Fandom televisivo y construcción de identidad. Análisis de los comentarios de las fans españolas y los community managers

Charo  Lacalle Zalduendo; Deborah  Castro Mariño

doi:10.4185/RLCS-2018-1242

Authors

Charo Lacalle Zalduendo Autonomous University of Barcelona http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0024-6591
Deborah Castro Mariño University of madeira http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7980-0964

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4185/RLCS-2018-1242

Keywords:

Social audience, television fiction, identity, fans, Spain

Abstract

Digital age brings to television fiction viewers a variety of spaces where they can disclose their self-identity and emotions generated by the texts consumed. Methodology. This article analyses 7,849 comments posted by female fans and community managers on 122 sites (forums and social networks) dedicated to the Spanish TV fiction. The 22,301 items generated from the comments analysed explore the emotions aroused by television fiction, such as joy, enthusiasm, sadness, anger, disappointment and nostalgia. Conclusions and discussion. The research confirms the potential of TV fiction to encourage self-reflection on the self-identity of fans. It also identifies forums as the platforms that encourage deeper debates about TV series, despite the popularity of social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Finally, community managers’ comments, which focus on the promotion of TV programmes, disregard the strengthening of the feeling of collective identity.

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Author Biographies

Charo Lacalle Zalduendo, Autonomous University of Barcelona

Charo Lacalle is Professor of Journalism and Director of the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

She holds a Ph.D. degree in Communication Sciences and a Bachelor’s degree in Information Sciences and Philosophy from the same University. Editor of Anàlisi. Quaderns de Comunicació i Cultura (www.analisi.cat).

Coordinator of the Observatory of Spanish Fiction and New Technologies (OFENT, http://ofent.org/) and the Spanish team of the Ibero-American Observatory of Fiction Television (OBITEL, http://obitel.net).

Semiologist and specialist in the analysis of television and the Internet. Lecturer in numerous courses and seminars in Spanish, European and Latin American universities. Member of the scientific committee of various publications on Communication. Evaluator in different Spanish and European university quality assessment agencies.

Author of more than 100 publications in the form of books, book chapters and articles in specialised journals. Her most recent publication include Gender, generation and reception of Spanish television fiction in the digital age (International Journal of Digital Television, 7(2), 2016, 217–231, coauthored with Cristina Pujol) and Promotion of Spanish scripted television on the internet: analyzing broadcast-related websites’ content and social audience” (El profesional de la información, 25(2), 2016, 246-253, coauthored with Deborah Castro).

H-INDEX: 9

Deborah Castro Mariño, University of madeira

Deborah Castro is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (Portugal). Her research interests lie in the fields of television studies, digital media and audience studies. She received a Ph.D. in Communication Studies (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain) sponsored by the scholarship “Formación de Profesorado Universitario” offered by the Spanish Government.

She holds a M.A. in research in communication and journalism (UAB) and a B.A. in journalism (University of Santiago de Compostela).

She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Radio-Television-Film (University of Texas at Austin, USA), and a researcher with the Ibero-American Observatory of Television Fiction (Obitel) and the Observatory of Spanish Television Fiction and New Technologies. Her work has been presented at several venues, such as the annual conferences of the International Communication Association and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Her research is also available in peer-reviewed journals like El Profesional de la Información (coauthored with Charo Lacalle) and Palabra Clave (forthcoming in 2018); and conference proceedings, like Audio Mostly 2017 - ACM (coauthored with Nuno N. Correia and Atau Tanaka).

H-INDEX: 1

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