Processos comunicativos digitais e presenciais na comunidade CS POA: relações culturais/identitárias e perspectivas de cidadania comunicativa e cultural

Abstract

Our research main objective is investigating how face and digital communication processes permeate cultural and identity relations of CS POA community (Couchsurfing’s community in Porto Alegre) and also investigating which prospects are offered by that processes for communicative and cultural citizenship: we are thinking about traces, mediations and community interactions. In order to cover our object complexity, our research context involves transmedia, globalization and mediatization processes, which also presents Couchsurfing and Facebook social networks, which constitute CS POA digital scene, and the community itself. Our research is based on conceptsand theories related to communities, virtual communities and social networks in order tounderstand a community which is configured by real and digital scenes. Our theoretical framework also consists in theories linked to appropriations, mediations, culture, identity, hospitality culture and communicative and cultural citizenship in order to analyze cultural traces that constitute that community and how the relations between social actors and alterities are. Methodology strategies permeated all research’s construction. We have used a combination between ethnographic and netnographic methods and our empirical approach included an exploratory research. In our systematic research we have interviewed eight community members, we have elaborated a diary and we have observed face and digital interactions in CS POA. We have found that cultural traces from Rio Grande do Sul can potentiate hospitality in that community, but also can restrict its citizen practices. Tacit and explicit rules constitute community identity aspects and aim to respect subjects diversity, although there are subversions. Digital interactions often converge to face interactions among CS POA members.