The centrality of TV News in the convergent media environment: rethinking how the links between the production and reception assign meanings to the Rio 2016 Games¹

This article proposes an analysis of the television news coverage of the Rio 2016 Games and the interactions between production and reception in the convergent media environment. From the theoretical and methodological dimensions of the Televisual Analysis and the Semiology of Social Discourses, this paper presents a critical reading of the coverage of Rio 2016 by Jornal Nacional and of audiences’ comments in the page of Facebook of this TV newscast. This paper reveals the interactions in digital platforms during live broadcasting are embedded in emotional motivations, which can shift the interest of the audience from the event itself to Politics. We observe the audiences tend to produce different significations about the Olympic Games in relation to the frames and meanings generated by the journalistic enunciations.

Keywords
Communication Theory; Two-Step Flow; Epistemology; Lazarsfeld