University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses March 2016 Confessions in the Courtroom: An Audience Research on Court Shows Silvina Beatriz Berti University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation Berti, Silvina Beatriz, "Confessions in the Courtroom: An Audience Research on Court Shows" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 551. https://doi.org/10.7275/7873397.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/551 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONFESSIONS IN THE COURTROOM: AN AUDIENCE RESEARCH ON COURT SHOWS A Dissertation Presented by Silvina Beatriz Berti Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2016 Communication © Copyright by Silvina Beatriz Berti 2016 All Rights Reserved CONFESSIONS IN THE COURTROOM: AN AUDIENCE RESEARCH ON COURT SHOWS A Dissertation Presented by Silvina Beatriz Berti Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________ Michael Morgan, Chair ____________________________________ Sut Jhally, Member ____________________________________ Agustín Lao Montes, Member ____________________________________________ Erica Scharrer - Department Head Department of Communication DEDICATION To my loving children, Alejandro and Federico ACKNOWLDEGMENTS I would like to begin by thanking my advisor, Michael Morgan, for his many years of patient guidance and support. His thoughtful and enlightening comments and suggestions helped me improve my readings and interpretations. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the members of my committee, Sut Jhally and Agustin Lao Montes. I want to thank the Fulbright Program and the Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto for making it possible for me to pursue my doctoral studies at the University of Massachusetts. A special thank you to all my colleagues and friends from the Department of Communication at the University of Rio Cuarto who covered for me during my prolonged absence, and especially to Ariadna Cantu, Carlos Rusconi, and Marcela Bosco, who always encouraged me. I would also like to thank all my professors and fellow students from the Department of Communication at UMASS, for making my time in Amherst such an enriching and wonderful academic and life experience. I wish to express my appreciation to all the people who participated in this research and generously shared their time and thoughts with me during the group interviews. A very special thank you to my partner, Michael Lewis, who spent many hours of his time helping me polish and improve my writing. And I would be remiss in not including a very special thank you to my family for giving up so much in order for me to embark on this project. v To all of them and many others who I haven't mentioned but are always in my heart, I will forever be grateful. vi ABSTRACT CONFESSIONS IN THE COURTROOM AN AUDIENCE RESEARCH ON COURT SHOWS FEBRUARY 2016 SILVINA BEATRIZ BERTI BA. UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE RÍO CUARTO, ARGENTINA MA. UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE CÓRDOBA, ARGENTINA PH. D. UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST Directed by: Professor Michael Morgan Since the mid to late nineteen eighties, the television world has been showing an increasing number of programs that are presented as “reality programs,” or “reality shows.” Court Shows, which are also known as Judge Shows, or Syndi-Courts, can be considered to be part of such a mega-genre. These programs (Court Shows) are offered as an alternative way for people to find a quick solution to some legal problem they may have. Meanwhile, millions of people tune in and watch those shows on a daily basis. Working within the Cultural Studies tradition, this research analyzes, on one hand, Judge Judy and La Corte del Pueblo comparatively to understand the way in which these programs operate ideologically. On the other hand, and most importantly, it focuses on how audiences (Latino and White Americans) read these shows; given the experiences, knowledge, feelings, (and intertexts) the two different audiences carry with them, they approach discourses with different “tools” and consequently read them differently. This analysis allows us to reflect on theoretical matters that refer to the complex notion of meaning and how it relates to the notion of power (on the side of production), and to problematize the three theoretical reading positions proposed by Hall in his vii seminal work Encoding/Decoding. It is suggested here that if, as Hall stated, the negotiated reading is what most people do most of the time, then the concept loses its explanatory capacity and therefore, it needs to be rethought (mostly in connection to how hegemonic processes work). In sum, the present study ultimately intends to accomplish a further purpose beyond its specific interest: the exploration of the problematic notion of reading positions and other related concepts. Delving into the possibility of distinguishing hegemonic from non-hegemonic readings amongst the array of negotiated readings, and exploring the connection between pleasure and resistance are examples of such interest. And as a byproduct, there is the hope of making a humble contribution towards a better understanding of the role that media messages play in the process of meaning making in modern societies. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. v ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................................vi LIST OF TABLES...........................................................................................................viii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 II. AUDIENCE RESEARCH: FROM MANIPULATION TO SEMIOTIC DEOMOCRACY, THE SPACES IN BETWEEN ............................................... 16 A. Media Effects ........................................................................................................... 17 B. “The Enemy Defeated: The Thinking Individual” ................................................... 22 C. Cultural Studies ........................................................................................................ 25 1. The Beginnings ...................................................................................................... 25 2. Redefining the Field of Study ................................................................................ 32 3. Rethinking the Encoding/Decoding Model ........................................................... 40 4. Unfolding Discussions........................................................................................... 46 D. In the Reshaped Television World Audiences Meet Court Shows .......................... 52 III. CAMERAS IN THE COURTROOM ......................................................................... 56 A. Early Concerns. The Law vs. Television: Two Conflicting Systems ...................... 56 B. The Blossoming of Court Shows: Law and Entertainment ...................................... 68 C. Later Debates ............................................................................................................ 73 IV. METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................... 84 A. The Programs ........................................................................................................... 86 1. Brief Description of the Shows ............................................................................. 87 2. Exploring the Shows.............................................................................................. 89 B. Approaching the Audiences. ..................................................................................... 92 1. The Interviews ....................................................................................................... 93 2. Some Interview Logistics ...................................................................................... 94 3. Meet the Groups .................................................................................................... 97 4. Interpreting Meanings, Analyzing Discourses .................................................... 104 ix V. COURT SHOWS: AN INVITATION TO BELIEVE ............................................... 110 A. “The Cases are Real, the Rulings are Final” .......................................................... 112 B. The Making of Reality ............................................................................................ 114 C. On Genre ................................................................................................................. 116 D. Metadiscourses and Reality Effect ......................................................................... 121 E. Of Emotions and Voyeurism .................................................................................