Viewing your Home District – On the media presentation of the provinces in reality television and on YouTube.
The purpose of my investigation is to make visible the ways in which a provincial area, in this case the Värmland town of Säffle, is presented and contextualized in the media. I want to examine the role, for example, people from Säffle in television shows Bonde söker fru (TV4) and Lite sällskap (Kanal 5) play for the inhabitants of the town and how the shows mediate the place’s character. What consequences does this exposure have? Despite the “reality/realism” that the media often claim to present, we know it is more complex than that since “the creation of an image through a camera lens always involves some degree of subjective choice through selection, framing, and personalization”. * The aim is to investigate how Säffle’s youth look at the image of their home town exposed by the media. Does the media image match the residents’ view of the town?
Question: How do young people living in Säffle view the media portrayal of their home town?
* Sturken, Marita & Cartwright, Lisa (2009). Practices of Looking: An introduction to visual culture. 2. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 16