Media and Society - SLU Madrid

 La Isla de Las Tentaciones is a Spanish reality show where we see five couples in crisis who travel to a luxury enclave to test their relationship's strength. Separated into two houses, they will have to live with a group of single men and women who will test them daily. Monica Naranjo, a famous Spanish Singer, presents the reality TV Show. This reality show is considered a media ritual since consumers gather and are waiting for the next day to watch what these individuals do and how they react to the planned situation with the singles. The idea of the media as a social frame, the myth of the mediated center. As Couldry (2004) argues, an essential myth that reality programs communicate is that scrutiny is a natural method through which members of society gain knowledge. Simultaneously, by situating the audiences in the observer's seat and showing them what real life surveillants look at the ordinary, regular, and exciting of whom real relationships will look alike. Reality pro...

BTS Vlive Couldry looks at the concept of liveness as one that is constructed by media claiming to present some sort of social reality shared among the members of a society (2003). In this way it can be argued that that “liveness” is not necessarily the presentations of an event in real-time, but rather “liveness” is “the guarantee of actual connectibility” (Couldry, 2003) be it with a particular social event or with people.   This idea becomes more concrete when discussing the K-pop industry and its interaction with its fans. Much of what is seen on the surface of K-pop is the high-budget, high-quality music and music videos which are produced in an almost factory like manner. The artists, or idols themselves are made up in a way that presents them as these beautiful unattainable beings. All these elements reflect the structure and perfection driven nature of the K-pop industry, one that would otherwise cause quite a separation between the idols and fans if it weren’t for the use ...

       Throughout the world different societies have experienced different relationships to the media. As Couldry explained, media rituals are an aspect of the daily life of a person, they are usually generated through a form of togetherness and communion that enable societal transformation. In my culture, which is essentially francophone, we have been influenced by multiple aspects of french pop culture and french media. Essentially there is a gap between the ages, media has adapted to all the ages as there are multiple branches of media that would affect my parents while others will affect my age group. Throughout the French media, Reality tv is very present and it has managed to generate a huge influence over teenagers in these past years, not only did it generate influence but it has created a form of business between the contestants and brands, where marketing is forged.  French Reality Tv shows can be considered as a media ritual because it has essentially...

Based on the class reading, “Media Rituals”, the reality that people desire most to see in the media is based upon a societal reality.  I want to argue that ‘liveness’, however obvious its meaning might appear at different historical moments, is a socially constructed term, tied not just to television’s but to the media’s claim to present social ‘reality’. (Couldry 2003).  However, when zooming in on television specifically, the reality that, historically, most people like to see is that which a smaller percentage of people live in, an idealized version of one’s societal reality.  One specific example of a form of reality television, according to Couldry, is soap operas, because although it is fiction, it is based on a reality. The U.K. Netflix series, “The Crown” represents an idealized version of a historical liveness.  Obviously a soap opera, currently filmed and representing a small percentage of a larger society, that is Great Britain.   “In fiction, altho...

 "Supervivientes" which the direct translation from English is "survivors" is about a group of celebrities with a great desire for adventure who are transferred to a lost island far from the world, there begin hardships and the "unforgettable" moments.  The 'survivors' will have to survive both the complicated conditions that the program has devised for them and the meteorological adversities that are repeated every year. Panama, Santo Domingo, Kenya, Honduras... these are some of the remote 'paradises' where celebrities have been sent in successive seasons. The contestants will have to use everything they find in nature to build their new life. The food, the food, the fire, the utensils... everything will have to be built from the most scarce raw material. Celebrities don't usually stand out because of their skills, so seeing them survive without any luxury is most of the time very funny. The contestants have to fight to be proclaimed ...

Although we live in a world where media is evolving each time more; where we have more liberty and can access anything we want with no restrictions, live tv is still gaining popularity. According to Nick Couldry (2003), there are rituals that bring people together, consequently media becomes a substitute for these rituals. These are known as media rituals. An example of media ritual would be the famous Netflix show “Dating Around”. The show is an American reality dating streaming and it is about people going on blind dates with various people. After five dates the person needs to choose one of them to go on a second date with. The purpose of the show is that it does not contain a script. Therefore it is considered a media ritual because it takes truth telling tools such as ordinary people and fly on the wall type of cameras and transforms it into something that all of your friends and family might have fun watching. “Dating Around” shows the experience of what a real blind date is. So...

 Scary Mommy- Snapchat Publisher Founded by Jill Smokler in 2008, Scary Mommy is an online community for  "... millions of women, supporting each other through acceptance, empowerment, and the shared experience of motherhood." (Scarymommy.com 2020) Alongside their website, Youtube channel, and other social media pages, Scary Mommy was the first parenting-related feature in Snapchat's Discovery. With 3. 27 million subscribers, the mom-themed publisher posts daily Stories featuring famous mothers, pop culture updates, and parenting tips and trends.  Smokler initially created Scary Mommy as a blog to discuss motherhood with "Confessions", allowing mothers to anonymously share their stories. After gaining traction in the parenting community, Scary Mommy has since been acquired by S ome Spider inc., a media entertainment company which owns various online audience-specific "identity brands." (Somespider.com 2020)  By Nick Couldry's standards outlined in ...

  In Nick Couldry’s chapter he explains media rituals as “ritual behaviour for a media saturated age” (Couldry). Many people across the world tune in to reality shows every week as part of a ritual. These shows are captivating as they are real, containing an aspect of liveness and demonstrating peoples unedited reactions. An example of this is The Bachelorette , an American reality TV show which is a spin off of The Bachelor . The show gathers a group of 20-30 single men for a woman to meet and get to know in the hopes of finding her husband. Every week she gives out a decreasing number of roses resulting in sending a few guys home until the last week where she chooses her husband. In the U.S., is very common for girls to gather weekly for a “Bachelor/Bachelorette night”. This consists of a group of friends watching the show with snacks and champagne waiting to see who the Bachelorette gives her roses to each week. The show is captivating because it is filled with unedited drama a...

The example that I have chosen for this blog entry is a TV show called La Isla de las Tentaciones, in English, called, The Island of Tentations. This tv show is about either finding love or being committed to your partner. There are two sides to the spectrum. On one side, some women are trying to find love that lives for a month with men in relationships, and the girlfriends of the men live with single men trying to find love. In this show, five couples go into a house with eight single women or men trying to find love. This tv show is made for the people living in the house to test their relationships and try to stay committed, which is not the case most of the time. This tv show has gone viral in Spain over the past year due to its drama among the people living on the island and the spectators loving that drama. The example of La Isla de las Tentaciones can be considered a media ritual based on Nick Couldry's chapter (2003) because they use strategies to recreate live reality sin...

Media Rituals An example of Media Rituals (Couldry, 2003) is the known as ‘Celebrity Worship Syndrome’ (CWS), which can be described as “an obsessive-addictive disorder where an individual becomes overly involved and interested (i.e., completely obsessed) with the details of the personal life of a celebrity” (Griffiths, 2013). As ‘celebrity’ we can understand every person who is in the public eye, but research suggest that it is more likely to be from the world of television, film or pop music. A person that suffers from this syndrome becomes a stalker of, for example, that celebrity’s social media (Instagram, Facebook), which could be seen through the lens of the Medial Ritual term by Carey (1989), as a real ritual for that person. This can be compared to the worship of Saints or Gods in the many religions that exist in our present society. But why? Because those people (with CWS) have created rituals centering that celebrity(ies) as their primary source of happiness and faith.  ...