Jornalismo, imaginário e leitores: os sentidos do real e da ficção sobre o avião desaparecido da Malaysia Airlines

This article deals with the relationship between a journalistic event, the reader and the imaginary. It discusses the discourse produced by readers on a “fascinating event”, a type of event that att racts att ention due to its “developments”, strongly activating the readers’ imagination. As our empirical environment, we have chosen the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane – occurred on March 8, 2014 –, with 239 people on board. We have analyzed 4.517 comments posted on the Facebook page of the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper. We have discussed how meanings mobilized by the reader move between images built by fi ction and images linked to reality. The investigation also occurred on how subjects interact in this discourse community, forged in a space of social networks comments, and how they build and reaffi rm the collective memory and the senses of their speeches. Keywords: Journalism, reader, imaginary, social networks.