Keeping the public in their place: audience participation in lifestyle television programming

Abstract

The participation of members of the public in the mass media has been studied discursively at the level of live broadcasting, notably in talk radio and talk shows on television. In this article I examine the construction of public identities in `lifestyle' television programming, specifically property shows, in which members of the public appear either as potential home buyers (`house-hunters') or as home owners looking to maximize the value of their properties (`vendors'). In a selected episode of the Channel 5 show Hot Property, I explore the way in which these identities are managed within the text, through an eclectic analysis both of broad sociocultural discourses and of the verbal and physical interaction between the host and the public participants. It is sometimes argued that media exposure can be empowering for the general public, but in a tightly edited production such as this, subject positions are created for participants that may be less than flattering.