Dossier

DO SSIE R TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS: from the mobilizations against homophobia to the crisis of a country music duo Copyright © 2012 SBPjor / Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores em Jornalismo RONALDO HENN Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil KELLEN MENDES HÖEHR Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil GABRIELA INÁCIO BERWANGER Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil ABSTRACT - This paper presents the preliminary results of a research that investigates the creation of events through social networking sites on the Internet. There is already a specific type of event that serves the logic of these networks, especially those whose production and distribution take place based on online platforms and digital tools. This paper investigates two cases: the first concerns the duo of Brazilian country music singers, Zezé di Camargo and Luciano, who, after an argument that occurred in a concert in the city of Curitiba, announced the end of the partnership. The video was posted on YouTube and was immediately spread through the social networks, which generated intense conversation about the episode until it became a journalistic event in the traditional media. This paper also examines the organization of a protest against the attack on a homoaffective couple in a street of São Paulo in 2011, completely worked on by Facebook. Based on Charles Sanders Peirce’s concept of semiosis, a map of the construction of these events is drawn with its various ramifications, from the articulations within the network to the production of meanings that they develop. The events studied have as an element in common the leading role that social networks had in their constitution. They possess the nature of the network and are framed in what is understood now as cyberevents, a category that poses new challenges to the practice of journalism. Keywords: Events. Cyberevents. Social networks. Internet. TRANSFORMAÇÕES DO ACONTECIMENTO NAS REDES SOCIAIS das mobilizações contra a homofobia à crise de dupla sertaneja RESUMO - O trabalho apresenta resultados preliminares de pesquisa que investiga a constituição de acontecimentos através das redes sociais na internet. Já existe uma especificidade de acontecimento que atende as lógicas da rede, principalmente aqueles cuja produção e difusão se dão a partir de plataformas e ferramentas digitais e on-line. Esse artigo investiga dois casos: o da dupla de cantores de música sertaneja brasileira, Zezé di Camargo e Luciano, que, a partir de desentendimento ocorrido em show na cidade de Curitiba, anunciaram o final da parceria. A imagem foi imediatamente postada no YouTube e repercutida nas redes sociais, o que gerou intensa conversação sobre o episódio até converter-se em acontecimento jornalístico nas mídias tradicionais. Também analisa a organização de protesto contra a agressão sofrida por casal homoafetivo em rua de São Paulo em 2011, totalmente trabalhada pelo Facebook. A partir do conceito de semiose de Charles Sanders Peirce, desenha-se o mapa de construção desses acontecimentos com as articulações no interior da rede até as produções de sentidos que desencadeiam. Os acontecimentos tratados contêm como elemento comum o papel de protagonista que as redes sociais tiveram na sua constituição. Eles possuem a natureza da rede e enquadram-se naquilo que se compreende agora como ciberacontecimento, categoria que lança novos desafios para a prática do jornalismo. Palavras-chave: Acontecimento. Ciberacontecimento. Redes sociais. Internet. 96 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS THEORETICAL COMMENTS The theories of the event usually set it at the level of surprise and unpredictability. Something that breaks through “the smooth surface of history” (in the interpretation of Rodrigues, as if it were possible to have a smooth surface in history), that generates a discontinuity in the continuous flow (QUERÉ, 2005), or even that becomes a singularity which produces paradoxical developments (DELEUZE, 1998). There is, therefore, a component that puts the event on the same level as information, understood in the terms of Information Theory. The more surprising or destabilizing the event is, more information it carries. And it is in this record that the journalistic event, translated into journalistic information, encounters its main configuration. However, this amalgam that is imposed even as common sense needs some strains. Usually the strength of the happening is linked to the concreteness of the facts and their constructions. There is an imposition of something that occurs on the level of the index (in the sense of C. S Peirce, 2002), of what is conventionally known as the real world. It is understood that this is not the only logical place of the event: it inhabits a broader semiotic plan ranging from the mere qualitative perception of the world to the development of ideas. One postulates, in this sense, that the event does not necessarily belong to the order of the real understood as a world driven by natural and social forces. The manifestations of culture and language that constitute what Iuri Lotman (1999) calls semiosphere are also carriers of evenemencial power exactly because of their potential for concentrating great informational impetus (HENN, 2010). The semiotic environments constituted by the mass popular culture, usually marked by redundancy, also produce evenemencial waves or processes that belong to the very nature of culture and of the event itself, or marketing strategies that seek visibility and integration of cultural products. Thus, it can be said that among the various possibilities of journalistic event, at least two situations are intertwined. One concerns the teeming of social dynamics and the other, the ebullience of contemporary cultural processes. These two dynamics of the event are now undergoing deep changes in terms of constitution because of the intense proliferation of network communication and the consolidation of the social networks on the Internet. It is understood that there are intrinsic relationships among the types of happening and the media environment in which they are processed. As early as the 1970s, the historian Pierre Nora (1979) BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 97 Ronaldo Henn, Kellen Mendes Höehr and Gabriela Inácio Berwanger suggested that there are events which are carriers of specific elements corresponding to the media with which they are contemporary. The Dreyfus Affair in France, for example, would be the birthplace of the modern press; the outbreak of World War II, of radio, and the arrival of man on the moon, of television. Each media situation transforms a little the nature of the event, which begins to contain, in itself, the dynamics of the media in which it is engendered. This thought can also be associated with what can be inferred from the seminal ideas of Marshall McLuhan and Walter Benjamin. Both of them, from distinct epistemological places, perceive the media as transformers of the perception and of our relationship with the world: fundamental cognitive changes in McLuhan (1974) and actions in space/time intensely mediated currently, situation anticipated by Benjamin (1982) to discuss the changes produced by photography and the movies (SERRA, 1993). In times of technological changes, with the web, mobile telephony, widespread capture and transmission of images and sounds, the event seems to undergo profound metamorphoses and concentrates in itself new problems. This scenario, besides establishing the urgency of other looks on the theoretical perspectives that address the emergence of the journalistic event, also brings changes in the professional practices. Since the popularization of the Internet starting in the 1990s, journalism began to migrate to the network and to present its own dynamics1. In this period formats and even generations of journalism have been identified that cover a wide range of specificities (MIELNICZUK, 2003). Major changes in the production processes and the consumption of news are changing the face of journalism. One such change is the greater interference by the public in the news process, achieved by the popularization of the access and the simplification of the technologies that promote publication and cooperation in the network (PRIMO; TRÄSEL, 2006). As early as the 1990s, an event gained shape from the web: the scandal involving former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the then White House intern Monica Lewinski. Ignacio Ramonet (1999) draws attention to the change which that episode meant in the behavior of journalism. The manager of a convenience store in the building of the television network CBS reported the scandal firsthand posting on his blog, The Drudge Report, the content of telephone conversations recorded by his friend and denouncer of Lewinsky, Linda Tripp. Journalist Michael Isikoff from Newsweek magazine followed the case and was hesitant to divulge these conversations, seeking better verification of the facts. He was 98 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS surprised. The Internet has since started to change the traditional ways of producing and consuming information. On April 14, 2009, a report in G12 recounted the extraordinary success of a gangly novice in the British TV show Britain´s Got Talent whose video had been accessed on YouTube more than 2 million times by that date. The same news was in the UOL3 and Terra4 portals, triggering a series of new reports that would be published with intensity during two months, seasoned with new ingredients. Susan Boyle, the singer in question, became an instant celebrity and her story began to be investigated since then, accompanied by the new turns on her tour: the status of favorite among other competitors, potential contracts to record an album, invitations to participate in movies. On April 21st, an article published in UOL5 reported that the singer had been offered 1 million dollars to star in a pornographic movie and that at that point, the program´s video had grown to over 100 million accesses. “A star was born overnight in cyberspace, where Boyle’s song video was seen more than 100 million times on YouTube, according to the electronic edition of Mail on Line and the newspaper The Sun, the most widely read in Great Britain”, emphasized the text. On May 24th, the Scottish singer was still leading in the online news that now reported her second performance in the talent show and her classification for the final. On May 30th, while she was singing “I Dreamed a Dream” in the final of the competition, news was already circulating in the portals highlighting her performance and the emotion that she caused in the audience. Later came the disappointment: Boyle’s favoritism had been defeated by a young street dance group. The subject remained on the air for a week with all sorts of speculations about the likely mental disorders of the singer, who was hospitalized due to the exhaustion she suffered on the eve of the final. Susan Boyle became a typical event of the Internet. Even though she had originally performed in a traditional television program, the interest in the star began as her video clip was disseminated by Youtube and became the subject of numerous accesses. Thereafter, news about the “ugly duckling” who surprised and delighted a TV audience began to pop up at the portals exponentially increasing the interest in the subject. The buzz was so intense that it made the singer remain on the air every day, with great highlighting, during two months, becoming a kind of global “craze”. The episode in question contains the elements that characterize it as an event: disruption in the tableau of social normality, and with BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 99 Ronaldo Henn, Kellen Mendes Höehr and Gabriela Inácio Berwanger institutional expectations, besides being unexpected (Babo-Lança, 2008). It also aggregates a component that comes essentially from the media: it is something based on the logic of a televisual program. But what makes this episode an event is its power to disseminate through the web, first by the video-sharing site Youtube, and then by the repercussion on the social networks and news portals. Leaving behind the superfluity, other recent events draw attention due to the way they were constituted. We highlight the demonstrations of the opposition supposedly defeated by fraud in the elections that occurred in Iran in June 2009. All the mobilization of this opposition was articulated by social networks such as Facebook, by blogs and Twitter. At the same time, the violence of the forces repressing the protests was recorded and disseminated via mobile devices. A news story of the New York Times reproduced on UOL6 on June 16th reported that “on Twitter, reports and links to photos of a mass peaceful march in Tehran on Monday (15), along with reports of fighting in the streets and victims throughout the country, became the most popular subject around the world in this service, according to statistics published by Twitter.” On the same day, another report of UOL7 emphasized that “by blocking the access to several websites, Iranians have adopted the stance of using online tools to try to circumvent government censorship and disseminate information, images and videos of the tense environment in the country. The most popular websites have been Twitter and Facebook, but Iranians have also used YouTube, Flickr and MySpace to post material, using tools that circumvent the blocking imposed by the Iranian authorities. “ Here are two faces of the event that complement each other. First, the generation of the facts (public demonstrations of protest) was articulated through the various devices of the Internet. Second, the dissemination of these protests itself, with its impact on traditional media, was accomplished through these devices, which gives this event unprecedented ingredients of configuration and propagation. In this scenario, the term cyberevent is proposed to describe events which are constituted based on the specific logic of the platforms instituted in the digital environment both with regard to their production and to their dissemination. Throughout 2011, the set of events designated as Arab Spring, the insurgencies in Europe and the global movement known as Occupy Wall Street had social networks as protagonists. In August 2011, due to the popular actions that proliferated especially in London, British Prime 100 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS Minister David Cameron even announced the intention to suspend or limit access to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as to the BlackBerry message service, the BBM. In the area of entertainment there are countless situations in which network communication now appears as an originating+ source of events. These processes are thought of within the logic originating from the Theory of Signs, by Charles Sanders Peirce (2002). Semiosis is the action of the sign in all its ramifications, not only what is established in the fruition of any sign with a probable interpreter, but also the set of semiotic activities prior to its specific production with all its potential meanings produced in a very broad perspective of time. This even includes concrete actions, such as social movements motivated by certain articulations of signs. In journalistic practice, each step of the processes can be understood as an interpretive activity: the agenda for an investigation of a news item is a sign that will be expanded in the interpretative activity of the reporter, editor and later of the user in the contact with the news, producing social repercussion (HENN, 1996). This set is a semiosis: the uninterrupted generation of signs by certain propelling poles, which are dynamic or semiotic objects. It is understood that the event acts as one of those poles. It concentrates in itself the driving force of semiosis: apprehended in the condition of sign, the breaking out of its existence unfolds in infinite possibilities for revealing the object that it embodies. In the various definitions of signs offered by Peirce, there is always an emphasis on the triadic relation of an object that translates into a sign and that, based on this translation, generates a new sign, an interpretive that in turn generates others in a potentially infinite way. The event, in journalistic practices, takes the logical place of the object, which also implies its own transformation into a sign. Located in the place of the object, the event offers itself to experience: it is formed based on this link. Through this linkage, it translates itself into signs, introduces possibilities of meaning by expanding its own experience: the event is transformed into a fact. From signs emerge the interpretives, which can be both meanings that are translated and unfold into others (which implies an enhancement of the meaning) as concrete actions in the world. From the object’s point of view, the event has various gradations: from “natural” events, generally cataclysms or accidents, producers of environmental and social disorders to the ones already established in the media. In any case, in terms of public perception, even the event BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 101 Ronaldo Henn, Kellen Mendes Höehr and Gabriela Inácio Berwanger configured this way would be at the object level. To the extent that it generates reports, we enter into the field of the sign which, in this case, is structured as a narrative that can be a public speech about what happened or a representation formed by the media. The event in this way is part, as understood by Alsina (1989), of the social construction of reality, since it is formed by elements outside the subject (object) that begin to recognize it and constitute it as an event. It only has meaning insofar as it affects subjects or, as Quéré (2005) would state, acting in the field of experience (which transforms it into signs). Is it through its transformation into a sign that the event is materialized publicly. This mediation also takes the form of a methodological gateway to the very constitution of the event. At this moment, it is possible to see a difference between the event constituted in the ambit of the traditional mass media and those which proliferate now through the web. In the previous model, there was a unilateral process, which places the object of the sign/event in the potentially exterior or decisive logical situation. In turn, the semiosis triggered tended to certain accommodations that would depend on the degree of public reverberation conquered (HENN, 2011). In the current model we have an object that is produced in the interior of the medium that is transformed into the logical and virtual place of its constitution. The event is already essentially signic, and semiosis will occur, to a large extent, in the very materiality of the medium in a process of collective intensification of the production of the sign/event. First case On October 2, 2011, Folha Online, G1 and other news portals narrated an event that has become quite common in the area around Avenida Paulista, São Paulo. A gay couple was attacked during the night after they left a bar. The assault resulted in serious bruises for one of them, with a suspected skull fracture. On the same day, there was an intense movement in the social networks with vehement protests against homophobia. There are initiatives in the Brazilian Congress to enact a statute that criminalizes actions that are considered to be homophobic. Neo Christian sectors in the Parliament, however, preclude the advancement of this proposal. The movement that was articulated by the networks, especially Facebook and Twitter, focused on giving visibility to this discussion. From the perspective of Louis Queré (2005), the event itself 102 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS contains two dynamics: the establishment of a discontinuity and the power of revelation. It has hermeneutical power in the sense that based on its emergence, a whole process of discussion is established. As the event affects people, it is felt in the light of experience and introduces a problematic area. The perception of the level of affectation mobilizes the transformation of the event lived in the field of experience into the journalistic event. For França and Almeida (2008), the event is important because of its consequences, because of the way it penetrates social life, transforming it. It is characterized mainly by interference in behaviors and by the blocking that is produced in the experience of those affected. While designing a horizon of meaning of its own, the event creates an institutional context of meaning that calls on individuals to take a position. Even if there is an individually unique experience of the event, there is a collective experience that creates an interpretive environment in which the possibilities of meaning take on a more effective shape. On being configured as mediation, the event starts to be established as a public experience. With the social networks, this experience is intensely shared, even if in a mediated way: meanings collectively built and acting on conventional journalism. This situation provides another level of public experience. In the modes of traditional reception there was already the prospect of building a public problem or a problem area “to be treated and resolved by collective action of the actors, institutions and/or governmental or political powers” (BABO-LANÇA, 2008). Through the network, this process triggers other potentials. The event in question led into another, a public demonstration, a week later, in the place where the attack occurred. The protest was articulated by the couple’s friends and activists of the LGBT movement and had as its initial stage Facebook. Through the page specially created for the mobilization, called Todo mundo gay no Facebook (Everybody gay on Facebook, Figure 1)8, the demonstration was organized with the initial adhesion of 3,268 people. Held on Saturday, October 9, 2011, at 11 p.m., the protest had a small attendance (only around 100 people), but it generated a journalistic event covered by all the major portals and media of traditional journalism. With colored candles, protest banners and glitter on the floor, the participants demanded the approval of PLC 122, the “Bill for a Brazil without Homophobia”, a difficult issue in the parliament. BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 103 Ronaldo Henn, Kellen Mendes Höehr and Gabriela Inácio Berwanger Figure 1 - Group set up in Facebook Based on this visibility, the profiles and groups identified with this cause generated debate: Não Homofobia9, Ato anti-homofobia10 and Homofobia não11. Through the hashtag #homofobianão the discussion continued and culminated, in late October 2012, with the signing of a protocol of intentions by the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Human Rights and the federal states of Brazil for a joint action to fight homophobia. Social networks not only introduced during the 2000s new forms of sociability, but also of production and circulation of information. Twitter is among the most popular tools of social networks. Its main feature is to function as a microblog where messages are posted containing up to 140 characters. Individuals and companies, in their many different nuances, build profiles that are linked together through a system of followers and followed. Based on the question “What is happening?”, messages can refer both to prosaic accounts of people’s everyday life and to the dissemination and comments of journalistic events. With use of the number sign (#), you can create a hashtag that points to a common webpage. In the case under analysis, the #homofobianão began to be used by most of the profiles that referred to the event. The terms or hashtags are constantly classified in a ranking called trend topics in which the ten subjects most commented on at the moment are shown. The tool has become more sophisticated, and today it is possible to obtain a list with only the tweets from Brazil, and there are already regional classifications for cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. These dynamics establish a collective conversation that is both 104 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS dialogical and narcissistic, to the extent that there is a social capital involved in the posts, as proposed by Raquel Recuero and Gabriela Zago (2011). The authors point out that social capital, as a form of capital, is the product of individual investment in their networks and of the building of value in those spaces, and is transformed in Twitter into a key ingredient of its constitution, since it is able to generate values in its appropriation. Being publicly linked to a particular subject reveals symbolic implications in the sense of the purposeful visibility of this link. The configuration of Twitter updates a postulate that the socalled School of Munich in the German theories of journalism had understood in the essence of journalism in the 1960s, systematized by Hanno Beth and Henry Pross (1987). The authors of this school (Hans Braun, Otto B. Roegele and Heinz Starkula) include in their field of work on the perspective of journalism as a science “the widest form of human contact, in which through speech, hearing and understanding the encounter and the reciprocal influence, the constant exchange of agendas and the interchange of spiritual content occur” (PROSS; BETH, 1987). Because of this, they understood journalism as a contemporary conversation of society and argued that the term ‘journalism’ (zeitung) not only designates a technical medium, but also a firstborn phenomenon of social communication. The contemporary social networks seem to take this postulate to much more intense consequences. Second case In the field of entertainment, the Brazilian media in 2011 highlighted the case of the possible separation of the Brazilian country music duo Zezé Di Camargo and Luciano. The event originated on the web, gaining force on Twitter. We considered all the reports related to the topic on the G112 and R713 portals. It is a significant example of the construction of an event that acquires importance of a different order on that platform. During their concert on October 27, 2011 at Teatro Guaira in Curitiba, Zezé went on the stage and sang alone. The singer apologized to the public because he and his brother had had a personal problem in the dressing room. Luciano showed up in the middle of the show and gave a message to the public about the disagreement, saying that his brother Zezé would follow his career alone. At the same instant, recordings with this statement were posted on the Youtube site and replicated in the microblog Twitter. OTV, channel 11 of the Net in Curitiba, was the only TV broadcaster BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 105 Ronaldo Henn, Kellen Mendes Höehr and Gabriela Inácio Berwanger present at the time of the event and released a report on the video channel on the same day of the event (10/27/2011), but it was the video made by a fan that was the one most widely used in the journalistic reports of other broadcasters. From there, the word was spread, reaching trending topics Brazil with three variations of the most commented subjects: #QuandoUmaDuplaSertanejaSeSepara, #FimdeZeZeeLuciano and Zezé e Luciano, also reaching a worldwide dimension, in the world trending topics, with the theme “Zezé Di Camargo e Luciano.” The posts were divided between comments on the disagreement, statements that they duo would split up, regrets of the fans who did not believe the information and humorous comments. The Brazilian trending topics of Oct. 28 shows what was happening the day after the event. Meanwhile, Luciano left the show and was hospitalized, with the suspicion that he had taken many types of medicine after that live statement. But the family’s version is that the singer was very stressed and taking diet pills, which made him sick after the fight with his brother Zezé. On Twitter, trending topics functions as a filter of the subjects most commented on among the actors in the network, using hashtags “#” or not to focus on the subject in question. This filter has a very significant importance for the network, because it defines the action of its actors and shows the path that the issue is taking with respect to the platform. The centralizing subject may be followed from the perspective of many different narratives constructed on Twitter, which intertwine and exchange one another, in a movement of negotiation of signs. From the viewpoint of Santella and Lemos (2010, p.83): “(...) the collective flow indexed of the hashtag #openpractice serves as a repository of experiences had by its participants, as well as a digital space of community involvement.” In the case of Zezé Di Camargo and Luciano, the hashtags in evidence were important for the management of network information since they occupied four variations of the theme at the same moment. This structure facilitates the monitoring in a tool in which the virtual links are based on shared ideas and not on the emotional and social closeness of the actors, as is easily recognized in other social networks. Twitter has this peculiarity of uniting people by information and not by social ties, since what this network provides is an interaction based on the exchange of ideas. It is from here that the flow gains intensity and reflects in the choice of certain guidelines by journalism. Even if the case of the 106 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS possible separation of the country music duo were interesting to the entertainment media because it presented criteria of newsworthiness such as relevance of the topic and public interest, the matter took on large proportions due to the movement of the duo’s fans and of the actors in the network. Considering that the news was released by seven large portals of the major Brazilian media outlets such as Band, Folha de S. Paulo, G1, O Globo, R7, SBT and Terra, in addition to five television programs aired on national networks such as Hoje em Dia, Bom Dia Brasil, Domingo Espetacular, Fantástico and Jornal do SBT, we note that the news would not have occupied so many journalistic spaces if the video with the statement had not aired on Youtube site and intensified by the social network Twitter. People who were at the show were responsible for disseminating information and, even if unintentionally, they chose one of the top subjects for the Brazilian journalism in the following days. As an example, we will use only the G1 and R7 websites to demonstrate how journalism has utilized the theme, creating new narratives on the subject. The portals have an advantage in relation to television programs: they may provide information at any time, without a regulator of time and space. However, the websites used different narrative strategies for the subject analyzed, as we find on the cover of the portals below (Figure 2), which gave prominence to the news, one day after it happened. Figure 2 – G1 Portal – The front page (10/28/2012) The G1 portal of the Globo Network focused on the instability between the brothers and the health status of the singer Luciano. The reports clarified the event retelling the episode, and used as a source press advisors, Twitter and the testimony of the father of the Brazilian country music singers. Only one appeal was recorded in the case with the headline “Crises atingem duplas sertanejas” (Crises hit country BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 107 Ronaldo Henn, Kellen Mendes Höehr and Gabriela Inácio Berwanger music duos), in which the portal takes advantage of the subject to make a retrospective account of other duos who have undergone instability in recent months, such as Rick and Renner, Bruno and Marrone, Hugo Pena and Gabriel and Edson and Hudson. The space in which the news occupied the cover of the site was prominent and was among other news related to several subjects. From another perspective, the R7 portal of the Record Network used a dramatic and sensational tone in its catch lines, with biased and mobilizing narrative constructions. If we look at the cover of the website (Figure 3), the news is framed in the entertainment section in a prominent place, with a photo and a headline that could possibly impress the reader: “Luciano is hospitalized due to alleged overdose.” It is understood that the catch lines use an appealing tone, both in the headline and in the declaration of the daughter of Zezé: “I’m astonished with all this,” demonstrating a worrisome situation on the part of the family of the singers. Figure 3 – R7 Portal – The front page (10/28/2012) Amidst so many news items, the utilization of Twitter as a source is clear. Both the G1 and R7 portals use the profile (Figure 4) of the country music duo as the source for the reports produced. However, the narratives are constructed in various forms, e.g.: G1 presents the whole case as a fight between brothers, something natural that happens all the time in families; it uses the duo’s father’s testimony to legitimize the story, it reconstructs the event in each report and shows the health status of Luciano, in search of a new ending for the case. A total of 18 reports showed everything from the event to interviews with other duos regarding the case. The R7 portal changed from legitimizing the event to collaborating, providing interaction with the public through quiz games14 regarding the career of Zezé and Luciano, and devoting a space in the portal to the complete coverage (Figure 5) of the disagreement with a total of 32 reports concerning the fight. 108 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS Figure 4 – Declaration of press advisors on the duo´s official Twitter Figure 5 - Journalistic coverage of the case In this entire structure of related reports, there is a heavy flow of information that is recycled and translated all the time, even from one portal to another, as in Twitter itself. An interesting data item is that in the two portals analyzed, G1 and R7, the auto tweet button15 was widely used by the readers, which characterized continuity in the flow of the networks, since, besides being consumers, they act as disseminators of what is produced in the press. The social web is perpetuated through this architecture of collaboration, in which the receivers are also producers and consumers. And this is how Twitter collaborates with journalism, increasing the speed of information, the sharing and the action as producer and translator of its messages. Final comments Both cases of events studied here have a common element: the leading role that social networks played in their constitution. They possess the nature of the network and are framed in what is understood now as cyberevent. The events perceived in this category are not only articulated by the social networks, but also generate an unprecedented form of collective construction in convergence processes (SALLES, 2011). The cyberevent is essentially semiotic, therefore it is articulated in the symbolic scheme of what Peirce calls thirdness. This is because it is based on its construction in the network environment that the event is established. It is in cyberspace that the event is produced, regardless of the fact that it may refer to an external reality. The modes of construction of this event (textual and audiovisual BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 109 Ronaldo Henn, Kellen Mendes Höehr and Gabriela Inácio Berwanger capture and distribution, formatting of hypertextual and transmedia narrative and its particular methods of repercussion, all without the necessary mediation of traditional journalism) point to changes that journalism experiences today and that possess characteristics of crisis. The production processes of the journalistic event and its narratives no longer follow the linear logic and are synchronously triggered with the significant presence of new actors. The logics of production change to the extent that it is the network itself, at first, which supplies information to journalists about what to report. And the report itself expands in an interpretive, rhizomatic, hypertextual and multimedia sequence, bringing greater complexity to the event/narrative relation. The sudden appearance of the event in this environment can produce an explosive semiosis, with immediate impact and exciting challenges for the practice of journalism. NOTES 1 In a paper presented at the X Meeting of the Compos in 2001, Zelia Leal Adghirni and Gilseno Nunes Ribeiro de Souza questioned the identity of journalists in their migration to the online environment. Jornalismo online e identidade profissional do jornalista, available at http://www. compos.org.br/data/biblioteca_1214.pdf, Accessed on 04/15/2011. 2 http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Musica/0,,MUL1085088-7085,00-MULHER+ DE+MEIAIDADE+E+A+NOVA+SENSACAO+DA+MUSICA+BRITANICA.html. 3 http://economia.uol.com.br/ultnot/efe/2009/04/15/ult1767u143799.jhtm. 4 http://noticias.terra.com.br/interna/0,,OI3705306-EI188,00-. 5 http://entretenimento.uol.com.br/ultnot/afp/2009/04/21/ult32u20609.jhtm. 6 http://www.andrelemos.info/midialocativa/2009/06/redes-sociais-e-osprotestos-no-ira.html. 7 http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/bbc/ult272u581828.shtml. 8 http://www.Facebook.com/events/158988370857561/. 9 http://www.Facebook.com/groups/150321371688306/. 10 http://www.Facebook.com/groups/173099929384003/. 110 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS 11 http://www.Facebook.com/hnao1. 12 http://g1.globo.com/. 13 http://www.r7.com/. 14 The quiz games referred to a series of questions regarding the career of the singers, and the participant had to choose the most correct answers possible. 15 Available on the pages of the portals, in every report it is possible to tweet the news directly from the website, without having to copy and paste the link on Twitter. 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Available at: <http://www.compos.org.br/>. Accessed on 06/25/2011. SANTAELLA, Lúcia; LEMOS, Renata. Redes sociais digitais: a cognição cognitiva do Twitter. Coleção Comunicação. São Paulo: Paulus, 2010. SENRA, Stella. Max Headroom: o Último Jornalista. In: PARENTE, André (Org.) Imagem Máquina. Rio de Janeiro: Editora 34, 1993. p. 162-172. Ronaldo Henn is Journalist and professor-researcher in the Postgraduate Program in Communication Science of Universidade Vale dos Sinos (Unisinos), Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. E-mail: henn.ronaldo@gmail.com. Kellen Mendes Höehr is Journalist and master student in the Postgraduate Program in Communication Science of Universidade Vale dos Sinos (Unisinos), Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. 112 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE JOURNALISM EVENT IN SOCIAL NETWORKS Gabriela Inácio Berwanger is Student of scientific initiation at Universidade Vale dos Sinos (Unisinos), Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. RECEIVED ON: 04/01/2012 | ACCEPTED ON: 05/01/2012 BRAZILIANJOURNALISMRESEARCH-Volume8-NUMBER1- 2012 113