Women's Body as a Site of Contestation: The Case of Betty in Big 'Brother Africa Reality Show and a Backlash it Triggers among the Ethiopian Social Media Users
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Date
2015-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This thes is examines the discourse of people reaction on Betty 's sexual act in Big Brother Africa
real ity show in onlinc media and message boards. The foc us is on how online med ia users wri te
and ta lk about Betty's "sex act" on this rea lity show, the discourses they draw on, how they
construct and position women in our society. The study drew on a sample of users' comments from
four online media sites in Ethiopia, Addis Zeren.com, Big Brother Africa, Dire Tube, and The
Reporter, ra nging from June to September, 2013. A corpus of 120commcnts was ana lyzed us ing
the Criti cal Discourse Analysis technique described by Norman Fai rclough. With in the sampled
texts reveal that there is many problematic frames and representation of Betty in particular women
in general. The react ion is outlined with patriarchal contexts. The analys is of the comments
demonstrates Betty's sexual act was generally considered to be a di shonoring and shameful act
within the actual text of online media users' reaction and retort, although there are some neutral
languages, several of the comments directly compared Betty's action with prostitutes. Besides, to
counter the act, many online media users resorted to hegemonic di scou rses comprising
patriarehali sl11, ostracizing Betty's sexual act. Most of the discourses mobilized in forum tried to
deprive Betty of her power to control and decide over her body and sexuality by excluding her as
a deviant. The findings also indicate that onl ine med ia users partly used patriarchal di scourses on
women and views of the world are constructed by encoding particular men-made ideologies. Although not 3s much in number as Betty's deriders, some sympathetic views have also been aired.
They hurl ed a lot about unfairness of the public reaction against her, whi ch they describe as "soc ial
tyranny". They dubbed her critics as hypocrites who admonish someth ing what they do in private,
in closed doors.
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Keywords
Women's Body