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Abstract

The article proceeds from a basic assumption that participation in the broadcast media is about mastering a set of performance roles that are given by the production context and by the requirements of the format. It discusses how a media production team is able routinely and systematically to manage the process of formatting participation; that is, the process whereby production teams prepare non-professional participants for the programme’s performance requirements. It elaborates on the various roles allotted to participants and introduces the concepts of ‘format consonance’, ‘format dissonance’ and ‘format incarnation’ to account for the formatting process. It also aims to demonstrate the way that formatting mechanisms operate in production where the professionals emphasize informality, everydayness and making participants ‘feel good’. The article draws for concrete examples on an ethnographic study of the production of Mamarazzi, a daily popular journalism format on the Norwegian public service youth channel P3.

Keywords

email media ethnography media production (popular) journalism radio (social) interaction

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Formatting Participation within Broadcast Media Production

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