How do people form their collective Identity through reality TV shows?

Collective identity is the idea that a set of indivudual's feel a sense of belonging to a group or collective and it is from this group that the indivdual derives or shapes a part of their personal identity. The way collective identity is formed can be from hobbies or a shared interest in music, art, sports, film but in a lot of cases for our generation which has grown up with the strong influence of social media it is easy to see that young people form a part of their collective idenitity through TV shows. Especially as the emergence of reality TV shows has increased rapidly recently with the surge in popularity of shows such as Geordie Shore, The only way is Essex and Made in Chelsea.

Michel Foucalt says that "We are born with a basic identity we then mediate that personality for who we meet"  according to this theory our identities develop via the influence of others around us and will continue to change with our environment and influences. With that in mind the main reason these types of shows are so popular is because they show the viewers social extremes, for example Made in Chelsea is a show that stars around the lives of a group of socialite youths who are all the heirs of affliuent companies and enjoy an extravagant lifestyle driving the best cars, wearing the most expensive clothes, living in an upper class area and enjoying the finest lifestyle without worries. The characters of the show share a collective identity and have clearly influenced the devlopment of their identity's they use the same colloquialisms, have similar interests in fashion, cars, sex and go to the same places. It is this similarity that gives individuals a sense of belonging which we can see from the way they express themselves, an interesting quote from the show is." Capitalism makes you beautiful"  this shows that it is their fortune that defines their persona and to viewers this is a very powerful statement because it brings in Henri tajfel's social theory on in and out groups that says "the groups we are part of transform into a source of pride and self-esteem and in order to increase our social identity, we enhance the status of the group which often leads to discriminating against another groups". Young people that view the show will regard the stars as the in group and aspire to be like them and in order to not become a part of the out group will begin to emulate their lifestyle which is in turn forming their collective idenitity.

However this idea of in and out groups can change depending on your persepctive, for example the group from Made in Chelsea would consider the cast of rival reality show Geordie Shore as an out group because they are frequently loud, crude and obnoxious and engage in sexually promiscuous behaviour, heavy drinking and partying whilst paying little attention to social norms such as working or family responsibilities. Though this social group differs they have formed their own collective identity and this type of behaviour constructs an image and it is this image that viewers can identify with. The image of this free lifestyle is very appealing Merleau Ponty's theory that "we have an embodied experience with naything in which we use our bodies to create new things for our identity" and by choosing to watch Geordie Shore viewers are having an embodied experiece and developing a sense of belonging and identity.

The influence of reality TV shows is quite significant I believe that the representations we see on the screen are extremes of normal social groups which creates a sense of reality and because people can often aspire to be like the representations which leads to forming a collective identity with the people on screen as well as others who aspire to that lifestyle.