La (re)construcción televisiva de la realidad. Una comparación entre la ficción norteamericana y la española

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation addresses the interrelations between television fiction and reality, by studying the mechanisms that allow their reciprocal construction. The feedback between television fiction and reality is analyzed from three complementary standpoints: a theoretical perspective; the analysis of audiovisual texts; and conducting an ethnographic study. In addition, the paper includes a comparison between Spain and North America, both, of audiovisual texts and the process of audience reception. The investigagion is divided into three parts. First, it maps the relations between television fiction and reality, describing the feedback mechanisms between the two. Classification of these mechanisms has been done combining inductive and deductive methods, using contributions from consolidated authors, and using a sample of 117 paradigmatic examples. Second, the study focuses on television fiction inspired on reality. After an overview of the TV movies and miniseries in Spain and North America, we conduct a socio-semiotic analysis of the audiovisual text, from a sample of 26 television biopics (14 Spanish and 12 North American). The study identifies strategies for reconstruction of reality in this subgenre and proposes a typology of the television biopic. The comparison between Spanish and North American fiction, allows us to identify common patterns of reconstruction of reality and to explore the differences and similarities between the two traditions. Finally, we have conducted an ethnographic analysis using the focus group technique. This part of the dissertation confronts the results of eight focus groups conducted in Spain and Canada, which explore the interactions of individuals with fictional information, and pays close attention to the didactic potential of television fiction. The focus groups addressed four main areas: television consumption habits; the feedback between fiction and reality; representation and perception of realism; and television fiction inspired by reality. The ethnographic study allows for a confrontation of the proposed mechanisms of interrelation and the textual analysis, with the results obtained from the group interviews.

Date of Award	10 May 2013
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	M. Rosario Lacalle Zalduendo (Director)