ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses the mediation of personal conflicts as a performance for the audience is built around a different participative framework altogether from the mediation of argument as debate with a participating audience, and how this is accomplished in a range of different media genres. From the arguments, discussions and debates of the issue-based talk show and the radio phone-in, the arena of confrontational talk shows and the highly personal disputes that are played out on the stages of programmes like Jerry Springer and Jeremy Kyle. The chapter explores the issue of how conflict on the one hand is being linked with judgement on the other, to produce some of the most pervasive discourses of performance in many current formats of reality TV. The chapter concludes by points of interface between broadcast media and social media, on Twitter sites for the construction of an interactive, web-based audience within which above mentioned shows are topically discussed and evaluated.
