Discoveries in the Making
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As seen on television
Reality television and documentaries have altered the landscape separating fact and fiction.
The rise in popularity of reality as entertainment is a symptom of a larger socio-cultural change, a phenomenon that is being researched by Fernando Andacht, an associate professor in the Department of Communication.
By consuming such natural, expressive behaviour through reality programming, which is closer to the physiological than to the intellectual, audiences expect to find the self as the ultimate evidence of the truth, a modern equivalent of the soul.
The academic is wrapping up a three-year research project funded by the Brazilian National Center of Research on the representation of the real at the age of its media spectacularization.
Andacht has used Charles Peirce’s semiotic model to account for the impact of reality television program, and for the depiction of daily life in contemporary documentaries. The findings will be used for a broader approach which will include mock news programs.