2010-07-21

ICTs and Participatory Culture

ICTs and Participatory Culture was the theme of the "Participatory Communication Research" section on July 21.The session began with Emmanoel Martins Ferreira, assistant professor at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil, with his paper "New Media and Participatory Culture within the Brazilian Context".

He explained what participatory culture is and how it is facilitated by the advances in new media, mainly Web 2.0. He also wondered how young Brazilians act within the digital environment and if this participation helps their cultural and social development.

Afterwards, the paper "«Bairros» from Oporto: representing identity and exclusion through Youtube" by Anabela Gradim, António Fidalgo and Catarina Moura from Universidade da Beira Interior, Portugal,was presented. The paper analysed videos about the neighborhoods from the city of Porto, with quantitative
and qualitative semiotic approach. "It is hoped to shed some light on their perceived profiles of identity and exclusion, as well as understand some of the particularities of neighborhood youth urban culture".

Christopher McConnell from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, presented his paper "Off the Computer and Into the Saddle: Local Cycling Media and Community Engagement". The paper was a study with interviews with 25 cyclists and 18 months of observation in Austin, state capital of Texas and home to the University of Texas.

From Viseu, Porto and Aveiro, cities of Portugal, Sónia Ferreira, Ana Veloso and Óscar Mealha brought their theme "A Study based on Web 2.0 Communication and Information Services in Senior Citizen Contexts of Use". Their objective was to show that senior citizens are capable and interested in digital inclusion. Their empirical research used data collecting instruments with a group of senior citizens in Portugal. Among their results were that the seniors prefer clean interfaces and Portuguese language in their computers.

Dagmar Monett Díaz from the Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany), and Beatriz Calvo Peña, from Universidad Carlos III (Spain) presented "A portrait of the Cuban bloggers based on The First Survey of the Cuban Blogosphere". This work about blogs in Cuba intends to show how the blogosphere is made up of Cubans living in the country and outside. Results were obtained from questionnaires sent to the bloggers.

Rita Santos, José Azevedo and Luís Pedro, from University of Aveiro, and Rong Wang, from the National University of Singapore were absent and did not present.

Diogo Soza, Raquel Lobao e Renata Freitas

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