Dealing With Dissonance: The Appropriation of Temptation Island as a Dissonant Practice Within Media Repertoires

Abstract

Despite being central to the media repertoire approach, operationalizations of interrelations of media repertoire components often remain limited to proportions of use, or the personal relevance of repertoire components. This paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of these interrelations by focusing specifically on one particular operationalization: the (in)compatibility of parts of the repertoire. Recent discussions in newspaper headlines indicate how Flemish reality TV-show Temptation Island might function as one such component, deemed incompatible with the repertoire of higher-educated young viewers. By drawing upon Lahire’s theory of dissonance, and exploring the appropriation of Temptation Island within repertoires through a moral economy of media use, the paper explores how young viewers under thirty-five make sense of “dissonant components” within their repertoire, and alleviate the tensions that their presence can create by adopting strategies that establish distance from the text or by hiding parts of the repertoire in certain social contexts.