Abstract
This chapter investigates edutainment (the use of entertainment as pedagogical tool) based on a case study of Who Do You Think You Are?, a documentary series about genealogy in which celebrities go on a journey to retrace their family tree. Originally broadcast by the BBC, Who Do You Think You Are? (2004–) has been adapted in eighteen countries. The Australian version of the franchise (2008–), which is the focus of this chapter, is broadcast on the public service channel SBS, whose charter states that its principal function is “to provide multilingual and multicultural radio, television and digital media services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians” (SBS). According to its producers, one of the main purposes of Who Do You Think You Are? is to teach history by exploring a wide range of eras and events through the celebrities’ genealogical investigations. But to invite viewers to learn, the program uses entertainment techniques such as including celebrities, storytelling, and emotions, instead of relying on more traditional techniques used in formal classroom environments. The aim of this chapter is to explain how this edutainment model constructs a particular version of learning. In the text, representations of learning are crystallized around the intricate figure of the celebrity, who performs as his/her famous public self, his/her authentic private self, and as learner, researcher, detective, and pedagogical tool all at once. This chapter first explores the pedagogical relationship between the celebrity-learner on-screen and the implied viewer-learner watching the program to demonstrate that the celebrity functions both as image of the learner and as pedagogical tool. The second part focuses more specifically on the use of storytelling and on the representation of learning as a detective investigation. The last section shows how Who Do You Think You Are? engages with the notion of learning as a bodily and emotional process and how this representation of learning as physical and emotional is linked to what is taught and to the representation of teaching.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
Barker, M., & Austin, T. (2000). From Antz to Titanic: Reinventing film analysis. London: Pluto Press.
Bartsch, A., & Schneider, F. M. (2014). Entertainment and politics revisited: How non-escapist forms of entertainment can stimulate political interest and information seeking. Journal of Communication, 64(3), 369–396.
Briggs, A. (1995). The history of broadcasting in the United Kingdom: Volume I: The birth of broadcasting. London: Oxford University Press.
Bruckman, A. (2002). Studying the amateur artist: A perspective on disguising data collected in human subjects research on the internet. Ethics and Information Technology, 4(3), 217–231.
Bruner, J. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bryant, J., & Vorderer, P. (2006). Psychology of entertainment. Mahwah: Taylor & Francis.
Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Buckingham, D., & Bragg, S. (2003). Young people, media and personal relationships. Available from https://www.asa.org.uk/Resource~Centre/~/media/Files/ASA/Reports/ASA_Young_people_media_personal_relationships_Nov_2003.ashx. Accessed 22 Oct 2015.
Buckingham, D., & Bragg, S. (2004). Young people, sex and the media: The facts of life? London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cold Case. (2003–2010). CBS
Collins, A., & Halverson, R. (2009). Rethinking education in the age of technology. New York: Teachers College Press.
Coren, V. (2011, April 17). Jamie Oliver’s dream was a nightmare. The Guardian. [Online]. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/17/victoria-coren-jamie-oliver-catherine-zeta-jones. Accessed 22 Oct 2015.
Ellcessor, E. (2012). Tweeting @feliciaday: Online social media, convergence, and subcultural stardom. Cinema Journal, 51, 46–66.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.
Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. New York: Routledge.
Gottschall, K. 2011. May you live normally ever after! – Popular film as pedagogy: Youth, subjectivity & Australian cinema. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Charles Sturt University.
Hansen, A., Cottle, S., Negrine, R., & Newbold, C. (1998). Mass communication research methods. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hartley, J. (1999). Uses of television. London: Routledge.
Hinds, L. (1991). Using entertainment television to educate: A case study. The Journal of Popular Culture, 25(2), 117–126.
Horton, D., & Wohl, R. (1956). Mass communication and para-social interaction. Psychiatry, 19, 215–229.
Jamie’s Dream School. (2011). Channel 4.
Klein, B. (2011). Entertaining ideas: Social issues in entertainment television. Media Culture Society, 33(6), 905–921.
Klein, B. (2013). Entertainment-education for the media-saturated: Audience perspectives on social issues in entertainment programming. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(1), 43–57.
Klimmt, C., Hartman, T., & Schramm, H. (2006). Parasocial interactions and relationships. In J. Bryant & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Psychology of entertainment (pp. 291–313). Mahwah: Taylor & Francis.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Kozloff, S. (1992). Narrative theory and television. In R. C. Allen (Ed.), Channels of discourse, reassembled: Television and contemporary criticism (pp. 42–73). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Lesser, G. S. (1975). Children and television: Lessons from Sesame Street. New York: Vintage Books.
Lury, K. (2005). Interpreting television. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Marwick, A., & boyd, d. (2011). To see and be seen: Celebrity practice on Twitter. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 17(2), 139–158.
McFadden, M. (2014). “People shouldn’t be forgotten”: Cold case’s pursuit of history's ghosts. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 42(3), 139–149.
Monaco, J. (2000). How to read a film: The world of movies, media, and multimedia: Language, history, theory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Morrow, R. W. (2006). Sesame Street and the reform of children’s television. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Muntean, N., & Petersen, A. 2009. Celebrity Twitter: Strategies of intrusion and disclosure in the age of technoculture. M/C Journal [Online]. 12(5). Available from: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/194. Accessed 29 Jan 2015.
Nichols, B. (2001). Introduction to documentary (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Accessed 27 Feb 2015.
Noble, G., & Noble, E. (1979). A study of teenagers’ uses and gratifications of the Happy Days shows. Media Information Australia, 11, 17–24.
Oliver, M. B., & Raney, A. A. (2014). An introduction to the special issue: Expanding the boundaries of entertainment research. Journal of Communication, 64(3), 361–368.
Parsemain, A. (2015). Crocodile tears? Authenticity in televisual pedagogy. M/C Journal [Online], 18(1). Available from: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/931. Accessed 8 Apr 2015.
Sarnoff, D. (1968). Looking ahead: The papers of David Sarnoff. New York: McGraw-Hill.
SBS. (2013). Who do you think you are? episodes [Online]. Available from: http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/whodoyouthinkyouare/episodes/page/season/5. Accessed 29 Jan 2015.
SBS. Our charter [Online]. Available from: http://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/corporate/index/id/25/h/SBS-Charter. Accessed 9 Sept 2015.
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (2003). Discourses in place: Language in the material world. London: Routledge.
Singhal, A., & Rogers, E. M. (2002). A theoretical agenda for entertainment-education. Communication Theory, 12(2), 117–135.
Singhal, A., Rogers, E. M., & Brown, W. J. (1993). Harnessing the potential of entertainment-education telenovelas. International Communication Gazette, 51(1), 1–18.
Thomas, S. (2014). Celebrity in the ‘Twitterverse’: History, authenticity and the multiplicity of stardom. Situating the ‘newness’ of Twitter. Celebrity Studies, 5(3), 242–255.
Tulloch, J., & Lupton, D. (1997). Television, AIDS and risk: A cultural studies approach to health communication. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Tulloch, J., & Moran, A. (1986). A country practice: ‘Quality soap’. Sydney: Currency Press.
Vorderer, P. (2001). It’s all entertainment-sure. But what exactly is entertainment? Communication research, media psychology, and the explanation of entertainment experiences. Poetics, 29(4), 247–261.
Vorderer, P., Klimmt, C., & Ritterfeld, U. (2004). Enjoyment: At the heart of media entertainment. Communication Theory, 14(4), 388–408.
Who Do You Think You Are? (2004–). BBC.
Who Do You Think You Are? (2008–). SBS.
Who Do You Think You Are? (2013a, April 2). Series 5, episode 1, Adam Hills. SBS.
Who Do You Think You Are? (2013b, April 9). Series 5, episode 2, Asher Keddie. SBS.
Who Do You Think You Are? (2013c, April 23). Series 5, episode 4, Michael Caton. SBS.
Who Do You Think You Are? (2013d, May 14). Series 5, episode 7, Rove McManus. SBS.
Who Do You Think You Are?. (2013e, May 21). Series 5, episode 8, John Howard. SBS.
Who Do You Think You Are? (2014, July 9). Series 6, episode 1, Andrew Denton. SBS.
Wirth, W. (2006). Involvement. In J. Bryant & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Psychology of entertainment (pp. 199–213). Mahwah: Taylor & Francis.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Parsemain, A.L. (2016). To Educate and Entertain: Representations of Learning in the Australian Version of Who Do You Think You Are? . In: Readman, M. (eds) Teaching and Learning on Screen. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57872-3_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57872-3_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-57871-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-57872-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)