ISSN 2349-4379 Cyber-Ethnography and Youth Cultures Ph.D. Christian Fernández Huerta, Ph.D. Ángel Manuel Ortiz Marín, Ph.D. Victoria Elena Santillán Briceño, Ph.D. Esperanza Viloria Hernández Institute of Cultural Research Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, México
[email protected] School of Human Sciences Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, México
[email protected] School of Human Sciences Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, México
[email protected] School of Human Sciences Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, México
[email protected] ABSTRACT The object of study is the research of youth phenomena, which is, linked to the expansion of opportunities for socialization of young people, particularly those related to interactive cyberspace mobility. This confirms the sociocultural processes where youth culture makes sense, in the temporary space and the cultural context where they take place. Assumptions allied to the purpose of investigating the vision of young students from public universities in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico and Viedma, Rio Negro, Argentina. We are convinced that moving through cyberspace research by means of digital mediation can provide the advantage of new ways of organizing information, in addition to aid in expanding the ways information is analyzed and interpreted. Qualitative research of Cyberethnographics whose development favors the construction of a specific methodological model for sighting, examining and identifying the sense and action that young people produce. It is that description, the core purpose of this present work.
Indexing terms/Keywords cyber-ethnography, Higher Education, Culture,
Academic Discipline And Sub-Disciplines Higher Education; Culture Studies; Psychology; Sociology.
SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION Public libraries
TYPE (METHOD/APPROACH) Qualitative research
Council for Innovative Research Peer Review Research Publishing System
Journal: Journal of Advances in Humanities Vol. 3, No.3
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ISSN 2349-4379 INTRODUCTION The development of qualitative research takes place through the aknowledgment of new modes of communication, unpublished practices of social interaction and innovative ways to build personal and collective identities, and the expansion of social spaces, particularly interactive mobility of young people in cyberspace. This research aims to investigate youth cultures through dialogue with university students from Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico and Viedma, Rio Black, Argentina, specifically from Universidad Autónoma de Baja California and Centro Universitario Regional de la Zona Atlántica of Universidad Nacional del Comahue respectively. Its description is the central purpose of thispresent work. The following approach is centered on the premise that the youth phenomenon confirms meanings that shape pronounceable sense and action spaces as culture, in the particular case, youth cultures that refer to social and historical moment of occurrence. In this regard, the Grounded Theory of Strauss and Corbin (2002) is the theoretical perspective for conceptualizing the object of study from the construction of three categories: Social Networks, Political Culture and Quality of Life. In this sense, the methodological approach of qualitative orientation focuseson the application of various techniques, including focus group sessions at each place of work (which were videotaped and later transcribed); semistructured interviews for which the technological device of Facebook was used.In the conviction that navigating cyberspace through digital mediation offers the advantage of new ways of organizing information, but also expands its ways of analysis and interpretation. For example, in addition to the hermeneutical analysis of data (qualitative's own perspective), discourse analysis was added which allowed to particularize, in dialogues, characteristics that gave more importance to the analytical categories properties aforementioned. Cyber-ethnographic work allows through the combined participation of research groups in Mexico and Argentina, to understand and describe the symbolic representation of this age group, and it fosters the construction of a specific methodological model for sighting, examination and identification of sense and action that young people produce. Some of the findings suggest that Mexicali and Viedma's youth access to Internet, in this case through the use of social networks, is made from personal computers which guarantee continuous access for at least seven hours a day. This connectivity fulfills several functions in the young person’s everyday life, including communication, primarily with friends and family located in geographically distant areas; assistance in the development of activities and homework, as well as the fulfillment of work commitments by facilitating its execution and scope; and, further, disseminate various products or events, whether academic, cultural or political, without avoiding the exercise of power that accompanies this action. On the one hand, for Mexicali's youth, elections are times when politics conquest its best, in terms of active participation. Viedma's youth, on the other hand, are more politically active and this is reflected in their more politicized language with ideological nuance. Moreover, for the youth of both scenarios quality of life is an issue that has to do with education, affection (love/happiness), family, friends, culture, physical and mental health, values, economy (having money), for a present and future life plan regarding the development of opportunities and capabilities. Individualistic vision focused on the estimation of "feeling good about what you have and know what each one is able to get to do." Interactive and political practices of life that shape the scheme of meanings with which young people live their reality, and whose everyday shift of meaning guarantees their cultural identity as a group through their individual and collective symbolic representation.
PERSPECTIVE TO APPROACH THE CATEGORY OF YOUTH CULTURES Complete and full of questions, the process of human development is the product of multiple threads: mixture of the biological and cultural, and the interweaving of a particular texture of relationships, history and circumstances. Development occurs in three domains: physical, cognitive and psychosocial, expressed in physical and behavioral alterations, a direct consequence of the maturation process through changes not only in the form of the body, but in its complexity, integration, organization and function. Youth is a stage of life that has become particularly important in contemporary times, whose beginning and end are ambiguous; inaccuracies in the existing general agreement represent a modern phenomenon. From a more holistic view, the look of youth as a culture, a referential construction, more precisely,youth culturesas Maccasi (2001) proposed, is associated with ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving and acting that a group's activities go through and distinguishes them from others in time and space. This creates the possibility of referring to the social group capable of creating yourself in relation to others, through the construction of symbols and signs, as well an entire worldview.That is the framework in which social construction of young
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ISSN 2349-4379 people is located. It is a category that generates a set of meanings, cultures and views expressed in the way they talk, dress and in the values used, which usually defines a way of living in the world, without necessarily incorporating the possibility of transformation. Thereupon the youth as it is known, is an invention of the postwar period in the sense of the emergence of a new social, economic and political order, which restores young people as subjects of law, but also of consumption (Reguillo, 2000). With these clarifications, the construction of identity is configured as one of the characteristic and nuclear features of this period, associated to certain individual, familiar, social, cultural and historical determinants. Through this process, an important self-recognition takes place to observe and identify characteristics that brings gender identifications and associated sexual roles. Besides self-recognition in a larger collective, recognition among others, which are significant or perceived with desirable characteristics and that are found in the same life stage. It is the concept of social groups that define and determine a common situation of life and coexistence through sharing. This generational identity involves lifestyles, particularly youth social practices and collective behavior, content related to values and worldviews that lead to that behavior. In this regard, identity necessarily refers to the surroundings and the environment. In addition, sighting perspectives of youth phenomenon synthetically include: thepsychobiological approach that characterizes youth as a vital period, focusing on the psychological changes and biological maturing of the individual.Thecultural-anthropological perspectivereveals the influence of the sociocultural context where the youth socialize.Thepsychosocial approachanalyzes young people’s personality, regarding their motivations and attitudes.Thedemographic approachconsiders the youth as an age group or a segment of the total population, in relation to the structure and dynamics of vital rates.Thesociological approachgives special meaning to the process of incorporating young person into adulthood. Finally, thesociopoliticalperspectivepays attention to the organization forms, the action of youth movements and their influence on social dynamics (Gurrieri and Torres-Rivas, 1971).Additionally to this, from the point of view of contemporary anthropology, Feixa (1999) advances in the definition of a youth anthropology that utilizes a double contribution: first, to the study of the youth's cultural construction, specifically of the ways in which each society shapes how a young person should be; and second, to the study of the culture's youth construction, particularly the ways in which young people participate in the processes of cultural creation and movement.
SCENARIOS OF YOUNG PEOPLE AND THEIR INTERACTION WITH INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICT) Information and communication technologies (ICT) comprise elements and techniques in the processing and transmission of information. Therefore it is a dynamic concept, or rather a notion, that is constantly evolving. The new technologies of today are the old technologies of tomorrow, because this notion always weighs the spectrum of obsolescence. Meanwhile, social media are spaces where the content is generated by the users through the use of ICT. This somehow "democratizes" the flow and transmission of information, but the verticality of the information remains and economic interests continue to be, as in the case of traditional media, determining factors.Social media needs a technological infrastructure to run, which are called platforms. Some of these: Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, are currently changing relations and coexistence among people, particularly among young people in some social sectors. The technological infrastructure of social media allows new and varied forms of social interaction. This dynamic exchange among individuals, groups and institutions is what generates a virtual social network. The network is not made by the platform or media, but rather by the social partners in the day-to-day, by participating in this exchange of goods and symbolic expressions and / or materials. This is an overview of the digital world in which one lives and relates. A place where the Internet plays primarily an instrumental role that contradictorily joins and shortens distances but simultaneously separates and widensgaps. Under which it is necessary to clarify the scope of technology and more so in the Mexican context, where the idea of global society is far from being realized, particularly among the working classes. While acknowledging that technological devices are those that increase local references and lead young people to give equal attention to global phenomena such as climatic change, women's rights movements, animal protection, or anti-nuclear movements. In the process of joining the whole, the youth transitions from traditional values to the values of global citizenship as Nino noted (2008) and thus, local identity and culture are reordered from new frontiers of knowledge and information that enable young people to access new expressions of individuality, but now with a global reference. Thus, some young people have internalized
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ISSN 2349-4379 some myths of their own, and consider that a globalized world through access to information by itself will give advantages. It is in social sciences, especially in cultural studies, where the issue of technology as part of the cultural system has been addressed, a clear example is the work of Jeffrey Alexander (2000) about the sociological implications of technology through computer history. This and other works demand a more critical approach to new technologies, which by providing greater access to information and knowledge have changed the way we understand these two concepts and the relationship with them. The transition between the information society (which still exists in many societies) to the knowledge society is a product of the increasing flow of information and the increased complexity in today's societies. This leads to the methods of interpretation of cultural events not being linear, if seeking to study the social interactions that are shaping the current world. The engine of this global society is informationalism as the highest expression of human interaction. This interaction is mainly based on the exchange of information but also in the exchange of experiences. Young people, within the constraints of their contexts, have tried to capitalize on these exchanges. This interactionexchange among youth, combined with consumer culture imposed on them by society, can create a dependency and to some extent, a cult of information where the value is assigned in bytes, storage and handling become integral parts of the dynamics of interaction and whoever has access to more and faster information dictates the rules of this interaction. "The information is of little value in itself without the knowledge to recombine it with a purpose" (Castells, 2006, p. 31). Thus, technology is a tool for easy access and management of information, and this technology can also aid in the process of acquiring knowledge, but the process by which this information becomes knowledge is a process that does not occur in cyberspace, but rather in the user. It is the individual, not the technology or the information itself which allows to construct knowledge. Something seemingly logical, but hard to remember in a society where information seems to become a fetish. Without falling into an apocalyptic or apologetic discourse, technologies have changed the way individuals communicate and relationships are established between them, as well as with objects (Imbert, 2003). These changes are reflected in various fields and permeate the whole of society, but it is in the youth, those with the necessary skills and access to technology, where it is much more evident. These new technologies and communication practices flowing from them have provided a range of possibilities for the reception and production of products and messages. In this sense, the natural absence of national borders in the Internet requires that such public policies have a global perspective, because they directly or indirectly affect the way in which the Internet evolves and is used by users. Network society is by nature a global society where boundaries and borders are relative.
INTERACTIONS IN A DIGITAL WORLD With the emergence of Internet and interconnected communities that share information and symbolic models, the use of digital platforms that enhance social networks pose new scenarios of interaction and sociability; new ways of being and doing with others,innovative ways to build and share subjectivities in a virtual community. To understand these processes, we start from a particular interaction concept that emphasizes the symbolic nature of social action. In particular, since the proposal of the Symbolic Interactionism in sociological research, and although the term coined by Herbert Blummer appears in 1938, this school of thought appears in the late 19th century with the so-called Chicago school, a group of theorists and researchers from the University of Chicago who influenced an entire generation in the stage of institutionalization of sociology as a science. In retrospect, the Chicago school, unappreciated in its time by American and European scientists, was the standard for the American sociological thought in the first half of the 20th century and served as a bridge between evolutionary social philosophy and modern empirical social science. The main figure of the Chicago school was George Mead, who developed the Symbolic Interaction Theory. In this theory, Mead states that the consciousness of people is given by self-interest, but is built. "Human behavior is oriented to the reactions of others, reciprocal expectations models of behavior models are formed by symbols, however, they are always integrated in the course of interaction" (Joas, 1991, p. 123). Thanks to Mead’s contributions, the I (self) concept is introduced, which is not built within the person, but through social interaction, based on the expectations of others and the individual's own expectations, to be in communion with the other, although it is a very vague and even romantic definition of communication. However, it allows you to think about the possibilities of an increasingly connected world (technologically capitalized speaking), where this communion with the other/he and other/ I acquires another meaning. Although there are different concepts of what symbolic interactionism is, the main characteristic of this social school of thought is in its object of study: the interaction processes. For interactionists "social relations are not established once and for all, but are opened and subjected to a continual recognition by members of the
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ISSN 2349-4379 community" (Joas, 1991, p. 115). Social relations are constructed and reconstructed, just as individual consciousness is built by social consciousness. The complex relationships between individuals, their social environment and digital technologies, have been addressed as what is briefly known as cyberculture (Galindo, 2003). Authors such as Jorge González (2003) have pondered on the implications of this object of study, involving "a wide and growing range of processes, capabilities, platforms and social representations" (p. 19). Ethnography is a tool to understand this reality in which information and communication systems redefine notions of society, community, culture and interaction (Galindo, 2001). This branch of anthropology which focuses on the study and analysis of the ways of life of a particular community uses techniques such as observations and interviews, as well as detailed records of social behavior of social agents. Briefly, its preferred field of study is the culture through analysis of language "of what is said" and practices "what is done", in other words, of its various symbolic expressions (Saville, 2005). So it is in culture that it inexorably influences communication mediated by technology, and its manifestation summarized in the interaction of social agents: which is more than enough reason to appreciate the ethnography of the digital world.
INFORMATION CONSUMPTION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICT) IN MEXICO According to the National Survey of habits, practices and cultural consumption (CONACULTA, 2010), 32% of Mexicans use the Internet. This means that about one third of Mexicans ages 13 and older have some form of activity in what some have called the seventh continent: cyberspace. This same survey allows us to know what these users do. One fourth, use the Internet to search for information, 23% for fun, 23% to chat, 11% to send and receive e-mails, 11% to work, 6% for downloading music and videos, and 1% to play (CONACULTA, 2010). All these activities, to a greater or lesser extent, involve interaction between individuals, which together typify the interaction mediated by technology, in other words, interaction from and in a digital world. According to the study entitled Digital Life, done by British firm TNS (http://2010.tnsdigitallife.com/) internet users in Mexico and Latin America in general, are increasingly and more actively participating in the digital world.According to this study, the Latin American internet users spend more than five hours on social networking sites. Without a doubt, at the end of the first decade of the new century, it is evident that ITC has transformed the forms of communication and relationships, those which the individual establishes with objects and with other individuals (Imbert, 2003). This is proven by the 8th Study on Consumer Habits of Internet Users in Mexico in 2012, drafted by the Mexican Internet Association (AMIPCI), indicating that this year there are 40.6 million Mexicans internet users, and this figure has increased notably thanks to smartphone devices that from 26% in 2011, grew to 58% in the 2012, hence the AMIPCI study, reports that there is a reduction in PC and laptop consumption.As for the user time, the average is 4 hours 9 minutes, an increase of 47 minutes more than the previous year, and access to social networking is second with 77% and daily activity , just 3% below the main activity is to send emails, therefore, that is considered the main entertainment activity for nine out of ten internet users. As for user time, 58% have three to five years accessing a virtual social network (http://www.amipci.org.mx/?P=esthabitos). Regarding the use of the Internet, the website Latinobarómetro indicates that in 2010 the second highest connectivity is Argentina, and Mexico ranks nine in context of 18 countries in the region. As for the daily use of the Internet, Argentina and Mexico also occupy the same positions. As far as use, Argentina is the country with the highest percentage of use to search for information, followed by Chile, but this country ranks first for emailing followed by Argentina. In this context, Mexico are ranked tenth and ninth places respectively; regarding the use of virtual social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Youtube) Argentina ranks third and Mexico eleventh. Latin Americahas advanced greatly in its internet connectivity. Chile is the champion of this issue in the region, with the largest number of people using different instruments. Central American has the countries with the least Internet use in the region. The countries' advance rate is the most interesting. Three countries triple internet penetration in seven years. It is the variable that advances the fastest among the 1600 variables measured by Latinobarómetro. The 2011 report by this same body indicates that the digital divide is shortened because Latin Americans prefer to buy a cell phone over improving their daily diet. "The digital divide is therefore limited to 22% of the population that has no cell phone and remains outside technology. Not only this, but neither are the poor left out since 22% of those having cell have only one meal a day, ie the economic impairment is limited, Latin Americans prefer to stay connected to the world and eat one meal a day to invest all they have in just eating. That's the kind of pressure that governments have to produce solid education and social mobility of the middle classes. It is a hard demand and hard evidence. There are only three countries in the region, Nicaragua (38%), Mexico (37%) and El Salvador (30%) have more than one third of its population who do not owna cell phone" (http://www.latinobarometro.org/latino/latinobarometro.jsp).
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ISSN 2349-4379 This data proves that the use of the Internet has become a daily activity in every society sector, the use of which has different potentials, whether commercial, political, cultural, in education or entertainment. Hence, the digital divide is narrowing gradually increasing for most Mexic@ns, Argentin@ns, and most Latinameric@ns.
CYBER-ETHNOGRAPHY AND TECHNOLOGICAL MEDIATION The alteration of traditional organization, spaces, and forms in which the youth build social relationships; are now mediated by ICT’s, which promote research in a heuristic way, to search, raise and create alternative or new methodological approaches and proposals. All of which will ultimately include the visualization of such practices –yet unknown but a characteristic of today’s world- with the purpose of retrieving life experiences of living together in a globalized world from the perspective of our youth. An option that is considered for the development of this specific interest in the acknowledgement of anthropology as the broad scenery for the location of ethnography, and the latter on its basic form as the sphere where the researcher, for a limited period of time, deals with relations, activities and significances that are formed among those who participate within social processes, based on what they say and what they do in the here and now in a specific context; commonness in which technology bursts in as a transformation agent by itself, possibly because of the use and sense construction that is produced around it. Ethnographic perspective can be adapted to the understanding of how youth culture is built and expressed through the use of one of today’s technological devices, the Internet and cyberspace, with the purpose of making the forms that are implicit, explicit, and that are supposed to construct and deliver significance by young individuals. On this matter, it involves an approach that is narrow enough to allow the comprehension of how a determined cultural commonness works, and in this regards, how social relations, political culture and life quality are shaped and exist in modern reality. As a matter of fact, traditional ethnography represents methodology more widely reconsidered, modified and adapted to be used in research of the social phenomena interconnected to virtual or non-personal interaction, more specifically of those interactions mediated through Internet and cyberspace, which leads to the identification of some of its dimensions. For example, synthetically, the Internet works as a space to transfer and receive data or information in a variety of formats: text, audio, or video that is spread on standardized protocols (Hine, 2000); while cyberspace “is an abstract space of information acquisition, from which information emerges and is received” (Mcfadden, 1994, p. 340.) As stated by the author, cyberspace is presented as a communication space characterized by a net of information channels that are organized in such a way that all the information gathered on each of the points is available to all of the points of the net. No doubt this technological device reconstructs social relationships through its impact on daily life, which brings up the concept of technological mediation. In a broad sense, technological mediation refers to the transformations that occur when objects or individuals enter a relationship (Latour, 1994), including identifying practices developed from the use of the Internet, video cameras, cell phones, videogames, etc. This notion proposes considering the ICT’s in two dimensions: as a study object, along with the broad methodological variety that may originate, and as an instrument or context for the production of empirical material. In the case of ethnography and social sciences, this mediated interaction and the formation of virtual communities constitute a genuine object of interest, since they usually become part of the scientific practice itself (production of knowledge.) This is true especially regarding the Internet, which becomes an object and an instrument through the multiplicity of textualities generated as a product of field work, by reaching an enriched interpretation of significances that technology gradually gains in the cultures that house it or that are formed due to it. Likewise, the ethnographic method enables gathering significances and symbols that are transferred through communication mediated by the use of the ICT’s (Ardevol, Estalella y Domínguez, 2008). Thus, it is important to highlight that the ICT’s themselves are not the object of study, but their social uses, appropriations, manipulations, cultural consequences, and identity uses, among others. In general, a new study field for anthropology is characterized by digital anthropology, virtual anthropology, cyber-anthropology, along with terms such as cyber culture or cyberspace, or even cyber-ethnography: the one related to human/machines, nature/culture, biology/robotics, and techno sciences, including the Internet. Cultural anthropology of science and technology subscribed to the field of cyberspace anthropology (Mayans, 2002), to the study of virtual communities developed on the use of Internet and cyberspace. It is a sub-branch of cyber-anthropology, also known as cyborg anthropology (Downey, Dumit y Williams, 1995.) On the other hand, but along the same line, virtual or on-line ethnography turns out to be pertinent if the interest is focused on exploring the forms in which digital technologies may be used to make ethnography when the study object are the uses of the Internet, on-line social practices, and how these are significant to individuals (Mason y Dicks, 1999.) Virtual ethnography (Hine, 2000) makes the detailed research of on-line relationships possible,
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ISSN 2349-4379 since the Internet is not only a way of communication, but also a daily life device and a meeting place that contributes to the creation of more or less stable communities, and in effect, the emergence of a new sociability (Domínguez, 2007). As proposed, virtual ethnography consists of diverse ethnographic approaches that relativize its method: Internet ethnography, cyber-ethnography, on-line ethnography, or digital ethnography. This last adjective refers to field work, which has a strong research component that occurs on and through the Internet (Ardevol, Estalella y Domínguez, 2008.) This methodological perspective that credits four approaches from the use of digital technologies according to determined purposes: 1) to produce and spread anthropological knowledge; 2) to obtain information regarding topics of public interest through the use of the Internet as a means to achieve this; 3) the Internet as a study object and place for the development of field work to account for the way how people uses this means to achieve their own purposes and tasks; and 4) to carry out online/offline ethnography, focused on the online practices of the study subjects without ruling out their connections to daily life. In such cases, the ICT’s are means and end. These traditions represent interesting methodological instruments for the research and study of youth cultures, precisely because of the lack of recipes to prescribe their application; particularly on three levels of cyber-ethnographic investigation for interpretative analysis – text and interpretation retrieval, meaning construction, and configuration of social relationships.
METHODOLOGICAL STRUCTURE PROPOSAL FOR CYBER-ETHNOGRAPHY As shown, cyber-ethnography may be a valuable tool to help comprehend the impact that new information and communication technologies have on culture, specifically those practices and relationships of the users of such technologies. It has been precisely some groups of youths who have demonstrated not only greater technical ability, but also a series of skills, competencies and attitudes that allow them to fit these technologies into their daily lives in an almost natural way. Thus, it is appropriate to use cyber-ethnography to study youth performativity on cyberspace, understood as an enunciation/action. A youth expression, intentioned, contextualized, and structured on its own terms (Reguillo, 2004). Cyber-ethnography refers to this observation task, both direct and participant, and its register in the virtual setting. Since the Internet is scenario of symbolic exchange among these social agents and, in some cases, the main stronghold of youth performativity, it is wise to register those sites where this interaction takes place, that is, chat rooms, blogs and fotologs, and all the platforms of social networks where youth practices and expressions are commented and displayed. It should be clarified that this methodological proposal suggests not only carrying out digital ethnography of cyberspace, but also using the same technological tools that are available for such purpose. Hence, it is ethnography of the digital world within the digital world. The observation subjects, that is, the youths, are social agents that interact in constant dialog, which has the characteristic of being synchronic and, in some cases, asynchronous. This text or discourse, as well as the visual or virtual communication scenario, are objects of observation and analysis, as opposed to subjectivities verbalized on interviews and reflected on some instruments such as questionnaires. This represents input to make an analysis exercise that transcends the textual, underlies the symbolic, and it makes possible to enter youth cultures. For this purpose, the Atlas.ti version 5.0 was used. This software made the analysis of expressions in youth discourse possible, both those mentioned on Facebook and those that were shared on focal groups. This process was based on the paradigm of Grounded Theory (Strauss y Corbin, 2002), that allowed the reconstruction of analytical categories for each of the research areas (social networks, urban culture, and life quality), and which manifestation is expressed on semantic networks that represent relationships among the various concepts of the categories that are developed. From this point of view, the considerations that are proposed herein can be a starting point for including these tools to the study of youth expressions, as well as the acknowledgement of the inevitable need of understanding the Mexican youth reality immerse on technological daily routine; situation that has started, as Gabriel Medina (2010) states, another kind of sociality.
RESEARCH PROPOSAL ON YOUTH CULTURES, EMPHASIZING ON CYBERETHNOGRAPHY The research project of urban cultures and life quality in young communities from Mexicali, Mexico, and Viedma, Argentina, was proposed in 2010 and registered before the appropriate official departments of the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, with the participation of the following researchers: Dr. Ángel Manuel Ortiz Marín, Dr. Christian Fernández; Dr. Victoria Santillán Briceño, Dr. Esperanza Viloria Hernández from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, in México, and in Argentina, M. A. María Inés Barilá and M.A. Sandra Poliszuk, from the Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Argentina. On this basis, several considerations for the development of research work were proposed:
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ISSN 2349-4379 Target population:A) Individuals between the ages of 18 and 25, B) Educated individuals studying at the university, C) Individuals both male and female of different socio-economic status, and D) Urban individuals (residents of the cities of Mexicali and Viedma.)
Methodology The methodological processes that were considered were the following: A) Development of a study from the qualitative perspective oriented to ethnomethodology, with particular interest in cyberculture ethnography with young people from Mexicali and Viedma. B) Liker-type survey elaboration and application, consisting of the basic categories to identify the perception regarding youth culture and life quality (survey applied only in Mexicali), and C) Elaboration and application of semi-structured interviews to key informants of the different youth cultures.
Research objectives To study and describe the accounts and/or discourses of the youth regarding the following objectives: A) To identify, describe and characterize the strategies that young people use to organize cultural spaces in Mexicali, Mexico, and Viedma, Argentina, B) To identify and characterize the public spaces that form the world of life of young people, on which they shape their political culture, and C) To identify the representation regarding life quality expressed by youth cultures in Mexicali, Mexico, and Viedma, Argentina.
Goals The goals proposed were the following: A) To create conceptual maps that describe how young people build their imagination or symbolic representations regarding the organization of culture, political culture and life quality in Mexico and Argentina, B) To develop a theoretical-methodological model to use it to approach the categories of: culture, youth, citizenship, and life quality in Mexico and Argentina, and C) To conceptually create the category of life quality from the youth culture of Mexico and Argentina.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
A significant contribution from this research effort lies in the possibility of generating synergies among work groups from two countries, Argentina and Mexico, through the use of the ICT’s.
The methodological process was a process of heuristic and hermeneutic discovery on the basis of the internal and external conditions of the project itself and study object, since heterogeneous groups of academic professors and young people from both countries participated.
Research process characterized since the beginning by a permanent dialog and discussion work between both work groups, which allowed reaching a consensus from the multiplicity of textualities.
A significant committed participation of investigation scholar students, who permanently participated using their own experience as Internet users on the diverse phases of research.
It is important to emphasize that two research aspects influence the cyber-ethnographic analysis process; the one related to the significances created by young people within their elaborated discourse, as well as the own space that is built for interaction.
The possibility of approaching the research of youth culture through the use of the ICT’s makes different ways of analyzing their daily life possible.
The complexity of the daily life of young people is undoubtedly crossed by the ICT’s through their various technological devices.
Despite cultural differences and geographical distances, Argentinean and Mexican youth have evolved similarly regarding the construction of their communication competencies, condition that is particularly evident within the concept of social networks.
The representation of life quality of the youth from both cities is placed mainly in the satisfaction that is experienced due to the specific life conditions.
Regarding the representation of urban culture, expressed through the use of Facebook, youths from Viedma, Argentina, have a broader political culture that is manifested on their political and ideological position, unlike the youths from Mexicali, for whom the use of Facebook has mainly social relations and entertainment connotations.
Regarding this matter, Facebook, as a deliberately created dialog space, is equipped with the technological tools that for the purposes of this research facilitated the expression of the inter-subjectivity
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ISSN 2349-4379 of young people among themselves.
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Author’ biography with Photo PhD. Christian Fernández Huerta Doctoral studies of global development. Researcher from the Institute of Cultural Research from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, México. Postal address: Calle L y Av. Reforma S/N Colonia Nueva Phone number: (686) 554-1977 e-mail:
[email protected]
PhD. Ángel Manuel Ortiz Marín Postdoc in Political Sociology for Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. Research Professor Full-time, Faculty of Humanities Sciences, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, México. Postal address: Blvd. Castellón y Blvd. Lombardo Toledano, s/n, colonia Esperanza Agrícola, Mexicali, B.C. Phone number: (686) 556-8309, ext. 133 e-mail:
[email protected]
PhD.Victoria Elena Santillán Briceño Doctor of Education Sciences. Professor and researcher full time,Faculty of Humanities Sciences, from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, campus Mexicali. Postal address:Blvd. Castellón y Blvd. Lombardo Toledano, s/n, colonia Esperanza Agrícola, Mexicali, B.C. Phone number: (686) 556-8309, ext. 121 e-mail:
[email protected]
PhD.Esperanza Viloria Hernández Doctor of Education Sciences. Professor and researcher full time, Faculty of Humanities Sciences, from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, México. Postal address: Blvd. Castellón y Blvd. Lombardo Toledano, s/n, colonia Esperanza Agrícola, Mexicali, B.C. phone number:(686) 556-8309, ext. 119 e-mail:
[email protected]
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