Director of the Center for Theory, Dr. David Arditi just published an essay in Popular Communication:

“The Voice: non-disclosure agreements and the hidden political economy of reality TV“

When aspiring recording artists audition for NBC’s The Voice, they sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for the opportunity to audition. Part of this NDA stipulates that they will pay a 500,000 USD penalty for every instance in which they disclose information about the show’s business practices. In this paper, I present NDAs as a mechanism used in reality television, and throughout society, for powerful wealthy interests to silence subordinates. To do this I use the case study of The Voice to demonstrate how the show conceals precariousand exploitative labor practices. Most of the current literature on NDAs is located in Business disciplines and focuses on the business benefits of having employees sign NDAs. This paper intervenes in this literature from a sociological perspective by exploring NDAs as social institutions deployed by the Culture Industry to exploit the labor of cultural workers.