The Power Game And Democratic Imagination In Entertainment Shows

In the summer of 2018,the talent show Produce 101 was estimated as a phenomenal program on account of its enormous social influence.Elected from the show,the girl group Rocket Girls has still been active on the stage with magnificent support from their fans.Produce 101 has mentioned the users as Public Producer for the first time in China.The users had the authority to elect their favorite candidates by voting online.Will the development of media technology and the variety of participation methods lead to a new relationship between users and media?Does it bring us closer to the truth of democracy,or distance us from it?Focusing on Produce 101,the paper has discussed discourse power by the pointcut of the voting system in reality TV.Instead of either celebrating the show as a democratic experiment or dismissing it for the obvious commercial orientation,this paper examines the show through the perspective of power game.Data were collected by depth interview and case study,in order to clarify all the power subjects mentioned in the program and find out their operation mechanism.Meanwhile,explore the relation between entertainment democracy and reality shows.After the research,it comes out with the conclusion that the media's construction of the symbolic boundary separating the “media world” and the “ordinary world” as crucial to the legitimization of media power.Users negotiate with the media by participation,and meanwhile are largely complicit throughout the process.Candidates who play the role of products are the direct beneficiaries or victims.Meanwhile,Public Producer is only a way to encourage voting and accomplish commercial values of the show.It seems more like the illusion of democracy.Distinguished from other researches before,the paper has three innovation points below.First,it focuses on power game between media,users and market,instead of judging the positive or negative side of the show.Second,the voting system of Produce 101 has changed a lot comparing with others.On one hand,audiences can elect their favorite girls online.On the other hand,they are not equal to each other,related to how much you paid.What's more,you can see dramatic changes to media environment during last fifteen years.Has the relation between media and audiences also changed because of the development of technology and the prosperity of fan culture? The paper tries to find out the answer.