Table1_Alone With Goffman: Impression Management and the TV Series.DOCX

Alone is an American reality television series on the History Channel. The show features 10 contestants who are vying to outlast each other while living off the land. Notably, there is no camera crew, and the contestants must film themselves everyday; the production team creates a weekly program that marks the journey of each individual. This study sought to understand the degree to which participants are able to shape their public identities through the video footage they shot and that was subsequently edited in Alone’s cutting room. The research team employed an explorative case study methodology, which allowed them to watch hours of publicly available official video clips from the History Channel’s Alone YouTube channel. The analysis was driven by theory (Goffman’s The Presentation of Self conceptual framework) and an inductive thematic analysis, which took place in a cyclical fashion through interpretation meetings at the end of each of the six series that were watched. The findings first showed that the contestants were performing to multiple audiences, such as their families, the public, the producers, and even God. Second, the boundary between the frontstage and the backstage was highly blurred. Third, the contestants were able to continue shaping and “repairing” their identities through their own social media outlets after the program. Finally, the theme of gendered approaches to living outdoors shone through in ways that were very complex, overlapping, and non-binary. There is an undeniably strong “impression management tension” between the selves that participants wanted to project and the narratives that were constructed by the Alone program’s producers.

《荒野独居》（Alone）是历史频道（History Channel）推出的美国真人实境竞赛节目。该节目邀请10名参赛者，他们需依托野外自然资源彼此比拼，力争坚持到最后。值得注意的是，节目全程无摄制组跟随，参赛者需每日自行拍摄素材；制作团队会将每位参赛者的生存历程剪辑为每周播出的节目。本研究旨在探究参赛者通过自行拍摄、并经《荒野独居》（Alone）后期剪辑室加工的视频素材，能够在多大程度上塑造自身的公众身份。研究团队采用探索性个案研究法，通过观看历史频道（History Channel）官方YouTube频道上公开上线的数小时《荒野独居》（Alone）官方剪辑片段开展研究。本次分析以戈夫曼（Goffman）的《自我呈现》（The Presentation of Self）概念框架为理论依托，并采用归纳式主题分析法，通过在观看完每一季节目后召开解读研讨会的方式，以循环迭代的模式完成。研究结果首先显示，参赛者需面向多重受众进行自我呈现，包括其家人、公众、节目制作方，乃至上帝。其次，前台与后台的边界极为模糊。第三，参赛者可在节目结束后，通过个人社交媒体渠道继续塑造并"修复"自身身份。最后，野外生存的性别化实践这一主题，以极为复杂、相互交织且非二元化的方式凸显出来。参赛者期望呈现的自我形象，与《荒野独居》（Alone）制作方构建的节目叙事之间，存在着毋庸置疑的强烈"印象管理张力"。