Viewers use TV dramas to confirm preexisting suspicions about what is real.

Evidence

Rankin is discussing the “flipping the enemy” strategy and indirectly critiquing 24 (and a smattering of Hollywood films) for portraying Americans as complicit in terrorism. He articulates a preference for Sleeper Cell over other TV dramas because Muslims are the sole enemy; no others are implicated along the way; no one else diffuses the potency of an Arab/Muslim threat. This post reflects how TV dramas can be used to make claims to “truth” and “realness”—and how viewers can use them to confirm their own suspicions about what is real. The emphasis here is not on an appreciation for representing diverse Muslims but rather on educating the public on the War on Terror and the Arab/Muslim terrorist threat. This viewer seeks programming that affirms an “us” and a “them” and appreciates a drama that reinscribes conceptions of the domestic and foreign wherein the foreign is signified as a threat. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 222

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how viewers treat fiction as evidence and seek programming that confirms rather than challenges their worldview — the confirmation-bias function of entertainment.
• XREF: connects to: A TV hoax became real to conspiracy theorists who adopted it — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 314; Hollywood plots validate paranoids by confirming their delusions are real conspiracies — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 217