were only expected to of audience participation by exploiting the connective potential either answer set questions or offer opinions on pre-determined of social media, and in doing so, how Love Island’s producers topics. Moreover, viewers at home were largely still consuming have reaped commercial rewards. The discussion then outlines these shows passively since their ability to contribute was concepts from surveillance scholarly literature such as lateral also restricted in the same ways. As such, audiences were surveillance and sousveillance to explain the participatory nature still pre-dominantly passive in the sense that they had few of these forms of watching and monitoring which have grown opportunities to determine outcomes or genuinely contribute to considerably in recent years thanks to social media. The final the development of narratives. section of the paper brings these strands together and draws upon The introduction of Reality TV shows at the turn of the examples from Love Island 2018 to demonstrate how audiences twenty-first century such as Big Brother and Pop Idol was have re-imagined their engagement and participation and re- the beginning of a rapid paradigm shift which began to purposed this to exercise modes of sousveillance to hold
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