By: Jacob Martinez
Social media can affect how we well we can communicate with different people outside and inside our community. From this week's reading by Sarah Wagner and Mireia Fernandez-Ardevol, Decolonizing mobile media: Mobile Internet appropriation in a Guarani community, I learned how indiginous people face barriers when trying to gain specific skills to transform media services. While I do believe that social media and other media platforms can be beneficial to communicating a message, sometimes mobile media can create barriers. It will create barriers for these communities that are trying to self-represent themselves successfully. In my past experience, I have learned that even multicultural communities have had trouble getting a message out because of the decline in face-to-face discussions. It is way easier for these types of groups and communities to relay a message when it is face-to-face, rather than over social media.
In the article, Wagner and Fernadez-Ardevol state that “a central cultural concept among Guaraní political discourse in Argentina and Bolivia is ñande reko or “our culture” (Hirsch, Huenuan, & Soria, 2016; Wahren, 2012), which reflects the Guaraní understanding of well-being and is often associated with group unity or togetherness (see Wagner, 2019).” I think this is a great point to reflect off, when thinking about visiblize the culture of Guarani. Since culture plays a huge part in their community, I feel as if it is hard for them to relay the message that, they are able to show who they are and self-represent themselves through their culture. Culture is something that people are able to understand when face-to-face, especially with hispanic indigenous communities. Late in the article, they state that one of the campaign managers, Julio was trying to obtain permission for a media project. They were working towards maintaining their own radio show and I think that this is a great start. In January of 2014, they were able to gain Wi-Fi signals as a tower was created for them. While it is better to talk face-to-face about culture, this was their first step on trying to communicate to the rest of the community about their culture.
One important topic that was talked was about access to specific services for different people apart of the community. Wagner and Fernandez-Ardevol state that “at the time of research, most community members could access Internet services at home on their smartphone, feature phone, or personal computer without cost difference between a wide selection of communication media. Being able to provide access to members of the community that had different mobile or online devices is great. Everyone is included with the Internet services being provided in their own home, and the culture is able to be shared between different platforms online.
Overall, I believe that what the Hispanic Indigenous people are trying to communicate across the community is great. They are taking different barriers and passing through them by ensuring all members of the community are involved. These people are working towards a more accessible community that is able to learn about the Guarani culture, since a ton of people that live in nearby communities, don't know what it is.
Commentaires