Genre and Age in the Reception of Television Fiction

This article presents the findings of an audience research conducted with 86 young Spanish people aged 15 to 29 years. The investigation examines the modes of reception of television fiction, and the impact of the shows on the viewers. Friends’ influence on the choice of program, and the tendency to use social networks to comment on the shows and to talk about themselves, underline the crucial role played by TV fiction and new technologies in sociali- zation processes. While most participants criticized the propensity of television fiction to build extreme stereotypes, they also showed a clear predilection for Spanish programs, and admitted that their characters often offer inspiration to face everyday problems.

International Journal of Digital Television, 2016

Media convergence has considerably modified television-viewing practices. The interaction of the television with second screens has generated new ways of communicating between viewers, which they do while simultaneously watching television. This study combines focus groups and questionnaires to examine, from a generational perspective, the relationship between female viewers and Spanish television fiction and the resulting interactions conducted both face-to-face and through new technologies. The results question the view that female members of the digital generation interviewed watch media products in isolation and demonstrate that the social aspect of television viewing is one of its greatest pleasures. In general terms, our contribution confirms the influence of the generation gap on viewers’ preferences and their different ways of watching television. Therefore, the solidarity established between women to maintain and prolong viewing pleasure helps to mitigate the digital gap between older and younger female participants.

griss.org

The construction of online gender identities around television fiction has been dominated by studies on eminently masculine cult fandoms. This article attempts to overcome this through the specific examination of the construction of online identities of women on social networks and forums dedicated to Spanish television fiction. The methodology employed combines manual techniques (gathering the comments) and computational processes (ATLAS.ti). The results of the analysis reveal that unlike cult fandoms, the female participants of our study do not seek to claim an identity. Instead, they reveal their desire to express and share sentiments and emotions generated through the interrelationship between the programmes and their daily lives. Female cultural identities are not used politically or as a claim.

Participations, 2012

This article aims to analyze the transmedia narratives and the levels of involvement with their audience of two different television series. In the Spanish and British markets, TV shows like El Barco (2011, present) or Skins (2007-2011) show a particular transmedia narrative and audience interaction with the fictional plot. Following the contributions to the field of three authors (Beeson, 2005; Davidson 2008; Scolari, 2009), this paper proposes a methodology for analysing these two transmedia narratives and audience involvement with them along four vectors: 1) The relationship between story and medium, 2) Narrative aspects (setting, characters, theme and plot), 3) Intertextuality, and 4) Distribution and accessibility to the audience. Using this methodology, this article gives an overview of two of the most popular television fictions with transmedia narratives in the British and Spanish markets. The analysis of these two markets shows the encouraging future for transmedia narratives in the current television industry, while concluding that the effectiveness of the expansion of these fictional universes appears when finding and fulfilling their audiences’ hopes of engagement.

The ninth OBITEL Yearbook 2015 elects as topic of the year “gender relations in television fiction”. The main goal is to observe how fictions represent and incorporate in their plots the intense changes that have undergone sexuality and affection in our societies. The analysis addresses the construction of characters and the heteronormative and homonormative relationships, as well as the various nuances with which the feminine and the masculine are represented in TV fiction.

1994

In the process of industrialisation media and communication were subjecled to the same basic structure of transport inherent in the telegraph and the railway. This led to categorisation based on the principle of the division of labour, into the central production, the distribution and the reception of the media. (2) The Combining of Communication with Consumption With the expansion of industrial production, all products are consumed. This means that as many people as possible have products at their disposal, which they acquire both in the same manner and in a highly individualised fashion. With the electronic media, particularly with television, individual consumption of similar offers is regarded as self-evident right from the beginning. The mechanism of the individualisation of media-

2014

Report on the A4U project "Los personajes jóvenes en la ficción televisiva" [Young characters in television fiction]. M. Fedele

European Journal of Communication, 1986

This article analyses discussions of an episode of Dallas by focus groups of different ethnic origins in Israel and the United States. It identifies four rhetorical mechanisms by which viewers may 'involve' themselves in or 'distance' themselves from the story: referential v. critical framings; real v .play keyings; collective' or universal v. personal referents; and normative v. value-free evaluations. Use of these mechanisms varied across the groups, and when the cultures were arrayed along a multidimensional involvement scale overseas viewers appeared to be more involved in the programme than Americans. Possible roles for involvement in the process of viewer susceptibility to programme messages are then discussed.

The rise of television drama in the late nineties challenged comedy as the most popular and resilient genre of fiction. The diversity of themes and growing complexity of new narratives have relegated family representations –key to comedy's success-to contextualize sentimental and sexual relationships and, to a lesser extent, the work sphere of female characters. This article analyses the context and family relations of 709 female characters represented, with varying degrees of importance, in 84 programs of Spanish television fiction (series, serials, TV movies, miniseries and sketches) premiered in 2012 and 2013. The approach combines quantitative (SPSS coding) and qualitative (socio-semiotics and script theory) methods. The analysis reveals that Spanish television fiction offers a complex picture of family relationships, which mixes clichés and stereotypes, while trying to capture reality. Generational conflicts are the most common misunderstandings in everyday representations of female characters, although most of the women generally have the support of their families to address problems and difficulties of their exciting fictional experiences.