Ordinary people on Television: A historical study of change, continuity and transformation

This project aims at conducting an empirical historical investigation of Swedish television. It focuses on change, continuity and transformation as regards the construction of "ordinary" people in four overarching genres: advice programs, debate and talk shows, game shows and reality shows. We investigate, more specifically, the development of television genres and formats with a focus on forms of participation, constructions of ordinariness and forms of addressing and involving audiences. The project comprises five studies. The first is an overarching mapping of two months of output per decade (1960-2010) which includes SVT 1, SVT 2, TV 3, TV 4 and TV 5. We map the occurrence of programs where "ordinary" people participate in different genres. The four other studies investigate the genres mentioned above and for each genre we both examine its development over time and conduct in-depth analyses of smaller samples. Our methods are Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis. Previous research on the representation of "ordinary" people on television mainly comprises theoretical discussions and studies of particular programs. As far as we know this is the first encompassing study that systematically investigates "ordinary" people's participation in different genres and formats over time. Since similar media developments occur in other countries, our findings will allow us to contribute to make essential theoretical contributions to this field of study.

Publications

Eriksson, Göran, Camauër, Leonor and Lakew, Yuliya (2017). Ordinary People on Television: A longitudinal study of Swedish Television, 1982–2011. Nordicom Review 38(2): 113-129.

Eriksson, Göran and Machin, David (2017). The Role of Music in Ridiculing the Working Classes in Reality Television. In: Way, Lyndon CS and McKerrell, Simon (eds.), Music as Multimodal Discourse, edited by. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 

Eriksson, Göran (2017). Critical Discourse Analysis of Reality Television. In: Flowerdew, John and Richardson, John (eds), Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. Abingdon: Routledge.

Camauer, Leonor (2016) Denigrating and being denigrated for a higher end: Constructing ordinary expertise through supportive and belligerent talk. Discourse, Context and Media, 13 Part A.

Ekström, Mats (2016) Medical authority and ordinary expertise: The transformation of doctors' talk in Swedish public service television 1983-2013. Discourse, Context and Media, 13 Part A.

Eriksson, Göran (2016) Humor, ridicule and the de-legitimization of the working class in Swedish Reality Television, Journal of Language and Politics, 15 (3), 304-321.

Eriksson, Göran (2016) The ‘Ordinary-ization of Televised Cooking Expertise: A Historical Study of Cooking Instruction Programmes on Swedish Television. Discourse, Context and Media 13 Part A, 29-39.

Eriksson, Göran and Thornborrow, Joanna (2016). Mediated forms of ‘ordinary’ expertise. Editorial for special issue. In: Discourse, Context and Media 13 (2016)

Ekström, Mats och Moberg, Ulla (2015) ’Welcome to participate!’: Host activities and caller’s position in Swedish election campaign phone-ins in the 1970s and the 2000s. Journalism 16(5): 654-671.

Eriksson, Göran (2015) Ridicule as a strategy for the recontextualization of the working class: A multimodal analysis of class-making on Swedish reality television. Critical Discourse Studies 12(1): 20-38.

Eriksson, Göran (2014) “See the error of your ways”: Belligerent expertise and the curative power of ‘though love’. International Journal of Cultural Studies 17(6): 573–589.

Ekström, Mats och Eriksson, Göran (2013) Citizen participation in journalist discourse: Multi-platform political interviews in the Swedish election campaign 2010, I: Tolson, Andrew och Ekström, Mats (red), Media Talk and Political Elections in Europe and America, Palgrave McMillan: Hampshire.

Conference presentations

Eriksson, Göran (2015) “Coming no up”: Ridicule as de-legitimization of the working class in Swedish Reality Television, paper presented at International Communication Association’s (ICA) 65th annual conference, 21-25 May, 2015, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Camauër, Leonor (2014) Construction of (neoliberal) ordinariness in a reality television show: from the ‘flawed’ to the ‘reasonable’ consumer, paper presented at CADAAD, 1-3 September, Budapest, Hungary.

Eriksson, Göran (2014) ‘Celebrification’ as de-legitimization: The devaluing of the Swedish working class, paper presented at CADAAD, 1-3 September, Budapest, Hungary.

Eriksson, Göran (2014) Televised Cooking expertise and ‘Strategies of ordinari-ization’, paper presented at the 21th Ross Priory International Seminar on Broadcast Talk, 2-4 July, 2014, Brest, France.

Ekström, Mats (2014) Medical authority and ordinary expertise: The development of in-house doctors talk in Swedish public service television, paper presented at the 21th Ross Priory International Seminar on Broadcast Talk, 2-4 July, 2014, Brest, France.

Eriksson, Göran (2014) The Laughable Excessiveness of the ’Ordinary’: A Multimodal Analysis of Class-Making on Swedish Reality Television, paper presented at International Communication Association’s (ICA) 64th annual conference, 22-26 May, 2014, Seattle, USA.

Ekström, Mats. Ask the doctor: Negotiating expertise and ordinariness in advice-giving on television, paper presented at the 20th Ross Priory International Seminar on Broadcast Talk, 8-10 July, 2013, Ross Priory, Scotland.

Ekström, Mats and Eriksson, Göran (2012) Audience involvement and the expanding forms of election campaign interviews, paper presented at “Media Talk and Political Elections”: a symposium at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, 6th-7th June 2012.

Eriksson, Göran (2011) “See the error of your ways”: Popular expertise on lifestyle makeover television, paper presented at the 19th Ross Priory International Seminar on Broadcast Talk, July 10 -13 Certosa di Pontignano, Siena Italy.