10 - Researching Emotion in Television: a small-scale case study of emotion in the UK/Irish soap industry

Summary

The previous chapters have drawn on particular televisual examples in order to explore how emotion is developed, constructed and valued within television. It has considered how emotion can be fashioned for a reaction from the audience, how particular characters are used to elicit emotional intimacy and how specific textual elements are used to draw in viewers emotionally. The final chapter considers how the industry values the concept of emotion by drawing on interviews with those working within the UK/Irish Television Industry. To begin, however, I shall consider the role of ethnography within television studies and outline the initial set-up of a small-scale case study.

Bird's work in the Audience in Everyday Life draws on her research within the field and, in so doing, offers her readers a useful way to consider ethnographic research and cautions against certain kinds of projects. She tells her reader that:

Rather than worry about relatively insignificant issues like time spent in the field, I believe we should be thinking more carefully about matching suitable methods to the subtle questions we are trying to ask. Our aim should be to achieve an ‘ethnographic way of seeing’ … whose goal Emerson, Fretz and Shaw (1995) define as ‘to get close to those studied as a way of understanding what their experiences and activities mean to them’.

(Bird 2003: 8, italics in original)