“Y Soy Rebelde cuando…” : uma análise do grupo RBD no Instagram

Abstract

The present study aims to understand how nostalgia and fan culture are mobilized as strategies of engagement and symbolic repositioning in contemporary cultural consumption, through the analysis of the official Instagram profile of the Mexican group RBD (@rbd_musica) between June 16 and December 19, 2022. The research is conducted using Content Analysis as proposed by Bardin (2011), under the theoretical lenses of studies on nostalgia (Pickering and Keightley, 2006; Cui, 2015; Armbruster, 2016), participatory culture and fandom (Jenkins, 1992; 2009; Duffett, 2014), cultural consumption and pop culture (Bourdieu, 2007; Azevedo et al., 2023), and affective bonds between artists and audiences (Baym, 2013; Cavicchi, 2017). The corpus consists of 55 posts organized into three analytical categories: Nostalgia, Affect and Identity (21 posts); Participatory Engagement and Fan Culture (14 posts); and Media Updating and Contemporary Relevance (21 posts). The analysis shows that the mobilization of affective memory, the encouragement of fan participation, and the construction of narratives of contemporary relevance operate in an articulated way to strengthen emotional bonds and promote the repositioning of the group in the post-pandemic context. With this, they concluded that they were using nostalgia as a strategy to engage fans and mobilize support for the comeback tour.