5

Studying Addiction

My Journey Through the Landscape of Telenovela Consumption

Carolina Acosta-Alzuru

There are stories that are addictive. In particular, there are some, originally from Latin America, that constitute a pandemic transmitted daily via the television screens of more than 130 countries. These serialized dramas are called telenovelas, and the simplicity of their codes belies the complexity of their production and consumption.

The main fare of every telenovela is a central story of heterosexual love, hindered by intrigues and obstacles. But not all telenovelas are the same. They are usually located in a continuum between the traditional telenovela rosa and the so-called telenovela de ruptura. The traditional telenovela rosa is a Cinderella story where the two main characters usually belong to different socioeconomic strata. These telenovelas offer a catalog of Manichean characters. Villains are evil and conniving, and the heroine is virtuous, naïve, and sweet. The love story's context is of little importance. In contrast, in the telenovela de ruptura, political and sociocultural issues provide a realistic environment for a love story in which characters are complex and not always predictable (Steimberg, 1997; Acosta-Alzuru, 2003b).

Telenovelas are much more than melodramatic stories of star-crossed lovers. They constitute one of the biggest industries in the television business and a commodity in the international market. Telenovelas are creations for those who write and work in them, and ratings and shares for network executives. Most importantly, they are a staple in the daily media diet of those who consume them. For me, telenovelas are an endless and complex object of study. They are a privileged epicenter where we can examine media, culture, and society; a reflection of Latin America; one way to decipher my country, Venezuela; a constant academic challenge; and the territory through which I have been traveling for a decade.

This chapter focuses on the audience study aspects of my journey through the telenovela landscape. Telenovela consumption loci defy national borders. Such consumption occurs not only via television, but also on the Internet. Hence, in addition to the use of interviews, focus groups, and participant observation in Venezuela, my studies have required my presence in the swampy grounds of Internet message boards dedicated to telenovelas and in social media outlets where my movements are still somewhat tentative.

In this chapter, which both summarizes my work and reflects on the research process, I describe how I follow telenovela consumption and interact with these shows' audience members. First, I present an overview of my research on telenovelas – the itineraries of the four case studies I have undertaken, the questions that guided them, and the methodological choices I made to investigate the audience in each instance. This section provides the big picture of a decade of research and the context for the chapter's second section, where I offer brief tours through the reality of studying the telenovela audience in different sites and via a variety of methods. The essay ends with a concluding section that reflects my journey still further and takes a peek into my future travels.

Throughout the chapter I write in the first person and use vignettes to give the reader a glimpse of telenovela audiences and of the experience of taking their pulse, even across geographic distance. But the tone of the two first sections is different. The “Itineraries” segment is more descriptive, and the “Walking Tours” is more intimate and reflexive. The two tones signal (sometimes in an uneven and choppy manner) my progression from an “observational” to a “reflexive” technique of representation (Murphy, 2008).

As I acknowledge my writing's uneven tone, I am keenly aware of the implications of these representations and of how they “draw attention to or obscure the relationships developed, dilemmas faced, and surprises encountered via our own ethnographic encounters” (ibid, p. 283). I am also painfully conscious of the main reason for those variations in my tone: they offer evidence of my own struggles to detach myself from the more traditional (and “safe”) forms of academic writing that I was socialized to pursue, and they allow instead personal reflection and critique to govern my writing in the same manner in which they have become the heartbeats of my prolonged academic immersion in the study of telenovelas (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011).

This chapter, conceived for a volume focused on audience studies, touches on inextricably related topics like fandom and online ethnography, which are complex and worthy of extensive and in-depth treatment, but beyond the scope of what I can provide here. In other words, the chapter is not about fandom;² but you will encounter fans as you read it. Neither does my account foreground online ethnography or its academic literature,² but you will find me wrestling with issues of identity as I walk through message boards and social media.

Finally, although I am mindful that, for some scholars, “audience-based identities and tastes [can be] seen as a threat to academic identity” (Hills, 2007, p. 44), I do not shy away from my dual identities of media academic and member of the audience I study. In that sense, when I conduct my research I do not set myself above telenovela watchers or apart from the popular culture we all consume. The travelogue that follows this brief introduction reflects my commitment to seeing myself as being thoroughly entangled in the phenomena I study and write about.

Itineraries

Ethnography is a multi-faceted process in which the requirements of detail and richness, rigor and systematicity, have to be carefully balanced, and where there is no single methodological procedure.

(Morley & Silverstone, 1991, p. 160)

Research motivated my journey through the landscape of telenovelas. Theory illuminates my path. Research questions determine both my itineraries and the methodologies that organize my voyage. But my ride is also intensely personal. None of my previous objects of study had stretched my academic muscles and challenged my determination as much as telenovelas do. After six years of immersion and training in US academia, telenovelas reconnected me with my country of birth and allowed me to understand like never before its political, social, and cultural environment.

I was lucky. A couple of months later Univisión started broadcasting El país de las mujeres. My friend was right: this telenovela was different from the traditional telenovelas rosa, with their repetitive love stories and trite language. I was hooked and intrigued. Soon I was analyzing the audiovisual text and wondering how the Venezuelan audience – soaked in the dual ideologies of machismo and marianismo – was reading these storylines and dialogues with feminist overtones.³ In addition, I was surprised to learn that El país de las mujeres was not written by a woman, but by the Venezuelan poet Leonardo Padrón.

Hence, after months dedicated to the textual analysis of El país de las mujeres, I decided to go beyond the text. Using the “circuit of culture” (Du Gay, Hall, Mackay, & Negus, 1997) as an organizational tool, I designed a comprehensive study that required a methodological mix: interviews and focus groups to study the audience, and interviews with the writer and cast members to examine encoding. Existing scholarship on telenovelas suggested that my project was ambitious. I was determined, though. Thanks to a Junior Faculty Grant I traveled to Venezuela, where I conducted interviews and focus groups after the telenovela's final episode had aired.

I returned to the US energized by the evidence I had gathered. I also experienced the satisfaction of getting the work done and the mixed emotions of fulfillment and anxiety that precede analysis. At the same time I had a budding concern: since I do not live in Latin America, would I be able to continue studying telenovelas? Soon I set aside my preoccupation and immersed myself in the analysis and writing of conference papers and articles related to El país de las mujeres. Meanwhile Venezuela entered a new historical stage, as it became increasingly polarized around the figure of President Hugo Chávez.

I returned to my country in June 2003, after the failed April 2002 coup attempt against President Chávez and the two-month national strike of December 2003–January 2004. Venezuelans were deeply changed. Politics and the rigid logic of polarization had invaded everyday life, labeling and dividing the population into pro- and anti-Chávez opposing sides. This time my research goal was more modest: to interview people who worked in the telenovela industry and to learn their opinions regarding the kinds of stories that could and should be told in a politically charged Venezuela. After interviewing actors, producers, and network executives, I returned to writer Leonardo Padrón's house. He was writing the third episode of his new telenovela, Cosita Rica (Sweet Thing), scheduled to air in September:

Research questions raced through my mind: How would my polarized country receive this telenovela? Would they decode the metaphor? How soon? How would the government react? Could the writer pull this idea off? My academic instincts went into high gear: “I MUST study this one as it happens!” But how could I? The writer assured me that I would be granted the access I needed to study his creative choices and decisions and the production process. But the geographic distance was a reality I needed to deal with. I applied successfully for a grant from the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts at the University of Georgia and traveled to Venezuela four times during the 11 months when Cosita Rica was on the air. Audience members were first interviewed in person and then I requested them to answer questions via email every two weeks. I monitored message boards, interviewed some of their participants, and analyzed Cosita Rica's ratings and shares on key dates. The production aspects of my study included over 30 hours of interviews with Leonardo Padrón and more than 40 hours of conversations with actors, directors, and production team members. In this way I was able to follow continuously both Cosita Rica's production encoding and the audience decoding.

Cosita Rica represented political Venezuela. I dedicated innumerable hours to the study of the many metaphors and allegories included in the telenovela and to the production and consumption of its carefully calibrated mix of romance, reality, humor, and commentary. Given the country's deep polarization around the figure of Hugo Chávez, I was particularly interested in the audience's reception of the telenovela's political critique. Cosita Rica marked my definitive intellectual and emotional return to Venezuela, as I connected with my country through my scholarship. This case study became my first book written in Spanish (Acosta-Alzuru, 2007). It also placed me, for good, on a parallel route to writer Leonardo Padrón. I realized that the engagement of his stories with political and sociocultural issues rendered his telenovelas a particularly suitable epicenter for the examination of the links between media, culture, and society. In consequence, now that I felt I had “conquered” the geographic distance and knew I had the stamina required for these complex studies, I was determined to continue studying Padrón's telenovelas. For his part, he was comfortable with my inquisitive presence close to his work and gave me increasing access to his creative process.

My country is obsessed with physical beauty. We take immense pride in our 70+ international beauty crowns. And, even though 51% of Venezuelans live under the poverty line (Ponce, 2009), they spend more on cosmetics and beautifying procedures than on education (Delgado Barrios, 2006). The use of plastic surgery is widespread. Venezuela ranks among the top three countries in the world for plastic surgery (Sosa, 2001; International, 2007). The media deliver a steady diet of perfectly shaped women and men. And telenovelas are no exception.

In this context, Leonardo Padrón wrote Ciudad Bendita (Blessed City) with the explicit purpose of critiquing Venezuelan vanity and obsession with beauty. In particular, the protagonists transgressed the beauty code (she has a noticeable limp that cannot be cured, and he is not handsome). They also deviated from one of the telenovela's most enduring codes: protagonists meet and fall in love immediately, before a series of obstacles and misunderstandings keep them separated for most of the episodes until the happy end. In Ciudad Bendita, instead, protagonist “Bendita” is infatuated with the antagonist for the first 50 episodes, and only falls in love with protagonist “Juan” after episode 70. Furthermore, in addition to its atypical protagonists, Ciudad Bendita included storylines that criticized the national fixation with physical appearance, eternal youth, body image, and plastic surgery.

With so many violations of the telenovela code, could Ciudad Bendita succeed in the aggressive ratings war? Would the audience decode the critique? These were the main questions that directed my examination of this telenovela, my third case study. I was interested not only in those viewers who watched Ciudad Bendita, but also in regular consumers of telenovelas who rejected its transgressive codes and stayed away from it.

The audience research design was very similar to the one adopted in my previous study. I traveled to Venezuela four times, in order to conduct interviews and focus groups and to observe families that watched Ciudad Bendita. I also took the pulse of viewers via email questionnaires and phone interviews, which allowed me to breach the geographic gap. There was one important addition to my methodological toolbox, though: I had access to ratings and market shares on a daily basis. These numbers rounded up my understanding of audience behavior, as they gave me snapshots of Ciudad Bendita's consumption that complemented nicely my qualitative research. And, since television production and consumption are deeply connected and mutually articulated, it was particularly helpful to analyze the numbers that constitute the currency of the television business and determine the professional survival of those who work in it.

Venezuela has long been considered a major player in the international telenovela market. But, in the last decade, the country's productions have lost ground to telenovelas produced by creative newcomer Colombia, traditional rival Mexico, and powerful Miami-based Telemundo (owned by the US network National Broadcasting Company (NBC)). By 2008, although Colombian telenovelas included a wide range of storylines, Mexico and Telemundo privileged melodrama and trite romance over telenovelas with local flavor, which incited reflection about gender roles and political and sociocultural issues. In addition, the Venezuelan telenovela industry had both struggled with and been shaped by the internal political forces of polarization, government–media belligerence, and media regulation that have characterized the presidential tenures of Hugo Chávez (Tremamunno, 2002; Cañizales, 2003; Marcano & Barrera Tyszka, 2004; Acosta-Alzuru, 2007).

For 50 years, privately owned networks Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) and Venevisión battled against each other fiercely, in a ratings war that defined Venezuelan television and its telenovela industry. The latter has also been marked by the changing relationship between these networks and the Chávez government. After a brief honeymoon period with the president, both networks joined the ranks of the opposition until July 2004, when Venevisión drastically moderated its editorial line after a much-publicized meeting between its chief executive officer (CEO), Gustavo Cisneros, and Chávez. By 2006 Venevisión was not broadcasting any content that was critical of the government. In contrast, RCTV maintained its oppositional stance. In May 2007 the government did not renew the network's 50-year-old license. RCTV ceased to exist as a commercial network, and Venevisión was suddenly in the unusual position of being assured of high revenues in Venezuela regardless of the quality of its programming. Venevisión's executives decided to prioritize the international market over the captive local audience by producing telenovelas “devoid of local flavor that tell universal love stories” (Arismendi, 2008).

Leonardo Padrón, who had given Venevisión four of its most resounding successes – Contra viento y marea, El país de las mujeres, Cosita Rica, and Ciudad Bendita – is well known for his competitive nature and for the strong local flavor and realistic context of his stories. However, in 2008 he wrote telenovela La vida entera (A Lifetime) under unprecedented circumstances: there was no domestic competition, but there was instead an order to write a “universal” telenovela, without local references, that would compete effectively in the international market. Hence my research questions focused on whether the audience would embrace this mandated change in the writer's style and storylines. Would Venezuelans still be able to recognize themselves in this telenovela (as happened in previous telenovelas written by Padrón)?

I traveled once to Miami, the “Mecca” of the international telenovela, to conduct interviews with writers and network executives at Univision and at Telemundo. These conversations, focused on the area of production and marketing, provided important clues for the audience dimension of the study.

I visited Venezuela three times and introduced a few changes to the methodological design of this case study. These modifications were the product of four new developments: the unavoidable presence of social media, the possibility of conducting video interviews via Skype, the generalized use of Blackberry devices in Venezuela, and the international consumption of the telenovela via video sharing services and webpages.⁴ Facebook became the newest site in my collection of loci where I gathered information about audience reception. I monitored Facebook pages related to La vida entera and created a Facebook group for it, where viewers exchanged opinions and I had the possibility of suggesting discussion topics. In addition, YouTube and other video sharing sites blurred the geographic borders of La vida entera's audience. For the first time my study counted on audience participants located in the United States and Europe. Skype allowed me to conduct interviews that were closer to a “face-to-face” experience than regular telephone had permitted. Finally, the widespread use of Blackberry smartphones among many of my audience research participants gave them the opportunity to comment spontaneously on the telenovela, without waiting for my prompts or questions.

* * *

The itineraries I have charted thus far show that I started my journey by conceptualizing the audience as a group bound by geography – Venezuela – and by its consumption of a specific telenovela – El país de las mujeres. My first methodological toolbox was conventional: interviews, focus groups, and participant observation conducted in Venezuela. As I delved deeper into the topic, my notion of the audience became defined less by geography and more by telenovela production and consumption as signifying cultural practices. This translated into an increase in the number of sites where I could observe and analyze the telenovela audience. In addition, my determination to monitor reception throughout the lifetime of particular telenovelas and the rapid development of telecommunications technology expanded my catalog of methods and gradually increased the opportunity to gather participant-generated information.

Walking Tours

It is a qualitative research tenet to combine emic and etic perspectives so that they provide a multidimensional view of culture (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). And it is the experience of many that you can understand the essence of a city only by walking through it. This section relies on these two principles. It consists of short “walking tours” through the locations where I study telenovela audiences. In them, I offer specific research anecdotes and some of the reflections that they have elicited through the years.

An Eclectic Neighborhood: Family Rooms, TV Rooms, Bakeries, Coffee Shops, and the Internet

In Venezuela I use traditional qualitative methods to study the audience: interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. One of my favorite and most useful research routines is to watch, in the company of a family at home, an episode of the telenovela I am studying, and then to follow up on this observation exercise with a focus group.⁵ It is not difficult to find participants for these occasions. Venezuelan families usually watch the 9 p.m. telenovela together (Barrios, 1988; Acuña & Blanco, 1994; Vallenilla, 1994; Marín, 2003). I observe as they watch and comment on the episode, jotting a few key notes and taking many “headnotes” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). I am particularly interested in participants' reactions and comments related to my case study's research questions. At the same time, I take note of whether they give their exclusive attention to the show or just watch it while they do something else. I also notice who is in charge of the remote control and how certain characters, storylines, or dialogues trigger responses and emotions in each family member. These observations help me tailor my prepared focus group guide to this particular party. Hence I put the same questions to every family that participates in my study, plus some questions that I craft on the spot, which are specific to each group's consumption experience. These are rich evenings, which do not end when I arrive home. They require several hours of writing, as I expand my fieldnotes before I finally go to sleep.

In Venezuela I also conduct face-to-face in-depth semi-structured interviews with audience members. I use an interview guide that includes questions that are particular to the telenovela I am studying and queries that explore telenovela consumption in general. During the interview I often show participants specific telenovela scenes to set up a particular discussion topic. For this reason, ten years ago I would conduct all interviews at a central location, where I had a TV/VCR unit. Now I can show the scenes on my laptop, and conversations can take place wherever it is most convenient for the participant: homes, restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries.

If the participant agrees (and, so far, no interviewee has ever declined), this first interview is followed by periodic email questionnaires and occasional exchanges through chats and interviews via Skype.⁷ My goal is to follow the audience throughout the telenovela's lifetime, even if I am away from Venezuela. I should note that my audience studies require information gathered on the production side of my study. Especially day-to-day knowledge of each episode's content, before it is actually broadcast, informs some of my audience questions. The end result is a wealth of evidence regarding the telenovela reception process and its articulations to the cultural context and to other moments in the circuit of culture: representation, identity, production, and regulation.

Participants enjoy the opportunity to express their thoughts and opinions about their favorite television show. At the end of the study, when I ask them to reflect on the experience of being a research participant, they write lengthy paragraphs explaining why they looked forward to our conversations and to my emails. They also admit that participating in the study encouraged them to become aware of details about the stories that they never noticed before. Some of them even say that being in the study “changed” them as viewers.⁸ Most importantly, they felt that my research gave them a “safe and serious” space to talk candidly about telenovelas.

Walking on the Wild Side: Life on the Message Boards

Lindlof and Taylor (2002) explain it well: communication and community are linked. The context of communication is the community, and the circulatory system of the community is provided by communication. Furthermore, the relationship between communication and community has been marked by technological developments – the telegraph, the railroad, and the telephone (Carey, 1989). Similarly, advances in telecommunications, new media, and the Internet sustain virtual communities. Internet message boards are examples of virtual communities built around a common interest, where users post and respond to other users' posts. These messages are organized and archived by topics (threads) defined by the users whose communication is asynchronous.

The number of message boards dedicated to telenovelas seems infinite. Every country where telenovelas are consumed has several of them, most telenovelas have their own, and networks and production companies host several message boards too. Their level of activity varies greatly. Some have a handful of posts per day, while others have an overwhelming number of messages and threads. For example, back in 2005 when I had been observing message boards for a couple of years, Univision already hosted more than 800 of them; the boards had 3 million users who exchanged 30 million messages per month (Pisani, 2005). Today those numbers are even bigger.

In my case studies, I monitor daily several message boards, all written in Spanish:

• the board that is specific to the telenovela I am studying (for example, Cosita Rica: http://www.network54.com/Forum/223657/);
• the boards of the telenovelas that compete directly against the one I am studying;
• TVVI (Televisión Venezolana e Internacional), the most popular board dedicated to Venezuelan television. About 90% of its posts are related to telenovelas (http://s6.zetaboards.com/TVVI/forum/14090/);
• Recordar es Vivir, international message board focused on telenovelas, where Venezuelan telenovelas are a recurring topic of discussion (http://www.network54.com/Forum/243414/).

These message boards offer an array of content: from valuable information to the repetition of gossip and press speculation of the worst kind. We can also find in them specialized voices coexisting with mini campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion.⁹ Board participants live around the world and are fluent in Spanish. They range from those who consider telenovelas an art form to those who see these shows exclusively as a source of gossip. Some users are polite, while others are extremely rude.

Most board participants feel the need to hide their true identity behind a pseudonym (“nick,” an obvious shorthand for the English word “nickname,” is the term used by board participants in Spanish). For personal and/or professional reasons, some board users lurk and participate very little. There are others, however, who take advantage of the anonymity that their “nick” provides to cultivate a particular agenda: either to promote/defend or to denigrate/attack a particular telenovela product, network, artist, and so on. These users merit close attention. If you follow them through time, their agenda eventually surfaces.¹⁰ And these agendas are great pointers to the strong competitive economic undercurrents present in the telenovela world.

After a couple of weeks of observing the boards included in my study, I am usually familiar with the most active participants, their styles, and the different roles they play: moderators, leaders, industry informants, cheerleaders, critics, hecklers, and snipers. Many participants hide behind their “nick” and never identify themselves. Others reveal their true identity at some point or when I approach them via the option of a direct message.¹¹ All of them create an online persona with distinct characteristics, which incorporate varying degrees of fandom for the telenovela genre, for a particular telenovela, for an actor, or – most common in the Venezuelan boards – for one of the two major telenovela producers: RCTV or Venevisión. When the latter is the object, network fandom is akin to partisanship. In extreme cases it is similar to sports hooliganism.

I usually participate very little in these message boards. I post a message or two, explaining that I am a Venezuelan scholar who studies telenovelas and that, as part of my research, I will be reading their posts. I also provide my email address and offer to answer any questions they might have about my study or about myself. Moderators usually email me a welcome. On rare occasions I receive correspondence from other board members. My decision to be a non-participant observer is due to my fear of getting tangled in one of those arguments in which one is not sure of the intentions and agendas behind the discussing “nicks.” For years I have wrestled with the impossibility of crossing the swampy terrain of message boards without getting soiled. Simply put, there are too many virtual agendas that are at play. And it is safer to observe and take fieldnotes without forgetting that anyone can hide behind a “nick.”

There are key occasions for message board observation that help to understand the reception process. For example, during the broadcast of a telenovela's first and final episodes, I keep an eye on the reactions and comments of these virtual communities as they watch my object of study. There are some enlightening in-depth discussions that illustrate the parameters and factors that the audience considers when choosing a particular telenovela.

At the same time, contradiction and speculation can also reign in message boards. Frequently arguments generate more heat than light. It is particularly interesting to observe the board behavior of some users who also participate in my study via interviews, chats, and email questionnaires. Often their online persona is completely different from the individual whom I meet face to face in Venezuela. Many times their opinions on the message board follow one of the board's opinion leaders and/or the partisan position of their own constructed online persona, and they are different from the ones they express in my study. This, of course, begs two questions: Who is the real person? And what are his/her real perceptions and opinions? Notwithstanding inconsistencies, hidden agendas, and role playing, the observation and understanding of message boards is essential for my research, because these inflection points help me deepen my knowledge about telenovelas. It is in these contradictions that the paradoxes inherent to this genre thrive and some of the questions that need to be answered hide.

The Newest Borough: Social Media

What does the contemporary self want? The camera has created a culture of celebrity; the computer is creating a culture of connectivity. As the two technologies converge – broadband tipping the Web from text to image, social-networking sites spreading the mesh of interconnection ever wider – the two cultures betray a common impulse. Celebrity and connectivity are both ways of becoming known. This is what the contemporary self wants. It wants to be recognized, wants to be connected: It wants to be visible. If not to the millions, on Survivor or Oprah, then to the hundreds, on Twitter or Facebook. This is the quality that validates us, this is how we become real to ourselves – by being seen by others.

(Deresiewicz, 2009)

Facebook

A social media network “can be defined as an individual web page which enables online, human-relationship building by collecting useful information and sharing it with specific or unspecific people” (Kwon & Wen, 2010). In other words, social media are online places where people share, network, and communicate. In addition, these sites encourage feedback such as voting, comments, and favorites. (An example of this characteristic is Facebook's “I like” feature.) Social media usage has grown exponentially in the last five years. According to the Nielsen Company, people spend more time on blogs and social networks than on other online destinations. Globally, Facebook was the most popular social network site in December 2009, when it had 206.9 million unique visitors (Ehrlich, 2010).

In 2008, when I designed my study of La vida entera, I was already aware of the massive presence of telenovela groups and fan pages on Facebook. Some were set up and administered by the telenovela's producing network/company, while fans created other groups. Hence I decided to set up a group for La vida entera where fans could exchange opinions, post pictures, and generally exercise their fandom. This was a different experience from monitoring the message boards. First, most group members watched La vida entera, as opposed to the behavior of message board participants, who sometimes commented even if they had not watched the show. Second, the use of pseudonyms is rare in Facebook.¹² Third, I played an active role as I posted topics on the group's discussion board.

Membership in the group reached 625 by the telenovela's final episode.¹³ Group participants used the “wall” extensively to express spontaneous opinions. During the six months when the telenovela was on the air, I posted 24 topics on the discussion board, which elicited spirited exchanges. These topics were inspired by my study's research questions and by developments in the storylines. In addition, group members posted 16 discussion topics, and also web links and photographs related to La vida entera. Some members created a spinoff group dedicated to actor Luis Gerónimo Abreu, who played “Guille.” This character's love story with “Tata” eclipsed the protagonists and became the public's favorite.

Once again, I witnessed the links between consumption and production. User-generated content from this Facebook group often came up in the production side of my research. Author Leonardo Padrón read carefully the musings of group participants, and actors working in La vida entera occasionally wrote on the group's wall and replied to the public's comments.

Video Blogs and Chats

“This video has content from Venevision International, which has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.” The message appeared every time someone outside Venezuela tried to watch La vida entera's episodes uploaded on YouTube and other video sharing sites. The warning was displayed even on videos uploaded by the network for promotional purposes. Venevisión executives told me that the rationale for this was to increase the international sales of the telenovela. This international block disgusted viewers around the world who had watched previous telenovelas written by Leonardo Padrón, admired many actors in La vida entera's stellar cast, and were used to watching telenovelas online.¹⁴

Soon there was an alternative: full episodes were embedded in a blog. The news traveled fast along the telenovela grapevine, via individual emails and chats. At the same time, fans protected the site. I could not find any posts on message boards or social media that included the actual address of the blog. As one audience member told me, “we must keep the secret so Venevisión never finds it.” Before long, people were watching and writing so many comments on the blog that the author/owner (who used a pseudonym) decided to embed a chat on the site where some of La vida entera's hardcore fans met regularly to talk about their telenovela. Every day, at the time when it was 9 p.m. in Venezuela, a group gathered virtually to chat about the episode being broadcast. Participants who were watching live in Venezuela would do a “play by play” of the telenovela for those living abroad, who eagerly “listened.” During commercial breaks and at the end of the episode, the chat's activity intensified significantly. I observed this nightly ritual with fascination. Many chat participants lived in Europe and stayed up until after midnight in order to participate in the conversation. The next day they would write about how tired they were for lack of sleep. But they rarely missed the chat. Two months after La vida entera had ended, there were still occasional chats on the blog. The conversation usually centered on how much they missed the telenovela and on “Guille” and “Tata,” their two favorite characters.

I contacted the blog owner the moment I heard about the site. We emailed periodically and he kept me informed about his decision process regarding the content of the chat. When La vida entera entered its final month, he offered to place a recruitment announcement for my study on the blog. I wrote the notice and he placed it prominently, at the top of the main page. Thanks to the announcement, I was able to interview, via Skype and email, 32 audience members who did not live in Venezuela and watched the telenovela on the blog. These one-time interviews at the end of the telenovela rounded off my study and provided remarkable material, which supplemented the evidence gathered from viewers who watched in Venezuela. I also interviewed, in Caracas, three of the chat participants who delivered each episode's “play by play.” In sum, the video blog and the chat became important research sites for my study. They represented yet another place where telenovela consumption revealed its addictive, determined, and transnational qualities.

Looking Back and Looking Forward

Scholars frequently report having difficulties in recruiting participants for their studies. I have not encountered these hurdles. Telenovelas are consumed massively and there is no shortage of potential study participants. In addition, audience members are usually eager to share their experiences and opinions. They enjoy talking about these shows' characters and plots. At the end of each case study, many report that their participation gave them a feeling of validation about their telenovela consumption habit. This foregrounds one of the many paradoxes inherent to this television genre: it is simultaneously (and massively) consumed and derided. And that contradiction marks everything and everyone related to telenovelas – viewers, writers, actors, regulators, and the scholars who study them.

Geographic distance is the main source of many of the challenges that I face in my research and the trigger for the methodological solutions I strive to find, aided as I am by technology and new developments in telecommunications. The mix of being culturally close to, yet geographically far from, Venezuela exacerbates the insider/outsider tension that is part and parcel of ethnographic studies (Murphy, 1999; Parameswaran, 2001). I occupy the subject position of outsider when I research production. Even after a decade of investigating telenovela production in Venezuela, and despite the continuous warm welcome I receive in television studios, dressing rooms, and writers' homes and offices, I know I am an outsider. I do not work in the telenovela industry. In contrast, I do not feel as an outsider when I study the audience because I watch telenovelas. And, although years of research have left their mark on my consumption process, I still think of myself as an audience member, and that links me to my reception participants regardless of other demographic and cultural markers where our identities do not intersect.

The insider/outsider tension points to the key role that identity plays in academic research. Identity is an undeniable factor in the topics we choose to study and in the epistemological and ontological assumptions and commitments that underpin our scholarship. But it is also a fundamental concept for the examination of telenovela audiences where identities are not only constructed in the telenovela text, but also produced, consumed, and regulated within the specific cultures that impregnate the sites where I have studied telenovela reception. This is most patent in my face-to-face exchanges with study informants who also participate in message boards or social media. It is a facet of my journey that needs to be further studied and analyzed.

The comprehensive nature of my case studies challenges me as much as the geographic gap does. Attempting to study telenovelas using a multiperspective model like the circuit of culture is not for the faint of heart. It requires particular stamina and creativity, because it is akin to running on a parallel course to a strange Olympic event: a relay obstacle race. As I run, I can see up close how the runners pass the baton to each other. I watch how ideas and talent become a script, and how hard work and more talent transform the script into televised installments. I observe how audience members interpret what they watch and make it part of their everyday life, and how the entertainment press reports and speculates about the production and consumption of the audiovisual text. I witness the way the audience's readings become factors in the writing and staging of the story. And I can detail the kinds of hurdles that make up the race's course – professional, personal, commercial, expected, imposed, or unanticipated obstacles. This is a difficult, complex, long race, which requires both speed and endurance. This race also provides evidence characterized by depth, texture, and complexity: it never simplifies my object of study for the purpose of our investigation, and it underscores the links among media, culture, and society.

My journey is not finished. The theoretical articulations of the different moments of the circuit of culture demand more research. The changing, paradoxical, and unpredictable nature of the telenovela world requires more studying. And my country also calls for continuous research. Venezuelan television and telenovelas are changing as the country transforms. Political polarization keeps growing, and the Chávez government is gradually diminishing the freedom of expression through media content laws and through the closing of opposition media outlets. The chilling effect of these measures is already obvious. And the impact on international sales of Venezuelan telenovelas is undeniable. Therefore it is not the time to stop. On the contrary, as both the industry and its context change, I must continue to examine how and why telenovela addiction works. Hence I face new itineraries. There are more destinies and audience hot spots that require my presence, and more packing lists that need to be planned for. I still have a lot of walking, talking, and observing to do as I traverse the beguiling landscape of telenovelas in search for their addictive soul.

NOTES

1 There are wonderful books that give fandom the in-depth treatment it deserves. I recommend particularly Jenkins (1992), Hills (2002) and Gray, Sandvoss, and Harrington (2007).

2 Some of the authors who have written about the ethics, procedures, and conundrums of doing online ethnographies are Bird (2003), Sade-Beck (2004), Markham (2008), and Driscoll and Gregg (2010).

3 Machismo is a set of beliefs that include the idea that men are superior to women, have more extensive rights, and belong to the public sphere, while women should stay in man's shadow and in the private realm. According to marianismo, women are morally superior, they are the owners of spiritual strength and they have a capacity for self-sacrifice that makes them particularly fit to be good mothers. The combination of these two ideologies places women in the private sphere of the household and makes them take the brunt of parental responsibility.

4 According to Research in Motion (Blackberry's manufacturer), Venezuela outpaces Europe in per capita use of smartphones (Cancel, 2009).

5 Families that have participated in my studies range from three to eight members. The structure of these groups varies from traditional – mother, father, and children of different ages – to nontraditional combinations. The latter include, but are not limited to, grandmother and grandchildren, grandfather, mother, children and aunt, and mother, children and mother's partner.

6 All the vignettes in the chapter were written on the basis of my unpublished expanded fieldnotes.

7 Participants who belong to lower socioeconomic strata have Internet access thanks to the widespread presence of Internet cafés in their neighborhoods.

8 Because telenovelas are a spectacle of emotions, their consumption tends to be very emotional. Participants in my studies tend to rationalize more their reception of the shows, which moderates the emotional aspects of their consumption.

9 The entertainment press lurks in message boards. Through the years I have seen repeatedly how a post becomes “news,” even when it was completely untrue. This is the main reason why some use message boards to advance their own agendas.

10 Often, in time, even their true identity becomes obvious.

11 Most message boards have the option of contacting other registered users directly, via their “nick” (their email address is not shown). This type of communication is private and does not appear on the message board. I approach some users this way to ask them if they would be willing to have a conversation with me about the telenovela I am studying. About 30% of those contacted agree to meet me in person or via Skype.

12 The absence of pseudonyms does not imply that each user does not construct a Facebook persona. We all do when we choose what to include in our profile and what to post on our wall and our friends' walls.

13 After I created the group, two Facebook fan pages were created One had 98 fans and the other over 1,600. Both pages had almost no activity.

14 In addition to discouraging the public's good will toward the network, blocking the videos did not seem to help international sales either, which is a topic that is beyond the scope of this chapter. The jury is still out on whether blocking content encourages or discourages international sales of specific telenovelas.

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