Social TV: o laço social no backchannel de The X-Files

Abstract

The convergence environment has decisively changed the ways of thinking, producing, distributing and consuming television. It is from this context that thesocial TV gets configured; the phenomenon is characterized by the content sharing (comments, memes, videos, photos, montages, etc.) made through the social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, etc.) and the second screen applications (TVShow Time, TV Tag, Viggle, etc.) synchronously to the programming griddisplay. By establishing a symbiotic relationship between the television and the cyberspace, the phenomenon potentializes and reconfigures the conversation around the television content and the collective experience. In this sense, this master thesis aims to discuss how the social TV reinforces the concept of social bond developed by Wolton (1996). In other words, if the author proposed the understanding of the social bond as a shared experience that approachesthe viewers and the different communities that constitute a society, establishing then a common knowledge among them, the phenomenon not only enhances this aspect, but also provides the formation of momentary communities and collaborative webs in the backchannel.In this context, the social TV actions adopted by the american channel Fox to engage the viewers and the way the publications dialog with the fictional universe of the series The X-Files were analyzed. Created by Chris Carter, the plot is starred by the FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Mulder and Scully are investigators of unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena, known as x-files. Therefore, we conducted a study on the strategies promoted by the american broadcaster for the episodes of the The X-Files tenth season and analyzed the content (comments, memes, photos, montages, etc.) shared by the interacting viewers on Twitter during the exhibition of the attraction. In this way, we concluded that, by interlacing the TV stream and the always on temporality of the Twitter, the social TV reinforces the social side of Wolton (1996) and re-signifies the television experience, allowing new forms of participation, collaboration and expansion of the fictional universe.