Soap opera, politics and social networks: readings of La Leona

Abstract

In an unfavourable scene for broadcast television, Argentinian telenovela struggles to survive by drawing on its melodramatic roots on the one hand, and on its typical permeability to the social or even political context, on the other. La leona, produced in 2015 but broadcast in 2016, is an example of how this genre can marginalize one of its main pillars, the love story, to focus the narrative on a workplace conflict between workers and employers. This article intends to analyze the evaluations of La leona posted by viewers in various social networks during its running period, and how these readings were different insofar as they considered the telenovela either as an exponent of a genre, with its corresponding rules, or as an allegory of a certain sociopolitical situation.