Broadcasters

Abstract

The routine appearance of opportunities for self-representation across spaces run by commercial and public service broadcasters begs the question — what is it that we are seeing? Ordinary people’s participation in broadcast spaces has often been told as a story of extremes — between exploitative appearance and meaningful participation. In recent versions of this story we find critically lauded digital storytelling projects at one extreme and reality TV programmes at the other (e.g. Turner, 2010). Between the poles are a range of now-familiar practices such as the use of the amateur image and personal story in news and current affairs, the continued use of phone-ins and audience discussion programmes and indeed the use of personal testimony in ‘serious’ documentary. Self-representations by ordinary people sit within a very wide set of participatory activities in broadcast TV.¹