Consumo midiático em comunidade online: um estudo sobre o mundo T-Girl

Abstract

This dissertation is chacaracterized as a study of media consumption wich articulates the senses formulated in Mundo T-Girl, an online Facebook community mainly composed of transsexuals women and travestis, their context and gender relation. Theoretically, we base ourselves in the perspective of Cultural Consumption, to assert that every consumer has a symbolic dimension subordinate to culture, revealing the meaning structures of social life. Methodologically, the research is configured as an ethnography in online context. The empirical field is Mundo T-Girl, a community on Facebook composed of transsexual women and travestis. We defined as the object of study the comments made about the celebrities. Our problem is to discover the senses that integrate and distinguish transsexual women and travestis. The main objective is to investigate the reasons why its members belong to this online space. For this, we conducted an analysis of the meanings formulated in the consumption of celebrities classified into two major groups: a) rights and political representation; b) gender roles. As results, we realize that the integrative practices in the community includes the adjustment to the current standard of femininity, as well as the discussion of a political project that consider their demands for social inclusion. At the same time, they seek to define the symbolic distance between themselves and women whose behaviors violate the conservative models of gender, as well as the part of society that does not consider them as political beings.