Reality TV has been through a long journey of being the most popular form of television programming for the past 20 years, coming in different types. Current ongoing media ecosystem distributes Reality TV to audiences via a variety of channels, making them even more popular. Everyone watches Reality TV and discusses about it!

What makes Reality TV become so widespread? Simply, because human was born with curiosity. Reality TV shows reflect “ordinary” people and emphasise the “ordinary everydayness” (Skeggs 2009, p. 627), giving audiences the opportunities of escaping into other people’s lives, allowing them to relate their own experiences and bringing enjoyment by letting them see others’ problems.

Every change start with a rumor! By engaging with informal conversations about “ordinary” things, the insight of what matters to human life are revealed and discussed (Graham et al. 2011, p. 23). The idea of focusing on ordinary and un-fiction kind of things has let these programs sneak into our society, gradually creating impacts on our society in every single life aspect by creating Digital Publics. For example, RuPaul’s Drag Race Reality TV show aired in 2009 has shown the visibility to the issue relating to LGBT community (Brennan et al. 2017, p. 4). Those informal discussions bring the public new understandings toward LGBT community, regarding to queer history, culture and identities. RuPaul’s Drag Race is likely to become a queer pedagogical platform.

Reality TV shows are also claimed to offer a communicative space in which everyday political talk is triggered. Take Big Brother show as an example. With the participation of George Galloway, a British member of parliament, the show has triggered a bulk of political talk, consisting of animal rights, health and the body, gender and sexuality, through telling the show’s participants experiences through their everyday topics (Graham et al. 2011, p. 27). The political topics triggered by the show are getting discussed in every conner on social media.

To sum up, Reality TV are performing as a fandom which does have function in serving new acknowledge, trigging political talk and gradually contributing positively to create changes in society.

References

· Skeggs, B 2009, ‘The Moral Economy of Person Production: The Class Relations of Self – Performance on ‘Reality’ Televesion, The Sociological Review, Vol. 57, No. 4, p626-644.

· Graham, T & Hajru, A 2011, ‘Reality TV as a trigger of everyday political talk in the net-based public sphere’, European Journal of Communication, vol. 26, no.1, pp. 18 – 30.