Mervi Pantti

Talking alone Reality TV, emotions and authenticity

This article examines reality TV as an illustration of contemporary confessional culture in which the key attraction is the disclosure of true emotions. This article hopes to contribute to the understanding of the production of self-disclosure through a formal analysis of international and domestic dating, adventure and lifestyle-oriented reality shows broadcast on Finnish television between 2002 and 2004. The diverse programmes verify that reality TV shows capitalize on a variety of talk situations within one programme, but it is the monologue that is used as a truth-sign of direct access to the authentic. We also suggest that the power of monologue in the reality genre promotes the transformation of television from a mass medium to first-person medium addressing masses of individuals.

The value of emotion: An examination of television journalists' notions on emotionality

This article engages with current discussions about public emotions by examining journalists’ perceptions of the value of emotional expression in broadcast news. First, the study provides insight into how journalists assess the place and role of emotion in news reporting and the perceived emotionalizing of news. Second, it examines how the journalists’ discourse about emotion is linked to their ideas of ‘good journalism’, as well as to their professional self-image. The data consist of in-depth interviews with television journalists working for both public service and commercial news programmes in Finland and in the Netherlands.

Misfortunes, memories and sunsets Non-professional images in Dutch news media

• In the professional news media, invitations to submit photos and video material are the most common means of allowing citizens to participate in the content production, as opposed to merely commenting on professional material. Based on interviews with leading journalists in different media in the Netherlands, this study examines how professional journalists respond to the phenomenon of amateur photography, how it is assessed in terms of journalism’s values and how amateur images are used in the established news media, both in the online context and in the broadcast or print context. 1 Our primary question is what amateur photography means for ‘participatory journalism’, understood in terms of conversation, collaboration and the democratization of news media. •

Re-imagining crisis reporting: Professional ideology of journalists and citizen eyewitness images

This study, based on interviews with journalists representing major news organizations in Finland and Sweden, explores how the professional ideology of journalists is shaped by the international trend of citizen witnessing. Citizen-created photographs and videos that have become a routine feature of mainstream news coverage are approached as a potential force of change that transforms professional imaginaries of journalism vis-a-vis crisis events. From journalists’ lines of thought three interpretative repertoires were identified: resistance, resignation and renewal. Our results hint at a rethinking of the professional norms and roles of journalists.

Flagging Finnishness: Reproducing National Identity in Reality Television

The worldwide success of reality television has received plenty of academic and public attention. All the debates seem both implicitly and explicitly to address reality TV as a global phenomenon, but little attention has been given to any national characteristics that may emerge in its localized variations. In this article, using a Finnish adventure show Extreme Escapades as a case, we argue that national television still plays an important role in constructing national identities; that reality television as a popular cultural product should be viewed in the context of “banal nationalism” and that the genre may indeed redefine the meaning of national television in the globalized media sphere.

GETTING CLOSER?: Encounters of the national media with global images

Drawing on the idea that citizen images of crisis events can function as “ruptures” within mainstream journalistic narratives—instances in which distant others can speak and be heard—this article examines from a dual perspective how the global citizen images (photographs and videos) embedded in Finnish print and broadcast coverage of the Arab uprisings and the Japan tsunami disaster facilitate the construction of cosmopolitan imagination. Specifically it explores, first, how emotional proximity is constructed through the conventions of citizen images that break with the aesthetics of professional photojournalism, and, second, how professional journalists see the role of amateur images in their work of reporting distant crises. The analysis identifies four defining characteristics of the aesthetics of citizen images—unconstructedness, unconventional framing, mobility and embodied collectivity—which may invite enhanced affective engagement and reflection. Moreover, it reveals that the increasing significance of global citizen imagery prompts renewed internal reflection on established journalistic practices and norms, but this is not accompanied by a new consideration on the relationship between journalists and their audiences, on journalism as a resource for cosmopolitan attitudes.

Mourning Becomes the Nation: television coverage of the murder of Pim Fortuyn

Abstract This article enters the debate on media events by analysing Dutch television news reporting of the death of controversial right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn. It aims to demonstrate how the coverage of the murder, in particular the representation of emotions, was implicated in the construction of a national, multicultural consensus. A nationwide bereaved community was created by focusing on expressions of mourning, and converting emotions like anger and hate into a unifying and less destructive depiction of grief.

‘Not an act of God’: anger and citizenship in press coverage of British man-made disasters

Anger motivates people to engage in political action, fuelling collective struggles for justice and recognition. However, because of its close association with irrationality and aggression, the public expression of anger has historically been discouraged. This article focuses on expressions of anger in British disaster coverage between 1952 and 1999. In particular, we look at the relationship between anger, journalistic practices and opportunities for ordinary people to express themselves politically. Our article concludes that anger opens up a space for ordinary people to critique power holders, allowing victims and those affected by disasters to raise questions of systemic failure and blame. And such questions, it appears, are increasingly part of the emotional management style of disaster journalism.

Do Crying Citizens Make Good Citizens

The present paper is framed within current debates about the need to rethink citizenship, especially with respect to the question of whether there is a legitimate place for emotion in the public sphere. Emotion has not traditionally been seen as a key to good citizenship, and there has been a fair amount of aversion among media critics towards the “emotionalization” of the public sphere and spectacular outbursts of public emotion. This paper looks at the coverage of the murders of Dutch filmmaker and journalist Theo van Gogh in 2004 and Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002, and shows that the issue is not simply whether emotions should be allowed in the public sphere or not, but rather how they are articulated and how they achieve different understandings of citizenship.

Masculine tears, feminine tears - and crocodile tears: Mourning Olof Palme and Anna Lindh in Finnish newspapers

The supposed ‘emotionalization’ of the public sphere has recently been the target of much hostile commentary, both lay and academic. In the news media, there certainly seems to be a growing interest in emotion, as more and more space is devoted to the representations of mourning in the coverage of major disasters or extraordinary deaths. In this study I look at the news coverage of the display of public grief in the Finnish newspapers following the murders of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden in 1986, and Anna Lindh, the Foreign Minister of Sweden in 2003. The similarities between the Palme and Lindh cases give an opportunity to examine how the representation of mourning has changed over time. The second aim of this article is to explore how gender is constructed in the portrayals of grief: are we witnessing a change regarding the persistent stereotypes about the emotional woman and the unemotional man in the representations of grief or just a new deal in gendered emotions?