Television fiction and online fans: communities, practices and life trajectories

Abstract

This project is part of the Center for Telenovela Studies at the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo (CETV-ECA-USP) and includes two objects of study, naturally integrated. The first is the monitoring and analysis of production and transmedia reception in TV fiction, focused by the Ibero-American Observatory of Television Fiction (OBITEL), both in its international and national network. The second object is the online fans, understood by their practices and behaviour, and as a type of audience that seems active and produces content on various social networks. This approach will focus mainly on the figure of the collective fan, active in fan communities on social networks. Both objects consist of theoretical studies with empirical basis. The main goals are to contribute to the advancement of theoretical and practical knowledge on the production and reception of television fiction in social networks and, ultimately, to demonstrate that studies of fans on the internet renew the Latin American tradition of reception studies combining the permanence and the new. (AU)