Articulo_9_EN_Doxa_27

The presenter and host Emma García has represented the programme’s direction and its editorial line since its first broadcast. Secondary figures complete the dynamic of the programme such as love advisors and accomplices. The former is seated next to the tronistas, where they give them their advice and opinion about everything that happens concerning their passage to the throne. On the other hand, the accomplices are usual collaborators on the program, whose primary function is to disclose information about the suitors’ private and public life beyond the program so as to ensure that they comply with the rules. Additionally, they can freely express their opinion about everything that occurs on the throne, they attempt to reveal secrets so that the tronista can be aware of what suitors do off camera, this information is usually a morbid element used for fuelling controversy and increasing public interest.

The program premiered on Spanish screens on June 9, 2008, since then it has been broadcasted continuously from Monday to Friday, each program lasting 75 minutes; its age rating is +12. The programs are presented in the format of a pseudo-live show, alternating between male and female thrones, usually with two tronistas per throne, each one with its respective suitors.

MYHYV strengthens the symbolic imaginary of what someone must or can do to arouse love in their object of desire and make it reciprocal. The media is one of the most powerful tools for the creation of our social reality through which to consolidate rules and social norms, stereotypes, and punishment and surveillance tools. They are a mechanism for articulating discourse and a vehicle for the legitimization of certain conduct and behaviour that (re)produces a hegemonic discourse consumed daily by the society, thus filtering this entire collective imaginary to the social body, allowing it take root in day-to-day life. This study aims to examine the stereotyped image generated by MYHYV of the conditions in which to successfully win somebody’s heart, based on the main actors’ discourse and the elements of the suitors which are evaluated positively and/or negatively.

2. Theoretical framework

For both social constructionism and symbolic interactionism, which are theoretical tendencies considered to be inherent in the interpretative perspective of communication (Rodrigo, 2001), reality is the product of continuous creation through the interrelation between different social actors (Blumer, 1982; Searle, 1997; Berger and Luckmann, 2011). Currently, the media is undoubtedly the largest source of discourse, whether they be the so-called traditional ones or the new channels of communication. If we are to examine the third model of the effects theory; the return on the powerful effects under limited conditions, we can understand the media as a vehicle for the creation and consolidation of the social reality, having a marked normative component (Noelle-Neumann, 1973).

This model is supported by constructionism and questions the weakness of the effects proposed by previous models (Klapper, 1960). At the same time, it accepts that the media are entities with the capacity to shape individuals in the long-term, their social relationships and their way of interrelating with reality due to the media’s omnipresence and degree of cumulation. The media provides the individual with a constant series of discursive tools through their role of articulation (Noelle-Neumann, 1974), which strengthens their symbolic imaginary of rules and social codes. Whereas regarding symbolic interactionism, they shape the Self while confronting the Generalized other in the media.