No Puppet's Land: The Role of Social Media in Puerto Rico's Mainstream Television

Abstract

This article explores the role of social media in the boycott and eventual cancellation of Puerto Rico's highest rated TV gossip show, titled SuperXclusivo. The show, hosted by a puppet character called “La Comay” (in English, The Godmother), ignited a controversy in 2012 when it was implied that the murder of a local publicist was caused by soliciting the services of a sex worker hours before he was killed. Within 24 hours of the comments being made, a social media movement emerged calling a boycott of La Comay. Through an online ethnography and a close textual analysis this article offers a close read into this event in order to show how it embodies two larger social and political phenomena: 1) the ways social media demonstrates an unexpected networked power vis-à-vis the entrenched power of a major media corporation and 2) the ways the movement is reconfiguring a cultural citizenship while it subsidizes a second-class citizenship attached to Puerto Rico.