¿Realidad o ficción? Tópicos e influencias de las series de televisión educativas en adolescentes

Abstract

Television series are one of the most consumed audiovisual contents nowadays. This research focuses on the study of those television series that are aimed at teenagers, analyzing the educational and moral aspects that are transmitted in them. Thanks to the instruments designed for this Doctoral Thesis, the aim is to examine the message transmitted to viewers through this type of programmes. For this purpose, four television series have been selected: "Merlí" , "HIT" , "Élite" , and "Sex Education" . The general objective of this Doctoral Thesis is to analyze fiction series aimed at teenagers from an educationalcommunicative perspective in order to study the consumption, habits and influence of the contents on the Spanish youth sector. Four specific objectives have also been established, namely: to find out about the themes of television series and their similarity to the difficulties that adolescents face in their daily lives; to study the characters portrayed in these television series; to identify the values that television series transmit to young people through four selected television series; and, finally, to analyze consumption habits, as well as the opinion of television viewers on the characters and themes that appear in these programmes. This research is based on two qualitative studies: a focus group with 15 teenagers and a content analysis of the audiovisual pieces. As far as the quantitative study is concerned, a survey was carried out with a total of 40 items. The sample consisted of 1,845 individuals. The results show that there is a preference for dealing with aspects that have a great impact on young people in the series. Among the characters analyzed, there is a large representation of young people, who are the main characters and whose plots are the backbone of all the series. In terms of quantitative analysis, teenagers say that their favourite programmes are TV series, which they watch on video-on-demand platforms. One of the main conclusions drawn is that these series transmit ethical and moral values to the audience. Only two of the series analyzed are considered educational, these being "Merlí" and "HIT".