Dance Your Ph.D. 2015: Communication in Reality TV (Lucie Barbapostolosová) HD

Thanks to the British duo BENT for allowing us to use their music in this video. A complete description of this video and my thesis is available here: http://wp.me/p4vUpR-3d A shortened version of the description: In my thesis about communication in reality tv I have applied pragma-, psycho- and sociolinguistic methods on hundreds of concrete communication situations, of both verbal and nonverbal nature, and described typical patterns of communication. Opening and closing the door in video scene 1 symbolizes the so-called gate-keeping (control over the media content, control over the participants. There are criteria that you have to fulfil to get through the gate). We have chosen the theatre hall for our performance, because we wanted to emphasize the isolated world of the reality tv show. Especially at the beginning of the video we decided to use the dynamic camera technique (moving camera) to emphasize also the dynamism of such a tv product (including qualities like popularity of a contestant, which changes literally each hour). A group of contestants has to be formed artificially. Criteria of such a formation include: “conflict potential”, interesting life experience, physical attractiveness. The group shares a limited space, knowing that they are being watched – and making use of it. The levels of communication I observed are (pseudo)intrapersonal (the most nonsensical, such as talking to oneself out loud), interpersonal (talking in two), group (social talk, discussion, decision making in a group, im/politeness), intergroup level (groups within a group – solving a conflict, arguing), institutional (occasional post, police, doctor from the outside world), and all these levels are provided via the mass-media channel/level. This level of course includes the audience and their behaviour. At the end of scene 1 we are showing the dynamics of the group, such as creating integration (e. g. as a result of expressing sympathy), or alienation (e. g. after sarcasm, vulgarity). Scene 2 shows contestants intuitively using some typical persuasive models of communication, e. g. assertiveness. There was for example a very nice example of two contestants talking about cheating in relationships and A wanted to convince B that people cheat on each other. She used the assertiveness technique of the broken record – she repeated her opinion again and again till the point when B agreed. In scene 3 we show, how the reality tv crew manipulates the contestants´ mood and behaviour, often experimenting with people similarly to psychological laboratories. Scene 4 demonstrates, that from time to time feelings of deep crisis occur and then the contestants urgently want to leave e. g. the house, the island; the audience hear more often the dichotomy we (contestants) as opposed to you (staff, audience) or we as opposed to them. Still, in the end, there are just people standing in a row and waiting for the rise or fall. One of them ends up strongest in the run. It