ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how reality TV and media representations work as a site for discursive deservingness negotiations related to morals, values, norms, affects and taste. Empirical examples in this chapter examine the ways in which Finnish poverty and wealth are represented vis-à-vis deservingness in the first series of the reality TV format adaptation of the Rich House, Poor House programme. This chapter shows how ‘positive’ media framings of deservingness can also be problematic since they implicitly represent undeservingness and stress the importance of values of meritocracy, entrepreneurialism and social mobility with regard to deservingness.
