Ciberespaço e Visibilidade Midiática: um Estudo sobre a Visibilidade do Candomblé na Internet

Resumo (EN)

This Masters Dissertation considers the relationship between cyberculture and religiousness. The main object of study is the cyberspace that presents itself as a new virtual communication modality and environment for religious announcement. The research showed the colonization of cyberspace by Candomblé (Afro-Brazilian religion) in arder to create a strategy for visibility, since cyberspace composed new mediatization processes by engendering the virtualization and globalization of existence. The following questions were raised in arder to identify the possibility of making Candomblé visible in cyberspace: the occupation of virtual space can be considered as a form of visibility viable for Candomblé, which traditionally failed to obtain visibility in the rrediatic space? Since Candomblé is an archaic, matriarchal spiritual tradition which uses the body in its rituais, what would be the consequences of making the religious experience virtual, since the body and the material spaces are imperative to the religious experience? This research is enrolled in the field of Communication Science, specifically in the line that researches the Media and lmaginary. ln arder to check the hypotheses and resolve the research problem, the author opted for an interdisciplinary theoretical reference in the Semiotics of the Culture, the Criticai Theory of Cyberculture, the Mediatic lmage Theory and the Religious Sciences. This approach provided the theoretical-epistemological references necessary for the analysis of the object. With the objective of observing, describing and analyzing the visibility strategies and of reflecting on the problem indicated, websites which auto­denominated themselves as representing Candomblé, used specific religious jargon and had regular access to internauts were selected as the corpus. The group of methodological strategies adopted during the process of this study also incorporated the netnographic method to guide the exploratory scan of the virtual environment, and collect and interpret the data. This study, of a qualitative nature, made it possible to understand and comprehend the construction of pseudo-visibility for Candomblé in cyberspace.