Therefore, the media must be considered as collaborators in the construction of personal identity by taking on a socializing role (Giddens, 1997; Thompson, 1998) from positions as authority figures (Ericson et al., 1989). The destabilisation of the self in a postmodern scene which is discursively fragmented (Gergen, 1992), the uncertainty of liquid modernity (Bauman, 2009), or the sensation of omni-crisis in the global risk society (Hardt and Negri, 2005; Beck, 2009), increase the media’s power and its effects when faced with the subjects’ needs for an articulated discourse. They show them who they can and/or must be, how they should act in the presence of the rest, and what is expected of them.

Vicarious learning (Bandura, 1982; Bandura and Walters, 1963) resulting from this entire process implies that the individual internalises what is and is not viewed favorably by society in determined situations. The media propose a series of conducts, behaviours, and opinions within a set catalogue to the individual, these are expressed in an exemplary way, using a corresponding punishment or reward. According to Guattari and Rolnik (2006), the exact role of some contemporary media is to be one of the many “collective facilities,” implying that they are a tool for social anchoring by means of an extension of power. This normative dimension inherent in the discourse is conveyed through the media’s ability to shape the subject while anchoring it to the social body. This learning reduces uncertainty through information integration strategies and is broadcasted, consumed, and processed through symbolic plastic models that propose an identity configuration based on social codes of adaptation, which are shared through media (Fiske and Neuberg, 1990).

The television genre known as Reality Show is usually translated as telerrealidad in Spanish, or the term “espectáculo de lo real” (Menéndez, 2016: 230). Although it can be divided into different subgenres, it encompasses “all those contemporary media manifestations in which what is real is substituted by fiction or confused with it” (Campos, 2016: 33). Perales (2011: 121) defines the genre more precisely as those “shows where cohabitation between non-professional actors who react spontaneously try to outdo and survive their opponents through constant competition and are exposed to the gaze of strategically placed cameras.” Reality Shows are the evolution from Paleotelevision to Neotelevision (Eco, 1986: 200), the cameras stop coming out to find what is happening in the real world to allow reality in television to (re)produce and (re)create itself.

The Reality Show originated from the North American programme American Family (PBS, 1973), in which the Loud family was filmed for seven months. The format has since introduced new focuses, which revolve around specific elements such as confinement or survival, the search for talent or self-improvement, the participation of anonymous people or the inclusion of famous personalities, the use of the audience as a judge or the participation of experts on a jury. This fragmentation of the genre into different subgenres has led to a terminological constellation or “taxonomic cosmos” (Menéndez, 2016: 232) which includes terms such as Talk Show, Docu Show, Coaching Show, Talent Show or Dating Show, among others (Ramírez and Gordillo, 2013).

The dating show focuses on the search for a partner among its participants and constitutes a format that is on the rise. At present, dating shows include several diverse programmes, which range from simple flirting on a blind date, the search for a serious partner to serious competition for a marriage proposal (Zurbriggen and Morgan, 2006). It is a subgenre that has traditionally explored heterosexual relationships between a man and a woman, although there are increasingly more programmes that have opened up this prospect to homosexual relationships. On the whole, the premises of the