Reactions to Audiovisual Adaptation on Social Media: The Case of How To Get Away With Murder

This chapter aims at moving away from the more traditional micro-analytical, textual analysis of localized audiovisual texts and toward the more all-encompassing study of audiovisual localization as a practice that includes marketing decisions by distributors and post-hoc reactions by the end-users of audiovisual adaptations. Specifically, this case study detailed in the chapter looks at Italian tweeters’ reactions to a 2016 incident concerning the adaptation of the US TV series How To Get Away With Murder (HTGAWM) (2014–ongoing), in which a sex scene between two men was edited out of the version that was aired on Italian national TV network Rai2. By applying the appraisal theory devised by Martin and White (2005), the chapter looks at the ways in which Italian Twitter users expressed feelings as well as affiliation/disaffiliation with the rest of the virtual community on the issue of the audiovisual adaptation of HTGAWM.