Media audiences and the game of controversy

Abstract This article looks at the atmosphere of controversy or the perfume of scandal around reality TV. In order to grasp the feeling of controversy, we first look at the social and moral issues treated by reality programmes, where we try to introduce some positions in the overall reality TV debate. In a second step we argue that the controversial nature may reside in the intentional production or simulation of a (possible) moral panic, where we bring in recent reconfigurations about this critical sociological concept. One of the ideas here is that the old moral-panic model — what can be seen as a spiral effect produced by the interaction of the media, public opinion, interest groups, moral guardians and the authorities — needs to be adapted to a postmodern (media) environment. In this context we make a distinction between the moral- and media-panic concept. A third, more empirically based step in the attempt to understand the perfume of scandal deals with an audience study on how young people perceive new factual television and reality TV, including ‘extreme’ or more controversial forms of it.