Working in the Reality TV Industry: The Regime of Justification of Reality Creators in Israel

• In Event: Labor Studies in the Digital Media Economy

Abstract

This article examines the justification discourse of Israel TV’s reality show creators as a case study of how employees of the culture industries perceive their work. On the one hand, creators of Israeli reality TV operate in an unstable and competitive environment, and on the other, their work is criticized as inferior and culturally corrupting. Here we combine Luc Boltanski’s pragmatist sociology, which studies the rationale of social agents, and the cultural industries approach to explore the regime of justification employed by reality show creators in Israel. An in-depth analysis of interviews with leading creators of the genre sheds light on the arguments they use to justify reality programming and draws home how deeply they are ingrained in hegemonic capitalist discourse.

Author

• Noa Lavie, The Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College