Volume 17, Issue 3

Abstract

Parting from the awareness that not all consumers of US media are located within the geographical and linguistic context of the United States, this article contributes to media sociology with an approximation to the fandom of transnationally popular texts. Empirical findings presented here draw from a broader qualitative study on the reception of the series (GoT) by 21 viewers from Argentina, Spain and Germany. Here I build on participants’ responses to both the original novels by George R.R. Martin and the series adaptation by HBO as distinctive media texts to explore notions of authorship, adaptation and cultural legitimacy. Given the polysemic, intertextual quality of contemporary’s memetic culture, I also discuss a case of digital re-appropriation of GoT’s characters within sociopolitical discourses in Argentina.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Award EU IJC-2020-042743-I/MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033)
This article is Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The CC BY licence permits commercial and noncommercial reuse. To view a copy of the licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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2021-09-01
2024-03-29
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Keyword(s): adaptation; cultural hierarchies; fandom; media audiences; qualitative social research; quality TV; TV series; user-centred research

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