Researchers at the University of Nottingham will shed new light on the highly controversial world of reality TV with the aim of improving care practices across the sector.
The Arts and Humanities Research Council has awarded £951,433 to researchers at the University of Nottingham, Lancaster University and the University of Leicester, for the 'RE-Care TV': Reality Television, Working Practices and Duties of Care project.
This project will be the first to put the various aspects involved in reality TV production, participation and policy under the microscope to improve caring practices across the sector.
Reality TV is a significant and highly controversial area of media production that has rapidly expanded over the last two decades with an increasing share of the UK's £1.48bn global TV export market.
Professor Helen Wood from Lancaster University is the Principal Investigator. She explains: "High profile concerns around mental health risks have led to changes to Ofcom's Broadcasting Code around improved welfare for participants, whilst broadcasters increasingly understand a need for the continued evolution of care practices across the sector. Most policy and industry initiatives have so far focused on risk management around mental health concerns for individual participants, without any interrogation of the broader contexts of cultural labour and working practices."
The need for better care extends behind the camera as well. Reality TV is a growth area and major commercial success for the UK creative industries, but is also characterised by precarious contracts, gruelling schedules and lack of agreement around things like pay. Our project will identify best practice across the sector.
The empirical knowledge produced by this project has transformative potential for re-conceiving care in RTV production, whilst the new theoretical framework, derived from careful empirical analysis, will offer a far-reaching academic agenda for care in the creative industries more widely.
The study will include policy analysis, media tracking, and qualitative interviews with a diverse range of key stakeholders.
The project will investigate how care is understood & experienced across reality television by asking:
- How is care understood, mediated and practised by different workers across reality television production?
- How should the working experiences of participants inform our understanding of care in RTV?
- How is care understood, inscribed and implemented in policy and industry decision-making?
- How can the analysis of care be incorporated into theorisations of cultural labour in the creative industries?
The research will centre the previously overlooked experiences of production workers and non-professional participants alongside contemporary policy debates and public concerns around duties of care.
The project team will work with the co-operation of all the UK Public Service Broadcasters and three key project partners:
- BECTU, the media and entertainment workers' union, to understand how care is implemented in production, which will inform the creation of a report and training materials.
- Equity, the trade union for creative practitioners, to listen to participants' voices, understand their needs, and to consider whether and how they can be formally recognised as cultural workers. This will lead to the production of a video for would-be participants which informs them of their rights and helps them to negotiate the complex terrain of RTV production.
- Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee to integrate findings from production, participation and policy, both to consider the current protections in place and to propose future policy recommendations.
Researchers will consult with the Chair of the British Psychological Society's Media Advisory Board, Professor John Oates, to understand how their findings can support developments around mental health protections, which will also inform their report to the DCMS select committee.
