A METHOLODOGY FOR TELENOVELA RESEARCH. Maria Immacolata Vassallo de Lopes School of Communications and Arts University of São Paulo - Brazil

Transcription

1 A METHOLODOGY FOR TELENOVELA RESEARCH Maria Immacolata Vassallo de Lopes School of Communications and Arts University of São Paulo - Brazil

2 2 A METHODOLOGY FOR TELENOVELA RESEARCH 1. Starting Points The purpose of this paper is to summarise the methodological strategy utilised in the research project titled Reception of the Telenovela* A Methodological Exploration. Based on a lack of satisfaction with communication studies and its relationships with other social and human sciences, this project was prepared with the intention of conducting a multimethodological study of Latin American mediations theory, and can be seen as a constructive response to that insatisfaction. The project was based on four proposals, which are truly challenges, and which were articulated through an empirical study of the reception of the telenovela. The first proposal was to conduct a multi-disciplinary project. Since this assumption has more than a mere honorary or rhetorical nature, to borrow Kaplan s helpful expression, we were required to dedicate much of the three years that we had to conduct the project to the organisation of the research team and the definition of an integrated and multi-disciplinary theoretical and methodological base. If, on one hand, the theoretical identification of the project is provided by the title itself, as a reception study conducted within Jesús Martín-Barbero s (1987) theoretical framework, on the other hand, the methodological identification, as the title itself also indicates, proposes methodological exploration. Thus the second proposal of the project consisted in the construction of a multi-methodological strategy within a reception study. The centrality that this methodological search for mediations assumes in the project is translated through a permanent reflection on the nature of the methods, exercising what we will call the work of convergent combination of methods. These types of studies which make concrete use of a multimethodological design, seeking the integration of methods which have various orientations, are part of a contemporary movement that is critical of the disciplinary compartmentation that characterised the historical construction of the social and human sciences. This movement proposes concrete measures for disciplinary restructuration (Wallerstein et al., 1996). We understand this movement as being one of disciplinary opening and convergence 1. *Telenovela is the Brazilian and Spanish term for soap opera. The third proposal, which also constituted a challenge, was to conduct what we call the comprehensive study of reception in the field of communication. As we said, the 1 The concrete challenges of the multimethodological design presented by this project are at the base of a text in which we discuss the challenges of the paradigms of globalization and of the complexity for the studies of communication. See Lopes(1998). 2

3 3 current state of communication research led us to emphasise the distinctive contribution of Latin-American mediations theory to the current reception studies. This contribution is exactly an attempt to break with fragmented and simplified theoretical approaches to communication, establishing reception as a theoretical perspective integrated to the processes of production, product and audience. Reception comes to be seen as a privileged moment in the production of meaning, refuting the reproductivist conception and establishing that "more than a media, communication today is a question of mediations, that is of culture" (Martín- Barbero,1989:19). The result is a complex investigative design which involves the structure and the dynamic of the production of messages, the uses and appropriations of these messages and their textual composition. This theoretical perspective goes beyond the proposal to add qualitative audience analysis + content analysis which currently characterises the international trend in reception studies. (Jensen, 1990). The principal challenge which Latin American reception studies confront is in the methodological translation of mediations theory into empirical investigation projects. In this project, we elect four mediations: everyday family life, subjectivity, genre and videotechnique and we accept the task of making them observable and documenting them empirically. The principal goal is to show how these mediations, each with its own specificity, converge in the reception process, which is taken as the locus of construction of meaning and not of its simple reproduction. Finally, the fourth proposal was to elect the telenovela as the object of a reception study. In this endeavour, we encountered both the renovations brought by the current cultural studies, as well as the sociology of communication to the phenomena of communication. Assuming the genre of melodrama as the cultural matrix of signification, the telenovela is understood as a construct which activates in the audience a cultural and technical competence due to the construction of a common repertoire, which becomes a shared repertoire of identity representations, whether about social reality, or about the individual. It is important to emphasise from the start that this repertoire between production and audience was built over the 35-year history of the telenovela in Brazil, and more precisely, the daily viewing of the telenovelas on the Rede Globo (Globo Network). From this point of view, the telenovela would constitute itself as a conspicuous representative of late Brazilian modernity, a thesis which we place under the form of one of our theoretical hypotheses. On a more concrete plane, the reception of the telenovela becomes a cultural and communication experience which permits a study that can combine context and reading of reception. 2. What was expected to be achieved The four proposals or premises presented were transformed into the following general objectives: 3

4 4 1) To investigate the processes and practices of reception of a single telenovela, A Indomada (The Indomitable), by a group of four families: a family from a "favela" (slum, usually on a hill), one from the urban periphery, a middle class family and an upper-middle class family. The study considered four mediations: everyday family life, subjectivity, genre and videotechnique. 2) To create and explore a multi-methodological strategy, inspired by the theoretical perspective of mediations, which can contribute to the advancement of reception studies. I. THE THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE MEDIATIONS 1. RECEPTION STUDIES Use of the theoretical perspective of mediations was basically adopted because it constitutes a renovation within the tradition of reception studies, with which it shares both common points as well as diversions. This was clear through the bibliographic route taken by the study and which was the source of theoretical and methodological seminars which we conducted at the initial phase of the project, and at which we considered the following theoretical currents: study of effects, study of uses and gratifications, study of literary criticism, cultural studies and reception studies The Traditions of Reception Studies Reviewing the reference frameworks of the study, the interest of which is the nexus between the communication media and the audiences, we note a certain consensus between authors in recognising the following principal currents: study of effects, study of uses and gratifications, study of literary criticism, cultural studies and reception studies. The latter constitute the most recent framework and emerge as the point of confluence of other traditions, while they simultaneously maintain disagreements and critical differences. In addition, these approaches differentiate themselves in their theoretical presumptions, methodological choices and their concept of reception, and even stem from different disciplinary fields. We would like to highlight that the current reception studies in Latin America, specifically those which are aligned to the theoretical perspective of mediations, are heirs of this long tradition, which itself is built upon struggle and with it has ruptures and continuities. We agree with Curran (1998) who, in a recent debate with Morley (1998), criticised the pretence to a homogenising character found in the label of the current reception studies given that they present distinct trends. In addition, that author warns of the lack of historic vision in these studies which, he believes, do not reinvent the wheel, and must be understood within a process more properly of renovation than of innovation of communication studies. 4

5 The Modern Latin American Tradition of Reception Studies Latin American reception studies are very recent. They began to emerge in the 1980s, within a strong critical theoretical movement that sought to make an alternative reflection about communication and mass culture through the Gramscian perspective, as an alternative to the functional, semiotic and Frankfurtian analyses that were dominant until then. Above all, it was within the theme of popular cultures that a complex and multifaceted reception theory began to be developed, having as a basic current of reflection the shift from media to mediations (Martín-Barbero, 1987) and of the processes of cultural hybridisation (Garcia Canclini, 1990). Today the theoretical perspective of mediations and hybridisation has a central presence in reception research throughout Latin America. We identify in the Brazilian reception studies of the beginning of the 1980s a type of late theorisation, in relation to the advanced reflection that was made through the theory of mediations. They were late theories because they were marked by a strong dualist scheme: they either gave exclusive privilege to the modes of reelaboration/resistance/refunctionalisation of the cultural content of the popular classes or they considered these contents as completely moulded by the ideological action of the dominant classes, through mass media. However, in little more than five years this situation was overcome by the incorporation of the mediation perspective to Brazilian reception studies. Nevertheless, what seems to persist here is the methodological insuitabilty of empirical research in front of the construction of a complex theoretical problematic about reception processes. The methodological designs, both of observation and of collection, as well as the analysis of data, continue in general to be narrow and can be summarised in the lack of a multi-methodological strategy which complexity corresponds to the object of its theorisation. As a consequence, the analysis winds up outside the theoretical model and sometimes is even forced to correspond to it. What contrasts sharply to this situation of Brazilian reception research is the formation of research-teams in various Latin American countries that worked on integrated and multidisciplinary projects. This is the case of projects studying telenovela in Colombia (Martín- Barbero and Munhoz, 1992) and México (González,1991), and those concerning active reception in Chile (Fuenzalida, 1987), children and television in México (Orozco, 1992), among others. The central and common element of all these projects was the methodological experiment, through which they sought to advance in the technical procedures of empirical investigation in order to make them compatible with the complexity of the theoretical framework of mediations. Another general characteristic was the global design of the investigation process, involving the structure and the dynamics of the production of messages, the uses and appropriations of these texts and the textual composition. As we said, this theoretical perspective goes beyond a proposal that has been characterising the international trend to combine qualitative audience analysis + content analysis. In Brazil, where we do not 5

6 6 find similar experiments in projects of global and multi-disciplinary design, this reception research of the telenovela arises as an attempt to overcome the insatisfaction with the state of reception research in this country Local and International Trends The current international trend in reception research appears to contrast with the Latin- American perspective in the sense of having made the cultural sphere excessively autonomous and having de-structuralised the analysis. That is, if on one hand the various theoreticalmethodological traditions have converged today to a dynamic state of coexistence (Jensen, 1990), on the other, this has not necessarily led to the construction of a more complex theoretical interpretative framework that allows giving properly theoretical meaning to the extraordinary set of empirical evidences accumulated about the relationship between media and audiences. Among international studies, an unsatisfactory descriptive level continues to prevail, as Lull (1992) and Silverstone (1996) point out, and there is a dangerous trend toward indulgence and an absence of criticism (Murdock, 1990). Thus, multiple versions are produced of what appear to be the same text about resistance, pleasure and consumption strategies. If, on one hand, the ethnographic descriptions have been extremely useful in demonstrating that the receptors are not culturally drugged, but people who extract specific meaning from texts, genres and media, the simple reiteration of proof of this central hypothesis does not guarantee the theoretical advance of these studies. The risk of producing a formal and sterile truth about the complexity and the contradictions between media and audiences is clearly noted. Within the framework of theoretical traditions, what appears to not be sufficiently retained in the qualitative empirical research is the cultural and political criticism that is proposed through the ethnographic critical work by the initial current in cultural studies ( Hoggart, Thompson and Williams). This critical insufficiency appears to be derived from a renovated functionalist environment in these studies, correctly denominated by Mauro Wolf (1987) as neo-lazarsfeldism, because what the cultural studies fundamentally proposed is that the reception practices be articulated with power relations. Reception, therefore, is not a process that is reducible to psychological factors and to daily life, despite the fact that it is anchored in these spheres, but it is a profoundly cultural and political phenomenon. That is, reception process should be seen as integral part of cultural practices that articulate processes that are both subjective as well as objective, both micro (immediate environment controlled by subject) as well as macro (social structure which escapes this control). Reception is thus a complex, multidimensional context in which people live their daily lives. At the same time, as they live this daily life, people inscribe themselves in structural and historic power relations from which they extrapolate their everyday activities. This is the set of theoretical presumptions that inform a comprehensive theory of reception studies. It is, from our perspective, the distinctive contribution of Latin American mediations theory. The social production and reproduction of the meaning involved in this cultural process is not only a question of signification, but also and mainly, a question of power. 6

7 7 II. A METHODOLOGY OF MEDIATIONS 1. METHODOLOGICAL PREMISES Reception is in the first instance an investigation perspective and not a research field about one more of the components of the communication process, in this case, the audience. It consists of an attempt to overcome the impasses which have led us to the fragmenting and reductive research of the communication process in autonomous fields of analysis: production, message, media and audience. We highlight here the integrative and comprehensive perspective of the reception study, once the entire communication process is articulated from the mediations. As Martín-Barbero (1992:20) affirmed: Mediations are this place where it is possible to understand the interaction between the space of production and that of reception: what television produces does not respond singularly to the requirements of the industrial system and the commercial strategies, but also to the demands that come from the cultural framework and the ways of seeing. Through this conception, mediation can be thought of as a type of structure encrusted in the social activities and in the daily life of people who, upon realising themselves through these activities, transform them into multiple mediations. The research strategy does not begin with the analysis of the space of production and reception to later seek to understand their imbrications ( as Jensen proposes). It does begin from the mediations, that is, from the places from where arise the factors that limit and configure the social materiality and the cultural expressivity of television) (Martín- Barbero, 1987:233). This theoretical perspective inspired a methodological strategy specific to the reception study of the telenovela. To investigate the telenovela demands thinking of both the space of production as well as the time of consumption, both articulated by daily life (uses/consumption/activities) and by the specificity of the technological and discursive devices (genres) of the television medium. Mediation in the process of reception of the telenovela should be understood as the structuring process which configures and reconfigures both the interaction of the members of the audiences with the media, as well as the creation by the audience of the meaning of this 7

8 8 interaction. The need for the decoupage of this concept to make it methodologically manageable, leads us to affirm the following principles. 1. The relationship receptor television is necessarily mediatised. This relationship is never direct and unilateral as it is customarily approached by other methodologies, but it is a multilateral and multidimensional relationship which is realised through multiple mediations. (Orozco,1991). 2. Reception is a process not a moment, that is, it precedes and continues after the act of watching television. Thus, the first meaning appropriated by the receptor is taken by the receptor to other scenarios in which he or she customarily acts (participation groups). We thus imagine that each message of the telenovela is reappropriated various times and, therefore, the spaces of circulation of the telenovela must be methodologically incorporated into the research. 3. The televised meaning is negotiated by the receptors. We then assume that there is no guarantee that the meanings proposed by a telenovela would be appropriated in the same way. It then can be affirmed that the ultimate meanings and signifieds of a telenovela are the product of various mediations. On one hand, this means that the communication process is not concluded with the transmission, on the contrary that is where the process begins. On the other hand, this does not imply the absence of a concrete global political and economic intentionality that is inscribed in the social hegemonic discourse. It is precisely this intentionality that causes the reality to mean something and impede any meaning from being transparent (Verón,1971). These affirmations lead us to a fundamental methodological question that of the causal relationships which will require us to question the causality of diverse intensity that should be established in the relationship among the multiple mediations. 2. A MULTIDISCIPLINARY STRATEGY OF MEDIATIONS The study of mediations in the reception of the telenovela demands the construction of a multidisciplinary methodology to assure the reception of the telenovela, thinking both of the space of production as well as the time of consumption, articulated through the four spaces of mediation: 1) everyday family life (where the uses, consumption and activities related with the telenovela take place); 2) subjectivity (which re-elaborates the symbolic content of the telenovela in the subjects); 3) fictional genre (as communication and cultural recognition strategy) and 4) videotechnical mediation (television as a mode of production and as technical devices of teledrama). The construction of these mediations was not random, but stems from the methodological demands of the integration of the various dimensions of the communication process and from the multidisciplinary approach present in the theory of mediations. One of the basic premises of this theory is that it overcomes the state of segmentation to which the communication process was reduced by the Lasswellian matrix of communication research. For this reason, the one-way relationship is shifted to a web of reciprocal interactions among the production, the product and the reception. This web of 8

9 9 interactions is not something that was discovered at the moment of analysis, after the field work, but it was imbricated in the very methodological design of the research, where, for example, we resolved to conduct genre interviews with the receptor, which were after integrated into the analysis of the recorded corpus of the telenovela, the basic material of the genre mediation. And so we did, in succession, combining technical instruments that offered materials for the analysis of the various mediations. However, despites this combining, the research design revealed that each mediation had its incidence marked in a determined locus, or more precisely, in a space-time of the communication process, integrating and, at the same time, marking the specificity of each mediation. It is worth remembering that one of the objectives of this methodology is to try to limit the specificity of each mediation involved which is the reason for its existence. This conception is graphically displayed by the Table 1. Table 1: Analytic Characterisation of the Mediations Level Source Place Discourse Structural Position of Class Social Context Linguistic System Institutional Family Reception Pragmatic Individual Subjectivity Reception Pragmatic Video-technique Fictional Genre Teledrama Product Production Semantic Syntax I. To build this characterisation we begin with Martín-Barbero who affirms that the mediation is the place from where sense is granted to the communication process and this place, for him, is culture. Through this apparently simple sentence, Martín-Barbero proposed his famous shift from media to mediations. Leaving aside the misunderstandings that this has provoked, we find a double merit in this proposal. The first is that it exposes the mediatic determinism or the mediacentrism to which communication studies were confined, which does not mean to say that the medium does not have importance, on the contrary, culture as a perspective of analysis allows the perception of media in their real and multifaceted importance. The second merit is that of having theoretically decentralised and pluralised communication analysis, inserting it in the dimension of cultural activities. We see a large theoretical potential in the proposal of this author which converges to the innovative clues opened by Gramsci (1978) toward the understanding of culture as a field of struggle (hegemony theory), by Bourdieu (1983) to the translation of the elements of structure to the level of social-cultural activities (habitus theory) and by Giddens (1989) to the introduction of the stratification of the self into reflexive action (structuration theory). All these clues point in the direction of a complex and transdisciplinary, non-reductionist and non-doctrinaire thought (Morin, 1986; Wallerstein, 1996). 9

10 10 What is important to understand is that, from the methodological point of view, there is no direct relationship between the components of the process of communication receptor, medium, message, emissor, but that every relationship among them is mediated, even the medium is mediation. In addition, the mediations only take on meaning when they are related to each other within a determined context, independent of the specific field over which we are working. II. The concept of mediation can be considered as a type of structure encrusted in the social practices of people s everydaylife and on realising itself through these practices, transforms itself into multiple mediations. In order to operationalise the concept of mediation, we undertake a re-reading of the typology proposed by Orozco (1991, 1996, 1997), called by him the model of the multiple mediation 2. This re-elaboration was planned to provide a greater methodological suitability to Martín-Barbero s concept and principally, to adjust it to the concrete requirements of the object of our study, which in other terms, means making it conceptually clear and methodologically manageable. This is what we attempted to express in the table above. III. At the base of this typology s framework there is an attempt to escape the risk of methodologically treating the mediations as if they were one more current version of the functionalist analysis of communication. This risk could occur by not making clear the guiding or articulating principles of the analysis, or by not demonstrating that every object is constituted by a web of categories of diverse empirical and theoretical importance. Otherwise 2 Orozco begins from the need to turn Martín-Barbero conceptualization more concrete and, for this reason, works with a typology of mediations that is still in construction (see his distinct publications), to which, like any proposal, demands perfecting the definition and the delimitation of each of the proposed mediations. It is certain that this is only achieved through its critical utilization in empirical research. In his most current re-elaboration, the author proposes the following set of mediations: 1) individual: are those who come from our individuality as cognoscitive and communicative subjects they are mental schemes mediant of which people perceive, pay attention to, assimilate, process, evaluate, memorize or even express themselves; 2) institutional: the production of meanings also results from the participation of the individual in the various institutions: family, school, firm, group of friends, neighbors, etc.; 3) massmediatic (in the case of TV is called videotechnique): distinct technologies, languages, and genres of each media; situational: concern the situation, spaces, and modes of reception; 5) of reference: characteristics which are located in a certain context or environment: age, or gender, ethnicity, race or social class and in this way of being, interact with the communication media. (Orozco, 1997). As a methodological tool, this typology was very useful to us, having served as a starting point for the specific methodological construction of this research. 10

11 11 the object would be pulverised into an infinity of variables absent of any concrete social meaning, and moreover, of any theoretical pertinence. We thus attempted to avoid this methodological simplification. In the table above, the mediations appear to be connected and designated by: 1) level: which indicates the plane of the structural dimension or insertion of the mediation. In this study, the levels with which we work are: structural; institutional, individual and technical. 2) Source: which indicates the mediation taken through its concretisation in observable objects. We elect as sources of mediation: social position of class, family, subjectivity, fictional genre and format. In order to be methodologically handled the mediations were submit to a process of decoupage in categories or empirical indicators. 3) Place: without ignoring that the communication process is highly relational, within this process were identified loci of mediation that are: the global context, reception, the product and production. It is worth remembering that we assumed reception to be a perspective of analysis that has renovated communication studies in order to propose a reintegration of the elements of the communication process. 4) Discourse: indicates the realm of the discourse in which the mediation is inserted. These realms are: syntax (relations of signs to each other), semantics (relations of signs with what they represent) and the pragmatic (relations of signs with their users). Some observations about the mediations chosen for this reception study 1. SOCIAL POSITION OF CLASS 1) Mediation of the structural level (contextual) which is conducted through different habitus and styles of life. It is the basic place of production and reproduction of social distinction (Bourdieu,1988) and, thus, of diversity of meanings. 2) Its use in this research is due not as a resource of final determination but as an attempt to make more complex the treatment given to the situation of class in the current reception studies, in which it appears on the same level as other categories such as gender, age, ethnicity or it is confused with social economic strata. In other words, it is treated as one more mediation without offering the proper highlight as an explanatory category of analysis 11

12 12 (Lopes, 1995). Therefore, we established a distinctive epistemological position of this study in relation to Orozco s model of multiple mediations, incorporating to the theoretical model of mediations a structural mediation as a dimension of mediation where the global social character of the process of construction of meaning in society is carried out. Thus, we consider that the production of meaning is mediated and thus realised through many mediations. Nevertheless they may have various importance (depending on the phenomenon in focus) and have relative weights in the game of the construction of meaning 3. 3) The concept of social class appears in this research as a social difference that is expressed through habitus which is a product of social conditionings associated to the corresponding position. Habitus creates a correspondence among a set of goods and properties that are united to each other by an affinity of style. We try to work ethnographically with social position in everyday family life, showing that despite logics of difference the social distinction of class is not exhausted, this distinction articulates the others. Beginning with this concept, we utilised the criteria of social class to organise our sample 4. This was organised through the category of class position, according to which the families in study appear placed in a certain social-spatial continuum: a favela family, (family 1) a peripheral family (family 2), a family from a middle class quarter (family 3), and a family from a upper-middle class private condominium (family 4). We have here a stratification inside the popular classes and one inside the middle classes. 2. EVERYDAY FAMILY LIFE 1) The growing importance of everyday family life is fully demonstrated in the recent reception studies of television (Morley, Silverstone, Lull). 2) Bourdieu s theses of consumption as distinctive cultural capital is refined by taking the family as mediation between the class structure and the individual. This is also the first place for the construction of habitus and taste. 3) The family dynamics is essential in understanding the different appropriations/ constructions of meaning about the telenovela. 4) The space/time of the daily routines and practices are the immediate scenery where telenovela viewing takes place. Moreover, the spaces of circulation of 3 Also in this sense, see: Caletti (1992) and Herrán (1994). 4 As methodological commentary to his analysis of the ideology of the press which has become a classic, Verón said in brief that there is a moment of investigation in which the intervention of what he called external information on the materials is essential, and that is the moment to fix the criteria of selection of corpus. In his words: these criteria are external to the method and depend on sociological theory of the researcher: if he handles a model of classes, it would probably consider meaningful to select the subjets of his corpus making relations between social class variables and some of the processes of communication (emission, transmission or reception) " (1971: 188). 12

13 13 the telenovela are principally constituted by transfamiliar relationships. 5) The conceptual renovation of everyday life as a complex micro-space and not only a place of reproduction and alienation. It is constituted by concrete indicators of inequalities and of a hybrid cultural arrangement which shapes the way of life in countries of late modernity such as Brazil. 6) The institutional mediation is captured in the interior of the family (family culture) and also in its connections with other institutions of which its members participate (school, church, work). The way to grasp these connections was not to follow the people in these scenarios, but we capture them through the internalisations of their values expressed in everyday family life. 3. SUBJECTIVITY 1) This mediation is not very much investigated in reception research, despite the references made to subject. 2) It captures the processes of construction of identities and sensibilities that operate in the interaction individual- small screen. 3) It allows to individualise the relationships between the life stories of each family member and the telenovela. 4) It is a mediation that acts within the social practices as a cognoscitive organiser (interpretative) of intentioned activity by the individual (Gidden's agency ). 4. FICTIONAL GENRE 1) The telenovela is considered as a narrative of popular culture matrix, of production/recognition of meanings. 2) It is a device that activates cultural competence and is a producer of shared repertoire between production and reception. 1) The Brazilian telenovela is a model of hybrid narrative that goes beyond the borders of its genre. 2) It is one of the two submediations pertaining to videotechnical mediation and which acts on the semantic level of the product (telenovela). 5. VIDEOTECHNIQUE 13

14 14 1) Telenovela is a televised product submit to specific production conditions: organisational and technical ones. 2) It allows the recognition of videotechnical devices in reception. 3) It is a mediation that participates in the construction of the shared repertoire. 4) It is also one of the mediations of the technical level which acts on the syntactic level of the product (telenovela). It remains to conclude from this examination of Table 1 that the mediations chosen in this study have as their SCENARIO the family space and the so called COMMUNITY OF INTERPRETATION can only be the family as the institution of basic socialisation and also as the source of expression of other communities of interpretation interiorised by their members (school, church, clubs, etc.). Articulation of mediations The methodological strategy to articulate the mediations selected follow more or less the following scheme. Everyday life and Subjectivity: mediations located on the reception and reappropriated in the Genre and in the Videotechnique. Mediation at the pragmatic level Genre: Mediation located on the product, and reappropriated in Everyday Life, Subjectivity and Videotechnique. Mediation at the Semantic Level Videotechnique: mediation located on the production, and reappropriated in Genre, Everyday Life and Subjectivity. Mediation at the syntactic level 3. THE METHODOLOGICAL PROTOCOL OF MEDIATIONS A multimethodological strategy which corresponds to the multidisciplinary approach of the mediations led us to combine various modalities of research techniques in such a way that each of the mediations could be explored, or saturated by empirical data of various angulation. We know that the data collected are a construction of the researcher who builds them with theoretical and conceptual tools as well as through the technical tools that are chosen. The technical conformation of data is an epistemological question along the research and it was treated as such (Bourdieu, 1975). The plurality of our technical instruments can be understood by analogy to the variations of the framings and angulations realised by the cameras in the production of an image, connotating 14

15 15 multiple meanings. For example, we conducted individual and group interviews, thematic interviews (which focused on each mediation) and also life story interviews. There was clearly a redundancy of data, but we realised that the meaning of the same data was completing itself according to the tool that was utilised. The privilege of the qualitative research is to promote the convergence of techniques (including quantitative techniques) in the fieldwork and in the data analysis, which, in our case, allowed us to conduct a true methodological exploration for the reception research. The result is synthesised in Table 2. Table 2: Multimethodological Protocol of Mediations Mediations Everyday Family Life Subjectivity Fictional Genre Videotechnique Data Collection 1.Fieldwork: 4 families Tec.Quantitat. CQ CQ CQ Tec.Qualitativ. EO - ELI SI GI VI LS LS LS PI CLS CLS CLS DG DG DG DG 2. Corpus:TVN TVN (R) TVN (R) TVN (R) TVN(R) compl.recorded Synopsis Synopsis Clipping Clipping Data Analysis 1.Transcriptio n All All All All 2Tabulation by Winmax Winmax Winmax Decoupage mediation Categorisation Digitalisation 2. Analysis Case Studies An. Subjective An. of Genre An. of flow Mediations 15

16 16 Key: CQ: Consumption Questionnaire LS : Life-Story EO: Ethnographic Observation PI : Production Interview ELI: Everyday Life Interview CLS: Cultural Life-Story SI : Subjectivity Interview DG : Discussion Group GI : Genre Interview TVN(R): Telenovela Re-edited VI : Videotechnique Interview The methodological protocol presented above was organised with the intention of developing strategies that allow the approximation to telenovela reception, seen as a cultural experience of people. In addition, as we have said, we began with a criticism of the methodological insufficiencies found in understanding the forms of appropriation of the telenovela discourse. Basically, it shows that the methodological framework of the research was developed from the perspective based on mediations which operate in the reception of a telenovela and points to the methodological design in two moments of the research: the collection of data and the data analysis. The moment of data collection is found in the fieldwork conducted with four families and with the corpus of the telenovela. Four mediations were explored in the families: everyday family life, subjectivity, fictional genre, and videotechnique. The theoretical criteria of the selection of mediations and of families have already been discussed. The fieldwork with the four families combined a set of ten techniques, one of which was quantitative: 1) the consumption questionnaire (CQ) and nine qualitative techniques: 2) ethnographic observation (EO), semi-structured individual interviews: (3) everyday life (ELI); 4) subjectivity (SI), 5) genre (GI), 6) videotechnique (VI) and 7) production (PI); nonstructured individual interviews: 8) life-story (LS) and 9) cultural life-story (CLH) and nonstructured collective interview: 10) discussion group (DG). The corpus of the research was constituted by the complete video recording of the telenovela A Indomada (The Indomitable), composed by 203 daily chapters, from which was extracted a smaller corpus formed by sequences chosen by the families and which constituted the reedited telenovela: TVN(R). This corpus was strategically used in the discussion group. The fieldwork took place over eight months (May to December 1997) while the telenovela was on the air. It was systematically viewed together with the families. We also collected the synopsis and clippings (articles in specialized media) about the telenovela. The second moment of the research, the data analysis, included the following steps: 1) the transcription of constant data in all of the collection tools; 2) the tabulation of the data, by each of the mediations, using the WinMax 97 computer program (German software for qualitative research designed by Udo Kuckartz), which was utilised in the analysis of all of the mediations, with the exception of the videotechnique. This last mediation was handled through the techniques of decoupage and digitalisation; 3) the specific analysis of each mediation: to everyday family life we produced case studies; to subjectivity was applied the hermeneutic analysis; to the narrative of the telenovela, the genre analysis and to videotecnical mediation, 16

17 17 the flow analysis. Each of the mediations was worked at the descriptive and interpretative level. CONCLUSIONS At the end of the rather long process that this project involved, from its conception until the final report, our first impression was of the great richness of the mediations involved, which resulted in a multifaceted analysis. Here, however, we can only list the principal results of the methodological construction that was the object of this text. 1. The central objective of this study sought to respond to the insatisfaction with the methodological operationalisation of the theoretical perspective of mediations. The proposal to conduct a methodological exploration of the reception of telenovela served to mobilise forces, both in the sense of a multidisciplinary and multimethodological concept of the project, as well as in its application. For this reason, we attempted to base and explain the decisions and options taken during each phase and, above all, we made a detailed report of the use of each technique and a careful reflection of the field experience and the treatment of the data. Based on this process we can affirm that our first result is to have made a concrete methodological proposal for reception studies. Now, through new research experiments, we hope it will be adjusted, adapted and modified. As we verified, until now there have been very few empirical studies on mediations in Brazil, which must be due, in our opinion, to the complexity of this theoretical perspective. We thus hope that our methodological proposal will encourage more studies in this orientation. 2. A second result is to have shown how the mediations operate in the concrete reception process of the telenovela. We use the term operate because mediations are devices inserted in domestic, daily and subjective activities; in narrative practices and in professional and technical activities. In this sense, we have come very close to Giddens concept of structuration (1989). 3. The qualitative research cannot have the ambition of generalising its findings. It lends itself more to be considered as a laboratory of experiences that can later be reproduced. This is what we have in mind for a future reception study, where the combination of qualitative techniques and the use of the computer program can be tested in a larger sample. 17

18 18 REFERENCES ALASUUTARI, Pertti (1995). Qualitative method and cultural studies. London: Sage. BOURDIEU, Pierre et al. (1975). El oficio de sociólogo. México, Siglo XXI. BOURDIEU, Pierre (1983). Pierre Bourdieu (org. Renato Ortiz). São Paulo: Ática. BOURDIEU, Pierre(1988). La distinción. Madrid: Taurus. CALETTI, Sergio (1992). La recepción ya no alcanza. In: LUNA CORTÉS, Carlos (coord.). Generación de conocimientos y formación de comunicadores. México: Coneicc/Felafacs. CERTEAU, Michel de (1994). A invenção do cotidiano.petrópolis: Vozes. CURRAN, James. El nuevo revisionismo en los estudios de comunicación: una revaluación. In: CURRAN, James, MORLEY, David e WALKERDINE, Valerie (comp.) (1998) Estudios culturales y comunicación. Barcelona: Paidós. FUENZALIDA, Valerio (1987). La influencia cultural de la televisión. Dialogos de la comunicación, 17. Lima: Felafacs. GARCIA CANCLINI, Néstor (1990). Culturas Híbridas. México:Grijalbo (1995). Consumidores e cidadãos. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ. GIDDENS, Anthony (1987). A constituição da sociedade. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. GONZÁLEZ, Jorge (1991). La telenovela en família. Estudios sobre las culturas Contemporaneas. Vol. IV, nº 11. México: Un. Colima. GONZÁLEZ, Jorge (1993). Metodologia y sociologia reflexivas. Estudios sobre Las culturas contemporaneas, vol.v, nº 5, México: Un. Colima. GRAMSCI, Antonio (1978). Literatura e vida nacional. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Civilização Brasileira. HERRÁN, Claudia (1994). Un salto no dado: de las mediaciones al sentido. In: 18

19 19 OROZCO, Guillermo (comp.). Televidencia: perspectivas para el análisis de los procesos de recepción televisiva. Cuadernos del PROIICOM 6. México: Un. Iberoamericana. JENSEN, Klaus B. e ROSENGREEN, Karl (1990). Five traditions in search of the audience. European Journal of Communication, vol.5, 2-3. LOPES, Maria Immacolata V.(1993). Estratégias metodológicas da pesquisa de Recepção. Intercom Revista Brasileira de Comunicação, Vol.XVI, (1995). Recepção dos meios, classes, poder e estrutura. Comunicação & Sociedade, nº 23, S.B.Campo: IMS. LOPES, Maria Immacolata V. (1998). Por um paradigma transdisciplinar para o campo da comunicação.v Ibercom, Encontro Iberoamericano de Ciências da Comunicação. Porto. LULL, James (1992). La estructuración de las audiencias masivas. Dialogos de la Comunicación, 32. MARTÍN-BARBERO, Jesús (1987). De los medios a las mediaciones. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili (1989). Comunicación y cultura: unas relaciones complejas. Telos, nº 19, Madrid: Fundesco (1998). Experiencia audiovisual y desorden cultural. In: MARTÍN-BARBERO, Jesús e LÓPEZ, Fabio (eds.).cultura, medios y sociedad. Bogotá: Ces/Un. Nacional. MARTÍN-BARBERO, Jesús e MUNHOZ, Sonia (coord.)(1992). Televisión y melodrama. Bogotá: Tercer Mundo ed. MORIN, Edgar (1986). Ciência com consciência. Lisboa: Europa-América. MORLEY, David (1998). Populismo, revisionismo y los "nuevos" estudios de Audiencia. In: CURRAN, James, MORLEY, David e WALDERDINE, Valerie (compl). Estudios culturales y comunicación. Barcelona: Paidós. MURDOCK, Graham (1990). La investigación crítica y las audiencias activas. Estudios sobre las culturas contemporaneas, vol. IV, nº 10, México: Un. Colima. 19

20 20 OROZCO, Guillermo (1996). Televisión y audiencias. Un enfoque qualitativo. Madrid: Ed. de la Torre ( 1991). Recepción televisiva. Tres aproximaciones y una razón para su estudio. Cuadernos del PROIICOM, n º2, México: Universidad Iberoamericana (org.).(1992).hablan los televidentes. Estudios de recepción en varios paises. Cuadernos del PROIICOM, nº 4, México: Un.Iberoamericana (1997). La investigación en comunicación desde la perspectiva qualitativa. México: IMDEC. POIRIER, Jean et al. (1995). Histórias de vida. Teoria e prática. Oeiras: Celta. SILVERSTONE, Roger (1996). Televisión y vida cotidiana. B.Aires:Amorrortu. THIOLLENT, Michel (1980). Crítica metodológica, investigação social e enquete operária. São Paulo: Polis. VERÓN, Eliseo (1971). Ideologia y comunicación de masas. La semantización de La violencia política. In: VERÓN, Eliseo (comp.). Lenguaje y comunicación Social. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión. WOLF, Mauro (1987). Teorias da comunicação. Lisboa: Ed. Presença. WALLERSTEIN, Immanuel et al. (1996). Para abrir as ciências sociais. Lisboa: Europa-América. 20