Prácticas comunicativas de los usuarios de videojuegos en España, 2017-2018

Abstract

This thesis intends to examine the fan community aspect of video game users in Spain, examining their communicative practices and the production and consumption of secondary texts about videogames, as well as the community's relationship with the textual production of mainstream videogames media. Through the analysis of these practices, the thesis will check if the Spanish community of video game users exists as such in the first place and if it does, whether it is a community of knowledge built around videogame consumption praxis and secondary text - guides, videos, reviews, comments, fanfiction, social network activity or others - production and comsumption praxis._x000D_ This requires a series of steps: First, we want to determine whether videogame users consider their videogame consumption habits as something that differentiates them as individuals from the social continuum by and based on that consumption, determining whether this differentiation leads to a feeling of belonging to a community. _x000D_ Once the existence of this community is -hopefully- established, we want to examine the habits of production and consumption of secondary texts about videogames of such a community. That is, the production and consumption of its own discourse by the community, which would constitute it as a community of knowledge centered on a specific type of cultural consumption._x000D_ This examination will require the comparison of different types of textual production by videogame users, including the production of secondary texts such as reviews, analysis or prescriptive texts about consumed videogames, comments and conversation about these secondary texts on websites and social networks used by the community, as well as textual artifacts that, beyond analyzing or valuing certain videogames or aspects of videogames, propose extensions to the fiction of said videogames, and other textual manifestations of Fan communities according to Jenkins' definitions. _x000D_ Following the analysis of these textual manifestations, the thesis will also analyze the value given to them within the community of and their use as social and cultural capital within it following Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital.

Date of Award	8 Feb 2021
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	David Vidal Castell (Director)