Chinese Boxes: Reality TV and Audience Participation

Convergent media technologies have set up a media platform that supports interactive, participatory mediated communities. The world-wide popularity of reality TV shows is indicative of the spread of these cultural values and exemplifies the era of participating audiences (¿¿). This book investigates audience participation in two Chinese reality TV programmes, identifying audience participation as a form of informal role enactment. This is the first research conducted in China that maps audience members by calling on them to be self-reflective. With its extension of a Chinese audience studies approach, and its valuing of audience members' voices, this book will be useful to scholars, students, as well as Chinese television production planners in designing environments that can assuage the growing Chinese appetite for participation in programmes. This book is highly recommended by Professor Naren Chitty A.M from Macquarie University, Sydney and Professor Daya Thussu from University of Westminster, London.