Binge TV Watching in the Name of Scholarly Research

Elizabeth DeStefano, Verrazano Class of 2018, majored in Communications with a concentration in Journalism.

 

Liz DeStefano before she binge 
watches in the name of research

My name is Elizabeth DeStefano and graduated with a Communications degree at CSI. I worked on my capstone project with Professor Edward Miller. What is great about the capstone project is that you’re able to choose any topic you want to focus on. Going off of that, I chose to focus on reality television. But how could reality television even be worth an academic discussion? That is the beauty of studying the media; you get to analyze everything you love on an academic level, and GET CREDIT for it. Cool right? You can watch Harry Potter get credit for it. You can watch memes and study them and get credit for it. But as fun and easy as this all sounds, it is important

to understand that it is a lot more work than it seems.

 When picking this project, I was originally going to focus on the effects of reality television on an audience. However, Professor Miller steered me in a much cooler direction, in which I analyze the aesthetics of reality television. I was troubled by the topic at first, not really sure what to do with it, until one day I was watching an episode of The Amazing Race and noticed that alliances are taking over the competitions within reality television. I was intrigued by this, considering the very networks that air these shows are involved in their own competition, in which only six major companies are competing (and sometimes they team up with one another). What formed was my comparison of the structure of the media industry to how reality television portrays alliances within the show. The research involved me watching two seasons each of three different competition-based reality shows.

Settling in for some research!

  

I chose to focus on the first four episodes of each season to also focus on the sub-problem, which was the speed at which alliances formed. I have been watching reality television religiously with my family since I was a child so I felt I had a pretty firm grasp on the concept. Boy, was I wrong.

There are so many aspects to take into account when analyzing the aesthetics of a show: the music, the camera movements, the footage they choose to use, the quotes they select from contestants. While I originally thought my research would be a walk in the park, it turned out to be more daunting than I thought. It also didn’t help that I procrastinated quite a bit (pro tip: DO NOT PROCRASTINATE). I found myself urgently watching episodes whenever I could; during breaks between class, breaks at work, while I was showering or brushing my teeth.

The negative effects of binge watching in the name of research!

My hand would be throbbing as I scribbled notes furiously when I could. Deadlines crept nearer as did my anxiety of not being able to graduate. However, I pushed through, having to spend my spring break in CSI’s library furiously typing up the paper. Now that I look back, this experience was stressful, anxiety-inducing, tiring, frustrating, exciting, interesting, and probably one of the most rewarding experiences of my college career. We always have to cite scholarly research articles when were writing papers for class but this time we are writing the scholarly research articles. It is truly amazing to be able to create something as elaborate and informative from essentially nothing. Aside from the free pizza Cheryl likes to get for us, and the priority registration, this in my opinion is one of the most rewarding parts of Verrazano because we get to be apart of the academic community on an entire different level.