Lazer em midiatização: estudo a partir dos fluxos e circuitos comunicacionais nas redes sociais digitais da Oldflix

Abstract

This exploratory and qualitative thesis aimed to analyze leisure in mediatization, a perspective developed considering the interpenetrations between social fields. In this sense, leisure has become increasingly relevant in shaping digital social practices on the internet. As a means of entertainment and disputes, so-called "leisure in mediatization" constitutes a leisure practice under the auspices of digital technologies—more communicative, interactive, ubiquitous, and filled with concessions regarding individuals' freedom of use. The study examined leisure practices promoted by digital social networks, seeking to understand them within communicative and interactional processes. The investigation focused on the communicative flows and circuits of the streaming platform Oldflix on Instagram, with a corpus consisting of posts and comments from the profile @oldflixbrasil collected between 2020 and 2024. This period allowed for inferring streaming as both a leisure content and a mediatized cultural product. The hypothesis raised is that leisure flows (content, posts, and comments) produced in network/profile interactions generate cultural and interactional matrices between leisure and media, linking this product to mediatized leisure. The general objective was to analyze the uses and circuits of leisure through Oldflix's digital social networks, categorizing user comment flows to situate social practices of streaming-based leisure. Furthermore, the study sought to understand how circuits related to posts and comments circulating on Oldflix networks reveal meanings about leisure and relational-communicative practices.The theoretical framework included references on leisure in social networks, digital leisure, mediatization and circulation, communicative flows, as well as communicative and interactional matrices. Methodologically, grounded theory was employed for comment analysis, combined with qualitative thematic analysis for posts, through systematic coding that allowed identifying emergent categories about communicative flows of mediatized leisure. The data demonstrated that @oldflixbrasil's leisure circuits mobilize consumption, memory, discourses, and digital interactions, confirming that communicative flows generate cultural matrices between leisure and media. These results reveal that streaming constitutes a space for digital sociability where users not only consume content but also build bonds and reinterpret cultural practices. The investigation contributes to understanding how leisure is reconfigured in digital culture, highlighting new forms of mediatization in contemporary social practices.