Decolonizing mobile media: Mobile Internet appropriation in a Guaraní community

Abstract

The internet has been a valuable resource for many indigenous groups as a vehicle for selfrepresentation. In this paper we describe how the installation of a Wi-Fi signal in a Guaraní community in Greater Buenos Aires-as part of the community leader's decolonizing media projects-generated issues within the community. While much indigenous media research concerns the politics of cultural representation, we consider the politics of everyday, intracommunity mobile communication practices. Firstly, our findings show how the choice of communication medium can become a political issue. An upsurge in mobile-mediated communication within the community contributed to the decline of face-to-face deliberations which were the mainstay for communal sharing arrangements and which held a central position in understandings of Guaraní culture. Secondly, our findings show how discrepancies between users' communication preferences and the readily available mobile media services can generate a use barrier by demotivating users from obtaining the skills needed to effectively appropriate or transform mobile media services. Familiarity with a few mainstream social media apps not only reinforced imaginaries of the internet as a non-indigenous space but also generated set ideas of what the internet supports in terms of communicative form-social networking-and content 1 Sarah Wagner is a doctoral candidate at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Barcelona. Using collaborative methods, her research explores the intersections of indigenous communicative ecologies and ICT service systems. 2 Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol is a senior researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Barcelona. Mobile communication has been one of her main areas of study since 2003, with a combined sociological and economic focus. Her interests are set both in developed and in developing countries.3 type-mainstream media. In the end, the community leader's decolonizing projects aimed at using social media for community media dissemination were not only rejected by community members but also undermined by the dynamics of mobile media practices in the community. We argue that limited mobile technology skills combined with commercially oriented mobile media services can hinder creative and adaptable mobile media practices, and in turn, decolonizing mobile appropriations.

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