Affect television

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Affect television is a media psychological neologism for various modern television formats such as talk , relationship or game shows . It refers to those television offerings that encompass the characteristics of being centered on individual fates, focusing on emotional sensitivities and crossing the border between the private and the public .

Characteristics

The media psychologists Gary Bente and Bettina Fromm characterized the following central features in 1997:

  • Personalization : The representation is centered on the individual's fate and on the directly affected individual, whereby general takes a back seat to the individual. The moderator creates a climate of familiarity and reliability.
  • Authenticity : The “true” stories of the unprominent people are either told or staged depending on the broadcast concept, whereby the live character underlines the authenticity of what is shown.
  • Intimization : Personal concerns and aspects of interpersonal relationships that were previously clearly in the private sphere are now becoming a public issue.
  • Emotionalization : The emotional aspects of the stories, i.e. personal experience and feelings, are emphasized. The camera supports this tendency by showing the actors in moving moments - and here often in close-ups.

The program formats of affect television , which claim to depict reality, primarily offer non-prominent people space to publish their own person or their personal fate in an authentic report and / or in direct self-portrayal in front of the camera. The theming of the often very intimate content goes hand in hand with an emotional media-technical presentation. The live character (see Live on tape ) of the broadcasts can be achieved through various design means, such as the presence of a studio audience , who can sometimes participate in the process, through “call-in” actions, through direct appeal to the audience or even through surprises staged in the media.

Another characteristic, personalization, extends not only to the more or less fateful stories, which are illustrated using mostly non-prominent individual cases, but also to the person of the moderator . He not only takes on the moderation function, but represents the constant human element in the programs with the changing topics, faces and stories . It helps to establish long-term emotional ties to the program or to the person of the moderator.

See also

literature

  • Bente, Gary / Fromm, Bettina: Affektfernsehen. Motives, ways of offering and effects. (Media research series of the State Broadcasting Corporation of North Rhine-Westphalia, Vol. 24) Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1997.

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