Research Seminar: ‘Influence, implement and protect: broadcasters and policies for care in unscripted television’

This event is part of the School of Media and Communication research seminar series.

This research talk draws on the first set of interview data taken from interviews with senior executives, senior compliance leads, heads of production and commissioners across most of the main UK broadcasters.

It forms part of the wider Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research project ‘ReCARETV: Reality Television, working practices and duties of care’ which aims to holistically examine ‘duties of care’ and working practices from policy through to production and participation in unscripted television.

Partly as a response to the 2021 changes to Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code, broadcasters now implement robust guidance on duties of care towards participants in programme making.

The responsibility for this process works across a number of sites from legal compliance, safeguarding, human resources, risk management, through to commissioning and production, and has also seen the development of ‘welfare executives’.

This first sift through the data draws out some of the main themes emerging from this group around issues such as the ethical commitment to ‘doing the right thing’, managing personal workloads, and protecting the editorial priorities and commercial reputation of the brand.

The paper will also reflect on the importance of understanding this data through the politics of ‘studying up’ in media industries research.

Helen Wood is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Aston, Birmingham UK.

She is the primary investigator of the AHRC project ReCARETV: Reality television, working practices and duties of care (2023-2026). She has published widely on television, class, gender and popular culture and her latest book is Audience (2024) Routledge.