VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL NETWORKS FOR THE PRESERVATION AND DIFFUSION OF THE GAUCHO TRADITIONS ON THE INTERNET

Abstract

Given the capability provided by information and communication technologies in the present times, this study points out the ways in which social groups mobilized around an ethnic attachment in the Internet, specially from the World wide Web, can use the apparatus to publicize aspects of their culture and way of life. These groups are dedicated to education, spread, preservation and dissemination of the gaucho traditions linked to the Gaucho Traditions Centers (CTG). Specifically, this article presents how the traditionalists Gauchos establish their social networking sites, shaping virtual communities around their culture and traditions, making use of Web 2.0 services. In this study, experiments that indicate that the virtual land is fertile and can transform and modernize the field of traditions and its preservation, dissemination, and (re) invention, are mentioned. In the context of late modernity that resource can not be discarded. Regardless if the analysis is situated in the economic, political and cultural field, among others, the key point is that the Internet is a wide-ranging and an effective way to transmit, teach and preserve all kinds of matters.