Abstract

The project Ciganos 2.0: Ethnographying ICT uses and the presence of Portuguese Roma in social media focuses on how digital technologies are being progressively incorporated into the everyday lives of Portuguese Roma (which generally continue to self-identify by the name Ciganos) and their relationships. Today, in many contexts, many dimensions of life are digitally experienced. The Portuguese Roma are no exception. There is empirical evidence of a growing use of digital technologies and active membership in multiple social media. Therefore, this project runs in two ways: on the one hand, it is intended to contribute to a better knowledge of Ciganos through an approach to their present social realities; and, on the other hand, it seeks to contribute to better understanding of how digital technologies are incorporated in human relations, contributing to the already vast anthropological theoretical body around the relation of humans to technology and to the digital in different contexts and dimensions of life. With this scope, we propose to carry out an ethnography centred on the everyday lives of Portuguese Roma – offline – and, also, in online sites frequently used by them, not dissociating these realities. In analytical terms, social media relationships that are established and the way they relate and perceive these connections, in the offline/ online sphere, are what we intend to follow and describe. How certain types of technologies are present in their everyday lives? How online sociality is created and how does it reflect and is a reflex of offline realities? What can an ethnographic study of Portuguese Roma and about their technological and relational choices reveal about how we relate and connect in this digital age? These are some approaches under analysis.

Team