Womens 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
This thes is examines the discourse of people reaction on Betty 's sexual act in Big Brother Africarnreal ity show in onlinc media and message boards. The foc us is on how online med ia users wri ternand ta lk about Betty's "sex act" on this rea lity show, the discourses they draw on, how theyrnconstruct and position women in our society. The study drew on a sample of users' comments fromrnfour online media sites in Ethiopia, Addis Zeren.com, Big Brother Africa, Dire Tube, and ThernReporter, ra nging from June to September, 2013. A corpus of 120commcnts was ana lyzed us ingrnthe Criti cal Discourse Analysis technique described by Norman Fai rclough. With in the sampledrntexts reveal that there is many problematic frames and representation of Betty in particular womenrnin general. The react ion is outlined with patriarchal contexts. The analys is of the commentsrndemonstrates Betty's sexual act was generally considered to be a di shonoring and shameful actrnwithin the actual text of online media users' reaction and retort, although there are some neutralrnlanguages, several of the comments directly compared Betty's action with prostitutes. Besides, torncounter the act, many online media users resorted to hegemonic di scou rses comprisingrnpatriarehali sl11, ostracizing Betty's sexual act. Most of the discourses mobilized in forum tried torndeprive Betty of her power to control and decide over her body and sexuality by excluding her asrna deviant. The findings also indicate that onl ine med ia users partly used patriarchal di scourses onrnwomen 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.rnThey hurl ed a lot about unfairness of the public reaction against her, whi ch they describe as "soc ialrntyranny". They dubbed her critics as hypocrites who admonish someth ing what they do in private,rnin closed doors.