A case study in transmedia reception: Fan communities on Facebook and social topics in the brazilian telenovela Passione

Abstract

The article begins by showing the main concerns, concepts and theories that have characterized Latin American studies on television reception and how the intensity of the transformations in contemporary communication environment requires an adjustment of focus in the present of the “network society” and its “media ecology”. Hereafter, the article presents two parts that respectively analyze the research of television reception in the challenges of the new media in face of the traditions of these studies, and what is new in the methodology of the reception of new media. To provide of what would be the main methodological challenges, the text presents an empirical example of the new practices of audiences of television fiction, identified through studies generated within the project of OBITEL , discussing some results of an exploratory research on transmedia reception of fans on Facebook about Passione, the most watched telenovela in Brazil in 2010.