Abstract
The representation of social issues in entertainment television challenges the assumed and nominal function of such programming to simply entertain its audience. Drawing on focus groups with television viewers in the UK, this article explores the ways in which audiences engage with and use entertainment television in discussions of social issues that conventionally have been framed narrowly across news and entertainment media: crimes against children, immigration and disability. Entertainment television that includes alternative perspectives on these issues offers the possibility of broadening resources and encouraging deliberation, although assumptions about the role of entertainment television are reflected in audience scepticism about the appropriateness of using such programming as a basis for considering the social world.
Keywords
Entertainment television has been on the receiving end of both censure and celebration from media scholars and commentators. While feminist media studies and audience studies have highlighted the positive potential of entertainment output, often such research is overshadowed by a history of scholarship and, more insidiously, enduring popular common sense claiming that the lighter side of television is at best a waste of time, and at worst, to blame for myriad public problems. This article brings to the fore the potential of entertainment television – as opposed to news and current affairs programming – to act as a useful prompt for deliberation of social issues among audiences. Against the prominence of entertainment media in the modern media environment, as well as decreasing news consumption figures, it becomes increasingly significant to assess the social value of less conventionally informative or educational genres and formats. Viewers and producers alike recognise a demarcation between news and current affairs programming and those genres that aim primarily to entertain, and categorisations may reinforce assumptions about what different types of programming could and should do.
Drawing on focus groups with a range of UK television viewers, the study explores the resources that audiences use when making sense of or discussing social issues that typically receive narrow coverage across the news and entertainment media. Cases of UK entertainment television that contribute unconventional perspectives on social issues offer the possibility of sparking deliberation, with constraints presented by assumptions about whether entertainment media is an appropriate resource from which to derive information. This article considers the tensions between how viewers use entertainment television to think about social issues and how they feel entertainment television should be used, and reflects on how and why such media might be better incorporated into discussions of important social issues.
‘Edutaining’ audiences
A number of usually disconnected bodies of research have explored hybrids of entertainment and education media; examining the arguments across these areas starts to clarify shared objectives and assumptions. Two key areas that consider the incorporation of educational principles or content in entertainment television (rather than the inverse) are the entertainment-education strategy, and communication research into social and political representations on entertainment television.
‘Entertainment-education’ is the phrase used by proponents of a strategy to delivery media content, largely in developing countries or to young people, with the explicit goal of educating audiences about social issues. 1 Best-known examples include the Latin American telenovelas that have incorporated such issues as domestic violence and HIV transmission, and the popular US children’s programme Sesame Street – versions of which have been produced around the globe – which are rooted in formal research and based around the goal of making educational content entertaining. In developed countries and for adult audiences, the strategy has been applied to entertainment programming in which specific health messages about the prevention, identification and treatment of illness are embedded.
Despite clear relevance to major strands in media and communication research, often entertainment-education work is not picked up by scholars outside its circles, perhaps in part because of the reliance on theories regarded by many as outdated, like Bandura’s social learning theory. Although there have been attempts to consider the ways in which entertainment-education research might broaden its theoretical understanding of the processes at work (Singhal and Rogers, 2002), the measurement of an individual’s attitude change is typically viewed as the single way of evaluating the success of the strategy.
At the same time, entertainment-education researchers have highlighted the entertainment-education qualities of kindred spirits in mainstream programming, even in the absence of measurable effects. The BBC, in particular, has been identified by entertainment-education researchers as a pioneer of the strategy’s objectives. The popular soap opera EastEnders is compared favourably to ‘the typical E-E [entertainment-education] program’ (Cody et al., 2004: 247), with researchers citing the way that storylines involving social issues encourage discussion, alongside helpline numbers and websites after the programme offering free advice and information for those who seek it. Yet there ‘has been little discussion of utilising theory or of advancing new theory in the BBC E-E programs’ even though, as Cody et al. claim, ‘no other agency in the world has used E-E programming so consistently and extensively’ (2004: 259). The BBC is championed as an innovator, even though it is essentially unconnected to the official entertainment-education network, where producers and strategists work together to create targeted messages. Indeed, interviews with makers of UK entertainment programmes that address social and political issues (Buckingham, 1987; Coleman, 2008; Henderson, 2007; Klein, 2011) support the view that entertainment producers in media-saturated countries are hesitant to place education as a central or greater goal (Singhal and Rogers, 2002: 123). Still, the strengths of public service broadcasting in the UK suggest that by drawing on the ideas and processes of entertainment-education, entertainment television producers could improve an already strong tradition of addressing social issues for viewers.
Although entertainment-education research has been rarely picked up by political communication scholars, the intersection at the heart of the strategy – between entertainment and education – has been a major focus of the field, especially among scholars exploring the merging and collision of political content and activities with entertainment devices and techniques (e.g. Corner and Pels, 2003; van Zoonen, 2005). Studies of hybrid formats such as infotainment and edutainment have considered the bi-directional influence of educational or informational approaches and entertainment approaches.
Questions suggested by Delli Carpini and Williams (1994a) provide a succinct framework for studying the role of entertainment programming as a resource for political information: ‘[H]ow do viewers receive and use the political message of “entertainment” programming as they form their own political beliefs and positions? Do they distinguish between news and entertainment programs as credible sources of information?’ (1994a: 78–79). Delli Carpini and Williams’ (1994b) exploration of the role of fictional and current affairs programming in discussions of environmental issues is an early example of a theme adopted by other political communication scholars involving both quantitative and qualitative approaches to entertainment or fictional portrayals of politics on television.
For example, Holbert et al. (2003) measure the priming effects of exposure to The West Wing, Jones (2005) considers the role of political comedy and talk shows in civic life, and van Zoonen (2007) uses postings on the Internet Movie Database to analyse people’s responses to popular films and television programmes about politics. Focusing on UK television, Coleman (2008) identifies the possibilities and limitations of representing politics in soap operas through interviews with producers, and surveys and focus groups with audiences. Although some of this research uses a fairly inclusive definition of politics, the investigations focus on ‘big P’ politics: representations of political issues, political processes and politicians in entertainment programming. In order to explore the role of media consumption in democratic engagement, it is important that no single or narrow definition of ‘politics’ is advanced at the expense of meaningful and participatory everyday experiences (Couldry et al., 2010). The approach of this article follows Henderson’s (2007) interest in social issues, but shifts the focus to unconventional representations that might be understood as complementing the more typical representations available via entertainment and news or current affairs programming.
Although the studies outlined above are often optimistic about the potential of entertainment programming to contribute to political or social discussion, the assessment of many of the programmes considered is less enthusiastic: whether due to production conventions or conservative tendencies of media, entertainment television is viewed as simplifying, trivialising or not doing justice to serious issues. In this respect, political communication research might learn something from the entertainment-education perspective. Certainly, the two bodies share concerns, including the narrow coverage of issues, limited depth of coverage and limited range of resources for audiences to draw from; they also share a belief that there is a way of combining entertainment and education qualities, but it is a delicate balance.
Conventional discourses, conventional media
If entertainment television holds the potential to contribute to public debate, programming that offers the opportunity to redress or complement dominant frames is particularly important. Thus this article focuses on unconventional representations of three social issues – crimes against children, immigration, disability – across a range of entertainment genres and formats (categorised against current affairs and news programming), and the role of such programming for television audiences.
The selected social issues have been evaluated through previous research as adhering consistently to specific and dominant media frames, with unconventional representations highlighted through their infrequency. For example, research into media representations of crimes against children has identified the application of narrow frameworks, concentrating on the innate or incurable nature of perpetrators. In the case of children committing crimes against other children, researchers have identified extreme coverage that emphasises ‘bad seed’ narratives, portraying the perpetrators as born evil (thus removing, at birth, the social environment of the crimes) (Franklin and Petley, 1999; James and Jenks, 1996; McDiarmid, 1996). Similarly, adults committing crimes against children are portrayed as ‘naturally’ evil; scholarly research into these representations, focusing mostly on news coverage, reveals the portrayal of the paedophile in particular as an ever-manipulative, incurable monster (Kitzinger, 1999, 2004; Meyer, 2007). Unconventional representations go beyond stereotypes to explore crimes against children as a social problem, and to consider the perpetrators as humans whose crimes and problems emerge from, and exist in, a wider social context.
Media representations of immigration may not be quite as narrow as representations of crimes against children, but likewise avoid complexities. Research has found that portrayals of immigrants conflate immigration with issues of asylum-seeking and ‘race’, and tend to operate within frames of the immigrant-as-intruder (Gross et al., 2007; van Gorp, 2005), or immigration as an element of the multicultural ideal (Gibson, 2003; Malik, 2008). Rarer than either approach are portrayals that deal with the social and economic complexities of immigration, where immigration is not simply bad or good, but complicated; representations which explored that complexity were interpreted as unconventional for the purpose of this study. Finally, media representations of disability can be classified into two main frames: the medical and the social. The medical model, traditionally the model present in media representations, tends to present disability in terms of personal struggle and social burden, where medical or social welfare problems must be solved through medical intervention, charitable work or social care (Barnes and Mercer, 2003; Ross, 1997; Thoreau, 2006). The social model, which focuses on systemic barriers to inclusion, is the framework emphasised by non-profit organisations and advocacy groups dedicated to disability issues, and changing (if still infrequent) media representations are a result of the intervention of the disability rights movement. In terms of this study, cases of entertainment television that employed the social model were viewed as less conventional.
Method
In order to explore the function of entertainment television as a complementary resource for audiences, this research drew on nine focus groups conducted between November 2009 and May 2010 with pre-existing groups of television viewers. Target groups were identified with the goal of encouraging a broad scope overall in terms of age, socio-economic classification and television viewing levels. Groups were contacted by email or phone, and included school teachers, professional women’s groups, university students, community groups and social clubs. Participants were reimbursed for travel costs, provided with refreshments and able to withdraw at any time. Focus groups averaged 1.5 hours in length and included between three and eight participants. Although the groups included participants from a range of ages and backgrounds, comprising a swathe of television viewer demographics, the intention of conducting focus groups was not to claim a convenient sample but to simulate an approximation of ‘routine but relatively inaccessible communicative contexts that can help us discover the processes by which meaning is socially constructed through everyday talk’ (Lunt and Livingstone, 1996: 85). Further to this goal, discussions centred around audience encounters with programmes that occurred naturally, rather than screening particular programmes for the groups, so that the resulting conversations might resemble more closely the type of deliberation that may occur between friends and acquaintances. The research design was modelled in part on the approach by Delli Carpini and Williams (1994b), who used focus groups to explore the role of conversation about entertainment television as a basis of public opinion formation.
The focus groups were conducted around the following key questions.
How is media integrated into discussions of crimes against children, immigration and disability?
Do audiences draw only from traditionally informational or educational media, such as news and serious documentary, or also from less traditional examples, such as soap operas and reality?
Do audiences recognise and use unconventional media representations in their discussions of social issues?
How do audiences understand the role of ‘entertainment’ television in addressing social issues and informing audience discussions of social issues?
Transcripts of the interviews were analysed inductively and coded through constant comparison in order to identify recurrent and significant themes. While the categorisation and organisation of these themes cannot capture every nuance or variation within the focus group discussions, the following sections highlight the dominant perspectives communicated within and across the groups. To that end, the quotations offered in support have been selected deliberately to represent and illustrate the themes, and not simply the individual speakers. What emerged through the analysis was a picture of television audiences aware of (and often annoyed by) the conventional frames noted above, and ambivalent about the role that entertainment television could and should play, and for whom.
Findings and discussion
Sources of information and media audiences
The focus groups illustrated the ways in which media audiences draw from a wide variety of sources around social issues. In some cases, professional and personal experiences took precedence over media ones, particularly among groups or individuals with a clear and direct link to the issues under consideration. For example, unsurprisingly, the focus group comprising teachers of children with additional needs referred to their own experiences with disability as informing their views. Similarly, a member of a women’s group related experiences with asylum-seekers and a talk that she had attended by a local journalist warning about sensationalised coverage as shaping her knowledge about immigration.
Yet despite the role that real-life experience sometimes plays, discussions frequently turned to media across all groups, highlighting the significant function of media as a source of information for social issues. However, whereas Delli Carpini and Williams (1994b) found that audiences made little distinction between fictional and non-fictional sources, the focus group participants in this study, at least initially, made that distinction through the inclusion of traditionally informative sources and exclusion of more peripheral formats. When groups discussed their views around social issues and their views around media coverage, the participants tended not to refer to entertainment programming, deferring instead to news (especially newspapers), current affairs and serious documentary. Within the scope of traditionally informative media, most groups recognised conventional representations. Although the extent to which groups challenged news conventions varied, most were critical of what was seen as deceptive coverage (only one group replicated the conventional discourse with infrequent challenges). For example, the participants noted the tendencies of news coverage of crimes against children with scepticism: as Doug, a coffee group member, described: You usually get something like ‘Paedophiles at it Again’ … the press sensationalise everything to the point where I think quite often, not necessarily in this instance, but in a lot of instances they just distort the truth.
Charlotte, a participant from a professional women’s group, regarded such coverage as not merely deceptive but a suspicious distraction: All of us, we are all potential paedophiles and murderers. We’re lurking in every bush. I just wonder what is being covered up because … they have got to sell news, they have got to sell stories, and the more they can make people go, ‘Aahhh!’, the better it is, and we are all being encouraged, whether it’s terrorists, whether it’s paedophiles or whoever it is, the message is the same: ‘Be afraid, be very afraid’.
Of course, the topic of crimes against children, and paedophilia in particular, has been subject to high-profile media satire such as Brass Eye, providing media consumers with a lens through which to critique news coverage. It is worth noting that even in the absence of satirical texts to lead the way, participants were quick to identify sensationalism, bias and imbalance, and expressed concern about narrow perspectives in media. Regarding immigration, Alex, a member of a friendship group, worried that people do not understand that there are different categories of immigration (immigrant, migrant, refugee, asylum-seeker, illegal immigrant); he implicated media coverage in perpetuating the conflation: The media doesn’t help that because it will just, people will see ‘asylum-seeker’ on the front page of The Sun, and will think [it includes] every migrant in the country, every immigrant.
In a similar manner to which newspaper headlines are criticised here, the group of teachers of children with additional needs related what they viewed as ridiculous titles of ‘shock docs’ about disabilities, and members of the friendship group worried that the sensationalist titles of documentaries featuring people with disabilities might encourage ‘freak show’ stereotypes in their attempt to draw high ratings. In the face of narrow news and documentary representations, experience was seen as a route to a nuanced understanding of an issue. Charlotte explained that newspapers will report the extreme cases and you’ve just got to remember, if it is an extreme case, well it is unusual, but that is why it is in the paper. But the obvious answer is for people to actually become acquainted with families of immigrants.
At times, the concerns voiced by the groups extended to entertainment television: for example, Irene, a additional needs schoolteacher, noted that ‘even the dramas’ about immigration ‘have all been negative’ in terms of reinforcing stereotypes. Others began to distinguish between the perspectives communicated through news and entertainment, emphasising entertainment’s ability to move past narrow frames. Through their descriptions of the differences, the participants identified the potential of entertainment television to feature characters who, for example, just happen to be immigrants, offering a different perspective to news stories about immigration, which will necessarily focus on the issues, often negative, relating to immigration itself. Time and again, once the focus groups began to consider entertainment television, the conversation turned away from news media and many more examples of entertainment television were volunteered.
In order to elicit deeper discussion around the possibilities of entertainment television, groups were prompted through the mention of genres (such as soap operas or reality television) or particular cases of programmes featuring unconventional perspectives. Focus group discussions resulted in two parallel trends: considerations of the possible influence of media on ‘other’ audiences; and demonstration, through anecdotes and conversation, of using unconventional examples of entertainment television to work through the complexities of social issues. On the surface, these tendencies seem to be at odds, but a closer examination suggests possibilities of overcoming the tension.
No ‘I’ in effect
When media audiences discussed the role of entertainment television in communicating ideas (positive or negative, conventional or unconventional), the key position that stood out was one that viewed television as potentially very powerful, but only for audiences of which they were not a part. In this way, the groups offered an example of Davison’s classic third-person effect: Individuals who are members of an audience that is exposed to a persuasive communication (whether or not this communication is intended to be persuasive) will expect the communication to have a greater effect on others than on themselves. (Davison, 1983: 3)
Some participants echoed well-rehearsed commonsense claims about the negative influence of television, and entertainment media more generally, especially on younger media consumers. A church group blamed television for the rise in violence, for example. The flipside of media influence – in this case, the prospect that entertainment television might positively influence people by expanding their knowledge about a social issue – also was expressed, but similarly filtered through the third-person effect. Participants were especially optimistic about the role of entertainment television for audiences that may not turn to more traditionally informative sources. There was a belief among many participants that responsible representations of a social issue in entertainment programming could be valuable for viewers who may not ‘read leaflets’ or ‘watch documentaries’. Reflecting on the difficulty of assuming the media behaviours of other audiences, Irene expressed: You need to reach your audience, don’t you? So the people might not be so – this sounds a bit stereotypical – but they might watch soaps more if they are not so open-minded. They might not watch a documentary, so it might reach that audience that you can’t reach otherwise.
Perspectives on who might benefit from less traditional sources resonate with findings about gendered and classed assumptions around entertainment television consumption (Seiter, 1990; Skeggs et al., 2008). However, that focus groups usually acknowledged the potential of entertainment television with respect to ‘them’ does not mean that entertainment television is not playing a role for ‘me’ and ‘you’. Indeed, the participants also relayed and illustrated instances of rational deliberation of social issues through invocation of entertainment television examples.
Entertainment television and the mediated public sphere
Many participants shared anecdotes about the role that entertainment television played in their everyday conversation with friends, family and colleagues. University students, for example, noted the soap Hollyoaks as a regular topic of conversation among friends (who ‘watch it religiously’ and ‘are always talking about it’ – Reese, university student). Participants also described the use of soaps as a foundation for discussion with family members about difficult issues: the child sexual abuse storyline in EastEnders, where the abuser was a member of a family unit and thus challenged popular stereotypes, was offered as an example. 2 The teachers of children with additional needs related regular conversations about representations of disability and talked excitedly about (at the time, upcoming) mock reality programme Cast Offs, which featured actors with disabilities and challenged previous and predictable types of medical model-based representations. They wondered whether their engagement with entertainment representations was only because of their line of work, but the conversations in other focus groups suggested a similar use of unconventional examples in entertainment programming. Of representations of immigration, for example, Alex said: ‘If I saw something that was completely different to what you usually expect to see, then I might start a conversation.’
In addition to relating discussions from outside the focus groups, there was evidence of deliberative conversations using examples of entertainment television taking place within the confines of the focus groups themselves. Especially when prompted to discuss entertainment programming (generally or through specific cases), the focus groups incorporated alternative perspectives into the wider discussion in progress. The single drama Secret Life, which addressed the difficulty that sex offenders have when released from prison, provided a group of students with an opportunity to shift the conversation about crimes against children away from simply condemnation: I think that was a really, really harrowing, fictional drama and covered some really important issues …We have them boxed into this evil, sadistic, psychotic box in terms of how they are portrayed … but what we don’t have is enough information on how they are treated, how they should be treated, how they should be rehabilitated. (Gloria, university student)
Even the community group that tended to reproduce many conventional discourses around the social issues challenged their own purported views with examples from entertainment television. For example, although she earlier bemoaned there being too many immigrants in the UK, and too many who do not follow the local rules and customs, Linda, a member of the community group, said of an immigration storyline on Emmerdale: She’s not doing any harm to anybody, she’s not getting into trouble and doing any wrong. She’s just come to work for money and sending it home to her little boy … So you can’t fault the girl for that can you, really?
Thus, despite the participants’ tendency to attribute the value of social issues in entertainment television to other audiences rather than themselves, the discussions recounted during and conducted through the focus groups demonstrated the role that unconventional representations do play in broadening debate. The results of the focus groups support the proposition that media can open up a space for deliberation of political and social issues, extending the claims of classic feminist work on the use of entertainment media for purposes beyond simply entertainment (e.g. Ang, 1985; Radway, 1987) into a practicable public sphere.
Dahlgren considers the role of television as ‘the major institution of the public sphere in modern society’ (1996: x). Perhaps the recognition of a link between media and Habermas’ core concept is particularly apparent in the context of public service broadcasting: Dahlgren highlights scholarship which has aligned public service broadcasting with the public sphere, observing an ‘explicit appropriation of Habermas’ public sphere concept … within the British debates where it has been utilised as a platform from which to defend public service broadcasting’ (1996: 13). This study appropriates the concept for similar means, but with an eye to less obvious segments of public service broadcasting (e.g. programmes primarily serving the ‘entertainment’ aspect of the Reithian mission). It follows McGuigan’s (2005) extension of Habermas’ ‘literary public sphere’ to include media and popular culture, and joins the body of work that considers the presence of a public sphere function in less traditionally informative or educational cultural realms (see for example Couldry et al., 2010; Hermes, 2006; Hesmondhalgh, 2007; Klein and Wardle, 2008; Kraidy, 2010; Livingstone and Lunt, 1994). Habermas’ public sphere (and theory of communicative action) offers a lens through which to conceptualise the nature of discussion that results from encountering an unconventional perspective, whether the source is news, soap opera or song. In fact, the usefulness of these ideas has been identified in the entertainment-education context, although not explored in great empirical depth (Storey and Jacobson, 2004).
McGuigan suggests that comedy programming may be permitted to offer more radical perspectives than mainstream media, precisely because it ‘is not serious’ (2005: 439). This premise can be extended into an exploration of whether entertainment programming more generally can wield such liberty in ways that news and current affairs cannot. Through emphasising unconventional discourses around social issues that tend to be narrowly framed, the important role that entertainment television can play in providing additional material for generating discussion (or in other words, to serve the goals of a public sphere) is highlighted. It is a point that did not go unnoticed by the focus group participants such as Gloria, who explained: It’s not necessarily so much about educating people towards a certain viewpoint or towards an established viewpoint, but more about instigating the debates. Because the second you give people fuel for asking questions, then you start getting really interesting answers and interesting responses, which of course is the main reason for it all.
Popular understandings of format
How is it that audiences at once dismiss the value (for them, at least) of entertainment television, while demonstrating that same value through anecdote and discussion? A significant barrier to acknowledging, and later using in discussion, examples from entertainment television, revolves around connotations attached to the ‘education’ and ‘entertainment’ labels used within the media industries and in popular discourse. That is, the labels themselves determine how audiences understand and use programming, and act as industrial and popular ‘prompts’ that were momentarily disrupted by the prompts used in the focus groups.
Audiences expressed a sense of what type of programming should and does teach us about social issues; their evaluation was linked clearly to a traditional understanding of formats and assumptions about the value of news and entertainment. For example, Doug, who had been very critical of the narrowness and sensationalism of news coverage still maintained that in terms of learning: ‘Well, I think the most important thing on television is the news, myself.’ The participants articulated that addressing social issues should occur only within certain genres, and that a more overtly pedagogic role for entertainment television would not appeal: I’d be getting quite annoyed if Doctor Who turned to the camera every so often and said, ‘This is a massive problem’. (Alex)
When focus groups recognised the integration of educational content into entertainment television, particularly with soaps, their acknowledgement of the address of social issues was paired with a sense that such content, or the attempt to educate, was inappropriate. Andrea, a university student, explained that she knew people who stopped watching Hollyoaks ‘because of the moral values on it – you feel like it’s turning into an educational programme’. Conversations about the potential educational value of entertainment genres were laced with laughter and joking reminders of the fictional status of programmes. Tension was demonstrated also through the presence of contradictory statements: for example, some participants recounted using an entertainment programme as a source of information on an issue, but also insisted that they would turn to educational programming for educational content and did not value such content in dramas. A group of students discussing the teen drama Skins insisted that education was not possible through entertainment television (‘People have their own opinions and ideas and comedy teen dramas aren’t going to change that’), but agreed that addressing social issues was better than characters simply drinking and fighting: ‘At least they are trying to make it a little bit more serious with pressing issues’ (Peter, university student). On the one hand, the contradictory statements and laughter communicate an uncertainty about entertainment television as educational, while on the other, experience bears out the possibility.
The labels used within the media industries reproduce a traditional understanding of formats for audiences, but also for media professionals, which suggests implications internally as well as externally. In other words, while this article concentrates on the role of labels in terms of audience perspectives, such labels also play a determining role in the process of commissioning, allocation of budget, application of guidelines and assessment of value (e.g. through viewing figures alone, or with a consideration of broader social value) (Klein, 2011). Furthermore, the focus on news and current affairs and near absence of entertainment programming in the ‘Due Impartiality and Due Accuracy and Undue Prominence of Views and Opinions’ section of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code communicates the perceived importance or possibilities of entertainment television as a resource. It is not simply the audience that risks neglecting the possibilities of unconventional entertainment programming, but professionals at all levels of the production process, including those that determine whether such programming is made at all.
The explicitness of entertainment-education might provide a model for entertainment programming within a public service broadcasting framework that offers unconventional perspectives on social issues, but with a proviso. Entertainment-education scholars have stressed the resistance of producers in media-saturated countries to the strategy’s unambiguously pedagogic approach to communicating social messages. Media professionals who work on entertainment programming describe discomfort with openly embracing educational goals, particularly when audiences might feel that they are being told what to think (Klein, 2011). These worries were reflected in the focus group discussions, where it was clear that striking the right balance was the key to addressing social issues usefully in entertainment television: It depends if they are being subtle about it …when they are trying to hit you over the head with it, it’s like it just feels completely unrealistic, but if they can do it in a way where, through characters, and develop them in a way that you emotionally get involved with the characters, then it can be really, really effective. (Tim, friendship group member)
Conclusion
One way in which assumptions about format roles might be challenged is through more explicit links between various types of media content, and particularly through connecting entertainment programming to current affairs and news. As evidenced by the focus groups, entertainment programming can complement news and current affairs, and can contribute to broader discussions. It is notable that prompts to discuss entertainment television or specific cases of entertainment television encouraged deliberation among the focus group participants. More conventionally informative or educational media might provide their own form of prompt to encourage a similar incorporation of alternative perspectives from less conventionally educational formats. Indeed, some of the cases mentioned in the groups featured in segments on current affairs programmes, although primarily to pre-empt controversy (as in the examples of programmes addressing paedophilia) rather than to emphasise the connection to larger social discussions. A more consistent link between entertainment television and discussion among viewers exists in the helpline messages that frequently follow representations of social issues. Current affairs and news programming might act as a similar bridge between entertainment television and the public sphere by referencing and exploring representations of social issues in entertainment programming that offer perspectives which could contribute to or widen the debate.
In their research into representations of environmental politics across fictional and non-fictional programming, Delli Carpini and Williams conclude: [W]hile television deals with politics on a wide variety of shows, it does not deal with politics in a wide variety of ways. While it may be possible to find specific instances of counter-hegemonic messages in television shows, it is important to not lose sight of the overall impact of the medium as an important mechanism for reinforcing the status quo. (1994a: 95)
Thus it is significant that the focus of this article has been not only on non-traditional formats, but those that express alternative perspectives, expanding the framework through which social issues can be understood and discussed. Narrowly framed social issues and neglected perspectives require sustained attention across media. By offering alternative perspectives too often missing in current affairs and news programming, entertainment media has earned a voice in the debate, if audiences are willing to hear it.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Claire Wardle and to Fiona Blair for organising and managing the focus groups. Thanks also to Nancy Thumim and David Hesmondhalgh for helpful comments on an earlier draft.
Funding
This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant no. RES-000-22-3202).
Notes
Biographical note
Bethany Klein is Senior Lecturer in Communications Studies at the Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds. She is the author of As Heard on TV: Popular Music in Advertising (Ashgate, 2009) and has published articles on commercialism and the media, popular music culture and social issues in entertainment television.