oai:repository.londonmet.ac.uk:927
type: CreativeWork
name: The land of the telenovela in the age of social media : a study of the Brazilian prime-time soap opera and its online mediations from a social semiotic perspective for the purposes of informing communication theory and critical literacy practices
description: This thesis investigated communicational processes of text interaction between the so called novela das oito (lit. eight o’clock soap opera) or the prime-time Brazilian soap opera – also known as telenovela or simply novela – and different groups of viewers, for the purposes of informing communication theory, on the one hand, and critical literacy practices, on the other. The investigated groups of viewers continually consumed this highly popular genre of serialised fiction, whilst also participating in online communities about novelas from a pioneering social network service called Orkut. Selected social theories of language and communication were used to investigate the primary text genre (i.e. the prime-time Brazilian telenovela) and the context where it originates, in relation the secondary communicational genres (i.e. selected Orkut communities about telenovelas) and the respective context where they emerged out of these intertextual interactions. To conduct this investigation, specific notions of text and genre were established in terms of their affordances and limitations, as discussed in Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) and in Kress (2003, 2010) with respect to textual modes of representation, and as developed in English (2011) with respect to genre itself. As such, novelas and online discussions about novelas were analysed here in terms of the specific ways in which genre afforded as well as it limited not only the design, the production and the distribution of both primary and secondary texts, but also their reception (i.e. consumption). For this, an adapted version of English’s analytical framework (ibid.) was developed and employed, with these multimodal texts and genres found to be oriented in specific terms with regard to their social aspects (contextually and discursively), on the one hand, and their material aspects (thematically and semiotically), on the other hand. As a result, a detailed understanding was provided, not only in terms of the specific wa…
abstract: This thesis investigated communicational processes of text interaction between the so called novela das oito (lit. eight o’clock soap opera) or the prime-time Brazilian soap opera – also known as telenovela or simply novela – and different groups of viewers, for the purposes of informing communication theory, on the one hand, and critical literacy practices, on the other. The investigated groups of viewers continually consumed this highly popular genre of serialised fiction, whilst also participating in online communities about novelas from a pioneering social network service called Orkut. Selected social theories of language and communication were used to investigate the primary text genre (i.e. the prime-time Brazilian telenovela) and the context where it originates, in relation the secondary communicational genres (i.e. selected Orkut communities about telenovelas) and the respective context where they emerged out of these intertextual interactions. To conduct this investigation, specific notions of text and genre were established in terms of their affordances and limitations, as discussed in Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) and in Kress (2003, 2010) with respect to textual modes of representation, and as developed in English (2011) with respect to genre itself. As such, novelas and online discussions about novelas were analysed here in terms of the specific ways in which genre afforded as well as it limited not only the design, the production and the distribution of both primary and secondary texts, but also their reception (i.e. consumption). For this, an adapted version of English’s analytical framework (ibid.) was developed and employed, with these multimodal texts and genres found to be oriented in specific terms with regard to their social aspects (contextually and discursively), on the one hand, and their material aspects (thematically and semiotically), on the other hand. As a result, a detailed understanding was provided, not only in terms of the specific wa…
author: Paszkiewicz, George
keywords: 300 Social sciences, 790 Recreational & performing arts
date published: 2015
date modified: 2026-07-24T02:54:20Z
provider: London Metropolitan University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: London Metropolitan University