The Media and Power: Foucault, Surveillance, and Reality TelevisionSteph Hendry applies Foucault’s theories about surveillance and dispersed power to reality television shows, with a focus on Big Brother.

Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name one attributes to a complex strategic situation in a particular society.Foucault

Power as it relates to the media is traditionally conceived of in top-down terms. For example, it can be claimed that media institutions, such as News International and other organisations belonging to Rupert Murdoch’s business empire, directly influence the way that people think about and understand the world through choices they make in the production of news and culture. Of course, audiences are perfectly able to reject what they consume, but the presence of corporate media entities is so pervasive that it can sometimes seem difficult to see beyond a model in which a powerful elite directly influence the general mass.

Much has been written about how new digital media have transformed relationships of power, with digital platforms such as Twitter offering a global voice to anyone with access to the internet. But what about new structures of power within traditional media forms, such as television? Reality television, for example, reconfigures the relationship between viewers, participants and producers in interesting ways. Applying some of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s ideas about how power is constructed in this configuration suggests that reality television does indeed offer new ways of thinking about media and power.

Foucault recognised the importance of watching and being watched in the way power works. He identified a specific architectural design used for prisons and asylums to show that power can be exerted in a non-direct way. The building, called a panopticon, had open cells and a central structure that allowed guards to observe inmates from a hidden position. The design of the building allowed prisons to be run with fewer guards as the threat of being watched was as effective in maintaining order as the act of being watched. Prisoners would ‘self-police’; they altered their behaviour when they knew they were being watched but they would also alter their behaviour if they thought they might be being watched.

Foucault said that the major effect of the panopticon was to create a ‘state of consciousness’ of a ‘permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power’. This means that ‘the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action’. According to Foucault, this means that ‘the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary’. An analogous example might be the way that the threat of a speed camera stops people from speeding; the knowledge that a camera might be present changes drivers’ behaviour, as people drive more cautiously to avoid getting a speeding ticket. Of course, speed cameras are not always active; but as the driver doesn’t know which ones are working and which are not, s/he will ‘self-police’ and slow down anyway. The idea of surveillance is as effective as actual surveillance. So, how does this relate to the media?

Applying Theory: Power in Reality TV – a ‘complex strategic situation’

In TV programmes like I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, The X Factor and Big Brother, the producers are able to exert their power in the construction of the shows and in the way participants are presented to the audience. Editing decisions can represent participants in very specific ways, and the producers can create characters and conflicts to entertain the audience. This can also act to influence the way the audiences engage with the programmes, including the way they vote. Producers frequently use drama to draw in the audience, and engineer shock and outrage to encourage social media chatter.

This is the traditional way of thinking about power in terms of the media products. However, reality TV exists within a much more complex set of power relationships.

The audience is offered power within shows such as Big Brother as they get to choose who stays and who is evicted. These decisions have an impact on the development of the programmes’ narratives, and give clear indications to the producers and the participants as to which behaviours the audience approves of and which they don’t. Because audiences have the choice whether to watch and engage with the programmes at all, they also have power over the producers; their votes and viewing figures will influence the producers’ approach.

Reality show participants are not simply fodder for the power of the producers and audiences. They themselves can exert power by manipulating their situation to show themselves in a good light – or to make others look bad. Participants often take on a role or persona in the hope that by being argumentative, outrageous, kind, funny etc., they will be perceived as ‘good TV’ and so avoid eviction. Ironically, time and again audiences have rewarded characters they see as being ‘real’ rather than a construction. Of course, this could have been a very clever strategy employed by winning participants!

News and social media can be very significant in amplifying some opinions and generating discussion and debate. Talking about events with other people can influence the way audiences interpret and feel about the programmes. The producers can use news and social media to gauge public opinion, and this will influence how they develop narratives and the way they represent characters in the future. This is why participants in Big Brother are not supposed to access the media during their residence, as learning what people are saying could influence their behaviour in the house.

The power relationships in reality TV are all based around the act of watching. The act of watching (or being watched) is central to the way all participants in the programme exert power or have power exerted upon them. The Big Brother house and the I’m a Celebrity… jungle act as panopticons.

The participants are aware that cameras are recording all the actions – they assume that they are being watched at all times – this impacts on their behaviour.

The audience watch the participants and judge their behaviour. They also watch news and social media to see what others are saying about the programme.

The producers watch the participants and make decisions as to how to present them to the audience – they watch the audience responses in voting and social media activity to help them decide how to shape the show.

In these environments, everyone is both powerful and subject to the power of others. One group (or institution) does not simply have power over another in a formal, structured way (as in direct theories) but complex power relationships are in play in the construction of the programme.

The producers attempt to have power over the audience and over the participants through editing and narrativising events.

The participants attempt to have power over the audience and producers by controlling their own behaviour and identities.

The audience can exert power over the producers and participants through voting and switching off. The wider media can influence the producers and the audience through promoting, reporting, debating or

challenging the content of the show.One way to conceptualise the audience’s relationship with the media is to acknowledge that sometimes we are ‘guards’ who are engaged in watching, but at other times we are ‘prisoners’ being watched. The reality TV format supports this hypothesis in that everyone involved in the programmes is in some way actively constructing something to be watched whilst watching someone else. No-one is powerless in the ‘complex strategic situation’ that is reality TV – but neither is anyone truly powerful; as Foucault argues, ‘power is everywhere’.