‘Why do you watch that trash?’ – Podcast episode

https://soundcloud.com/maddie-date/why-do-you-watch-that-trash-podcast-episode Hi there, and welcome to a very special, one-off episode of 'Why do you watch that trash?' Over the past few months, I have conducted an autoethnographic study trying to answer the question: why do I like to watch The Bachelor? You can have a look at the pitch for my project here. If …

Research Project Journal – observing the world of The Bachelor Australia

This is the journal for my autoethnographic research project asking why people watch reality television shows like The Bachelor. (You can view the project pitch for this research here). https://gph.is/2RkvH5J Essentially, this is a dump of my research observations, containing my reactions to a range of Bachelor-related content sourced from the show's official social media, …

Live-tweeting The Bachelor finales

http://gph.is/1hiWhWB Live-tweeting plays a large role in the audience community of The Bachelor. This is achieved through the #TheBachelorAU and #BacheloretteAU hashtags. In conjunction with my auto-ethnographic research project, I observed the live tweet reactions during the finale episode on 24/9/2020. These were my general observations: Many tweets were extremely critical of the Bachelor and …

Will you accept this pitch?

Sarah Wall (2006, p.5) likens autoethnography to being “sent into the woods without a compass”. Despite learning the sheer truth of this statement as I have developed my research project over the last few weeks, I have narrowed down my ideas and planned out my work.  Now, this is my pitch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBN-YiYN9Sc I will conduct …

Research and Ethics – the final project planning hurdle

Although reality television has emerged as a leading genre in recent years, academia on the subject remains somewhat scarce. On the other hand, there is an abundance of work on mediated audience theories and the public sphere (the theoretical frameworks I mentioned in my previous blog post) in countless communication journals. When doing some background …

Activating defence mode – research plan for The Bachelor Franchise

When sitting down, eating dinner, and watching Bachelor of Paradise two nights a week, I never thought that I’d be knee-deep in the complex web of its media network less than two months later. What began as a guilty pleasure has evolved into an exploration of a large mediated sub-cultural group with a variety of …

A Constellation of Reality Stars – Mapping the field site of The Bachelor Franchise

During his lecture this week on Qualitative Research and Ethnographic Skills, Chris Moore made a statement that’s truly at the crux of ethnographic research as a whole:  Your voice is important but it is not the definitive voice, it is one voice among many.  This has stuck with me throughout the week as I have …

Hi, my name’s Maddie and I love The Bachelor

Everyone has a guilty pleasure, whether it’s secretly listening to boybands (guilty), doing hundreds of Buzzfeed quizzes (guilty), or Colin Firth movies (my Mum’s guilty).  But rarely can you say that your guilty pleasure has exploded to permeate various aspects of your media consumption and everyday life. It probably turns into a hobby at that …

Fact-Checking Should be Here to Stay, and Here’s Why

It’s 2007, and the U.S. Presidential Election is fast approaching. St. Petersburg Times bureau chief Bill Adair is deliberating innovative ways to cover the upcoming political frenzy. During previous political campaigns, Adair has been a  self-described “passive co-conspirator…of passing along inaccurate information”. Therefore, being driven partially by guilt, Adair sketches plans for a political fact-checking …

What’s Hidden? ‘Home’

Daunted. Excited. Stressed. Free. These are the thoughts running through a person’s mind when they move out of home for the first time. Almost all of us will experience this at some point in our lives. The fear of the unknown can be overwhelming as we leave the nest and take our first steps into …