Reality television programming chronicling the daily workings of multiple birth families within American culture has gained notoriety in recent years. Such programs, especially Discovery Health and TLC's 17, 18 Kids and Counting and TLC's Jon and Kate Plus Ei8ht, film, edit and broadcast the "everyday" life of these families. This research study focuses attention on hegemonic ideologies surrounding family values, motherhood, gender roles and religious faith, illuminated through textual and audience analysis. Working from an interdisciplinary approach combining feminist media and cultural studies, this study finds that hegemonic notions of family values, gender representations, religious faith and conceptions of motherhood are evident to varying degrees in the television texts and accepted by fans who negotiate their meanings online. / by Emily M. CIttadino. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This thesis takes a cultural studies approach to representations of post-war U.S. suburbia in Richard Yates’ 1961 novel Revolutionary Road, as well as in the contemporary AMC television series Mad Men. These texts explore the postwar time period, which holds a persistently prominent and idealized space in the collective cultural imagination of America, despite the fact that it was a period troubled by isolationism, containment culture, rampant consumerism, and extreme pressure to conform to social roles. This project disrupts the romantic narrative of postwar America by focusing on the latent anxiety within the suburban landscape—by interrogating the performative nature of the planned communities of the 1950s and 1960s and exposing the tensions that were borne out of the rise of domesticity and consumerism. This project explores the descent into a society obsessed with consumerism and conformity, and seeks to interrogate the culture’s false nostalgia for the time period. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.

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Este trabalho investiga elementos da narrativa jornalística contemporânea presentes na programação televisiva e discute o caráter híbrido das tecnologias da comunicação. A partir da análise de programas que retratam a tragédia acontecida na cidade de Santa Maria em janeiro de 2013,são utilizadas bases semióticas e analíticas no intuito de compreender referenciais comuns pelos quais esse tipo de comunicação opera na transmissão de suas mensagens e pontos de vista acerca do real. Traz como resultado a comprovação dos usos dessas estratégias de representação desses dentro do recorte analisado, o que serve como evidência da constante reafirmação de discursos generalistas a respeito dos fenômenos sociais, reeditados em novas bases tecnológicas. / This work investigates elements of contemporary journalistic narrative present in television programming and discusses the hybrid character of communication technologies . From the analysis of programs that depict the tragedy that took place in the city of Santa Maria in January 2013,semiotic and analytical bases are used in order to include common reference by which this type of communication operates in the transmission of messages on reality . It brings as a result the evidences of representation strategies within the analyzed cut. The conclusion serves as evidence of the constant reaffirmation of general discourse about social phenomena, reissued in new technological basis.

Este trabalho investiga elementos da narrativa jornalística contemporânea presentes na programação televisiva e discute o caráter híbrido das tecnologias da comunicação. A partir da análise de programas que retratam a tragédia acontecida na cidade de Santa Maria em janeiro de 2013,são utilizadas bases semióticas e analíticas no intuito de compreender referenciais comuns pelos quais esse tipo de comunicação opera na transmissão de suas mensagens e pontos de vista acerca do real. Traz como resultado a comprovação dos usos dessas estratégias de representação desses dentro do recorte analisado, o que serve como evidência da constante reafirmação de discursos generalistas a respeito dos fenômenos sociais, reeditados em novas bases tecnológicas. / This work investigates elements of contemporary journalistic narrative present in television programming and discusses the hybrid character of communication technologies . From the analysis of programs that depict the tragedy that took place in the city of Santa Maria in January 2013,semiotic and analytical bases are used in order to include common reference by which this type of communication operates in the transmission of messages on reality . It brings as a result the evidences of representation strategies within the analyzed cut. The conclusion serves as evidence of the constant reaffirmation of general discourse about social phenomena, reissued in new technological basis.