ABSTRACT
In 2007, the reality TV (RTV) show Kid Nation (Forman, 2007) debuted as the fi rst of its genre to exclusively involve children (40 of them-aged 8 to 15) as participants working together to rebuild the failed 1885 community of Bonanza City. Before it even aired, the show generated much commentary and moral panic online. Although the bulk of the furor tended to frame the children as ‘victims’ and the parents as ‘dupes’ of the media, the controversy pointed to the ways in which Kid Nation could be seen as a cultural catalyst for “invigorating spiralling debates” (Biltereyst, 2004, p. 92) concerning the tenuous status of childhood in contemporary culture. The RTV format, we suggest, encourages scepticism and contestation when it comes to negotiating the spaces between the real and the representational in contemporary culture, and online fan communities can provide interpretive sites of collection and containment for responding to such catalytic popular cultural forms.
