DPhil Student
Hertford College
Thesis: Brazilian Indigenous Activism on Social Media: Challenges and Affordances of the Use of Instagram and Twitter in a Political Movement (working title)
Research Interests: This project seeks to investigate how Brazilian Indigenous people are occupying social media, particularly regarding their activism and political struggles. By analysing posts, mainly on Instagram and Twitter, I hope to understand how these platforms afford new ways of fighting for Indigenous rights and identities. Further, the possibility to directly speak to their audience, be that Indigenous or not, poses a new opportunity for Indigenous people to reach larger sections of Brazilian society and take more control over how they are represented. Is this a new chapter of the Brazilian Indigenous movement? What challenges does it pose to anthropology now that knowledge about Indigenous people and their cultures can be easily accessed “straight from the source”? What are the consequences to pan-Indigenous alliances of the increased ease in communicating across the vast Brazilian territory without having to travel? Finally, during the large annual demonstrations in Brasília, how do the online and the offline come together when activists from all areas of the country can meet and create content together?
