tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/love-island-54609/articlesLove Island – The Conversation2023-02-23T14:03:59Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2004092023-02-23T14:03:59Z2023-02-23T14:03:59ZJake Paul v Tommy Fury: whoever reigns in the ring, it’s no contest when it comes to social media<p>Jake Paul, an American social media celebrity turned professional boxer, has made a name for himself in the ring. After defeating former UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva by unanimous decision in October 2022, he now turns his attention to the UK’s Tommy Fury, brother of world champion <a href="https://theconversation.com/tyson-fury-defeated-deontay-wilder-in-the-social-media-fight-as-well-as-in-the-ring-132548">Tyson Fury</a>. </p>
<p>The twist is that Tommy Fury is Paul’s opposite – a professional boxer turned reality TV star (he rose to fame on ITV’s dating show, <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-2019-why-bromance-matters-as-much-as-romance-to-viewers-117626">Love Island</a>), which sets up a hotly disputed showdown between the two in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, February 26. Tyson Fury took to social media to tell his brother to “<a href="https://www.manchesterworld.uk/people/tyson-fury-tommy-fury-saudi-arabia-jake-paul-3999647">stay in Saudi Arabia</a>” if he loses the fight, so the prestige of the Fury name is also at stake. </p>
<p>Paul has not only been victorious in his first six fights in the ring, but he has also won the support of social media followers worldwide. In the battle of the personal brands, Paul knocks Fury out. </p>
<p>We examined the pre-match fight on social media to compare how each fighter’s profile brand performed worldwide. The table below provides a head-to-head social media comparison of the two fighters. </p>
<p>With over 70 million followers across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter, Paul is a big hitter on social media. Despite Fury’s celebrity status and social media influencer girlfriend <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-molly-mae-hague-and-the-working-life-of-a-social-influencer-118407">Molly-Mae Hague</a>, he is a relative rookie in the social media stakes. </p>
<p>Paul punches around ten times his weight in the social media battle, cementing himself as a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Digital-and-Social-Media-Marketing-A-Results-Driven-Approach/Heinze-Fletcher-Cruz/p/book/9780367236021">mega influencer</a> (over 100,000 followers) on every channel. Meanwhile, Fury can be classified as a macro-influencer (between 10,000 - 100,000 followers) on most channels <a href="https://www.instagram.com/tommyfury/?hl=en">besides Instagram</a>, where he has mega status.</p>
<p>In a straight fight between boxers or other sports personalities, success in their sport often leads to more followers on social media through the <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1977-10287-001">“basking in reflected glory” effect</a>, where fans want to be associated with successful sports stars and teams. </p>
<h2>Are social media stars diluting the sport?</h2>
<p>This new phenomenon of influencers turned sportspeople and vice versa, however, puts a twist on using social media followers to gauge the level of sporting prowess. Paul gained this massive following before becoming a professional boxer, so he now faces the fight of his life in the ring. </p>
<p>There have been criticisms towards social media influencers <a href="https://thebookofman.com/body/sport/youtuber-boxers/">from traditional boxing enthusiasts</a> for entering the sport and calling out established professional fighters, as they perceive it to be damaging to the sport of boxing. However, because social media influencers attract such a high following and are mega influencers, there is always the potential to bring in new fans and the associated money to be made. </p>
<p>Paul has thousands of users retweeting and commenting on his posts. The network of users is so vast it is similar to that of a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/22779752211017275">high-engagement sports team</a>. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@georgegrovesboxingclub/video/7200813244758461701">recent interview</a> with The George Groves Boxing Club, boxing promoter Frank Warren notes how Tommy Fury and Jake Paul are capitalising on their following and eclipsing traditional professional boxing events at this level. </p>
<p>As our data shows, the two top locations interested in the fight are the US and UK. However, the event also has a global interest, with users actively engaging from South America, Africa, Europe, Australia and Asia. With this level of international interest, more people are exposed to boxing than might not otherwise have engaged with the sport. </p>
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<p>In the lead up to the fight, one of the top pre-fight social media posts came from Paul. In the above tweet, which reached 1.4 million people, he uses his social media status to provide pre-fight updates. </p>
<p>The fight has already been cancelled twice, once due to injuries and once due to a visa issue. In his tweet, Jake Paul assures fans that Fury is on his way to Saudi Arabia and that the fight will probably go ahead. </p>
<p>In terms of quantity of followers, macro social media influencer Paul wins the contest, hands down. In the bravado stakes of showing off and appearing confident and relaxed through social media posts, Paul outshines Fury’s more modest status. In terms of the betting world, too, Paul is also currently <a href="https://talksport.com/sport/betting-tips/1339642/tommy-fury-jake-paul-boxing-free-bets-betfair/">odds on to beat Fury</a>. </p>
<p>Fans will find out on Saturday what the fight’s outcome will be and the impact of millions of fans viewing pre- and post-match updates through various social media channels. </p>
<p>Despite criticism from purists, these mega sporting events have added <a href="https://talksport.com/sport/boxing/1235120/jake-paul-fight-anderson-silva-result-pay-per-view-buys-upsetting/">a new lease of life</a> to boxing, potentially attracting casual fans to the sport. Despite the detractors, as social media audiences continue to tune in, boxing matches between influencers are set to remain popular.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200409/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We examined the pre-match fight on social media to compare how each fighter’s profile brand performed worldwide.Wasim Ahmed, Senior Lecturer in Digital Business, University of StirlingAlex Fenton, Head of Centre for Professional and Economic Development, University of ChesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2001152023-02-20T15:16:17Z2023-02-20T15:16:17ZMuch Ado About Nothing: National Youth Theatre gives Shakespeare the Love Island treatment<p>“<a href="https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/56469/1/love-relationships-type-on-paper-dead-love-island-ekin-su">What’s your type on paper?</a>” is frequently asked by contestants on the popular reality dating show <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-what-the-show-can-teach-young-people-about-commitment-185459">Love Island</a>. “Rich, that’s certaine” responds Benedick, a contestant on “Nothing Island”, who appears to know exactly what he likes. “Wise, or I’ll none”, “virtuous”, “fair”, “mild” – though he concedes he is not fussed about hair colour.</p>
<p>In this <a href="https://www.nyt.org.uk/MuchAdo">National Youth Theatre production</a> celebrating their tenth anniversary, poet and playwright Debris Stevenson (<a href="https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/poetindacorner/">Poet in Da Corner</a>) adapts Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing as the final segment of reality TV show “Nothing Island”. “If it ain’t love,” executive producer Leonato (Jessica Enemokwu) says: “it’s Nothing”.</p>
<p>Stevenson’s production is sprinkled with quotations from other Shakespeare plays. “To thine own self be true,” cautions on-set therapist Dr Dogberry (a brilliant new lease of life for Shakespeare’s nightwatch policeman). “To sleep perchance to dream,” says the executive producer as the islanders turn in the night before the finale. </p>
<p>However, King Lear’s caution: “Nothing comes from nothing” might be the overriding concern, as this production sets Shakespeare’s coupling and uncoupling within the nihilistic and superficial world of reality TV.</p>
<p>The concept, however, is an effective springboard. As Stevenson and director Josie Daxter explain: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were forced to lean into the shared, uncomfortable realities of the play [patriarchy, misogyny, racism] and the TV show [superficiality, racism, heteronormativity] in order to expose and critique them. The lens made us braver.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Through innovative approaches, theatre productions can make the historical values of Shakespeare’s plays <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Political_Shakespeare.html?id=K2UgAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">both understandable and relevant</a> to modern audiences. This is exactly what has been achieved here.</p>
<h2>Staging reality</h2>
<p>The TV production set frames all the play’s action, in a coherent, if claustrophobic, 90-minute run time. What audiences see of the play, they also simultaneously see being manipulated by a production team for an off-stage TV audience, whose torrent of caustic, sentimental and superficial social media interjections appear on screens above the action.</p>
<p>The rationale for the villainy in Shakespeare’s original plot has shifted. Don John is still the disaffected and illegitimate sibling – now sister – of Don Pedro (both decried as “nepo babies”). However, in this adaptation, she is more puppet than puppeteer.</p>
<p>Conrad (played brilliantly by Tomas Azócar-Nevin) is now the arch manipulator as an ambitious “story producer”. With an eye over all the action, Conrad seeds rumours that bloom into reality TV gold. He whispers in people’s ears (headsets) providing prompts and cues. </p>
<p>At the height of one character’s public humiliation, when they are jilted at the altar and presumed dead, he says: “Oh! I think we are going to win a Bafta.”</p>
<p>The reality show elements of the diary room (soliloquies), staged competitions (Benedick and Beatrice’s first encounter is a girls v boys “rap battle”) and parties (the masked ball), map uncannily well onto the plot devices and structure of Shakespeare’s comedy.</p>
<p>Will surprise couple Beatrice and Benedick win this year, or will it be Hero, back from the brink of death, and her lover/abuser Claudio (Jez Davess-Humphrey)? The executive producer, herself a black woman, articulates her cynical certainty that TV audiences will never vote for someone who looks like her.</p>
<p>There are also some tensions or distortions produced by this amalgamation. That Beatrice still requires Benedick, a man, to “kill Claudio”, is <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/6048">a hangover of Shakespeare’s patriarchal society</a> that feels out of kilter with the equality of the 50/50 gender split cast and female-led creative team.</p>
<p>Stevenson’s language is predominantly true to Shakespeare’s original play, with some deft interpolations and witty disjunctures: “I must cancel your company”, declares Benedick to Don Pedro. </p>
<p>However, the decision to keep other bits of original text (“he is as civil as an orange”, says Beatrice of the jealous Claudio, a pun on the sour imported Seville oranges of the 17th century, played here as a piece of nonsense), is unnecessary.</p>
<p>In other instances, Shakespeare’s verse is shown to excellent effect as rap and spoken word, though some of the play’s chipper couplets (“If it proves so, then loving goes by haps/ Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps”) could have been made more of.</p>
<p>Overall, this youth adaptation speaks with wit to a generation saturated in reality television and social media versions of love, who have missed out on real social contact during the COVID pandemic. The cynicism of the exposed reality TV strategies is counterbalanced by the warmth and joy of an assembled audience who laugh, gasp and click their fingers at this fast-paced and witty production.</p>
<p>If you want to know what love is, this adaptation suggests: switch off the reality TV and turn to Shakespeare instead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Penelope Woods has previously received funding from The Arts Council and The Arts and Humanities Research Council.
She is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>Shakespeare’s Conrad is now an ambitious ‘story producer’. With an eye over all the ‘Nothing Island’ action, he seeds rumours that bloom into reality TV gold.Penelope Woods, Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1883132022-08-09T17:17:29Z2022-08-09T17:17:29ZBig Brother is coming back – the reality TV landscape today will demand a more caring show<p>ITV2 has announced <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-62389219">the return of Big Brother</a> to the UK with a promo trailer during this year’s Love Island final. Big Brother’s successful format of putting a group of housemates together in a controlled environment as an “experiment” to observe their behaviour has proved entertainment gold with international iterations, spin-offs and many imitations across the world. </p>
<p>To many, the show’s return, after its 18-year stint on Channel 4 and then Channel 5 will come as something of a surprise, given the way the viewing figures had <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/big-brother-ends-18-years-reality-tv-channel-4-start-end-best-bits-davina-video-a8537741.html">gradually fallen</a>. For others, however, it remained <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jun/25/big-brother-best-shows-ever-channel-5-years">a cult hit</a> at the centre of contemporary British popular culture.</p>
<p>But reality television is not the same as it was when Big Brother launched in 2000. The show will return to a changed set of circumstances and expectations. For instance, Big Brother’s explosive drama was roundly criticised for sometimes being fuelled by alcohol, a practice which is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jul/18/alcohol-hand-grenade-reality-tv-boozy-big-brother-nosecco-love-island">no longer condoned</a>. </p>
<h2>Reality television and social media</h2>
<p>Love Island has clearly taken inspiration from Big Brother as it also relies on observing the behaviour of participants in a house (known in Love Island as the villa) over eight weeks. The difference is they’re supposed to “couple up”. The show has developed a successful branding strategy with intricate social media tie-ins – for instance, numerous sponsorship deals with clothing and music brands, as well as gaming apps, merchandising and multiple branded social media accounts. All of this has upped the stakes of the amount of publicity and extra commercial value generated around a show – dwarfing the frenzy the tabloids made of Big Brother. </p>
<p>This year’s Love Island winner, Ekin-Su, came out of the villa with more than a million Instagram followers and poised for numerous <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/love-islands-ekin-su-make-27627992">lucrative branding deals</a>.)</p>
<p>But also since that initial “psychological experiment”, the nature of reality contestants has changed. They are now media-savvy people who’ve grown up online and in a world saturated with reality TV. They see shows such as Love Island as part of a social media landscape, in which performing and branding their personalities is a normal way of life that might just lead to a lucrative career. </p>
<p>While of course not all reality shows offer such a platform, Big Brother and Love Island have been some of the most successful for offering a springboard into other media careers – sometimes for those who might have had no other way in, given the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09548963.2016.1170943">lack of diversity in the media industry</a>.</p>
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<p>There is therefore no shortage of people queuing up to get a spot, despite the escalating <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/tv/love-island-releases-message-contestants-24515209">risks of trolling and social media bile</a> that seems to be the price paid for quickly-won fame. </p>
<p>How audiences interact with a show has also changed. They can now participate in the experience, not only through voting, but in the sharing of opinions, often in real time and directly with participants, as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook extend the shows’ visibility. </p>
<p>Looking back to older series of Big Brother, I wonder what kind of death-threats “<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/nasty-nick-evicted-by-big-brother-1.1259694">Nasty Nick</a>” would have received for breaking the rules of the show after he was caught writing down housemates names to influence the nominations for eviction. He left the house to a booing crowd and a baying press like a pantomime villain, but that would have been multiplied and magnified across social media and into his DMs (direct messages) today. </p>
<h2>Duty of care</h2>
<p>For more than 20 years, largely unpaid contestants have provided content for television without much oversight or concern for their wellbeing. Think of <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/big-brother-7-exploitation-controversy-22202099">Shahbaz Chauhdry</a> who in series seven of Big Brother showed obvious signs of worsening mental health and ended up leaving on day six after threatening to commit suicide. </p>
<p>Now producers need to think more closely about their duty of care to contestants in a landscape that is much more sensitive to the risks of taking part in reality television, particularly those associated with mental health. </p>
<p>Caring for contestants has become a growing issue as several <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/may/27/why-suicide-is-still-the-shadow-that-hangs-over-reality-tv-hana-kimura-terrace-house">reality stars have committed suicide</a> post filming. A <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/378/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/103566/committee-announces-inquiry-into-reality-tv/">2019 government public inquiry</a> and a period of <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/protecting-tv-radio-participants">consultation by Ofcom</a>, the UK broadcasting regulator, have led to <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/protecting-tv-radio-participants#:%7E:text=to%20make%20sure%20the%20welfare,might%20not%20have%20been%20protected.">changes in the broadcasting code</a>, which came into effect in April 2021. </p>
<p>Now broadcasters must protect the welfare of participants and ensure that audiences don’t watch harmful or offensive things happening on screen. However, as Ofcom is a post-broadcast regulator it cannot interfere with the direction of creative content. It can only intervene once something has already aired. </p>
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<p>There might be a feeling that the changes to the code and the more serious intent of the broadcasters are enough. However, before the end of Love Island 2022 Ofcom received more than <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2022/07/29/how-many-ofcom-complaints-has-love-island-2022-had-17090102/">5,000 complaints</a> about issues ranging from misogyny to bullying. It remains to be seen whether any of these complaints can be upheld under the new duty of care regulations. </p>
<p>The code also struggles to take account of the complexity of caring for such contestants. How long after a show should after-care go on and what should it look like? This is a difficult question, especially considering that many reality TV contributors sign over the rights to their performances “in perpetuity”. You may not feel the same about something you did at 19 being replayed as TV gold or re-circulating as a meme when you are 45, for instance.</p>
<p>I presume that ITV has taken this leap because of the success of Love Island and the continued audience appetite for shows that manipulate the experience of contestants in confined conditions. For a TV show that thrived on chaos and emotion, what would a caring revision of Big Brother even look like? I guess we will see when it airs next year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188313/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Wood has previously received research council funding from the ESRC, AHRC and British Academy. </span></em></p>Reality shows now have a duty of care to their contestantsHelen Wood, Chair professor in Media and Cultural Studies, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1879482022-08-02T10:36:09Z2022-08-02T10:36:09ZLove Island: the psychological challenges contestants – and viewers – could face after the show is over<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477120/original/file-20220802-24-ufavuu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=126%2C14%2C1790%2C1060&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Love Island winners Ekin-Su and Davide will leave the villa £50,000 richer.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.itv.com/presscentre/itvpictures/galleries/love-island-ep57-week-31-2022-sat-30-jul-fri-05-aug">ITV Plc</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The finale of ITV’s Love Island was watched by millions of fans, many commenting live on social media as Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu and Davide Sanclimenti were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/aug/01/ekin-su-culculoglu-and-davide-sanclimenti-voted-love-island-winners">awarded the £50,000 prize</a>. The four couples who made the final will now leave the Majorca villa where they’ve kissed, cried and cracked on for the past eight weeks. When they enter the outside world, they will be met with massive amounts of attention. </p>
<p>Some of this is positive – lucrative business opportunities, partnerships with popular brands and thousands of new followers on social media. Other attention will be in the form of online abuse and trolling from viewers. </p>
<p>Love Island (and indeed, all reality television) is an interesting case study in psychology, from the social experiment of isolating people in one house for a period of time, to the relationship between audience and contestant. The blurred line between reality and fiction creates a strong fan attachment to the show, but also contributes to mental health issues for contestants themselves.</p>
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
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<p>Like soap operas, reality shows are made up of storylines that follow characters (though they may be real people). Viewers watching hours of these programmes can develop attachments to the characters, where they feel they are “one” with the people on screen. </p>
<p>Psychologists describe this as a parasocial relationship, a one-sided, unreciprocated friendship or connection to a person they only know through a screen. <a href="https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S2352250X22000082?token=3767850506D9AC64E15AB5191E2D26520C40804612BFC33289C69D2CE5549CCEE2D198DBA31467619B1E49B83F79C047&originRegion=eu-west-1&originCreation=20220729141227">Research has found</a> that following celebrities and media figures on social media platforms may blur the lines between social and parasocial relationships. Our interaction and engagement with social media posts no longer significantly differs between close friends or famous people.</p>
<p>Viewers’ previous experiences reflect what they think of a character, creating either empathy or disdain. In a parasocial relationship, a viewer may feel a closeness and connection in their lives with a person who does not know that they exist, and based solely on the storyline of the television show.</p>
<p>Soap actors have <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-star-sunday/20190825/283175790156683">discussed</a> being shouted at in the street by “fans”, because of their characters’ behaviour on a scripted, fictional show. Eastenders star Louisa Lytton said the abuse is <a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/eastenders/a34542557/eastenders-louisa-lytton-fan-abuse-ruby-stacey-storyline/">a daily occurence</a>.</p>
<p>Love Island contestants enter the villa a relatively unknown person in society, and come out to a barrage of messages from viewers, all responses to the show’s editing, of which the contestants themselves may not know the full extent. This exponential rise in awareness of them as a person, a character and a celebrity creates a dramatic and fundamental shift in their lives. Psychological support is paramount to successfully navigating their newfound fame.</p>
<p>ITV <a href="https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/love-island-confirms-duty-care-protocols">provides mental health support</a> and other resources to contestants during the filming process. As of 2022, this includes giving islanders training on “the impacts of social media and handling potential negativity”. </p>
<h2>The psychology of trolls</h2>
<p>Love Island has had a long history of mental health challenges, including the <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/06/how-love-island-became-a-tv-reality-of-sex-fame-and-sometimes-tragedy">deaths of two former contestants</a> and former host Caroline Flack by suicide. Alex George, an ex-islander, has become the government’s first <a href="https://www.varsity.co.uk/interviews/23850">youth mental health ambassador</a>.</p>
<p>Many of the psychological challenges that have been associated with Love Island have been linked with the social media barrage directed at contestants. Former islanders Kem Cetinay and Amber Gill now host a <a href="https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/love-island-2021-mental-health-social-media-kem-cetinay-amber-gill-interview-the-full-treatment-itv-1088557">mental health series</a>, The Full Treatment, where they discuss the experience of abuse that comes from tweets and forums during and after the show airs. </p>
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<p>Psychologists <a href="https://www.themckeownclinic.co.uk/the-psychology-of-an-online-troll/">define</a> so-called keyboard warriors or trolls as individuals with a sense of emotional inner turmoil, using their perceived power to invisibly belittle others as a way to self-satisfy their internal crisis. Recent <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Delroy-Paulhus/publication/260105036_Trolls_just_want_to_have_fun/links/59e3389b0f7e9b97fbeacaf1/Trolls-just-want-to-have-fun.pdf">research</a> found keyboard warriors have personality traits associated with the dark triad of personality: narcissism, machiavellianism and psychopathy.</p>
<p>The apparent safety behind the keyboard allows people to say what they feel without the repercussions of the negative emotional and verbal abuse that would be socially unacceptable face-to-face. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/love-islands-tasha-is-the-shows-first-deaf-contestant-heres-what-you-should-know-about-deaf-accents-187109">Love Island's Tasha is the show's first deaf contestant – here's what you should know about deaf accents</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Love Island is about contestants looking for love, but it is also about looking for public approval in the form of votes to ultimately win the £50,000 prize. This thrusts contestants straight into the path of viewers’ unfiltered thoughts and comments, filled with envy, admiration and vitriol. This need for public attention makes <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5gb5b/you-cant-fix-online-troll-culture-until-you-fix-reality-tv">reality shows and their aftermath</a> a psychological minefield for participants.</p>
<h2>Responsible viewing</h2>
<p>Love Island is on six nights a week for eight weeks straight. This might also cause mental health issues for regular viewers. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7908146/">Research</a> suggests that people who binge-watch shows become so invested in the characters’ lives and storylines that when it’s over, they can face feelings of depression, emptiness, anxiety and even loneliness. </p>
<p>But due to the 24/7 world of social media, Love Island never truly ends. Fans have ample opportunity to comment on the show and its contestants on social media. The show itself encourages this, sponsoring a forum on Reddit. </p>
<p>The contestants’ social profiles are also kept up to date by friends and family while they are in the villa, further blurring the lines between the contestants’ lives before, during and after the show. </p>
<p>It’s perfectly fine to watch the show and discuss it with friends (and strangers) online. But viewers of Love Island (or any reality programme) must remember when commenting that islanders are human too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187948/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Molitor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Reality shows can be a psychological minefield for both participants and fans.Rachael Molitor, Behavioural Psychologist, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1871092022-07-19T13:07:35Z2022-07-19T13:07:35ZLove Island’s Tasha is the show’s first deaf contestant – here’s what you should know about deaf accents<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474830/original/file-20220719-20-fbzwr5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C182%2C3791%2C5516&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tasha Ghouri is the first deaf Islander on the popular ITV show.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.itv.com/presscentre/itvpictures/galleries/islanders-itv2-generic">ITV / Lifted Entertainment</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I sat down to watch the first episode of this year’s Love Island with my daughter as I was told that there was a deaf contestant appearing on the show. I don’t usually watch Love Island, but as a deaf person I was intrigued to find out more about how this contestant, Tasha Ghouri, would handle being the only deaf person on the show. </p>
<p>I asked my daughter, who is hearing, whether or not she could hear that Ghouri was deaf – she seemed to be communicating with her hearing peers with complete ease. My daughter replied: “I can hear the deaf in her voice.” This was not surprising, as several members of my family are deaf and I socialise mainly with deaf people. My daughter is highly familiar with what we, deaf people, call, “deaf accent”, also known to researchers as “deaf speech”. </p>
<p>Sadly, a few weeks into the show, there has been a wave of online trolling and abuse <a href="https://graziadaily.co.uk/celebrity/news/love-island-tasha-ghouri-trolling-deaf/">directed at Ghouri</a>. Much of this has focused on her cochlear implant – an electronic device that allow some deaf people to hear and process speech (this varies greatly among deaf people) – and her accent.</p>
<p>An accent refers to people’s voice quality, intonation and their pronunciation of both vowels and consonants. In general, people tend to have an accent when speaking that reflects their gender, ethnicity, social class, age and their region or country of origin (among other factors). Other linguistic differences in vocabulary and grammar are known as dialects, and relate to the same social factors as accents. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-were-searching-england-for-new-dialects-181897">Why we're searching England for new dialects</a>
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<p>Accents may also indicate that a person has a disability, including deaf people. “Deaf accent” occurs because deaf people are often unable to hear the full range of sounds that hearing people hear. This means that they are not always able to replicate the full range of sounds in spoken words. Speech also has various tones or intonation patterns that deaf people may also be unable to hear, thus they do not replicate those. There is a high degree of variability in deaf accents simply because every deaf person is different, with some who are mildly deaf and others who are profoundly deaf. </p>
<p>Quite often, deaf people undergo speech therapy (whether they want to or not) during their school years to learn how to pronounce sounds and words they’re unable to hear. Many deaf people have quite <a href="https://www.handspeak.com/learn/index.php?id=371">negative experiences</a> of speech therapy. For deaf people, learning to speak and using speech can be quite a conscious and laborious process. </p>
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<p>In addition to a deaf accent, it is quite possible for a deaf person to have a regional accent, depending on how deaf they are. Deaf people from different parts of the country, like hearing people, can sound different from one another when they speak. </p>
<p>As well as having varying accents, deaf people frequently comment that they can “see” accents, because different sounds may appear different on the lips. In a <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/applirev-2020-0144/html">recent study</a>, deaf people mentioned that mouthing varied in different parts of the country. This shows that deaf people are aware of differences in accents, giving examples such as how the word “bath” looks differently articulated by deaf people from the north and south of England. </p>
<h2>‘Accents’ in sign language</h2>
<p>Many deaf people in the UK use British Sign Language (BSL). Like spoken English, there is a high degree of variability, depending on social factors. Technically, there is <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/applirev-2020-0144/html">little evidence</a> for accent in sign languages – that is, systematic variation in pronunciation in signs such as their handshape or other formational features – related to social factors such as region.</p>
<p>But there is definitely widespread lexical variation, with different signs used for a given concept. This is similar to differences in dialect in spoken English,
like the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/british-accents-and-dialects/articles/lexical-variation-across-the-uk">different words for the shoes</a> that British children wear for PE. </p>
<p>We found in <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/applirev-2020-0144/html">our research</a> that BSL signers tend to equate this lexical variation with accent. We think this is because this variation is very noticeable, and marks regional identity in BSL in the same way that accents do in spoken languages. For example, <a href="https://bslsignbank.ucl.ac.uk/dictionary/regional/sixteen-1.html">signs for numbers</a> can vary greatly.</p>
<p>Importantly, we found in the same study that BSL signers place a high value on the regional variation in BSL. It’s part of what makes it a rich language, on equal footing with English, the surrounding majority language. The contestants on Love Island come from all over the UK and the world. In this season alone, there is accent variation from London, Newcastle, Wales, Italy and Essex, to name a few – Tasha’s accent is just another example of the rich diversity in English accents.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187109/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Rowley receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). She works for University College London (UCL) and has her own freelance business (Language Wise). </span></em></p>Deaf people from different parts of the world can have different accents, whether they speak, sign or both.Kate Rowley, Lecturer in Deafness, Cognition and Language, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1854592022-06-21T13:38:53Z2022-06-21T13:38:53ZLove Island – what the show can teach young people about commitment<p>It’s summer in the UK, which means that millions of viewers are piling onto their sofas every night to watch how the gaggle of “hot young tings” from the four corners of the UK (and Ireland) are getting on – or who they’re getting with…</p>
<p>It is easy to dismiss Love Island as just another frivolous reality TV show featuring horny, conventionally attractive young adults looking for fame and some fun along the way. But beneath the fake tans, and cringey banter, Love Island can actually help us understand the forces that push people together and help maintain commitment in long-term (off-camera) relationships.</p>
<p>In fact, Love Island is a perfect illustration of <a href="https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=psychpubs">the investment model of relationships</a>. This model helps explain whether people are going to “stick or twist” in their relationship (i.e. stay committed or move on to greener pastures). </p>
<p>According to investment model of relationships, our commitment and desire to persist in our relationships is influenced by three distinct pieces of information:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Our quality of alternatives (aka whether anyone’s head is turning)</p></li>
<li><p>Our investments in the relationship (aka how many eggs you’re putting into one basket)</p></li>
<li><p>Our satisfaction with the relationship (aka whether you are happy cracking on)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>According to this model, we are more likely to be committed to our current partner when our investments and satisfaction are high and our quality of alternatives are low.</p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/online-dating-fatigue-why-some-people-are-turning-to-face-to-face-apps-first-184910?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Online dating fatigue – why some people are turning to face-to-face apps first</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-ditches-fast-fashion-how-reality-celebrities-influence-young-shoppers-habits-183771?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Love Island ditches fast fashion: how reality celebrities influence young shoppers’ habits</a></em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/sally-rooneys-conversations-with-friends-how-weve-become-tougher-on-adultery-183843?notice=Article+has+been+updated.?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends – how we’ve become tougher on adultery</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>The day-to-day toss-ups and surprises on the show allow us to watch in real-time how each of these three predictors of commitment can fluctuate and interact with each other to decide who couples up, recouples and ultimately, who gets dumped from the island. It’s the experiment no psychologist will ever get permission to run. So, let’s break it down with some examples courteously of the 2022 Islanders.</p>
<h2>Is your head turning?</h2>
<p>A lack of quality alternatives is sometimes referred to as the “having no option but for the relationship to persist.”</p>
<p>Quality alternatives are anything that can help us satisfy our needs outside of our relationship with our partner. This could include time spent with the family and friends who support us, hobbies that make us feel accomplished and happy, and romantic alternatives. </p>
<p>As quality alternatives go up, commitment starts to go down. It is the last type of alternative – alternative romantic partners — that most people in monogamous relationships (or who want to be in a monogamous relationship) are often most worried about and which take centre stage in Love Island. From new “bombshells” to strange challenges, Love Island constantly tries to increase the availability of alternatives, often to shake things up and undermine any attachments people might be forming. </p>
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<p>On this series, the love triangle between Ekin-Su, Davide and Jay is a great example of how attractive alternatives can shake things up. Before Jay arrived in the villa, Ekin-Su and Davide seemed to have a really intense connection. As soon as Jay enters the villa, however, Ekin-Su’s head starts turning leading to a total breakdown in her and Davide’s connection. She quickly gives into temptation.</p>
<p>We might meet alternatives in unsuspecting places in our real lives: at work, at the gym, at school, at the pub. And these people pose just as much of a threat to our relationships in real life as they do on Love Island.</p>
<p>But luckily, commitment isn’t determined by quality alternatives alone. </p>
<h2>Putting your eggs in one basket</h2>
<p>The size of the investments we make in our relationships is often referred to as the “need for the relationship to persist” because of what is lost when that relationship ends. These investments include mutual friends, blended families, family pets, shared living spaces, and even just the time spent on that one person.</p>
<p>The more investments we put into a relationship, the more losses we incur by breaking up with that partner. This can help explain both why people might be hesitant to put too much time and energy into one potential partner to avoid investing resources that could get lost. </p>
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<p>For example, Davide claims that he didn’t want to put too much time and energy into Ekin-Su right away because he was afraid of getting hurt. On the flip side, investments can help explain why some people might stay despite a lack of fireworks. Another contestant, Indyah, recently saved Ikenna over Remi. Indyah had invested time and energy into getting to know Ikenna. By contrast, she invested very little time and energy into her connection with Remi, and sending him home didn’t risk her upsetting the mutual friends she shared with Ikenna.</p>
<p>So even when our quality of alternatives are high, our invested resources can help us understand why we might choose to stay even when we’re maybe not getting as much out of the relationship as we could.</p>
<h2>Happy cracking on and seeing where it goes</h2>
<p>Satisfaction is one of the <a href="http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/984219/13434258/1311966710690/Le_Agnew_2003_PR.pdf?token=aRvXtCTSIP%2FBgdaPdSHWDHDlcgQ%3D">strongest predictors</a> of commitment and captures how happy we are in our relationship. We are satisfied with a partner when we experience more positive than negative interactions with them, and our connection meets or exceeds our expectations. </p>
<p>Satisfaction is important because it can also help us to discount or play down the availability of quality of alternatives. For example, Luca recently demonstrated this protective power when he told Gemma he didn’t enjoy talking to Danica as much as he enjoys talking to her, and has no desire to see where that relationship might go despite Danica being interested enough in Luca to break up a coupling.</p>
<p>Once again, even when quality of alternatives are high, or our investments are low (like a two-week-old relationship), our satisfaction with our current partner can help us keep us focused on them and see the positives rather than the appeal of others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Veronica Lamarche does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To stick or twist? Love Island is a perfect illustration of the investment model of relationships.Veronica Lamarche, Senior Lecturer of Psychology, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1852422022-06-21T13:32:09Z2022-06-21T13:32:09ZLove Island and eBay: how the reality show could model a radically sustainable future for its young viewers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469796/original/file-20220620-24-vt8on1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6687%2C4194&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Love Island has faced past criticism for not promoting sustainable lifestyles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <a href="https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/ebay-becomes-love-islands-first-ever-pre-loved-fashion-partner">recently announced</a> partnership between ITV reality show Love Island and secondhand e-commerce giant eBay sends a strong positive signal about prioritising sustainability over fast fashion. </p>
<p>After receiving a strong backlash against Love Island’s promotion of fast fashion brands such as <a href="https://www.isawitfirst.com/">I Saw It First</a> and <a href="https://www.missguided.co.uk/">Missguided</a>, the show’s executive producer, Mike Spencer, has announced it’ll be working with eBay in 2022 to clothe participants in its current series with “preloved” garments.</p>
<p>Love Island boasts huge audience ratings among young people. Some <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/entertainment/articles-reports/2019/07/29/what-kind-person-watches-love-island">43%</a> of Love Island viewers are under 30, and 16-34 year-olds made up <a href="https://www.itvmedia.co.uk/making-an-impact/love-island-launch-peaks-with-30-million-viewers-tv-overnights">one-third of viewers</a> of the series premiere on June 6. So the show has the power to influence young people’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-ditches-fast-fashion-how-reality-celebrities-influence-young-shoppers-habits-183771">shopping habits</a>, largely through the official Love Island app where viewers can “shop the show” to find beauty and fashion items promoted by contestants. Producers hope that by linking viewers to eBay – where they’ll find a curated selection of “<a href="https://www.ebay.co.uk/b/Love-Island-Official-Looks/bn_7118520194">Islander-inspired</a>” outfits – they’ll be encouraged to buy secondhand instead.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A close up image of the Love Island app icon alongside other apps on a smartphone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469783/original/file-20220620-18-694crv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469783/original/file-20220620-18-694crv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469783/original/file-20220620-18-694crv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469783/original/file-20220620-18-694crv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469783/original/file-20220620-18-694crv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469783/original/file-20220620-18-694crv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469783/original/file-20220620-18-694crv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">App partnerships allow viewers to buy styles similar to those seen on screen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stone-staffordshire-united-kingdom-july-2-1440369578">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-ditches-fast-fashion-how-reality-celebrities-influence-young-shoppers-habits-183771">small step</a> in the right direction towards making sustainable lifestyles more accessible and fun. But more needs to be done in order to shift the pervasive association between popular culture and consumerism.</p>
<h2>Attracting sustainable consumers</h2>
<p>Love Island and its <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/molly-mae-hague-pretty-little-thing-love-island-b1909069.html">influential contestants</a>, including PrettyLittleThing creative director <a href="https://graziadaily.co.uk/celebrity/news/molly-mae-pretty-little-thing-fashion-week/">Molly-Mae Hague</a>, are known to <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-ditches-fast-fashion-how-reality-celebrities-influence-young-shoppers-habits-183771">drive fashion trends</a>. In previous years, online fashion sales have grown by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-entertainment-climate-fashion-idUSL8N2Y13F7">more than one-tenth</a> during the eight-week summer period when the show airs. Early insights suggest this year will be no different, with eBay searches for dresses similar to those seen on contestants up by as much as <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/fashion-beauty/womens-clothing/love-island-2022-ebay-partnership-contestants-b2098165.html">200%</a>. </p>
<p>Sustainability advocates, including former Love Island contestant, model and fashion influencer <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-entertainment-climate-fashion-idUSL8N2Y13F7">Brett Staniland</a>, have argued that the show endorses a throwaway attitude to fashion. For many, this was epitomised by the show’s promotion of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/jun/22/one-pound-bikini-missguided-fast-fashion-leaves-high-street-behind">Missguided’s £1 bikini</a>, priced low enough to be considered disposable. In contrast, the show’s decision to partner with eBay should attract a new audience for the reuse culture message compared to the people sustainability messaging usually targets.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-ditches-fast-fashion-how-reality-celebrities-influence-young-shoppers-habits-183771">Love Island ditches fast fashion: how reality celebrities influence young shoppers' habits</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/resource-efficiency/what-we-do/sustainable-consumption-and-production-policies">Sustainable consumption</a> involves recognising the environmental impact of our lifestyles and resolving to consume less. Moving away from disposability and towards reuse across all sectors of society – not just fashion – relies on cooperation between governments, businesses and citizens. </p>
<p>But motivating people to take environmental concerns into account when it comes to shopping is <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Sustainable-Consumption-Key-Issues/Middlemiss/p/book/9781138645660">challenging</a>, not least because we are bombarded with images that equate success or “<a href="https://sustainableearth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42055-020-00033-2">the good life</a>” with high levels of material consumption. Advertisers work hard to convince us that we need the latest car, gadget or fashion item to live a fulfilling life. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Rows of workers use sewing machines inside a factory hall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469791/original/file-20220620-14-kbbew1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469791/original/file-20220620-14-kbbew1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469791/original/file-20220620-14-kbbew1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469791/original/file-20220620-14-kbbew1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469791/original/file-20220620-14-kbbew1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469791/original/file-20220620-14-kbbew1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469791/original/file-20220620-14-kbbew1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The fast fashion industry has been criticised for exploiting workers and damaging the environment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/iloasiapacific/10987405545">Flickr/ILO Asia-Pacific</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
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<p>Another challenge is to make sustainable lifestyles appealing to the mainstream, rather than just to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0731121419836966?casa_token=ULG0ULUFgrUAAAAA%3AZ9iPdI05nccjXL4jNpsh9tQBVAjOVWV0QxBUWp6Kd599wcI4dzX-p5gUio4d-eXZI5zRBIS5Mjzb">affluent middle-class consumers</a>, who are already <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315165509-9/participates-community-based-sustainable-consumption-projects-matter-constructively-critical-approach-manisha-anantharaman-emily-huddart-kennedy-lucie-middlemiss-sarah-bradbury">most receptive</a> to sustainable consumption campaigns.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/5-ways-to-shift-consumers-towards-sustainable-behaviour-120883">5 ways to shift consumers towards sustainable behaviour</a>
</strong>
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<p>Living sustainably is often taken to mean giving up the things that we like (including cars, meat or holidays) and allowing our individual freedoms to be curtailed for the <a href="https://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-growth-the-30-year-update/">common good</a>. And <a href="https://www.umasspress.com/9781558495043/the-anxieties-of-affluence/">critiques</a> of consumerism have linked good citizenship with restrained spending and denial of material pleasures. </p>
<p>Collaborations like that between Love Island and eBay – along with other popular campaigns such as <a href="https://wearme30times.com/">wearme30times</a>, which encourages us to only buy items of clothing if we’ll wear them at least 30 times – can play a big role in shifting these ideas. Importantly, they’re often successful because they work <em>with</em> <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344913001353">consumer culture</a> in recognising that we buy clothes to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2489287">communicate our identities</a>, display our social status and <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/A+Theory+of+Shopping-p-9780745667911">maintain social relationships</a> (as well as for fun). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two people look at a pink sweater in a store" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469801/original/file-20220620-22-hcrp12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469801/original/file-20220620-22-hcrp12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469801/original/file-20220620-22-hcrp12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469801/original/file-20220620-22-hcrp12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469801/original/file-20220620-22-hcrp12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469801/original/file-20220620-22-hcrp12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/469801/original/file-20220620-22-hcrp12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sustainability is often targeted at more affluent people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-female-customer-shopping-clothing-store-2053746332">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>They also tap into our existing anxieties about fast fashion by introducing other options. Philosopher Kate Soper’s concept of “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1469540507077681?casa_token=3z_x321RxEAAAAAA:Y7DCzuBixwaDLKATY8-sMXjVlxEUzIgD6MrOdNKYonaHrPrYjkkvRrHhnpRjvcNRpOTZzAU2Rc64">alternative hedonism</a>” recognises how, when faced with the negative effects of consumption, it can be deeply satisfying to reduce your impact to benefit the world around you. That sense of satisfaction helps challenge enduring <a href="http://ecite.utas.edu.au/65295">social stigma</a> surrounding secondhand clothes, as well as promote sustainability among those unable to afford high-end eco-friendly fashion. </p>
<h2>Taking it further</h2>
<p>But the impact of this partnership should not be overestimated. Those who watch the show – but perhaps not the news – would be forgiven for missing it altogether, given there’s not yet been any mention of secondhand clothing on Love Island itself. In fact, what’s more likely to stand out is the appeal of a luxurious foreign holiday and the multiple beauty and fashion items pictured in dressing room scenes.</p>
<p>And <a href="https://theconversation.com/reducing-peak-demand-lowering-prices-but-what-about-emissions-11564">reducing consumption</a> is definitely not the message underpinning the show’s economy: with big brands advertising during breaks, in-app purchasing enabled across multiple social media platforms and contestants likely to become <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/17d9dd5c-90c3-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca546">brand influencers</a> once the show ends. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-addiction-to-stuff-how-walmart-enables-us-to-destroy-the-planet-129066">Our addiction to stuff: How Walmart enables us to destroy the planet</a>
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<p>But if it was to <a href="https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/interventions-in-practice-reframing-policy-approaches-to-consumer-behaviour(f41b5679-f201-47df-ba48-12254e497074).html">lead by example</a>, Love Island could ditch conspicuous consumption altogether. Since many unsustainable behaviours are <a href="https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/interventions-in-practice-reframing-policy-approaches-to-consumer-behaviour(f41b5679-f201-47df-ba48-12254e497074).html">driven</a> by convenience, comfort and social norms, the show could promote <a href="https://www.ribabooks.com/whats-mine-is-yours-how-collaborative-consumption-is-changing-the-way-we-live_9780007395910">collaborative consumption</a> instead. </p>
<p>That could mean group cooking, which cuts <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/food-waste-9780857852342/">food waste</a> and appliance <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/aof/7691">energy consumption</a>, or a “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq7ub4z7YLQ&ab_channel=MyGreenCloset">fashion library</a>” encouraging increased use of each clothing item. There’d certainly be entertainment value in watching contestants swap clothes or harvest local produce: or even slog through the British mud in a glamping-style scenario. Love Island already shows the good and the bad of dating – it’s time for it to get real about sustainability too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185242/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katy Wheeler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sustainable fashion collaborations show that living an eco-friendly life can be fun - here’s how popular shows can help dismantle consumerism altogether.Katy Wheeler, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1837712022-05-31T12:05:13Z2022-05-31T12:05:13ZLove Island ditches fast fashion: how reality celebrities influence young shoppers’ habits<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466255/original/file-20220531-14-8p3053.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=129%2C72%2C9492%2C5409&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The cast of Love Island will be dressed in secondhand clothing as they look for love in the villa.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.itv.com/presscentre/itvpictures/galleries/love-island-ep1-week-23-2022-sat-04-jun-fri-10-jun-1">ITV Plc</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year, contestants on the TV show Love Island will be scantily clad in secondhand rather than new clothing – a pivot away from fast fashion that could influence more eco-conscious shopping habits in fans. The beloved reality show will return to televisions next week, and with it, an array of colourful bikinis and skintight outfits that viewers will seek out in order to dress like their favourite Islanders. </p>
<p>For the past <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/may/20/love-island-partners-with-ebay-to-dress-contestants-in-secondhand-outfits">three years</a> Love Island has partnered with online fast fashion brand <a href="https://www.isawitfirst.com/">I Saw it First</a>, which sponsored the show and provided clothes for contestants. This year, Love Island will be sponsored by eBay, and contestants will be dressed in secondhand outfits on screen. </p>
<p>Sustainability advocates will welcome the change, having criticised the show for encouraging fast fashion consumption. In June 2019, the online fashion retailer Missguided advertised a £1 bikini during a commercial break for Love Island. Former Love Island contestants were used as models to promote the bikini, cementing the link between fast fashion and reality <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17569370.2020.1794321">television</a>. </p>
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<img alt="Quarter life, a series by The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451343/original/file-20220310-13-1bj6csd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/wagatha-christie-what-the-vardy-v-rooney-case-can-teach-you-about-avoiding-libel-on-social-media-182969?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">Wagatha Christie: what the Vardy v Rooney case can teach you about avoiding libel on social media</a></em></p>
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<p>Excessively low price points encourage a throwaway culture by implying that clothing has no value. Missguided said the <a href="https://www.missguided.co.uk/media-statement/one-pound-bikini-statement">£1 bikini was</a> a promotional item “sourced to the same high standards as all of our other products”, and that the company absorbed the production cost as a gift to customers.</p>
<p>Of course, partnering with eBay won’t discourage consumption overall. <a href="https://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-releases/ebay-becomes-love-islands-first-ever-pre-loved-fashion-partner">Viewers</a> will be able to explore eBay’s “preloved fashion” via the official Love Island app, where they can purchase similar outfits to what they can see on screen. The sponsorship may well encourage consumers to purchase secondhand clothing while the show is airing over eight weeks. </p>
<h2>Influencing shopping habits</h2>
<p>The show will still create influencers, who may form lucrative partnerships with fast fashion brands once they leave the villa. Last year’s winner, Millie Court, has since signed a deal with ASOS and launched her own <a href="https://www.asos.com/women/fashion-feed/2021_12_13-mon/love-island-millies-style-edit/">range</a>. Perhaps the most commercially successful contestant is Molly Mae Hague, who <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/fashion/a28780359/love-islands-molly-mae-signs-major-prettylittlething-contract/">landed</a> a six-figure clothing deal with Pretty Little Thing in 2019, before being named their creative director in <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/mollymae-hague-prettylittlething-maura-higgins-instagram-europe-b1909215.html">2021</a>.</p>
<p>Young consumers follow Love Island contestants and other reality celebrities on social media, and this affects their fashion purchasing choices. These celebrities often remain in the public eye after appearing on television, promoting fashion brands through their platforms. Shoppers look to reality stars for fashion inspiration, and many report being <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17569370.2020.1794321?scroll=top&needAccess=true">swayed by digital influencers</a> to make purchase decisions.</p>
<p>Love Island is especially <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50005148">influential</a> in the UK. In 2018, 80,000 hopefuls applied to appear on the show, while just 19,400 people applied to the University of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jul/13/what-does-love-island-have-in-common-with-a-surrealist-dystopia-quite-a-lot-actually">Oxford</a> that same year. Appearing on Love Island for eight weeks is likely to earn you more money over the course of your life than three years at <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/17d9dd5c-90c3-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca546">Oxbridge</a>.</p>
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<img alt="The Love Island logo, a tropical beach with floating white text reading love island and a sparkly gold, floating heart" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465750/original/file-20220527-17-83iq0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465750/original/file-20220527-17-83iq0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465750/original/file-20220527-17-83iq0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465750/original/file-20220527-17-83iq0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465750/original/file-20220527-17-83iq0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465750/original/file-20220527-17-83iq0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465750/original/file-20220527-17-83iq0t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Even a short stint in the Love Island villa can lead to lucrative deals with fashion brands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.itv.com/presscentre/itvpictures/galleries/love-island-ep1-week-23-2022-sat-04-jun-fri-10-jun">ITV Plc</a></span>
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<p>It is not uncommon for contestants to leave the show with over a million followers on social media. This is appealing to brands, who then pay these contestants to advertise their products. All of this has contributed to changing values among younger generations, who admire the instant <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17569370.2020.1794321">success</a> achieved by reality stars.</p>
<p>Reality celebrities and other influencers use social media to encourage followers to purchase the clothing they advertise at the click of a button. The instant gratification of purchasing clothes, without the need to visit the local high street, adds to the desirability – and disposable nature – of fast fashion.</p>
<h2>Fast fashion and the planet</h2>
<p>The detrimental environmental impacts of the fast fashion industry are <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-020-0039-9.epdf">well documented</a>. In the UK, people buy more clothes per person than in any other country in <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmenvaud/1952/1952.pdf">Europe.</a> The fashion industry in the UK grows at a faster rate than the rest of the <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1646">economy</a>, and an estimated £140 million worth of clothing is sent to landfill each <a href="https://wrap.org.uk/taking-action/textiles">year</a>. Many fast fashion garments are not made from single fibre materials, and therefore cannot be <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmenvaud/1952/1952.pdf">recycled</a>. Fashion is destroying the planet, and yet we keep buying clothes. </p>
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<img alt="Cluttered rack of colourful fast fashion clothing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465752/original/file-20220527-23-l7qt0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=78%2C123%2C7391%2C4860&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465752/original/file-20220527-23-l7qt0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465752/original/file-20220527-23-l7qt0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465752/original/file-20220527-23-l7qt0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465752/original/file-20220527-23-l7qt0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465752/original/file-20220527-23-l7qt0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465752/original/file-20220527-23-l7qt0v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Fast fashion’s impact on the environment is well documented.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/crowded-clearance-section-clothing-store-various-1646863171">Sundry Photography / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Fast fashion is affordable, meaning that it is not always high quality, and often doesn’t contain durability or longevity. It is also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-fashion-blog/2014/oct/01/cotton-production-linked-to-images-of-the-dried-up-aral-sea-basin">resource intensive</a>, and when disposed of in landfill, takes an extremely long time to biodegrade.</p>
<p>However, it is possible to love fashion and still be environmentally aware. Changes in consumer values, vintage inspirations used by current fashion designers, and increased sustainability awareness have fuelled a growing popularity of the secondhand <a href="https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/publications/the-rise-of-vintage-fashion-and-the-vintage-consumer">clothing market</a>.</p>
<p>Love Island’s decision to ditch fast fashion sponsors in favour of secondhand options is a step in the right direction. It will be interesting to see if this year’s contestants go on to partner with fast fashion brands or more sustainable and secondhand options upon leaving the show -– this may be the real test of success of the partnership with eBay.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183771/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rose Marroncelli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The beloved reality show is partnering with eBay to promote secondhand outfits instead of fast fashion.Rose Marroncelli, PhD Researcher, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1650972021-07-28T15:03:05Z2021-07-28T15:03:05ZLove Island and the coded language of sex<p>“We were at St Mary’s stadium last night, both teams were ready to rock and roll. The whistle got blown soon as, well, before the lights even went down, and the floodlights come on and it was literally – sprinklers erupted!”</p>
<p>This confusing description is how Love Island contestant Jake Cornish talked about his bedtime exploits with fellow contestant Liberty Poole last week. </p>
<p>The reality show, now in its seventh season, takes a group of mainly 20-somethings (known as islanders) and throws them into a villa for eight weeks in the hope that drama and, most importantly, romance will ensue. They are expected to “couple up” from the very beginning, and references to sex form much of the programme’s content.</p>
<p>Islanders are often very candid about their sexual histories, but their discussions of in-villa sexual activity rely heavily on metaphors and innuendo. In part, this might reflect contestants not wanting to broadcast explicit details of their sex lives to their families, friends and the wider British public. But, as a historian of sexuality in the 20th century, I can see how it also highlights broader trends in how non-penetrative sex has been understood and talked about over the last 70 years. </p>
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<h2>Danger zones</h2>
<p>Islanders have been very creative when describing forms of non-penetrative sexual activity. In the fourth season, this was often referred to as “doing bits”. The 2019 islanders often referred to “the danger zone” to describe their bedroom intimacies. This year’s contestants have developed their own code based on the different levels of the British system of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/love-island-2021/love-island-nvq-meaning-levels-b1890262.html">national vocational qualifications</a>. “Entry level” is “just a snog”, “NVQ1” is “a cheeky finger”, “NVQ2” is “oral” and “NVQ3” is “the full shebang”. </p>
<p>While these might be particularly modern turns of phrase, the use of such sexual euphemisms has long historical precedents and reflects the fact that while there is a rich vocabulary in the English language for describing and talking about penetrative intercourse (“making love”, “going all the way”, “doing it” – and that’s just at the more polite end of the spectrum), the language associated with other forms of sexual behaviour is more limited.</p>
<p>Without any “good” language, people have often developed creative systems for discussing sex acts. In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, teenagers often used a numerical ranking system. A typical five-stage code ranked sexual activity from kissing (1), breast touching, touching a partner’s genitals, having one’s genitals touched by a partner, to finally having penetrative intercourse (5).</p>
<p>History shows that these ranking systems are elastic and change over time. <a href="https://doi.org/10.5153%2Fsro.2842">In contrast to modern youth</a>, teenagers in the mid-20th century would rarely include oral sex in these rankings as this was often deemed more intimate than penetrative sex. Similarly, in Love Island the girls distinguished between “kissing in a challenge” and “snogging”, highlighting how intimate acts that are physically similar can be ranked differently based on context.</p>
<p>Sex talk on Love Island is refreshing in the way it addresses forms of intimate behaviour beyond penetrative sex. It is also positive to observe a community of young people celebrating sexual pleasure and playfully constructing ways of thinking and talking about sex on their own terms. </p>
<p>The programme does highlight, however, some of the limitations of this type of sex talk. At the same time that the shared construction of sexual languages creates opportunities for dialogue and inclusion, it can also be exclusionary and obscure. After a number of viewers were <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/15656116/love-island-girls-raunchy-secret-sex-code/">confused by the boys’ football metaphors</a>, the Love Island producers chose to have one of the female contestants explain some of the code. </p>
<p>Chloe Burrows explained that “‘One all’ is basically doing bits. ‘One all’. You did something, I did something, we both had a very happy ending!”. Even here though, Burrows was vague about exactly what the couples were doing.</p>
<p>Perhaps more importantly, the metaphors that are used reflect and reinforce certain assumptions about sexual activity. For example, the 2021 islanders’ qualification metaphors reinforce hierarchical understandings of sexual activity and the “right” order that couples should engage in sex acts – snogging to “the full shebang”. </p>
<p>These cultures are deep rooted - the order outlined in Love Island 2021 is very similar to those <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/policybristol/policy-briefings/teenage-sexual-violence/">used by teenagers in the 1950s</a>. But these hierarchies are not fixed and people can have fulfilling sex lives without engaging in penetrative intercourse, just as they can have penetrative sex without having engaged in other forms of sexual activity.</p>
<p>How young people talk about sex can be as important as their actual sexual activity. Love Island shows it can be fun to develop new ways of talking about sex. But so far, the language doesn’t necessarily reflect radically new ways of thinking about sex. Maybe next season the islanders will get even more creative.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah Charnock received PhD (1+3) funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (2012-16)</span></em></p>There is little language for sex acts that aren’t going all the way, the full shebang, doing it…Hannah Charnock, Lecturer in British History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1641822021-07-08T15:13:51Z2021-07-08T15:13:51ZLove Island: how women with ‘fake’ faces have been belittled throughout history<p>After a recent episode of the British dating reality show <a href="https://www.itv.com/loveisland">Love Island</a>, Twitter buzzed with the word “fake”. In a challenge designed to test the couples’ knowledge of each other, the islanders were quizzed on everything from their partner’s favourite sex positions and turn-ons and turn-offs to which cosmetic procedures they had undergone.</p>
<p>Contestant Hugo Hammond’s repeated disparagement of women who were “fake” was read as a slight against women who chose plastic surgery. This offended several of the women, with fellow participants Faye Winter and Sharon Gaffka calling Hammond “ignorant” for not understanding why women undergo aesthetic procedures.</p>
<p>The game’s neglect of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/mar/03/zoom-ready-male-demand-for-cosmetic-procedures-rising#:%7E:text=Amid%20news%20that%20comic%20Jimmy,for%20video%20consultations%20over%202020.&text=A%202019%20report%20from%20the,%E2%80%9D%20rather%20than%20%E2%80%9Ctucked%E2%80%9D.">growing market in men’s plastic surgery</a> (only the women were quizzed on their procedures) and the association of aesthetic surgeries with “fake” bodies and personalities isn’t surprising. Issues of gender, identity and authenticity have been relevant throughout the long history of plastic surgery.</p>
<h2>Reconstructive surgery</h2>
<p>The earliest operations akin to today’s plastic surgery focused on restoring the face and body to “normal”. This stretched from the <a href="http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/issue-11/treating-facial-wounds/">neat suturing of wounds</a>, to reattachment and then full recreation of a cut-off nose. Such procedures were uncommon, and mainly used by men who had been wounded in duelling or warfare.</p>
<p>The earliest accounts of a nose being recreated from a skin flap <a href="https://ispub.com/IJPS/3/2/7839">date back to 600BC India</a>. European operations to build a new nose from a flap of skin from the forehead or cheek began in 16th-century Italy. Bolognese surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi published the first major <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/r5e3unwm">Latin guide</a> to reconstructing the nose, lip or ear using skin from the arm in 1597, claiming the credit and biggest space in the history books.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-400-year-old-botched-nose-job-shows-how-little-our-feelings-about-transplants-have-changed-156774">This 400-year-old botched nose job shows how little our feelings about transplants have changed</a>
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<img alt="Illustration of 16th-century plastic surgery on the nose." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410340/original/file-20210708-27-15hjlk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410340/original/file-20210708-27-15hjlk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410340/original/file-20210708-27-15hjlk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410340/original/file-20210708-27-15hjlk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410340/original/file-20210708-27-15hjlk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410340/original/file-20210708-27-15hjlk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410340/original/file-20210708-27-15hjlk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Illustration of 16th-century plastic surgery on the nose.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:16th_century_plastic_surgery_on_the_nose_Wellcome_M0013854.jpg#/media/File:Plastic_surgery_on_the_nose_-_16th_century._Wellcome_M0013856.jpg">Wellcome Collection.</a></span>
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<p>In 17th- and 18th-century Britain, this operation was associated with another kind of damaged nose: the collapsed nasal bridge of caused by syphilis. Bodily changes and augmentations that were seen as intended to hide disease were especially associated with “loose women”, out to deceive men into marrying poorly or paying for the pox (syphilis). </p>
<p>The 17th century English Poet <a href="https://poets.org/poet/robert-herrick">Robert Herrick</a> was one of many writers to describe women using padding, cosmetics, transplants and other tricks to “cheat” men. These women were “False in legs, and false in thighs; / False in breast, teeth, hair, and eyes.” </p>
<h2>The conundrum of ‘effortless’ beauty</h2>
<p>Perhaps Love Islander Aaron Francis should have landed in hotter water for naming women’s arm hair as his biggest turnoff. But between him and Hugo we see the classic women’s conundrum: change your body too much and you’re fake, but don’t show yourself too naturally either. Herrick’s contemporary, English poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44452/still-to-be-neat-still-to-be-dressed">Ben Jonson</a> put it bluntly. In the poem “Still to be neat, still to be dressed”, he praised women for a style of effortless “sweet neglect” that required them “still to be powdered, still perfumed” but with the “art” and labour of it carefully hidden away.</p>
<p>Rare and disparaged through these centuries, the use of skin flaps for reconstructive procedures like rhinoplasty was <a href="https://oldoperatingtheatre.com/joseph-constantine-carpue-and-the-revival-of-rhinoplasty/">revived</a> at the very end of the 18th century, as new information arrived from India. Patients included men and women whose noses had been damaged by accidents and fights, but also diseases like cancer and lupus. </p>
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<p>Male surgeons began to compete and brag about the speed and success of operations, including the beauty of the resulting noses. Major facial procedures remained restorative up to the huge improvements made by <a href="https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/people/cp121917/harold-delf-gillies">Sir Harold Delf Gillies</a>, who is considered the father of modern plastic surgery, and his teams in the first world war. But aesthetic options were also increasing, with the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342080522_History_of_Dermal_and_Subdermal_Injectable_Fillers_Before_Collagen_The_Early_Years">first facial fillers</a>— made of ingredients like fat and paraffin — appearing in the late 19th-century.</p>
<p>People make strong distinctions today between reconstructive and “normalising” surgeries, and those seen as merely “aesthetic”. These divisions carry serious implications, such as whether something is covered by the NHS. This is the case even if the operation is very similar, or even identical: breast reduction for aesthetics is usually not NHS eligible, but <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cosmetic-procedures/breast-reduction-female/">breast reduction to help with mental health or back pain</a> often is. </p>
<p>There are also continuing levels of stigma and accusations of deception or “fakeness”, as we saw on Love Island. On the other hand, feminists, disability activists and other ethicists have raised important concerns about the normalisation of cosmetic surgeries and the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35380469">pressure to achieve “perfect” looks</a>. “Sweet neglect” remains a difficult line to tread.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164182/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Cock previously received postdoctoral funding from the Leverhulme Trust for for ‘Fragile Faces: Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies (1600–1850).’. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Han does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A woman’s right to use fillers and have plastic surgery was a topic of discussion on the show after a male contestant alluded that he found women who used such enhancements ‘fake’.Emily Cock, Lecturer in Early Modern History, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1633852021-06-29T11:53:04Z2021-06-29T11:53:04ZLove Island: What makes the show so successful?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408846/original/file-20210629-19-1jxpp6z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1920%2C1077&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUaHuClGEU&ab_channel=LoveIsland">YouTube/ITV</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Audiences can’t get enough of reality dating TV shows, including First Dates and Married at First Sight. But few programmes have been able to drum up the same level of excitement as <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/love-island-54609">Love Island</a>, which returned this week after an 18-month break. </p>
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<p><em>You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/audio-narrated-99682">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>With viewing figures usually in the <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/21/what-are-the-uk-tv-ratings-for-love-island-2020-12095557/#:%7E:text=Since%20it%20aired%2C%204.8%20million,shortfall%20of%20over%201%20million.">millions</a>, Love Island, in particular, has become ubiquitous in British pop culture since its arrival in 2015. But beyond the apparent appeal of watching people go through the up and downs of finding love, what is the enduring attraction of this genre of reality TV? </p>
<p>The gimmicks of shows like Love is Blind and the upcoming Netflix dating show <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/tv/2021/06/24/sexy-beasts-netflix/">Sexy Beasts</a>, (in which participants wear animal prosthetics to mask their true appearance) may certainly explain why viewers tune in. But dating competitions like Love Island remain immensely popular despite introducing relatively little change in format from one year to the next.</p>
<p>For some, the apparent authenticity of reality TV is a key part of its appeal, particularly when watching “real” people seemingly fall in love. But there are different views within academic research on this particular appeal of reality. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08838150701307152">Some have argued</a> that the more viewers perceive a show to be authentic, the more their enjoyment increases (and vice versa). Others, however, propose that authenticity has become less important for viewers who are increasingly <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527476407307241">savvy</a> to the fact that many reality TV shows are engineered to provoke dramatic moments. Instead, audiences are said to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448030053006">deliberately suspend disbelief</a> to indulge in their favourite shows, accepting that realism is a fluid and <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203082195/reality-tv-annette-hill">ambiguous concept</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0038038512448563">scholars</a> have argued that audiences enjoy trying to distinguish the real from the false in reality TV. This may explain the popularity of shows such as Keeping up with the Kardashians and others billed as reality TV despite widespread acknowledgement that scenes are scripted and key events choreographed. So if realism and authenticity aren’t key attractions, what is?</p>
<h2>The social media strategy</h2>
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<img alt="Love Island contestant walks into villa wearing blue and yellow swimming trunks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408850/original/file-20210629-23-xoz57i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408850/original/file-20210629-23-xoz57i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408850/original/file-20210629-23-xoz57i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408850/original/file-20210629-23-xoz57i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408850/original/file-20210629-23-xoz57i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408850/original/file-20210629-23-xoz57i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408850/original/file-20210629-23-xoz57i.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Viewers are often encouraged to use social media while watching Love Island.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUaHuClGEU&ab_channel=LoveIsland">YouTube/ITV</a></span>
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<p>Audience engagement is a critical part of why these shows have remained so popular in the past two decades. Ever since the introduction of Big Brother and Pop Idol in the early 21st century, reality TV has offered viewers a chance to be part of the story. For the first time, audiences moved beyond passive viewers watching content unfold and became active participants, shaping outcomes and voting on the success and failure of contestants. In this sense, audiences were no longer just consumers but recast in a dual role of viewer-producer in a new <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1367877904043238">participatory relationship</a>.</p>
<p>However, audience engagement and participation are only part of the story. In fact, my research has found that for shows as popular as Love Island, social media <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00059/full">is the key</a> to success. Love Island’s producers have made little secret that <a href="https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2017/09/love-island-itv-used-social-drive-viewing-sales-hit-series/">generating audience engagement</a> via social media is central to their strategy. This approach seeks to elicit a loop whereby television and social media content feed back onto each other in a cycle, driving audiences to engage with the show across many platforms, including on TV, via the show’s official mobile app and on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-the-kardashian-jenner-family-become-so-successful-a-psychologist-explains-92377">How did the Kardashian Jenner family become so successful? A psychologist explains</a>
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<p>Perhaps more importantly, social media allows audiences to watch and engage with shows together, as the show is aired. In the past few years, fans of Love Island have congregated online every summer, creating a vibrant fan community mediated largely via Twitter and Instagram. They provide real-time commentary on the show, creating memes and gifs, predicting outcomes, and generally sharing their thoughts. </p>
<h2>A sense of community</h2>
<p>Though this form of multi-platform consumption is now common practice for many TV shows, for Love Island viewers, consuming the show across many platforms has become not only normalised but also a central part of their enjoyment. </p>
<p>In 2018, <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2018/08/hour-day-love-island-made-twitter-kind-place-be">Sarah Manavis</a> argued in New Statesman that “for an hour a day, Love Island made Twitter a kind place to be”, explaining that the show’s friendly virtual community overcame the usually confrontational and toxic nature of social media. </p>
<p>She claims that Love Island has gone so far as having “transformed the way we treat each other online” with open and supportive discussions among fans. Twitter posts at the end of one of the show’s runs often capture this positivity:</p>
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<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1022427558774820864"}"></div></p>
<p>Collective consumption of the show has even prompted fans to group together online to <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2019.00059/full">challenge perceived injustice</a> and subterfuge by the show’s own producers. One example of this was the infamous <a href="https://thetab.com/uk/2018/07/10/love-island-georgia-jack-kiss-staged-72203">#kissgate</a> in 2018 when Twitter users banded together to reveal that an apparently unscripted and impromptu kiss had actually been filmed in two separate takes, misleading viewers as to its authenticity. </p>
<p>However, it should be noted that alongside this positivity comes some negativity. For some viewers, part of the attraction of consuming the show online with others is the opportunity for trolling. This type of behaviour has even prompted Love Island to <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/love-island-issues-trolling-warning-24359694">post a trolling warning</a> ahead of the show’s 2021 run.</p>
<p>Love Island has achieved the perfect blend of creating ways to engage audiences across multiple platforms and leading its audience towards largely friendly and vibrant online fan communities. With a default model like that (and a hungry fan base to contend with after a pandemic-related hiatus), it’s no wonder Love Island remains immensely popular.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Xavier L'Hoiry does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s not just the drama that gets people to tune in every nightXavier L'Hoiry, Lecturer in Criminology and Social Policy, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1319552020-02-19T11:54:40Z2020-02-19T11:54:40ZCaroline Flack’s death shows why police and CPS need more training in domestic abuse cases<p>The tragic news that television presenter and, until recently, host of ITV’s flagship show Love Island, <a href="https://theconversation.com/caroline-flacks-death-is-yet-another-reason-to-be-angry-at-the-way-the-media-treats-women-131920">Caroline Flack</a>, took her life the day after Valentine’s Day has come as a shock to many.</p>
<p>As the details have unfolded, it’s clear that in the days and weeks leading up to her death, Flack had been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/19/caroline-flack-family-releases-unpublished-instagram-post">mentally struggling</a> with the level of scrutiny and speculation she had received since her arrest for assault in December last year. </p>
<p>Since the news of her suicide broke, <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/15/caroline-flack-dead-love-island-star-management-blasts-cps-show-trial-12247472/">questions have also been raised</a> about the criminal justice response to her case – which does appear to have been a bit heavy-handed.</p>
<p><a href="http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/71114/">My research</a> focuses on domestic abuse and criminal law and, in my opinion, police and prosecutors misunderstood the risks involved in this case and imposed an inappropriate “no contact” bail condition with tragic consequences.</p>
<h2>Different kinds of abuse</h2>
<p>Indeed, latest findings in academic research have established the existence of two, quite distinct types of domestic abuse – <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801215599842?journalCode=vawa">coercive control and situational couple violence</a>.</p>
<p>Coercive control involves the malevolent exploitation of an imbalance of power in an abusive relationship. The abuser is almost always male – in the first cases to come before the English courts under the new “<a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/9/section/76/enacted">controlling or coercive</a>” offence more than 99.5% of cases involved a male perpetrator and a female victim. The perpetrator uses his power to terrorise his victim, limiting her access to money, friends and family, putting her down, eroding her self-worth and subjecting her to physical abuse. </p>
<p>Whereas situational couple violence arises when two people in an intimate relationship resort to violence to address a one-off argument. Triggers range in seriousness from fights over what to watch on TV, to disagreements about how to spend money or how to raise children. </p>
<p>The point is that while any physical abuse between intimate partners is, of course, illegal, coercive control is dangerous and victims of coercive control need protection – as their lives are often at risk. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49459674">Two women a week</a> are killed in this way, and <a href="http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/4553/">recent research</a> estimates that 92% of domestic murder victims experienced some form of control. </p>
<p>Perpetrators of coercive control can exert undue pressure on victims and their decisions – often meaning that when a victim chooses not to pursue charges against her abuser, this must not be taken at face value. </p>
<p>Once charged, a perpetrator can be even more dangerous, and it is imperative that consideration is given to protecting vulnerable victims. A fight over the remote – even if it ends in an illegal drunken punch-up – has none of these dangerous dynamics.</p>
<h2>No contact</h2>
<p>It’s not clear what took place or why the police were called to Flack’s house. Allegedly she hit boyfriend Lewis Burton with a lamp and self-harmed after discovering he had been texting other women. </p>
<p>He suffered minor injuries. Flack was arrested and charged with common assault – the least serious form of assault from a criminal law perspective. Her boyfriend did not want to press charges and retracted his evidence. She was granted police bail – but with the condition that she was prevented from any contact with Burton. </p>
<p>She pleaded not guilty to the charge of common assault and applied to have her bail conditions lifted – she desperately wanted to see her boyfriend – but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) opposed her request. So she was prevented from contacting him directly or indirectly and from visiting him at his address until trial. </p>
<p>It is never “ok” to attack your partner. But an option to include a bail condition preventing contact with a victim is designed to protect vulnerable victims in coercively controlling abusive relationships. And is not necessarily designed to be used in cases such as Flack’s.</p>
<h2>Keeping victims safe</h2>
<p><a href="https://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/police-chiefs-guide-officers-to-impose-bail-conditions-protecting-victims-and-vulnerable-people">Updated operational guidance</a> on bail orders was issued to police in May 2019. When police are dealing with domestic abuse, their priority is to the keep victims of domestic abuse safe. The domestic abuse <a href="https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/domestic-abuse-guidelines-prosecutors">guidelines for prosecutors</a> have a similar ethos. They also point out that victims might be afraid of repercussions when a perpetrator of abuse is charged.</p>
<p>But it is also important that police forces and the CPS are able to recognise that coercive control and situational couple violence are different and require different handling to prevent tragedies like the death of Caroline Flack.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316157/original/file-20200219-11040-x0mied.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316157/original/file-20200219-11040-x0mied.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316157/original/file-20200219-11040-x0mied.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316157/original/file-20200219-11040-x0mied.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316157/original/file-20200219-11040-x0mied.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316157/original/file-20200219-11040-x0mied.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316157/original/file-20200219-11040-x0mied.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Caroline Flack at the National TV Awards 2019 at the O2 Arena, London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-january-22-2019-caroline-1292483164">Featureflash Photo Agency</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.safelives.org.uk/training/police">Excellent training</a> from domestic abuse charity SafeLives is available to police forces. This training – which focuses on coercive control and is delivered by experienced domestic abuse specialists – requires the active release from duty for all officers in a force for one day. It is therefore expensive and, unfortunately, not compulsory. This means that the forces that need it the most are the least likely to prioritise it. </p>
<p>This is a concern, because the police and the CPS need to be able to distinguish situational couple violence from coercive control. It is highly unlikely, for example, that Burton needed protecting. Unfortunately, in this case, it turns out that Flack might have done. In an <a href="https://www.eonline.com/news/1123502/caroline-flack-s-boyfriend-lewis-burton-breaks-his-silence-on-her-death">Instagram post</a> on Sunday Burton broke his silence to express his regret: “I know you felt safe with me … and I was not allowed to be there this time”. With a domestic abuse informed response, the chances are he would have been.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131955/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cassandra Wiener is a trustee of SafeLives. She has been awarded a full ESRC studentship for her PhD in domestic abuse. She is co-founder and trustee of the Treebeard Trust.</span></em></p>It is important that police forces and the CPS are able to recognise that coercive control and couple violence are different and require different handling.Cassandra Wiener, Visiting Lecturer in Sociology, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1211482019-08-01T13:15:06Z2019-08-01T13:15:06ZThe original Love Island: how George Sand and Fryderyk Chopin put Mallorca on the romance map<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286575/original/file-20190801-169710-njjs0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C5%2C924%2C720&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ChopinSandDelacroix</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eugène Delacroix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49157523">four million Britons watched</a> Amber Gill and Greg O'Shea being crowned the victors of Love Island 2019. Gill, a beauty therapist and model from Newcastle in the north of England, and O'Shea, a rugby player from Limerick in Ireland, proved the most popular pairing among the 24 reality TV show contestants on the Balearic island of Mallorca.</p>
<p>Their 12-day romance has ensured fame, fortune and social media influence for the two 20-somethings – and it won’t hurt Mallorca’s tourism numbers either. But perhaps few of the contestants or viewers know that tourism on Mallorca was kick-started almost two centuries ago by an earlier pair of star-crossed celebrity lovers, in a remote lodging just a few miles away from the ITV villa. So while Love Island might feel quintessentially 21st century, it was prefigured by events on the same island in 1838.</p>
<p>In that year, the “most famous woman in France”, the avant-garde, aristocratic, cross-dressing, best-selling novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Sand">Aurore Amantine Dupin Dudevant</a> – known by her male pen name of George Sand – travelled to Mallorca with the lauded Polish composer, pianist and political refugee <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/09ff1fe8-d61c-4b98-bb82-18487c74d7b7">Fryderyk Chopin</a>. She was 34, he six years her junior. </p>
<p>Sand claimed they had sailed to the Balearics seeking solitude, where she could write and Chopin compose. They were likely also fleeing from the scandal their love affair had caused in Paris. Sand was a high-society rebel, a divorced mother of two who had successfully won custody of her children. The critic Robert Graves has described her as “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3e1ag2S07fsC&pg=PA335&lpg=PA335&dq=graves+sand+the+uncrowned+queen+of+the+Romantics&source=bl&ots=YOvUdjuLvk&sig=ACfU3U0_9hYgqLdogQXYGytBbF_ddBSfBw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiwjLSVvOHjAhWB-qQKHZa6BU8Q6AEwEHoECB4QAQ#v=onepage&q=graves%20sand%20the%20uncrowned%20queen%20of%20the%20Romantics&f=false">the uncrowned queen of the Romantics</a>”, a conscious pioneer of a “modern”, liberated lifestyle. </p>
<p>At 28, Chopin was the same age as several of the Love Island hopefuls. Like one of this year’s contestants, he came to Mallorca with a recent broken engagement behind him – to fellow Polish émigré Maria Wodzińska. Yet unlike the bronzed, toned bodies of the 2019 ITV islanders, Chopin was in 1838 already ailing, with bronchitis or tuberculosis. Writing to a friend from the island, <a href="https://archive.org/stream/chopinsletters00chop/chopinsletters00chop_djvu.txt">he described his own appearance</a>. He dressed informally, Chopin explained, but his skin was still wan: “Behold me [here] without white gloves, without curled hair, but as pale as usual.” </p>
<p>Mallorca in the 1830s was heavily agricultural. In her travel memoir <a href="https://www.literarytraveler.com/articles/george-sand-her-majorcan-winter-of-discontent/">A Winter in Mallorca</a>, Sand estimated that almonds and pigs were the main exports, and she described too the orange groves, figs and olive trees. To the two Parisians the island seemed fertile yet strangely impoverished. “No peasant in the world is so dreary or poor,” Sand concluded. The island’s infrastructure for foreign visitors was extremely limited in the early 19th century. </p>
<p>Sand and Chopin sailed from Barcelona on a cargo ship, its hold full of hogs. Arriving in the capital of Palma, to their shock the couple could not find a functioning hotel. They stayed in expensive rented rooms in a bad neighbourhood – and Chopin’s piano was impounded by customs officers. They ended up renting a cell in an abandoned Carthusian monastery in the mountain village of Valldemossa. </p>
<p>The lovers’ Mallorcan tryst was bittersweet. Chopin’s letters praised the natural beauty, calm and “poetic feeling” of the island. He took pleasure in the “African sun”, the blue sea and the eagles he watched gliding overhead. Sand, however, grew disillusioned. She was angry in particular at the locals who disapproved of the unmarried lovers, and later vented her feelings in her notoriously acerbic memoir. </p>
<p>Yet however unflattering her account, Sand’s book put Mallorca on the literary map. She joked that she had “discovered” the island and predicted that once international travel connections improved “Mallorca would soon prove a formidable rival to the Alps”, a new destination for the North European traveller. That prophecy was realised with the opening of an international airport at Palma in 1960, and the advent of mass tourism.</p>
<p>Then – as with Love Island now – the couple’s Mallorcan love spectacle inspired much hand-wringing, moralising and outright disdain in the newspapers of the day. A journalist writing in the Polish monthly Przegląd Poznański, for example, <a href="http://www.ejournals.eu/sj/index.php/SLit/article/view/1189">lamented Chopin’s extra-marital love affair</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our respect for this person should not blind us, or cause us to pass over in silence things which are so severely condemned by society. It is a source of bitter sorrow that such a beautiful life has not been without deep stain. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today, contestants hope that a successful stint on Love Island will generate income from advertising, guest appearances and endorsements. For Sand and Chopin, the Mallorcan interlude was also productive for their own careers. Sand wrote <a href="https://booksien.com/2018/01/15/about-spiridion-by-george-sand/">her novel Spiridion</a> in the monastery, and Chopin composed a number of pieces at Valldemossa. But the romantic happy-ever-after which the most gossiped-about couple of 19th-century Europe had sought in the Balearic sun proved, ultimately, far more elusive.</p>
<h2>Unhappy ever after</h2>
<p>Like many Love Island contestants, Chopin and Sand found that an extended stay in a Mallorcan hideaway was no guarantee of successful long-term romance. The trip had an ambiguous effect on their relationship. Chopin was already seriously unwell, and his love affair with Sand would break down in terrible, <a href="https://crosseyedpianist.com/2013/04/10/divine-fire-fryderyk-chopin-and-george-sand/">very public recriminations </a> a few years later.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286601/original/file-20190801-169684-1nudr5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A fine romance? Love Island winners Amber Gill and Greg O'Shea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV Studios</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Polish pianist died in Paris in 1849 and Sand did not attend his funeral. Graves <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/george-sand">has speculated</a> that the hostile reception which the lovers received from socially conservative, Catholic Mallorcans heightened the existing tensions in their relationship, fuelling Chopin’s own internal misgivings.</p>
<p>We do not yet know if the Love Island villa – rented by ITV from its millionaire German owner – will become a tourist attraction. But at Valldemossa, the Chopin-Sand connection is still <a href="https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2017/08/05/as-mallorca-enjoys-the-frederic-chopin-festival-we-remember-his-island-sojourn-with-george-sand/">a major visitor draw</a>, 180 years on. The town boasts a museum, and offers visits to the monastic cell where the couple lived, as well as regular recitals of Chopin’s music. </p>
<p>Relics associated with the famous visitors are displayed – including Chopin’s piano, finally rescued from customs officials.</p>
<p>So Gill and O'Shea, flying back to the UK, might spare a moment to peer down from their aeroplane window onto the cool northern hills, where those first, pioneering “islanders” put controversial, public-private Mallorcan love affairs on the map.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalia Nowakowska receives funding from the British Academy and the European Research Council. </span></em></p>180 years before Love Island, Chopin and Sands travelled to Mallorca to pursue their romance.Natalia Nowakowska, Associate Professor of Early Modern History, University of Oxford, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1197512019-07-11T09:31:51Z2019-07-11T09:31:51ZWhat Love Island can tell us about the history of love<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283376/original/file-20190709-44505-1itdjub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C1991%2C1000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last summer, the apparently scandalous statistic that more young people applied for the reality TV series Love Island <a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/reality-tv/a858828/love-island-2018-application-numbers-top-cambridge-oxford/">than applied for Oxbridge</a> rippled through the commentariat, eventually featuring in Prime Minister’s Questions and that hotbed of middle-class moral panics, Question Time. </p>
<p>While this was not the first reality TV show to provoke a media storm, the scale and impact was unprecedented – the series attracted four million viewers and more than <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-44683885">2,500 complaints to Ofcom</a>. The current series has again been a magnet for controversy, with concerns around “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jul/05/love-island-has-a-gaslighting-problem-yet-again">gaslighting</a>” and mental health being offset by record-breaking viewing figures. </p>
<p>Hidden historical arguments often underpin these public furores. The “problems” which Love Island represent are almost always framed as being specific to the current generation – symptomatic of a newly emergent youth culture recalibrated by the tyranny of social media, subverted by a newly hyper-sexualised imaginary and driven by an obsession with celebrity. </p>
<p>The show is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jul/18/problem-with-love-island-people-who-turned-it-down">regularly identified</a> as the epitome of a shallow, inauthentic age. This historical narrative has even been deployed to explain the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-island-reality-tv-mental-health-suicide-mike-thalassitis-sophie-gradon-itv2-a8936256.html">tragic suicides of two ex-Islanders</a>. So what can Love Island tell us about our collective emotional history – what, if anything, is new about feelings on and in Love Island?</p>
<h2>Moral panic</h2>
<p>Moral panics over the “hyper-sexualisation” of young people, particularly working-class women, are nothing new. From wartime alarm about “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/260893">Khaki-fever</a>” to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/763998.stm">Mary Whitehouse’s moral crusades</a> in the 1960s, anxiety about the romantic interactions of “youths” has been rearing its head throughout the 20th century. </p>
<p>In the broadsheet press, Love Island is often seen to represent a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/may/29/from-jacqui-lambie-to-love-island-tv-shows-us-romance-is-just-another-consumer-experience">coarsening of courting rituals</a>” – the Islanders are presented as being motivated by money or winning the game rather than “real” feelings. But anyone who thinks that the intersection between economics, social status and love is a new thing need simply read any Jane Austin novel, or indeed Sally Holloway’s book on Georgian courting rituals entitled <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/valentines-gloves-garters-fall-love-like-georgian/">The Game of Love</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283488/original/file-20190710-44432-ijk891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283488/original/file-20190710-44432-ijk891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283488/original/file-20190710-44432-ijk891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283488/original/file-20190710-44432-ijk891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283488/original/file-20190710-44432-ijk891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283488/original/file-20190710-44432-ijk891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283488/original/file-20190710-44432-ijk891.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy playing the courting game in Jane Austen’s Price and Prejudice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Archive</span></span>
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<p>Looking beyond the responses of the chattering classes, the Islanders themselves reveal much about the <em>historicity</em> of love – the idea that feelings are not fixed parts of our biology, but contingent on the changing historical moments they are experienced within. Take, for example, the catch-phrase “100% my type on paper”. It’s easy to dismiss it as a throwaway idiom – but this phrase does important intellectual work.</p>
<h2>Making matches</h2>
<p>The straightforward way to interpret “my type on paper” is about a dissonance between physical appearance and what is generally termed “personality”. The phrase is generally used when the person saying the phrase and the subject of the phrase don’t know each other very well. </p>
<p>There’s clearly some traction to this interpretation – it’s clear that Love Island, through both its contestants and its heavy-handed producers, promote a “type” which works along distinctly, and in many cases worryingly, aesthetic lines. The men are athletic, smooth-chested, sporting 12 packs, orange skin and fluorescent teeth. The women tend to be relatively similar, albeit with a few less abs. All, of course, heterosexual. </p>
<p>The “types” certainly speak of the racialised and gendered ideologies circulating today – it <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-island-2019-samira-mighty-token-black-woman-diversity-yewande-a8950786.html">(has been noticed)</a> that no black contestants have been selected for “coupling up” in the opening episode for the past four years. The show shines a light on – perhaps even offers a platform for – thorny issues about emotional prejudice in wider society.</p>
<p>This is one way to make sense of the phrase: “My type on paper” – focusing on what the “types” themselves tell us about contemporary sexual preferences. But there is another way of making sense of the phrase which opens up a different set of historical stories. While people have been quite literally setting out “types” on “paper” for centuries (the first lonely hearts advert <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Hq5sWfkIu3YC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=harry+cocks+classified&source=bl&ots=Tqyz1zgEh7&sig=ACfU3U0DLt3VTHLWIjk237rZ5EnblsnJ5g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwir8t7okajjAhU4RxUIHdWfDbQQ6AEwCHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=harry%20cocks%20classified&f=false">appeared in 1690</a>, just 50 years after the first newspaper), the phrase also reveals much about how a distinctly “modern” understanding of love has emerged. </p>
<p>It seems to be suggesting an irrational, autonomous and enigmatic understanding of love, defying rules that can be written down on paper. There is a long tradition of sexual love being conceived of in such a way – certain early-modern historians would see this as being rooted in the democratising process of the late 18th century. According to historian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/10/origins-of-sex-faramerz-dabhoiwala-review">Faramerz Dabhoiwala</a>, processes such as the French Revolution, the Enlightenment and industrialisation unshackled love from the rules and regulations of a feudal regime.</p>
<p>The phrase can also be placed in a shorter trajectory. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/10/english-in-love-langhamer-review">Claire Langhamer argues</a> that an emotional revolution in the middle of the 20th century created new expectations about love. Rather than primarily providing material security, romantic love suddenly had to complete the “self” – a “soul-mate” was now demanded. </p>
<p>The key here was a cultural development which has been dubbed the “psychologisation of society” – the popularisation of psychological ways of thinking about the world. This is a compelling way of historicising “my type on paper” – the phrase suggests the person speaking only has conscious control of their emotions to an extent. They can try to set the rules, but ultimately it will be an unconscious part of their psyche which will determine who they love. </p>
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<h2>Performing love</h2>
<p>Is there anything new about the love in Love Island? The show is a product of a moment in which we’ve made a game out of judging the authenticity of other people’s romantic relationships, not just our own. We spend our leisure honing our ability to detect sincere feelings, to discern “truth” in love. </p>
<p>In many ways, this is the real pleasure of the programme – does Curtis really fancy Amy? Do Molly-Mae and Tommy have a genuine connection? Which couple perform “love” the best?</p>
<p>As well as being central to the success of the show, this incitement to scrutinise emotional authenticity also helps explain the outraged responses to Love Island. The show poses questions about knowing the “truth” of others’ feelings, and through this, our own. It suggests that the experience of love is not solely determined by “chemistry”, but shaped by shifting social, cultural and political environments. It’s not simply the language and labels of love which have changed through time, but its very essence.</p>
<p>This mercurial, historically fluid conception of love might seem unsettling for some, but in the words of this year’s Islanders: “It is what it is.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Geiringer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The show – and the public’s reaction – can tell us a huge amount about how ideas about love and romance have changed over the centuries.David Geiringer, Associate Lecturer, Queen Mary University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1184072019-06-12T08:15:27Z2019-06-12T08:15:27ZLove Island: Molly-Mae Hague and the working life of a ‘social influencer’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278888/original/file-20190611-32331-ydmrlb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=278%2C112%2C1485%2C960&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Molly-Mae Hague and Tommy Fury on their jacuzzi 'date'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV2</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Love Island returned to screens in the UK for a fifth season on June 1, alongside the usual discussion of who was going to couple up with whom – which is, let’s face it, what makes the show tick – the employment status of islander Molly-May Hague prompted a bit of a stir on social media. </p>
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<p>Within her introduction video and during her date with boxer Tommy Fury, Hague described her job as a “social influencer” who “does social media … Instagram”. Immediately, viewers took to Twitter to discuss her job role, with many claiming that a “social influencer” was simply a more acceptable way of saying she was unemployed. Others defended her “influencer” profession as a legitimate form of work.</p>
<p>Given that the show has an estimated audience of 13.3m on ITV2, it’s not a bad platform for someone with that job description. But this debate around Molly-Mae’s job shows how we need to think about the growing trend of social influencers and whether what they do constitutes a new and emerging form of 21st century work. </p>
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<h2>2019: year of the influencer?</h2>
<p>Millennials (people born in the early 1980s to the early 2000s) <a href="https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Millennials-Adept-Filtering-Ads/1012335">do not respond to traditional media advertisements</a>. Instead, they tend to use social media to communicate how they feel about products and businesses. So in order for businesses to capitalise on these online conversations, an entirely new approach to advertising is needed. “Influencer marketing” is emerging as one of the main solutions to this need. </p>
<p>The main premise of influencer marketing is that brands identify and pay social media celebrities – individuals with a large enough fan base to interest advertisers – to advertise products to their personal social media following. The idea is that consumers trust these “influencers” almost as friends and are more likely to have a positive reaction to a brand or product recommended by someone they trust in this way.</p>
<p>So, for example, the dress Kylie Jenner wore for her 21st birthday resulted in a spike triggered by her 137m Instagram followers – internet searches for “pink dress” reportedly <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/global-influencers-kim-kardashian-kylie-jenner-meghan-markle-ariana-grande-cardi-b">increased by 107%</a> in the 48 hours after she posted her picture. </p>
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<p>Then there is her half-sister, Kim Kardashian. Awarded the first ever <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysAec0JWKuc">CFDA Influencer Award</a> in 2018, Kim reportedly charges between <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-kim-kardashian-charges-for-instagram-endorsement-deals-2019-5?r=US&IR=T">US$300,000-$500,000 per single Instagram post</a>. For longer-term collaborations with a brand, deals can reach into the many millions of dollars. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.adweek.com/digital/giordano-contestabile-activate-by-bloglovin-guest-post-influencer-marketing-in-2018/">2018 article</a>, AdWeek magazine suggested that the influencer market would be worth over US$10 billion by the end of 2019. Within the UK alone, the allocation of marketers’ budgets put aside for influencer marketing campaigns has nearly <a href="https://rakutenmarketing.com/en-uk/press-articles/marketers-spending-in-excess-of-800000-per-year-on-influencer-campaigns-nearly-double-from-2017-as-they-aim-to-tackle-measurement-challenges">doubled to 40%</a> in 2019.</p>
<h2>But is it a job?</h2>
<p>It’s no surprise, then, that many are desperate to start a career in the influencer industry. Alongside traditional celebrities, social media has also enabled ordinary users to build their own fan base of followers and earn a living by collaborating with brands and creating content on social media. </p>
<p>But this new and emerging form of work brings new challenges and problems. Former Love Island Australia star Cassidy McGill recently used an Instagram story to <a href="https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/reality-tv/its-a-hard-job-love-islands-cassidy-on-the-reality-of-being-an-influencer/news-story/c510deb7782d3d6e1ff95458f696bd6f">outline some of the pressures</a> of her social media career. The recent backlash directed at Molly-Mae shows the continued stigma faced by influencers and the dismissal of the job, as McGill notes, as simply getting “paid a shitload to do fuck all”. </p>
<p>Through my own <a href="https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/nina-willment(a5f8fa28-ce22-4549-b6c7-558d6a005519).html">research</a> working with bloggers and influencers in the travel sphere, it appears bloggers and influencers actually invest a large variety of online and offline work in order to successfully become an influencer. </p>
<p>Individuals typically work long hours building relationships and continually engaging with their fan base, alongside working to create and curate content for brands. This typically results in the transformation of spaces of leisure such as holidays or meal times into spaces of work, as influencers feel they have to relentlessly share their life with their audience. </p>
<p>As a result, influencers have to deal with the pressure of constantly being available and accountable to their followers and wider audience. Offline, this work spills over into creating and curating a desirable image of themselves, which can involve both unrelenting physical and emotional management. </p>
<p>The true realities of this form of work and its resulting pressures on health and well-being are central issues which prompted ITV to <a href="https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/love-island-2019-itv-aftercare-plan-contestants-deaths-mike-thalassitis-sophie-gradon/">revise the aftercare</a> for Love Island contestants to be more comprehensive and include bespoke social media training. This revision followed public outcry after the tragic passing of former Love Island contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis who both <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/19/love-island-bosses-confirm-changes-show-deaths-mike-thalassitis-sophie-gradon-8951991/https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/19/love-island-bosses-confirm-changes-show-deaths-mike-thalassitis-sophie-gradon-8951991/">died by suicide</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/jeremy-kyle-show-a-psychologist-explains-the-risks-in-reality-tv-and-how-aftercare-should-be-done-117287">Jeremy Kyle Show: a psychologist explains the risks in reality TV and how aftercare should be done</a>
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<p>In a recent <a href="https://www.hrreview.co.uk/hr-news/1-of-5-british-children-want-a-career-as-social-media-influencers/114597">survey</a>, one in five British 11- to 16-year-olds said they wanted to be a social media influencer when they grew up. This result, alongside the sheer value and scale of the industry, suggests that the influencer is here to stay. It’s high time we recognised the amount of work that successful influencers invest in the role and acknowledged those working in this intense and precarious world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118407/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nina Willment receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>Is ‘social influencer’ a real job? It’s all about work-life balance.Nina Willment, PhD Candidate, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1176262019-06-03T07:50:40Z2019-06-03T07:50:40ZLove Island 2019: why bromance matters as much as romance to viewers<p>The reality TV dating series Love Island has captured the hearts and minds of the UK public. The 2018 series attracted some <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45023673">4m viewers</a> across eight weeks, and audiences have been eagerly speculating about possible winning matches among the <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-05-30/love-island-2019-contestants/">new cast of contestants</a>, since the premiere of the fifth series on June 3, 2019. </p>
<p>The Radio Times <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-05-31/love-island-2019-contestants/">has said</a> that Love Island’s “winning formula” is the work of the casting team, who find a “varied mix of individuals who strike the balance of being compatible with one another”. </p>
<p>As part of an ongoing <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/project/Cross-Disciplinary-Analyses-of-Performing-Art-Literature-Visual-Media">research collaboration</a> into TV and film, we analysed the 2018 series of the ITV show – and the public’s reaction to it – and found that one of the key ingredients for the show’s popularity is not the romantic couplings, but the bromances formed.</p>
<p>We analysed all 59 Love Island 2018 episodes, as well as social media interactions from viewers on Instagram and Twitter. Our initial findings suggest that a number of viewers favour bromantic over romantic relationships in the show – and that is to be welcomed, as these bromances offer audiences <a href="http://time.com/4978727/bromance-male-friendships/">a healthy model</a> for supportive, accepting and happy relationships. </p>
<h2>In the name of bruv</h2>
<p>Bromance (seen as an intense emotional bond between straight men) has become a popular and marketable aspect of film and TV. In hit American TV series such as animated sitcom Family Guy, and hospital-based comedy Scrubs, and in films such as Ted, The Hangover franchise, and <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/film/edgar-wright-explains-cornetto-trilogy-name-2470001">The Cornetto Trilogy</a>, written by British male comedy duo Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, bromances often carry greater emotional weight in storylines than the relationships between heterosexual couples. </p>
<p>In 2018, the popular Love Island bromance was between self-confessed “Jack the Lad” former stationary sales manager Jack Fincham, and “Steady Eddy” A&E doctor Alex George. This bromance manifested throughout the show in confessions such as “I love you to death mate” and Jack calling Alex “a peng sort” to which Alex replied: “thanks Jack, you’re a sort as well”. </p>
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<p>There were calls from viewers to bend the rules and allow a bromance to win the show - mirroring <a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/reality-tv/a833733/love-island-viewers-want-kem-chris-couple-up-win-show/">previous calls</a> in the 2017 series of Love Island regarding the bromance between contestants Chris Hughes and Kem Cetiney. </p>
<p>The pair developed a friendship early on in the series and went on to have a successful reality TV career together after the show, as well as producing a rap song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWwGFBYROl8">Little Bit Leave It</a>, named after one of their sayings.</p>
<h2>A healthy sight</h2>
<p>With comedy, compassion, camaraderie, and consistency (or what we’ve called “the four Cs”), bromances in Love Island show a way for relationships to have a dynamic that is open, friendly and supportive, rather than jealous and manipulative – as some of the show’s romantic relationships turned out to be. </p>
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<p>Conversations within the Love Island bromances have been some of the most comical throughout all four series of the show. Viewers enjoy the comedic value of these relationships, and embrace their banter and catch phrases, using them as hashtags on social media and wearing branded clothing.</p>
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<p>In a society where <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/617/Sriskandarajah_%282019%29_-_Suicide.pdf?1559299664">male mental health</a> has been labelled a <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/talking-about-men/201702/mens-mental-health-silent-crisis">“silent crisis”</a>, the spotlight on bromantic pairings on Love Island gives viewers an insight into male feelings. The heartfelt, compassionate, and often deep conversations between bromantic pairs are a refreshingly healthy sight for British reality television.</p>
<p>Society generally is becoming increasingly vocal about mental health, and young people are becoming especially concerned with the psychological pressures exerted by a near-constant exposure to social media and reality TV. The conversations between male friends on reality TV shows such as Love Island demonstrate how important it is for men to <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/618/Cairns__C.__Corcoran__R.___Haarmans__M._%282017%29_-_A_modern_male's_dilemma.pdf?1559299910">talk about their feelings</a> more openly, which can work to <a href="https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/your-mental-health/looking-after-your-mental-health/talk-about-your-feelings">improve mental health</a>. </p>
<p>The bromantic relationships between former contestants have presented glimmers of mutual trust and friendship. In a television show with a tendency to “mug” or “pie” people off within romantic couplings – for instance, through re-coupling or cheating – these bromances have taught viewers a lot about the importance of togetherness, solidarity and respect. </p>
<p>In a programme focused on re-coupling, bromance is often the one constant storyline throughout the series – and beyond. The friendships formed between Love Island contestants often last longer after the show has finished than the <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2019-05-30/which-love-island-couples-are-still-together/">romantic couplings</a>.</p>
<h2>Friendship first</h2>
<p>While anticipation about the winning couple in the Love Island villa in the latest series begins to grow, we suggest viewers also pay attention to the emerging bromances. Friendships play a vital role in all people’s lives, alongside romantic partnerships. </p>
<p>Love Island’s artificially created relationships and scheduled “coupling up” activities create plenty of drama – but we argue it is the natural and enduring bonds of friendship that really win viewers over. As viewers see and celebrate the power of the bromance in Love Island, we hope they also pause to appreciate the friendships they have in their own lives – regardless of their relationship status.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The show’s memorable bromances remind viewers that building lasting friendships is just as important as finding love.Catherine Wilkinson, Senior Lecturer in Education, Liverpool John Moores UniversitySamantha Wilkinson, Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth Studies, Manchester Metropolitan UniversitySergio A. Silverio, Research Assistant, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1181262019-05-31T16:35:07Z2019-05-31T16:35:07ZLove Island: the urge to bare all in public has been around as long as TV itself<p>A new series of Love Island is upon us and, at this point in the programme’s life, we know what to expect: a group of beautiful young people will spend the summer looking for love – or at least something resembling love – and imagining how many more Instagram followers they will have when they return to the UK. </p>
<p>The tabloid newspapers will give the stars of the programme top billing, with the usual galleries of beefcake and bikini shots. Non-viewers, meanwhile, will be mystified by Twitter trends referring to what’s happening on Love Island – and there will be a fair amount of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/love-island-body-positivity-plus-size-jameela-jamil-itv-a8934771.html">hand-wringing from critics</a> about why people go on the programme and why other people watch it.</p>
<p>In 2018, Love Island’s popularity among television audiences was echoed by BAFTA voters, with the programme <a href="http://awards.bafta.org/award/2018/television/reality-constructed-factual">winning the BAFTA</a> for Reality and Constructed Factual. Although it’s a BAFTA category that often raises eyebrows, the win reflected the programme’s presence in the cultural zeitgeist.</p>
<p>Of course, what would have made the Islanders different to us 20 years ago – their willingness to expose themselves on television – is what makes them similar to us now. Most of us live some of our lives on screens – whether that be television, YouTube, or on social media. So why does reality television continue to concern us – and what do we get out of television participation?</p>
<p>Ordinary people have been appearing regularly on television since the 1940s, when hidden camera shows, talent shows and game shows were added to the US television schedule. The gameshow Queen for a Day, which was broadcast nationally from 1956, is viewed as an <a href="https://www.history.com/news/this-midcentury-show-turned-unhappy-housewives-into-tv-royalty">antecedent</a> for the displays of emotion central to reality television’s appeal: women competed for prizes by tearfully revealing hardships they faced. Like Love Island, it attracted <a href="https://timeline.com/queen-for-a-day-tv-sexism-9bd594f509d9">large audiences as well as harsh critiques</a>.</p>
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<p>The format of Love Island, where participants are filmed around the clock while they live together, has its roots in programmes such as <a href="https://www.looper.com/15293/untold-truth-mtvs-real-world/">MTV’s The Real World</a> (first aired in the US in 1992), which documented the lives of seven strangers living together, and the globally successful Big Brother (first aired in 1999 <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/big-brother-changed-tv-dutch-creator-says-10-years-on-5504160.html">in the Netherlands</a>). </p>
<p>These early examples of reality television were praised for providing visibility and voice to populations often excluded from televisual representation, including members of the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/big-brother-lgbt-housemates-gay-culture_uk_5720a35de4b06bf544e106b8?">LGBT community</a> and – in the case of The Real World – people living with HIV: its 1994 series featured <a href="https://medium.com/queer-history-for-the-people/pedro-zamora-real-world-activist-cf89c5e237ab">openly gay and openly HIV-positive AIDS educator Pedro Zamora</a>.</p>
<h2>Duty of care</h2>
<p>While the format in its many variations has become a normal and standard part of factual entertainment offerings, it still holds the potential to concern us. There is, for example, a recurring charge that reality programmes exploit vulnerable participants, an accusation that retains a classed dimension (nobody seems concerned about the toffs of <a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/reality-tv/a822410/made-in-chelsea-net-worth-richest-wealth-stars-ranked/">Made in Chelsea</a>). And when tragedy strikes, as it has recently for some former reality and talk show participants, we <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/on-demand/70191-001">question the support and aftercare provided</a>.</p>
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<p>The death in May of Jeremy Kyle Show guest Steve Dymond led to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/jeremy-kyle-show-a-psychologist-explains-the-risks-in-reality-tv-and-how-aftercare-should-be-done-117287">cancellation of the long-running show</a> and to an inquiry by the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/reality-tv-inquiry-launch-17-19/">Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee</a>. The <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/love-island/8932235/love-island-2019-cancelled-death-mike-thalassitis-sophie-gradon/">deaths of Love Island participants</a> Mike Thalassitis in March 2019 and Sophie Gradon in June 2018 resulted in updated <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-48366213">“duty of care” measures</a> for the programme.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/jeremy-kyle-show-a-psychologist-explains-the-risks-in-reality-tv-and-how-aftercare-should-be-done-117287">Jeremy Kyle Show: a psychologist explains the risks in reality TV and how aftercare should be done</a>
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<h2>Look at me</h2>
<p>So what is it about baring their souls – and often their bodies – before a mass television audience that attracts people? The lazy answer is that participants are all <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-love-island-to-hd-brows-what-you-need-to-know-about-narcissism-99328">fame-hungry narcissists</a>, worryingly typical products of a culture dominated by vacuous celebrity. From self-made YouTube films to appearances on designed television sets, willingness to appear before others and have the authenticity of one’s identity and depth of one’s feelings judged by others is a way of participating in the world.</p>
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<p>It contrasts starkly with the dullness of conventional forms of civic participation – the best known of which is the anonymous act of expressing one’s beliefs in the privacy of a polling booth. It is an irony of contemporary politics that democracy has come to be associated with the invisibility of citizens, many of whom believe that nothing they do or say in or out of the polling booth can impact public affairs.</p>
<p>The popularity of self-exposure through media is a move in the direction of visibility. It is a way of saying “I am here”. Philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/">Hannah Arendt’s definition</a> of the public domain as a space “where I appear to others as others appear to me, where [people] exist not merely like other living or inanimate things, but to make their appearance explicitly” points to an understanding of public participation that is conspicuously absent in contemporary politics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/sick-of-politics-how-the-arts-can-rekindle-your-love-of-voting-40806">while increasingly prevalent in popular culture</a>. </p>
<p>People want to see other people who are faced with the kind of challenges and dilemmas that they face themselves. For all of its exotic setting, Love Island is just a place full of individuals trying to relate to one another. It is tracking how that happens that fascinates viewers and makes participants feel that they are engaging in something meaningful.</p>
<h2>Fifteen minutes of fame</h2>
<p>Appearing on television has managed to become normal while <a href="https://www.thisamericanlife.org/675/im-on-tv">continuing to fascinate</a>, compelling us to grapple with questions of what participants hope to get out of participating, what they actually get out of participating – and how we can better understand the gap between their experiences and what we see on screen. Dismissing participants as merely driven by their hunger for fame is overly simplistic (just as it would be to label all political activists as power-hungry would-be leaders or crazed fanatics). People put themselves before their fellow human beings for complex reasons. </p>
<p>Making sense of such reasons is best conducted by talking to them and working to understand how current programmes relate to the longer history of public participation in television formats, and by exploring (and potentially tightening) the production rules that guide participation. </p>
<p>As long as there are willing participants, there will be interested audiences: to paraphrase a <a href="https://www.ok.co.uk/lifestyle/love-island-georgia-steel-loyal-14356220">2018 islander</a>: “We’re loyal viewers, babe.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118126/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ordinary people have been getting their 15 minutes of fame on the small screen since the 1940s.Bethany Klein, Professor of Media and Communication, University of LeedsStephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1172872019-05-17T08:54:08Z2019-05-17T08:54:08ZJeremy Kyle Show: a psychologist explains the risks in reality TV and how aftercare should be done<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274984/original/file-20190516-69169-86s7t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Host Jeremy Kyle broadcasting before the show was axed.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Jeremy Kyle Show/ITV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The psychological impacts of participating in broadcast productions can be much greater than broadcasters and producers may realise. This was evident in the recent events in the UK surrounding The Jeremy Kyle show and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48279613">the decision by ITV to axe the programme</a> after the death of one of its guests. Children, vulnerable people and general members of the public can suffer long-term effects from participation in these kinds of reality show, and broadcasts can have serious unintended consequences not only for them but also for family, friends and work colleagues too. </p>
<p>Allegations from former participants of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/may/14/jeremy-kyle-show-ruined-life-guest-speaks-out">perfunctory screening</a> question that have missed pre-existing mental health issues, alleged “wind up” methods in the Green Room to incite conflict before a show commences, have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/apr/22/life-after-jeremy-kyle-treatment">previously been reported</a>. So-called “aftercare” procedures have also come in for criticism for being brief, or consisting of “phone calls from junior members of the production team” – testimonies that have also been supported by former members of the production team. All this seems to be evidence of systematic neglect of the most basic of moral principles: “Do no harm.”</p>
<p>The Jeremy Kyle Show isn’t the only reality-based show to come in for criticism about a failed duty of care by programme makers. Another series of the hugely popular ITV show, Love Island, <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/breaking-love-island-go-ahead-16044595">is still in the works</a> despite the suicides of two former contestants, Mike Thalassitis and Sophie Gradon. On Twitter, former Love Island contestant Malin Andersson questioned the level of care given to people on the show: “Do we have to wait for one more death before other shows are axed? Or can’t we just put in some extraordinary aftercare in place to prevent any deaths from occurring ever again.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1128647052152406016"}"></div></p>
<p>It is a sorry situation that it has taken a death (or deaths) to bring this more out into the open, and for the government to now take steps, through <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/news/reality-tv-inquiry-launch-17-19/">the inquiry launched</a> by the Digital Media Culture and Sport Department, to delve into this murky world in television and to hopefully find ways and means to encourage and perhaps enforce better standards of practice across the broadcast media industry.</p>
<h2>Heading off harm</h2>
<p>There is a wide range of potential harms of participating in broadcast productions, especially for people other than professional actors and celebrities (who may be more versed in tackling the pressures of being in the media spotlight).</p>
<p>Following public concerns about possible harms to children in performances arising from the series <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_and_Girls_Alone">Boys and Girls Alone</a> – a Big Brother-style programme featuring 20 children aged eight to 11 – a <a href="http://www.nncee.org.uk/attachments/bulletin/sarah-thane-full-report.pdf">2010 Thane Review</a> led to the English and Scottish governments establishing working parties to develop legislation and regulations analysing psychological risks to under-18s featured in performances, including television appearances. I contributed to this on behalf of the <a href="https://www.bps.org.uk/">British Psychological Society</a> (BPS). Our finding was of multiple risks, including harms such as distress, trauma, negative attitude change, moral damage, lowered self-esteem, embarrassment and loss of dignity, disempowerment, insecurity, anxiety, engendered fears, mental stress/fatigue, and peer disapproval or bullying. This led to changes <a href="https://www.dumgal.gov.uk/media/20444/Risk-Assessment-Performance-by-children/pdf/Risk_Assessment.pdf?m=636728596360370000">in regulations</a> and reference <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/section-one-protecting-under-eighteens">in Ofcom guidance</a> for under-18s in UK. </p>
<p>Because there is a licensing process for child performers, local authorities are involved in ensuring that proper risk assessment and mitigation is in place for every performance. Chaperones, psychological screening, support and aftercare are all recognised and required parts of harm avoidance processes. </p>
<p>But there is nothing like this in place – either in legislation or industry best practice national guidelines – for adults, some of whom, if not many, will have vulnerabilities and little understanding of the risks they will encounter when taking part in broadcast shows. The risks identified for children apply also to adults, and recent events have shown this clearly.</p>
<h2>Desensitisation</h2>
<p>A further issue, not yet widely discussed, is the impact on audiences of viewing scenes such as those in The Jeremy Kyle Show. <a href="https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/24015">Research</a> has <a href="https://academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/frames/phx/creativegeography/nabietal_03.pdf">shown strong effects</a> of broadcast media on audiences. To give just one example, a TV parenting series was found in <a href="https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/8594/1/ACF453.pdf">a carefully controlled experiment</a> to bring about substantial and long-lasting positive effects for families. Psychologist Albert Bandura, best known for the <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/bobo-doll.html">Bobo Doll experiments</a> in the 1960s, showed how behaviour displayed on screen is easily modelled in everyday life. In his experiments, Bandura showed how children mimicked aggression in real life that they had seen on screen.</p>
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<p>So convinced did he become about the importance of this that he then started working with broadcasters to explicitly work socially positive narratives into productions. But what does sitting passively watching adults being goaded into interpersonal strife, denigration and dysregulated emotional outbursts do for the million or more viewers? Can we not expect at least some degree of desensitisation? And what about the effects on children and young people? There is little research that can directly inform us about this, although Bandura’s work offers a strong theoretical reason to strongly suspect negative effects.</p>
<h2>Taking care</h2>
<p>While current concerns about harms are dominant, there are good examples of best practice in broadcasting, and I have been privileged to be able to help many productions to think through very carefully how to minimise harms, and indeed to maximise benefits for participants. </p>
<p>Ten years working with the production team for the BBC/Open University <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0072bk8">Child of Our Time</a> series opened my eyes to the care taken throughout to ensure that the families were happy with how they were portrayed and that a thorough duty of care protocol was followed before, during and for some time after each series. This experience encouraged me to establish the British Psychological Society Media Ethics Advisory Group, made up of a group of psychologists with extensive media involvement. We work with productions at all stages and help to ensure that properly qualified and experienced psychologists work with productions, registered with the <a href="https://www.hcpc-uk.org/">Health and Care Professions Council</a> when necessary. </p>
<p>In collaboration with the major broadcasting channels, the <a href="http://www.pact.co.uk/">Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television</a>, and some of the major independent production companies, we have been developing a guidance framework for commissioners and producers: Psychology and Media Productions. This is shortly to be launched and will be promoted through the media industry.</p>
<p>It takes special experience and skills to identify the risks to people in productions, to screen potential participants, to monitor their reactions during recording and to provide adequate aftercare. Where mental health issues and risks are implicated, our guide will stress that only psychologists with relevant experience, qualifications and appropriate membership of a professional body should be given responsibilities for safeguarding participants. </p>
<p>Psychologists can play an important role also in programme planning, to ensure that risks are minimised, and harmful effects avoided from the start, with appropriate safeguarding being an integral part of the production. The BPS maintains a register of psychologists available for such work and hopes to play a role in the upcoming government enquiry. </p>
<p>Broadcasting has immense power for good in the world. Now seems an apt time to turn away from showing anything that stigmatises, denigrates, or otherwise harms the mental health of people – not just participants, but audiences too – and to reinstate values of respect for the autonomy, dignity and privacy of people.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>In the UK, <a href="https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/contact-us?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIj7S40uLL3AIV7bftCh2DMw35EAAYASAAEgLI-_D_BwE">Samaritans</a> can be contacted on 116 123 or by email – jo@samaritans.org. Other similar international helplines can be found <a href="https://www.befrienders.org/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117287/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Oates is Chair of the British Psychological Society Media Ethics Advisory Group and member of the Society's Ethics Committee, and acts as consultant to television production companies regarding safeguarding of participants and the portrayal of psychology and psychological treatments. </span></em></p>The popular daytime television show has been axed. Here’s how programme makers can ensure proper aftercare fro reality show participants.John Oates, Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/993282018-07-17T13:31:55Z2018-07-17T13:31:55ZFrom Love Island to HD brows, what you need to know about narcissism<p>The TV show of the summer, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-love-island-is-the-best-kept-guilty-secret-on-british-television-97409">Love Island</a>, is fascinating for many viewers – but especially so for personality psychologists. Mainly because the programme is a parade of rampant narcissism. Even if you can’t quite define it, you can sense it in several contestants’ preened, “perfected” and often utterly artificial appearances (think Megan) and their roaming, self-interested, and “gaslighting” <a href="https://theconversation.com/love-island-adam-shows-teenagers-how-not-to-treat-romantic-partners-98801">romantic behaviours</a> (think Adam).</p>
<p>In contemporary society, narcissism is all around us. The rise of “celebrity” culture, selfies, Instagram and Snapchat, all help to fuel an obsession with and celebration of self-promoting “icons” – like <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-the-kardashian-jenner-family-become-so-successful-a-psychologist-explains-92377">the Kardashians</a>.</p>
<p>Psychologists have studied narcissism since the turn of the 20th-century – and it’s a word many people are familiar with. It’s a personality trait <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868316685018">defined by</a> entitlement and a belief that you are “special”. It also involves self-centredness, a need for admiration and recognition, and a casual, exploitative attitude towards friends and partners.</p>
<p>Narcissism exists on a spectrum, from low – which most people are – to very high, which makes up only a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3819488/Being-narcissist-wins-friends-not-long-Popularity-people-personality-trait-temporary.html">very small percentage of the population</a>. Like other personality traits, narcissism exists to a greater or lesser extent in all of us. And it’s found across <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656603000266">all ethnicities, cultures, and ages</a> – though it is typically seen at <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0038231">higher levels in men than women</a>.</p>
<h2>Narcissistic traits</h2>
<p>Contrary to what you might expect, <a href="https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84939566711&origin=resultslist&sort=plf-f&src=s&sid=0ad1bd2e1157b916ae4e6f71c832ad20&sot=autdocs&sdt=autdocs&sl=18&s=AU-ID%2835174438300%29&relpos=6&citeCnt=21&searchTerm=">there’s no link</a> between narcissism and talking about “me, me, me”. In fact, narcissism is more related to talking about friends – to suggest popularity. </p>
<p>Other hallmarks of narcissistic speech include the use of more <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009265661000084X">swear words and sexual language</a> – being unconventional and titillating. Narcissistic people may also be quite funny, as they use non-hostile, witty, cheery and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886910000358#!">self-enhancing humour to build relationships</a>. In short, they charm and disarm. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228004/original/file-20180717-44100-6eapom.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Queen me.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Most people might expect narcissism to be related to “peacocking” – wearing flashy or designer clothing and accessories, to catch the eye, impress others, and advertise wealth – <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550612461284">and indeed it is</a>. Research shows that both sexes high in the trait dress smartly, and are well-groomed. The end result is that we can often tell if someone is narcissistic <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656608000901">just by looking at them</a>.</p>
<h2>How to spot it</h2>
<p>What might be less well known is that natural, physical manifestations of narcissism can also be spotted in our faces, according to some studies. It has even been suggested that <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009265661100136X">women high in the trait tend to have sharper features</a>. And one recent study claimed that highly narcissistic people have <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12396">thicker, denser eyebrows</a>. </p>
<p>Narcissistic traits, we are told, are also frequently seen more in people whose <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656611001127">faces have greater symmetry</a>, – which are typically more appealing. In this way then, it turns out that people often <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656609002177">find narcissism quite attractive</a>. </p>
<p>Research has also found that narcissistic people seem to be charming and popular in the first instance and to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40869027_Why_Are_Narcissists_so_Charming_at_First_Sight_Decoding_the_Narcissism-Popularity_Link_at_Zero_Acquaintance">move in a self-assured manner</a>.</p>
<h2>The problem</h2>
<p>But a narcissistic person’s appealing veneer belies what goes on beneath. They are extroverted and open minded, yes, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691616666070">but disagreeable and low in honesty and humility</a>. They may be sociable, but they’re dominant – which has traditionally been considered a sexy but dangerous combination – <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/1995-24993-001">at least in men</a>. </p>
<p>Highly narcissistic people exhibit a lot of negative behaviours, from <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009265661000084X">skipping class more often</a>, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886910005015">cheating in tests</a> and forming friendships based on <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/147470491201000303">what people have to offer and how attractive they are</a>. It’s a short-term approach to life, and love, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407506064204">focused on self-satisfaction</a>. The bottom line is that narcissistic people don’t make for great long-term romantic partners – and though there’s some evidence <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167209340904">change is possible</a>, it isn’t very likely.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/228006/original/file-20180717-44073-kjxagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">‘Look how great we are’.</span>
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<p>The evidence is a little mixed, but narcissistic <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407506064204">men</a> and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915002524">women</a> may be <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167202287006">more likely to stray</a>, swap partners, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886909004619">or even steal someone’s else’s partner</a>, than work on an <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886909004619">existing relationship</a>. </p>
<p>Narcissistic men and women alike have a <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2002-17391-007">game playing romantic style</a>. But research has shown that in heterosexual marriages, it’s the wife’s levels of narcissism – more so than the husband’s – that can have a substantial, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2015-27303-001">negative effect on marital satisfaction</a>.</p>
<p>The ease with which narcissistic people can form new relationships – using their first impression charm – and the novelty of another “conquest” holds considerable sway. This is especially true for narcissistic men, who <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886911003011#b0125">aren’t even all that picky</a>.</p>
<p>But other than taking one more look at your potential Tinder date’s eyebrows before you swipe right, the reality is, you may find narcissistic people hard to avoid. These types of people are likely to “want” something from you – consider what that is. And if you have found yourself in a relationship or friendship with someone who’s narcissistic, try and set clear boundaries and be aware of the potential consequences.</p>
<p>And if you’re wondering where you sit on the scale, one of the tools psychologists use to measure narcissism is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory – you can see how you fare on it, and compare your score with others <a href="https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/NPI/">here</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A recent study found that highly narcissistic people have thicker, denser eyebrows.Gregory Carter, Lecturer in the School of Psychological and Social Sciences, York St John UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/988012018-06-25T17:32:20Z2018-06-25T17:32:20ZLove Island: Adam shows teenagers how not to treat romantic partners<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224759/original/file-20180625-19379-v1ejmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not love.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/heart-drawn-on-beach-sand-being-532786735?src=u6D7aPZD7jRQgF_TiClQAQ-1-22">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Adam’s manipulative behaviour towards the women he likes in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jun/21/love-island-contestant-prompts-warning-from-domestic-abuse-charity">Love Island</a> villa prompted charity <a href="https://www.womensaid.org.uk/womens-aid-calls-for-love-island-viewers-to-speak-out-against-domestic-abuse/">Women’s Aid to issue a statement</a> asking viewers to join love interest Rosie in speaking out against unhealthy behaviours in relationships – especially “<a href="http://www.thehotline.org/what-is-gaslighting">gaslighting</a>”, a form of emotional abuse that makes someone question their own feelings, memories and version of reality.</p>
<p>Emotional partner abuse is a common experience among young people. <a href="http://stiritup.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/STIR-Briefing-Paper-2-English-final.pdf">Research shows</a> that nearly three quarters of teenage girls, and half of teenage boys, have reported some form of emotional partner abuse. But many still won’t recognise the early warning signs, and only 33% of teenagers who are involved in an abusive relationship talk to someone about it. </p>
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<p>Although the UK’s legal definition of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-violence-and-abuse">domestic violence and abuse</a> includes psychological abuse and controlling and coercive behaviour, <a href="https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/domestic-abuse/">research by child protection charity NSPCC</a> has shown that teenagers often don’t understand what emotional abuse is, and how controlling behaviours – such as checking someone’s phone, telling them what to wear or gaslighting – can be early warning signs of abusive behaviour.</p>
<p>Love Island is watched by over <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/stayingin/tvfilm/love-island-2018-is-itv2s-mostwatched-show-ever-as-337-million-people-tune-in-for-first-episode-a3855581.html">3m viewers</a> and most are young women <a href="https://www.itvmedia.co.uk/programmes/programme-planner/love-island">aged 16 to 34</a>, though a younger teenage demographic also watch. Many of these younger viewers may be learning about what healthy relationships are like, and entering their first romantic relationship. </p>
<p>If young people are getting their information about relationships from programmes such as Love Island – with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/22/love-island-emotional-abuse-entertainment-adam-collard-gaslighting">emotional abuse as entertainment</a> – they will inevitably have trouble recognising the <a href="https://www.refuge.org.uk/get-help-now/recognising-abuse/">early warning signs of abuse</a>, as they might think that this type of relationship is normal. There is a clear need to help young people recognise abuse in relationships, and fight back against it. </p>
<h2>Let’s teach about sex</h2>
<p>In the past, government strategies to promote healthy relationships – including <a href="https://www.disrespectnobody.co.uk/">Disrespect Nobody</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/this-is-abuse-campaign">This is Abuse</a> – have targeted 13 to 18-year-olds with extensive media campaigns. These strategies recognised the power of TV, celebrities and social media to influence young peoples views of relationships. For example, This is Abuse partnered with the Channel 4 teen soap <a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/hollyoaks/articles/all/weve-joined-forces-with-this-is-abuse-for-patrick-and-maxine-ad-campaign/1171">Hollyoaks</a> in 2013. </p>
<p>One in four teenagers admit they are <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6012322/Teenagers-most-influenced-by-celebrities.html">more influenced by celebrities</a> than people they know. This is why there needs to be positive role models of healthy relationships in the media. But <a href="https://research-information.bristol.ac.uk/files/34955937/Article_16_English.pdf">evidence shows</a> that domestic abuse can also be prevented through early, age appropriate education, which promotes relationships based on equality and respect. </p>
<p>Currently relationship and sex education is not compulsory. But from September 2019, it will be a statutory <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/schools-to-teach-21st-century-relationships-and-sex-education">requirement in all schools</a>. In order to be effective, high quality relationship and sex education needs to start early, in order to influence attitudes and behaviours before they are entrenched in adulthood. It needs to be about <a href="https://theconversation.com/sex-and-relationship-education-should-be-about-rights-and-equity-not-just-biology-88806">rights and equity</a>, and delivered by either well-trained teachers, or external professionals. </p>
<h2>Drama lessons</h2>
<p>At Liverpool John Moores University, <a href="https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/news/features/recognising-abusive-relationships">we are working</a> with arts charity <a href="http://tender.org.uk/">Tender</a> to prevent domestic abuse by using art and drama in 24 schools across Greater Merseyside. Using age and ability appropriate workshops, which focus on identifying early warning signs in unhealthy relationships, young people are encouraged to question past relationship behaviours and challenge their current norm.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224750/original/file-20180625-19375-1u6i1sw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224750/original/file-20180625-19375-1u6i1sw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224750/original/file-20180625-19375-1u6i1sw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224750/original/file-20180625-19375-1u6i1sw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224750/original/file-20180625-19375-1u6i1sw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224750/original/file-20180625-19375-1u6i1sw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224750/original/file-20180625-19375-1u6i1sw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224750/original/file-20180625-19375-1u6i1sw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Janette Porter/Liverpool John Moores University</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.uclan.ac.uk/research/explore/projects/peach.php">The PEACH study (Preventing Domestic Abuse for Children)</a> has proven that drama is a particularly effective way of teaching pupils how to recognise the early warning signs of abusive relationships. One female pupil, aged 14, said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I used to think it as OK for my boyfriend to log into my Facebook account but I know now its not. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>People’s understanding of what is a healthy and unhealthy relationship comes from many sources, including family, friends, peers, the media and school. We expect that society will offer models of healthy relationships and portray positive intimate partner relationships. But that is not always the case, as Love Island shows.</p>
<p>Rosie called out Adam’s behaviour, and it’s time we enable everyone to do the same. Schools have a responsibility to provide young people with the skills and information to recognise the signs of unhealthy relationships, and speak out against abuse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98801/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janette Porter receives funding as part of The Tender National Partnership .</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kay Standing works with Tender as part of the national partnership programme. </span></em></p>Teenagers often don’t understand what emotional abuse is – and shows such as Love Island can make it seem normal.Janette Porter, Sessional Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores UniversityKay Standing, Reader in Gender Studies, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/984182018-06-19T13:39:14Z2018-06-19T13:39:14ZLove Island: audience reaction shows deep snobbery about accents<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223813/original/file-20180619-126550-1tu5p3f.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV2</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Now that the current crop of inmates disporting themselves around <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-love-island-is-the-best-kept-guilty-secret-on-british-television-97409">Love Island</a> have settled in, members of the mainstream and social media have been passing judgement on the “islanders”. While I’m by no means a regular viewer of the show, as a sociolinguist, it is the comments that are being made about the way some of the contestants sound that have really caught my attention. </p>
<p>Linguistic discrimination, also called <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13613324.2016.1150827?journalCode=cree20">linguicism</a>, is discrimination against somebody based on their use of language. This can include their vocabulary, the sound of their accent, or their grammar.</p>
<p>When the show started at the beginning of June, 11 young people moved into their luxury accommodation on the island and immediately social media lit up with people passing judgement on their demeanour, their looks, body language and what they had to say. From a sociolinguistic point of view, it’s been easy to predict who of the 11 would receive the most criticism – there’s a <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/sociolinguistics/attitudes-language?format=HB&isbn=9780521766043#2jV0PjqZX16Hlue6.97">body of research</a> to back this up and, for anybody who has studied this, there were few surprises.</p>
<p>In general, speakers with more standard southern accents are less criticised, and those with accents that we are socially conditioned <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-accents-sound-better-than-others-77732">to think of</a> as funny, friendly, and socially attractive, such as Welsh, Scottish and Newcastle accents, also get off lightly.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-accents-sound-better-than-others-77732">Why do some accents sound better than others?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>However, the Liverpool accent is frequently found near the bottom of the list when people are asked to rate how much they like the sound of different accents. One young islander, Hayley – from Liverpool – has been widely criticised on Twitter. Viewers have variously stated that her voice is “annoying”, “cringeworthy”, “makes [your] skin crawl”.</p>
<p>Hayley’s speech prompted one viewer to ask the twitterverse: “What level of education does this girl have” because “it’s so difficult listening to [her] speak.” Another tweeter left this tweet:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1005929634511441920"}"></div></p>
<p>Now, if I were someone who discriminated against someone because of their language, I’d be pointing out that the last sentence in that tweet needs some punctuation – and by the way it’s “you’re embarrassing”. There’s more than a sprinkling of irony in someone being a language pedant and then getting it “wrong” while doing so. And while Hayley might <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/love-island-2018-brexit-hayley-trees_uk_5b1b87f8e4b0adfb82695492">say some surprising things</a>, it tends to be her accent that people queue up to criticise.</p>
<h2>Common complaint</h2>
<p>Links between a lack of education and use of language have long been used as justification for oppression and control of people by the dominant ruling classes throughout history. Whether it be putting down the Welsh <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/72d77f69-72a7-3626-9c19-469c91f45753">Treachery of the Blue Books</a> (where it was falsely concluded in 1847 that the Welsh were ignorant, lazy and immoral, and that their use of the Welsh language was partly responsible) or whether it is used as a tool of the class system, language snobbery is and has been used to oppress people.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223989/original/file-20180620-137728-1h1oj55.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Hayley Hughes has been abused on social media because of having a Liverpudlian accent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV2</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Unfortunately, accent prejudice is now so deeply ingrained within us that it’s incredibly frequent to hear speakers describing themselves as sounding “common”. I spend much of my teaching time at university trying to get my first year students to understand that there is no such thing as a “common”-sounding or “bad” or “correct” accent – but in fact these are societal norms that have been imposed on us.</p>
<h2>Like it or not</h2>
<p>Back on Love Island, another islander who received negative attention was Niall from Coventry. His voice was criticised for being annoying – but, according to Good Morning Britain’s Piers Morgan, Niall’s biggest crime was his use of the word “like”. The presenter demanded that a clip of Niall be played several times. He also mocked Niall’s West Midlands accent by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kekLukjDLQ">doing an impression</a> that sounded more like a really bad stereotype of a West Country farmer (or Worzel Gummidge if you’re from my generation): </p>
<blockquote>
<p>But like I didn’t actually like say to her like before she went like anything like I didn’t say like …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The use of the word “like” is currently one of the most stigmatised aspects of linguistic variation. Its use is generally attributed by non-linguists to adolescents and young people – when it is often perceived as a sign of lexical indecision, perhaps through having a small vocabulary or just not knowing what you want to say. However, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/the-evolution-of-like/507614/">research shows</a> that the use of like in utterances always performs a function. It frequently acts as a marker that may be used to sustain or repair a sentence, link information in the utterance together, or alternatively mark a boundary between the different points the speaker is making.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223815/original/file-20180619-126531-fvbp7i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Niall, from the West Midlands: criticised because of his use of the word ‘like’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV2</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like receives so much attention that there’s even a book on “<a href="https://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs.187">800 years of like</a>”. In the book, Canadian linguist <a href="http://web.uvic.ca/%7Eadarcy/web%20documents/DArcy%202005.pdf">Alexandra D’Arcy</a> details the different uses of like, the fact that there is a long history of use of like by speakers of all ages, and dispels a number of the myths and stereotypes associated with it.</p>
<h2>Class act</h2>
<p>It would be easy to dismiss the comments about the Love Islanders as a bit of fun, but there is a much darker side to linguistic discrimination. In the US, a <a href="https://source.wustl.edu/2006/02/linguistic-profiling-the-sound-of-your-voice-may-determine-if-you-get-that-apartment-or-not/">study showed</a> that some potential employers, real estate agents, loan officers and service providers linguistically profile callers responding to adverts, despite this being against federal and state law. </p>
<p>Although we now hear more regional dialects on the TV and radio, more than a quarter of Britons <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/2013-09-25/28-of-britons-feel-discriminated-against-due-to-accent/">feel discriminated against</a> because of their accent. Teachers feel that they need to change their accent to be taken more seriously and teachers with northern accents have even been <a href="https://schoolsimprovement.net/teachers-northern-accents-told-posh-heres/">told to “posh up”</a>. Experts in their field face prejudice because of their accents – including my colleague Katie Edwards, who <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11270980/British-universities-Im-fed-up-of-being-ridiculed-for-my-regional-accent.html">has spoken out</a> over times she has felt that she can’t be taken seriously as an academic with her Doncaster accent. </p>
<p>Even masters of their craft have been typecast and discriminated against just because of the way that they speak, such as the acclaimed actor Maxine Peake – who was told to <a href="https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/maxine-peake-accent-interview-guardian-12963558">lose her Bolton accent</a> because the character she was auditioning for had been to university. The list goes on.</p>
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<p>So why can we not seem to shake our prejudices about dialects? Well, part of the issue is that by now, these attitudes are so deeply ingrained within us that we all tend to believe the hype. Our standard language ideology maintains that standard accents are associated with the upper classes, privilege, education and opportunity. </p>
<p>Despite John Major’s <a href="https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107871">1990 declaration</a> that the former prime minister wanted Britain to be a classless society, <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/05/03/the-long-read-the-working-class-hasnt-gone-away-by-ron-johnston/">more recent evidence</a> indicates that class divides are just as bad as before. And unfortunately, it seems that linguistic discrimination really is one of the last acceptable forms of prejudice.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-love-island-is-the-best-kept-guilty-secret-on-british-television-97409">Why Love Island is the best kept guilty secret on British television</a>
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</em>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gerry Howley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Viewers are taking to Twitter to display their prejudice about Islanders’ accents.Gerry Howley, Teaching Associate in Sociolinguistics, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/974092018-06-04T12:34:22Z2018-06-04T12:34:22ZWhy Love Island is the best kept guilty secret on British television<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221551/original/file-20180604-175445-jjoheb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ITV2</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As is so often the case these days, we didn’t have to wait for series four of Love Island to actually go to air for Fleet Street to <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/6441389/first-look-at-love-island-launch-as-the-boys-and-girls-enter-the-villa/">start salivating</a> about the prospects of spending the summer with 11 “unfathomably ripped young men and scantily clad young women” – as The Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/04/sex-love-island-reality-show-tv-hit">rather coyly put it</a> – tasked with doing little else other than to select their daily swimsuit and, over the course of eight weeks, choose their ideal life partner.</p>
<p>With a little help from a bit of audience participation. And here’s the thing: 2017’s Love Island became the UK’s breakout televisual hit, giving ITV2 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/04/sex-love-island-reality-show-tv-hit">record viewing figures</a> of 2.5m people. It was the most talked-about show of the summer, prompting <a href="https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2017/09/love-island-itv-used-social-drive-viewing-sales-hit-series/">5 billion Twitter impressions</a> and merchandise shipped by the truckload (Primark says it <a href="https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2017/09/love-island-itv-used-social-drive-viewing-sales-hit-series/">sold 197,000 Love Island slogan t-shirts</a> during the series’ seven-week run). Some 25% of 16 to 25-year-olds were watching the show via tablet or smartphone and after season three ended, ITV Hub claimed it had regularly reached 56% of 16 to 34-year-olds – the show’s core demographic. </p>
<p>This is often a demographic that terrestrial TV finds it hard to engage with given the always available lure of Netflix and YouTube.</p>
<p>“This is a real case study for all of those nay sayers who say that 16 to 34s don’t watch telly,” Angela Jain, the boss of ITV Studios Entertainment <a href="https://rts.org.uk/article/love-island-secrets-behind-itv2-hit">told a conference</a> hosted by the Royal Television Society in May, adding: “That’s bollocks isn’t it, because they’re watching this.”</p>
<p>But why is it such a hit? Yes the blue skies and holiday vibe helps, but at its heart it is still based on the idea of a love story – some have even heralded it as a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170807-what-jane-austen-tells-us-about-dating-today">modern-day Jane Austen</a>. The story of falling in love is a narrative that has <a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-07-14/love-island-is-like-shakespeare-with-a-suntan/">obsessed us since time immemorial</a>. It’s why we’re still riveted by the work of Austen or Shakespeare: because we are all searching for someone who helps us make sense of ourselves.</p>
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<p>There is also a sense of joining an exclusive club – you just need to get your head around Love Island slang (The Sun <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/3822641/love-island-2017-phrases-melt-pied-muggy-meaning/">helpfully provided a lexicon</a>) – not knowing what being “muggy” or “melty” is (disrespectful and soppy respectively) or that when someone is “grafting” (putting in some hard work on a member of the opposite sex) is tantamount to social suicide. Love Island gives the insiders’ guide to dating 21st-century style (<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/bad-parent-watching-love-island-daughter/">with reports of parents watching with their teens</a> to find out about millenial attitudes to dating, love and sex).</p>
<p>Feminist commentator and journalist Caitlin Moran penned a column for The Times <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/love-island-celebrity-fans_uk_595a4740e4b05c37bb7f7f0d?guccounter=1">in which she claimed</a> that watching shows like Love Island is “good for you”, particularly if you’re a parent: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>These may be ‘scripted reality shows’, but they are, essentially, amateur documentary recreations of what happens to you, over and over, in your teens and twenties. That’s why they’re so popular. That’s why you need to watch them with your children.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Rules of attraction</h2>
<p>While it’s tempting to dismiss Love Island as just another reality show, it is surprisingly a critical – as well as a ratings – success, even from quarters which would normally be scornful of something like this. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/04/sex-love-island-reality-show-tv-hit">a piece headlined</a>: “Sun, Sex and Mugging Off: is it wrong to be watching Love Island, The Guardian revealed a host of high-profile viewers for whom Love Island 2017 was their "guilty secret”. </p>
<p>The shamelessly low-rent show has been attracting <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/trashy-escapism-innocent-time-celebrity-love-island-still-original/">broadsheet think pieces</a> by columnists, who wouldn’t normally watch reality TV because they’re far too busy listening to Radio 4 or reading worthy doorstop novels, all hand-wringing about whether it’s “wrong” to be watching it.</p>
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<p>When the show was <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2018/05/13/bafta-tv-awards-2018-winners-list-peaky-blinders-love-island-handmaids-tale-lead-way-7542907/">nominated for two BAFTAs</a>, the twittersphere erupted in <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5576773/Love-Island-nominated-TV-BAFTA-Twitter-erupts-delight-fury-raunchy-show.html#ixzz5GVNbzlZ2">delight and outrage in equal measures</a>. Moran was left stunned, tweeting happily:</p>
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<h2>Start of something wonderful</h2>
<p>Ratings, rather than critical success, is probably the reason so many young people were thronging to ITV to be selected for the new show – <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2017/08/03/love-island-receives-80000-applications-lively-singles-hoping/">80,000 people applied</a> within a week of applications opening. </p>
<p>So what will this series have in store? Show producers have promised a longer run, but more of the same with some tricks up their sleeve, yet to be revealed. </p>
<p>With islanders ready to declare their undying love and find “their type on paper”, will relationships last or become a summer fling with a chance to make <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4727526/Love-Island-winners-set-leapfrog-earners.html">millions as the newest reality stars</a>. Money and fame aside, the chances of forming a lasting relationship on Love Island <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/jun/02/it-is-ridiculously-intense-in-there-the-creators-of-love-island-on-the-shows-return">appear to be pretty slim</a> – 2017’s loved-up winners Kem and Amber did not even make it to the end of the year. </p>
<p>Instead, the ultimate winners are ITV who have reportedly sold the format for megabucks (reportedly <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4695114/ITV-set-1BILLION-pay-selling-Love-Island-format.html">set to recoup £1 billion</a> from overseas versions). They say money can’t bring you love, but as the creators of this show would happily attest, the opposite certainly appears to be true.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97409/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lyndsay Duthie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Exploitative reality show or a modern-day Jane Austen? You decide.Lyndsay Duthie, Head of Film and Television Programme, University of HertfordshireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.