Historic Consciousness and Ethnographic Research about ICTs: Practices and Uses amongst Family Farming in Southern Brazil

Abstract

The study presents findings obtained through ethnographic field research about the uses and practices of information and communication technologies among tobacco planters living in the region of Vale do Sol–Santa Cruz do Sul. This inquiry aims to better understand both the data and the data-gathering approaches deployed by biographical research based on in-depth and semi-structured interviews.

We deploy the prevailing category of historical conscience by exploring biographical narratives through and with media supplied by the informants. This approach helps us focus on lived experience of time and change.

The informant becomes a narratable self in the very act of speaking about his or her own life, and special attention to the ever-changing conditions of time and space can be essential to better understanding how new media finds new uses and how life coexists these new medias in new ways. We propose here to connect the practical approach of ethnographic research, particularly biographical research, to media usage and appropriation practices. These practices are evident in the social landscape of an ever more technologically colonized region. Our inquiry is guided by the aim to understand how the conscience of a certain people, in a certain space, manifests itself through and with media.

Citation

Baptista Reis, P.H. (2017), "Historic Consciousness and Ethnographic Research about ICTs: Practices and Uses amongst Family Farming in Southern Brazil", Brazil (Studies in Media and Communications, Vol. 13), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 363-375. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2050-206020170000013025