![]() Both of these factors have the capacity to significantly alter their life situation. They are exposed to millions of people and, crucially, have the opportunity to win half a million dollars. Participating in the show represents an enormous event in their lives. The program often focuses on contrasts between the participants’ different approaches to survival and usually ends with one of the participants tapping out and returning home. The participants are shown in a wide range of circumstances, which elicits footage that shows them being variously confident, reflective, worried, elated, depressed, and emotional. The production team then edits the material, chooses interesting parts, and creates audience-friendly episodes. Through an impressive array of camera equipment, participants video-record their own experiences for up to 5 h a day. They have no idea how the other participants are faring. Participants are sometimes required to leave the show if their body weight becomes dangerously low. Getting enough food is generally the biggest challenge, and all participants lose quite a lot of their body weight (often 25–35%) during their time on the program (often 70–90 days for the winners). The participants are given basic equipment by the production team, and as a supplement, they can choose 10 survival tools (e.g., an ax, a saw, and fishing hooks and line). In previous seasons, only the winner would claim the prize of $500,000 USD. Season 7 was promoted as the “Million Dollar Challenge,” where any participant staying for 100 days would win the money. In season 4, the concept involved pairs being “alone” in the wilderness, and in season 5, the contestants were all former participants. ![]() Over the course of the program’s life, the conditions and challenges have gradually been made harder, as the locations have moved from Vancouver Island and Patagonia (seasons 1–4) to Mongolia and the Canadian Arctic (seasons 5–7). The show premiered in June 2015 and, at the time of writing, has run for seven seasons-each of which lasts 10–13 weeks. While they are alone in the wilderness, they have an emergency phone to call for help or “tap out,” should they wish to be brought back to civilization. With a strictly limited amount of equipment, contestants must deal with challenging weather conditions, wild animals, hunger, and their own solitude. Their challenge is to stay out longer than the other competitors, with whom they have no contact. The show features a group of 10 highly motivated and skilled, but otherwise “ordinary” contestants, who are individually placed alone in a wilderness area (e.g., northern Vancouver Island). There is an undeniably strong “impression management tension” between the selves that participants wanted to project and the narratives that were constructed by the Alone program’s producers.Īlone is an American reality television series that runs on the History Channel. Finally, the theme of gendered approaches to living outdoors shone through in ways that were very complex, overlapping, and non-binary. Third, the contestants were able to continue shaping and “repairing” their identities through their own social media outlets after the program. Second, the boundary between the frontstage and the backstage was highly blurred. The findings first showed that the contestants were performing to multiple audiences, such as their families, the public, the producers, and even God. The analysis was driven by theory (Goffman’s The Presentation of Self conceptual framework) and an inductive thematic analysis, which took place in a cyclical fashion through interpretation meetings at the end of each of the six series that were watched. The research team employed an explorative case study methodology, which allowed them to watch hours of publicly available official video clips from the History Channel’s Alone YouTube channel. This study sought to understand the degree to which participants are able to shape their public identities through the video footage they shot and that was subsequently edited in Alone’s cutting room. Notably, there is no camera crew, and the contestants must film themselves everyday the production team creates a weekly program that marks the journey of each individual. The show features 10 contestants who are vying to outlast each other while living off the land. 2University of Southern Denmark, Odense, DenmarkĪlone is an American reality television series on the History Channel.1Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Oslo, Norway.Simon Beames 1* Søren Andkjær 2 † Aage Radmann 1 †
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