Media Studies- What do you find irritating about a certain media text?

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What do you find irritating about a certain media text?

A media text that I find quite irritating is the reality television programme “Big Brother”. This programme has become something of a phenomenon since it began in the Netherlands in 1999, spreading throughout various countries – normally a series or two each year. The show is based around a number of contestants who are isolated from the outside world in a “Big Brother House” one by one being eliminated until there is an ultimate winner. The show relies on its vast audience to vote for whom they would like to be eliminated from the house each week. It is this huge response that the producers receive each year that keeps the show running, however over the years, this huge following has resulted in each contestant only applying for the show because of the quick rise to fame that follows after the show ends, and according to the Learning and Skills Council; “one in seven UK teenagers hope to gain fame by appearing on reality television”. The media have also become obsessed with the programme, and it is not unusual to see these contestants on the front pages of magazines, revealing shocking stories of their past. The fascination and ultimate obsession that the public has with these ordinary contestants has caused many unnecessary disagreements both on and off the show, which have dominated newspaper headlines when there may be something of greater importance to account.

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  The idea of Big Brother did originate from Dutchman John De Mol, however the show’s name comes from George Orwell’s novel

 “Nineteen-Eighty-Four”, in which there is a character named Big Brother who oversees all of dystopian Oceania. The contestants that are sent into the house are often chosen from a sociological perspective, where tension can arise quite easily between people, i.e. placing a loud extroverted person with quite a withdrawn individual in the same room would cause a lot of arguments due to clash of personality. These clashes of personality have cause many “incidents” over each series of ...

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