Mahesh, 28, an ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services) professional met with me for lunch in one of Chennai’s well-known vegetarian restaurants. He works three days a week from his company’s branch office located in the Indian field site – Panchagrami – and two days from the company’s Chennai office located close to this restaurant.

Over special vegetarian Thali meals, we discussed his life, his ambitions, his family, his presence on social media etc. When I called him up to schedule an interview, he arranged for us to meet for lunch before his work shift that started at 2 PM. Though we met at around 12:30 PM, he seemed pretty relaxed and unrushed and the lunch interview kept going until around 1:45 PM, when he excused himself to let his boss know that he would be running late for work by approximately 30 minutes. He got his smart phone, a Samsung Galaxy out of his pocket and typed something into it and sent out a communication in less than 20 seconds. I was pretty surprised because, it normally takes at least a minute for an official communication to be typed and sent over an official email server with all the salutations normally required in an official communication. So, wondering if he had already typed an email to his boss, I asked him what he let his boss know, to which he replied that he just sent a WhatsApp message to his boss letting him know that he was delayed over a meeting and would report in shortly. This triggered a conversation that was extremely informative. I asked him why he didn’t email his boss and why did he choose to operate and communicate over WhatsApp.

Soon, it became extremely clear that WhatsApp was fine enough for communicating mundane official matters such as informing that one was running late to the office or to a meeting or to meet at lunch etc. and that it was replacing what Short Messaging Service (SMS) did originally. However, important official communication always happened through official email. But, communicating to one’s immediate boss on mundane official matters now moved from text messages to WhatsApp messages. So, why did this happen? Because everyone is now on WhatsApp, almost all have a smart phone connected to the internet with WhatsApp as an application, which people would keep checking on a constant basis compared to SMS and WhatsApp is free to use. These factors led to people using WhatsApp messages more often than SMS.

Naturally, the next question was geared towards Facebook (FB). I asked him if his boss was his friend on Facebook and were they on FB messenger on an always signed-in mode. He replied ‘yes’. So, why did he still choose to communicate over WhatsApp rather than Facebook? He considered WhatsApp more official compared to Facebook. It seems like one of his teammates had actually sent a message to his boss over FB and was frowned upon, as somehow FB just didn’t seem official enough and equated everyone to a being just a ‘friend’, thus breaking hierarchies, while hierarchy was still maintained over WhatsApp. So, did people in his team ever communicate with their boss over FB? They did for more for personal communication such as ‘liking’ something, forwarding a moral message, spreading the word about an office party or get together etc. but nothing related to an official one-to-one or one-to-many sort of communication. He made sure to add that he would never communicate to his boss’s boss over WhatsApp, it had to always be over an email. The vertical span of use of media seemed extremely interesting.

I was immediately reminded of the concept of polymedia, termed by Madianou and Miller, 2012 and also on how an important person in a network influences others in the network to choose media through which people communicate to him. In this case, Mahesh had three ways of communicating with his boss – over email, over SMS or over WhatsApp (in this case was influenced by the boss, who was fine with communication over WhatsApp and had added it to the list of official communication tools).

This soon became an important question, and interviews with several other IT/ITES professionals revealed something similar. So, why are certain media perceived to retain hierarchy while others don’t? Stay tuned to find out…

For the past 14 months I’ve been living in this rural town in north China, conducting ethnographic research on how social media is affecting life here.

However, many people in the town have never had a foreign friend before, let alone one that can speak Chinese. People are extremely inquisitive about me and life in the UK, and I generally spend much more of my time answering their constant questions than I am able to ask them my own research questions and hear their answers.

Below are the questions I tend to get asked on an almost daily basis here in the town. I’ve decided to publish them on this blog partly because even though I am really bored of having to answer these questions again and again, they remain interesting both because they reveal some commonly held ideas that many people in the town hold regarding the rest of the world, while also helping us to learn about some of the important concerns of rural Chinese life (food, family, work, history, politics).

• Why are your eyes blue?
• Why is your skin white?
• Why is your hair yellow? Is it dyed?
• How many brothers and sisters do you have?
• Do westerners just eat bread and drink milk?
• Do westerners always eat raw meat?
• Are you unable to eat Chinese food?
• Wow! How come you know how to use chopsticks?!
• What religion are you? Do all westerners believe in Jesus?
• How much is your salary in a month?
• What is the average house price in the UK?
• What is the area/population of the UK?
• Can you get used to living here?
• Do you miss home?
• How old are you?
• Are you married?
• Why aren’t you married?
• Do you like Chinese girls? Are they pretty?
• Why don’t you get a Chinese wife?
• How many children are you allowed to give birth to in the UK?
• Why does Britain always invade other countries and do whatever America does?
• Do you think the Diaoyu Islands are China’s [territory]?
• Why are you here?
• Are you a spy?
• What cars do you drive in the UK?
• What is the weather like in the UK?

While some people may interpret these questions as showing that people in my fieldsite know very little about the rest of the world, I think the questions make a lot of sense and actually show how interested in the outside world my friends here are.

In addition, the incredulous looks my friends give me when I ask some of our research questions in our interviews, such as ‘does social media increase or decrease your interaction with people who are significantly richer or poorer than you?’ sometimes makes me think us researchers are the ones who are asking the stupid questions.

But then maybe there is no such thing as a stupid question. Almost anything you ask can help start a dialogue which will end up helping you to learn more about the people in your fieldsite. As the old adage goes: ‘one can but ask…’.

Anytime I become close to a family after having visited them at least a couple of times, my new friends usually show me their family photo albums. So far this has happened in every house I’ve been to. After talking, eating and drinking tea together, they ask me if I want to have a look at their family pictures. Then they usually bring me one, two or more boxes containing different albums and many scattered photos. I’ve seen many pictures taken from the ‘60 until recently. These boxes usually contain both formal photos taken during weddings and then edited in the studio, and more informal pictures from daily life. Showing family photo albums and family photos to guests is a very common practice here in Mardin. It’s a way to communicate to new friends what the family looks like, and to highlight to me (a new friend) who the family members are and were in the past.

(more…)

Schoolteachers and staff in Baldoíno have a common perspective about the impact of social media on education. For them, Facebook and similar services are bad because they make students even less interested in what happens during classes. The argument tends to be that the Internet in general is a good thing, but young people avoid the “good internet” to devote a lot of time to socialization. The typical example of the “good internet” here is Google because it’s where one can learn things. Google fits into the image of a sort of oracle of knowledge that fits well with the idea of what a teacher is while Facebook is the playground and the understanding is that children have nothing good to teach each other.

If you ask a staff member of a school to give an example of the consequences of using the “bad side of the internet”, they may talk about how poorly students are writing because of the lingo they use to communicate through social networking sites. They say that kids are now happy to misspell words because they all like to type in this way. But this is actually very far from what the evidence from fieldwork shows. I am confident to claim that, at least here in my field site, Facebook has made spelling-checks an obsession among younger users and they are constantly improving their writing skills for that reason.

Here is a bit of my own pre-theorizing about the way things work here in terms of social mobility. Displaying economic progress is an important part of life, hence the effort made to show off this progress through actions such as buying branded clothes or a being a strong speaker through which the neighbors can evaluate the technical quality of your investment in education. Teenagers appear to have been given a central role in this arena: they are the main embodiments of display for family wealth and that may be a heavy burden to bear. These kids are intensely comparing what they have to what others around them have to look for signs of  a“lack of conditions”. And a serious indicator of poor economic means shows itself through writing.

I have systematically asked teens about different topics related to technology and almost all of them are highly concerned about not misspelling words on Facebook’s public areas. Some have newer phones that have spellcheckers and these are sought after technologies. Others with less powerful smartphones get into the habit of using Google to check the words they are not sure about. And as a consequence they all claim that their writing skills have improved as they fell more confident about writing.

I like this example because it shows how an assumption about the effects of the Internet may be wrong and yet remain as the truth, at least to a certain group. The perspective of school staff reveals less about what happens in terms of learning and possibly more about another important topic related to the internet here: how it has deepened the generation gap. We are talking about parents that are functionally illiterate in terms of reading, but also in terms of operating a computer. So young people have the whole World Wide Web to live their lives away from the sight of adults.

Viewing the world cup from the perspective of  a relatively homogeneous English site, The Glades, a dual village with a total population of 24,000, North of London, seems to bring out the ‘Englishness’ of this site compared to others around the globe.

At the time of writing England are already out of the World Cup, and most of the overheard conversation is about failure. England is ranked below the two teams, Italy and Uruguay, that beat them. Most experts felt they played quite well. So the results are pretty much in accordance with expectations. But this is not how things are seen here. Social bonding seems most effective when everyone agrees that England are ‘rubbish’. The humour on social media is typically self-deprecating, for example, a picture of the tour bus on sale with signs such as ‘only used twice’.

On social media we looked at all posting on 30 Instagram, 40 Twitter and 65 Facebook accounts during one week. This provided very clear support for my earlier claim that Facebook is no longer a peer to peer media for youth but has migrated to older people. Of the forty teenage Facebook profiles only one person used it for extensive football comment and this was because all his Twitter posts were set to also show on Facebook. Two others made a single relevant posting, one posted twice and that was it. World Cup references are more common for older users of Facebook with two people posting 11 times and one six times.

Instagram is only used to post ones own photos so the World Cup was not relevant. The core to young peoples posting today is Twitter. Of forty teenage sites, of those who posted during this week there were 5 males who posted frequent comments throughout the week. 11 males made just a few comments often around 3 to 5 while only 1 male made no comments at all. Of the females none posted extensively, half posted a few and half posted no world cup related tweets. Males tend to post either exclamations at events, general comments such as: ‘Why were Uruguay and Italy so poor against Costa Rica?’ Also popular is humour or critical remarks, such as:

‘I don’t get all the people that say England are good, we are shit, you just don’t want to admit it… when was the last time we won anything?’

‘Any coincidence that nations who sing their anthems with pride and feeling put in spirited performances, rather than our pathetic effort?’

Humour, as well as being self-deprecating, is often sarcastic, such as:

‘”BREAKING – Steven Gerrard to retire from international football after the World Cup” what a shame.’

Females add a gendered perspective, with posting such as: ‘why are all the Uruguay player’s shirts so so so tight? lol’, or cute pictures of the Brazilian player Oscar. If they comment on the football itself it may be apologetically such as ‘Uhh ohhhhh!! trust it to be Suarez (like i actually know what i’m talking about)’. Only those who comment extensively tend to mention games other than those played by England, or if they have connections such as family in Portugal and therefore support that team.

As well as self-deprecation the English qualities of modesty and reticence are much in evidence. There is relatively little public display. Across the two villages only 3 shops had extensive world cup influenced windows (see photos), 3 more had minimal and around 80 had none. Apart from an electrician, it was either the most traditional English butcher and pub or ethnic minority restaurants (Indian or Chinese) that had displays. There was only one example of commercial exploitation, a supermarket that had a selection called ‘tastes of the world cup’ with Brazilian watermelon Ivory Coast cocoa etc. Less than 1% of homes or cars displayed flags.

Going to pubs during the games when England were not playing one rarely saw more than 3 or 4 people that looked like they might have come especially to watch that game. During the England game one pub was crowded with 140 people another less than half that. The atmosphere was subdued. Apart from the collective shouting and celebration when the English goal was scored, there were no instances of people making remarks loud enough for anyone to hear other than their own companions.

THE WORLD CUP ON SOCIAL MEDIA WORLDWIDE
This article is part of a special series of blog posts profiling how social media is affecting how ordinary people from communities across the planet experience the 2014 World Cup.

• Brazil: “Why aren’t they protesting?”: low-income Brazilian’s views on the World Cup
• Chile: Seeing red: watching the World Cup in Northern Chile
• China (North): Online and under the covers: the World Cup and social media in rural China
• China (South): “Watch the World Cup – watch the fun and the world”
• India: Football World Cup 2014: Observations from Panchagrami
• Italy: ‘We are more united for the World Cup than for Christmas!’: the World Cup in Italy
• Trinidad: “It ain’t ova till its ova” – Spectacular sports and social media: the World Cup in El Mirador
• Turkey: “Turks have no other friends besides the Turks” – a Turkish saying
• United Kingdom: Englishness, the World Cup and the Glades

The ongoing World Cup, as a global event, seems to provide an ideal platform for us, the Global Social Media Impact Study to compare people’s social media engagement worldwide. Here in this busy factory town in south China, there is no pub where people can watch football, there is no football field where people can play football, and I have never ever felt any passion for football during my whole year of field work. Most of the time, I had to train myself to select ‘useful’ information from a huge amount of field notes.  However, this time I was somehow worried that the topic of football over here is somewhat similar to the topic of skiing for people who live in a tropical rain forest.

Not surprisingly, up to the day of writing (24 June) there is very limited content on social media about football or the World Cup among my informants (around two-thirds of them are Chinese rural migrants, working in local factories, one-third are factory managers, local businessman, and few people living in cities), among 100 informants’ QQ profiles (around 179 posts over the World Cup period), there was only five posts about football directly, and the majority of them were about football gambling game as one of the posts said: “I am optimistic about Italy!” XB, an 18-year old factory worker wrote so, and he told me later that the reason he posted so was because he clicked on a QQ football gambling game “by chance”, and invested 10 RMB (1 pound) betting with Italy. However, when I moved to WeChat (a social media applied more by Chinese urban population and middle-class) things became different. When I included my personal social media connections which mainly consist of people living and working in cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, and overseas places, the rate of football related posts is much higher: among 158 posts drawn from 60 people on WeChat, there were more than 30% of football and World Cup related posts. Furthermore, the posts about football varied. There were original posts about watching football in pubs or at home alone or with friends (usually with a set of photos of the beer, the TV screen, the venue, and group photos); posts commenting on the performance of certain players or teams; informative shared links about the game schedule and the line-ups; shared pictures/videos about the world cup, including a great amount of jokes, etc.

The presence (or the absence) of the World Cup on people’s social media profiles (QQ and WeChat) not only showcased different ‘lifestyles’ of the urban Chinese and rural migrants, but also manifested a great difference between the user groups of WeChat and QQ that is WeChat is more urban and QQ is more rural. Even though it is too simplistic to put things in urban-rural dichotomy, it is safe to say that the urban-rural division exists in many obvious ways in China according to my ethnography.

Nevertheless, my inquiry about the ‘social media and the World Cup’ should by no means remain on social media domain since the real strength of field work lies in a comprehensive understanding of people’s daily life. The game-watching experience with my informants and follow-up interviews tell me more about the social connections behind football and the World Cup.

Curiously, even though the visibility of the world cup on social media among rural migrants is extremely low, in my field site, one can still feel some passion for the World Cup, especially among men. ZF, a forklift driver in his 30s, went to bed straight away after work at 5 pm, in order to get up in midnight to watch the games via his computer (given the time difference, most of the games are after midnight China time). Some of ZF’s co-workers in the factory (around 25%) did the same, and “the younger, the crazier” even though most of them “do not understand football” as one of them told me. However the majority of people who showed interest in the World Cup reported that they watched the game alone in their room, which means watching the world cup is not a public event or social event at all in this small town. Such situation limits the possibility of me, as a young woman, of joining the game-watching with my informants: at midnight, a young woman and a young man, both don’t understand football, watching football in a small room where the only furniture is a bed does not sound particularly inviting for me and probably too inviting for the other side.

Having said so, I still managed to watch a recorded game (Columbia Vs. Greece) during the lunch break with four of my informants (three male one female) who are factory officials in the office. During the game-watching, I secretly counted how many times people made remarks on the match per se, and how many time people made remarks on something else. Among roughly 230 remarks over 90 minutes, 1/3 of them are very short remarks about the match per se, such as “Oh he is fast!”, “Shoot!”, “Quick quick”, “that must be painful”, “Come on, that’s fake”. And the other 2/3 of the remarks was sort of ‘football-free’. 

“I like the blue pants!”

“Hey, many of the foreigners are bald, how come?”

“Is that true foreign men always smell, so they have to use perfume?”

“Oh I wish I could run and fight like them, men should be like that”

“Look, the judge running after the players all the time, how tiring, he must be very well paid!”

“Where is Columbia?”

“He is handsome!”

“One of my friends marry to a ‘fu er dai’ (second generation of the rich, refers to people who come from very rich families), and their honeymoon trip was to Greece. The photos she posted on her QQ were just amazingly beautiful. I just don’t get it, I mean, she is not very pretty at all.”

“Oh, foreigners are really crazy, they paint on their face, and dance like this, they are so crazy! Life in the west must be very free and have a lot of fun.”

“I really think Chinese men can’t date foreign women, they are too open to sex, too difficult to control!”

It seems that during the game-watching more conversation were centered on exoticism, masculinity, and gossip, which for whatever reasons were allowed by the encounter of the carnival-like world cup. And for me those conversations where football was absent seemed to be even more interesting in terms of anthropological inquiries about sociality in people’s daily life.

The World Cup watching experience reminds me of the local opera show. From time to time, a local traditional Chinese opera troupe had performance on a makeshift stage, hundreds of people gathered under the stage, however not everybody was interested in the performance; the noise of chatting under the stage was just as loud as the singing on the stage. When the performance was over, more than half of the audience remained at their seats, chatting with each other. I asked some of them whether they were fans of the opera or the troupe, few of them said yes. People told me that they came here because it’s very “re nao” (‘re’ in Chinese means hot, ‘nao’ means noisy, two characters together means ‘bustle’). “Re nao” is a very interesting thing, Chinese people will say “cou re nao” (join the bustle), which takes place in various situations. Basically being bustle and noisy is regarded as something fun. Here, many people come to the performance for the purpose of “cou re nao”, which is joining the bustle, watching the fun. The social interactions in many cases depend on those ‘everyday encounters with people’ – any activity in public which gathers people became a ‘social activity’ automatically. Similarly, people’s interest may be not necessarily in the event, either the world cup or the local opera show. Thus watching the world cup in my field site is more about watching the world and watching the fun.

THE WORLD CUP ON SOCIAL MEDIA WORLDWIDE
This article is part of a special series of blog posts profiling how social media is affecting how ordinary people from communities across the planet experience the 2014 World Cup.

• Brazil: “Why aren’t they protesting?”: low-income Brazilian’s views on the World Cup
• Chile: Seeing red: watching the World Cup in Northern Chile
• China (North): Online and under the covers: the World Cup and social media in rural China
• China (South): “Watch the World Cup – watch the fun and the world”
• India: Football World Cup 2014: Observations from Panchagrami
• Italy: ‘We are more united for the World Cup than for Christmas!’: the World Cup in Italy
• Trinidad: “It ain’t ova till its ova” – Spectacular sports and social media: the World Cup in El Mirador
• Turkey: “Turks have no other friends besides the Turks” – a Turkish saying
• United Kingdom: Englishness, the World Cup and the Glades

Cricket, cinema, politics and religion are things that interest Tamils the most. This is not only reflected in their offline lives but can be witnessed online too, especially on Facebook. Now, where does football fit into all of this? Though football isn’t something that is entirely ignored, it really doesn’t scale up as cricket does. It is one game which is constantly encouraged in schools during the physical training hours next to cricket, but, it really doesn’t have the same following as cricket does. However, it is nonetheless more popular than hockey, which is India’s national sport.

Most men would tell you that they were exposed to football during their school days, but, as a sport the interest in it gets restricted to their school/college days, compared to their interest in cricket which is carried on to their adult life. However, the scenario is not all bad as there are people who do follow football feverishly and know each team’s statistics by heart, but, the numbers just don’t match cricket. Chennai, the nearest city to my fieldsite – Panchagrami – has a Manchester United clothing shop in a famous mall and people do shop there, some for its brand value and a few as fans.

The Ground Reality
So, how does the recent FIFA World Cup 2014, score in this scenario? While Brazil wakes up to football, it’s almost bed time in India. The live telecast of the World Cup starts only at around 9:30 PM which is almost past dinner time for most folks in Tamil Nadu, India. The first match at 9:30 PM isn’t too tough to follow, but the next slot is close to midnight and the slots thereafter most often takes a toll on people who work. They go back to work like zombies if they stay awake watching the entire series the night before. So, people following the live action of every single match is rare.

These night slots come at a disadvantage not only to fans but also to the hospitality industry. Star hotels, restaurants and bars do play the matches live, but most have a time constraint and normally don’t go over midnight. Though replays of matches do take place in the afternoon, football isn’t really treated as a great marketing option during weekdays, though weekends are slightly different. There is only one five-star hotel in Chennai which has taken football to be a serious way of marketing and attracting fans to dine in and has activities related to the sport 24/7. While a few others do consider this an attractive marketing option, most places haven’t really bothered too much with the idea. Bars and restaurants in Chennai (specifically those in star-rated hotels) play football on their television sets, however, most go on only till about midnight and close down, so catching the live telecast from Brazil in public places is difficult for most people here.

The other issue is with the concept of bars in Tamil Nadu. The bars here are of two different kinds, the first type is attached to the local government-run alcohol shops called TASMAC. But, most middle class men prefer not to frequent this bar and opt to take alcohol home. Further, there isn’t any facility here to watch football. The second kind of bars are those that are mostly present in star-rated hotels or exclusive bars/restaurants and can be pretty costly compared to the local government-owned alcohol shops. So, people frequenting them would normally be people travelling on business or upper middle class/rich folks. However, irrespective of the bar one frequents, if one decides to drive back home, with the stiffening of rules against drunk-driving, one is almost certain to get caught by the law and shell out loads of money (either as a fine or at least in terms of corruption to avoid a fine). Some clubs do offer football viewing during dinner for its members, while most often the television sets in gymnasiums play them as an option along with cinema songs.

A World Cup 2014 arrangement at a star-rated hotel in Chennai:

The scenario in coffee shops is not too different. Though some do have replays of football matches instead of cinema songs, most prefer cinema songs to match replays. Most often one can catch some advertisement/sign or symbol related to the World Cup in the form of a commercial product. Coffee shops don’t spend money putting together advertisements or banners of the Football World cup, but willingly display beverages bearing the symbols of the World Cup.

For example, Coca Cola cans which have the World Cup advertisement on them.

 The constant scene of people who watch windows of shops/showrooms with a television set playing a live stream of the cricket World Cup matches isn’t seen with the FIFA World Cup. Though, the time at which the matches are played might be one reason, the other would be that football just doesn’t interest people here as cricket does. Private viewings in homes do take place in Chennai. However, except for a few nights in the season, most stop watching past midnight during weekdays, due to work day schedules. The only store which has a dedicated football brand Manchester United also only plays matches of the team and not the FIFA World Cup, as a store associate expressed his concern of attracting too much of crowd, if the matches were shown in the store. However, the time of live relay of such matches was also something that did not work out in their favour.

One definitely cannot ignore the World Cup as there are vinyl hoardings and the media (print, radio and television) constantly relays news of the World Cup. Most often people seem to prefer watching news slots of the matches or just get the scores from the internet rather than watching it live. Discussions at offices or schools on football aren’t as frequent as they are regarding cricket.

The World Cup on Tamil Television news

However, it does have its own reflection on social media, and especially on Facebook. Private chats and groups on football do exist. Most often one needs to get invited to these groups, where discussions between Facebook friends happen. Being a part of such a group was clearly enlightening, as it gave the opportunity to witness conversations first hand. Members keep checking for scores online and run their own analysis of teams. They also share links of popular articles related to the teams they love or hate or just about the World Cup itself. Some even run voting options such as the one below

The Scene in Panchagrami

By contrast to the above scene in Chennai, Panchagrami, which lies in the outskirts of Chennai offers a completely different scenario. What hits one is that there are absolutely no vinyl hoardings of football. Further, there are no commercial enterprises that offer an overt advertisement related to football. The only place which has a public viewing of football matches is a star-rated hotel at Panchagrami, situated on a major highway. It offers football match viewing between 7 PM and 11:30 PM every day available only at the roof-top garden restaurant, opened newly at the hotel. However, the screen where the match is projected is pretty small and unclear.

Interviews with the restaurant staff revealed that when families dine in, they really don’t pay too much attention to the matches and most aren’t bothered about them. Some have even requested the staff to change channels (to play cinema songs) as the sport seemed boring to them. However, the staff were ready to admit that excitement picks up only when groups of young men come in to dine and specifically only when they consume alcohol. This normally seems to happen on weekends rather than weekdays. Every evening there are men who travel on business who dine in at the hotel and sit alone to watch the game, just until they finish dinner, most often out of boredom rather than an interest for the sport. The same was true of a coffee shop in the area too; they were content playing cinema songs rather than the World Cup as they felt that cinema songs were much better received by their customers. When probed deeper, they did say that a few customers mostly men, sometimes requested the staff to change channels for a few minutes to update themselves on news related to the football World Cup. Again, timing for catching live action of the World Cup just isn’t suitable for most people nor does it suit the business.

The corner tea shops are normally the spaces where communication of world news is witnessed through informal discussions. Frequenting some of these tea shops revealed that people did speak about cricket in the last week and never once mentioned Football. Informal chats with a few in these tea shops revealed that they just didn’t care about it and were content getting a glimpse of it from the local newspapers.

Most of my informants in the past week were posting pictures of their favourite cricket/cinema stars and political figures. They even Liked pages of their favourite stars, teams or political leaders. I haven’t found even a single posting on football. Even IT workers staying here weren’t really bothered putting up posts on Facebook about football. Interviewing my younger group of informants, revealed a few interesting findings on why they don’t post anything about football.

1. None of their friends were interested in it.
2. They wouldn’t get as many Likes if they post about football rather than cricket
3. It doesn’t allow girls to Like/Comment on their posts – while they did say that the chances of women Liking/Commenting on a post related to cricket was more. In other words, they meant that football was more masculine and could keep away women from actively participating in their profile (through Commenting/Liking).

However, a few did say that they did receive WhatsApp messages from some of their work/college friends about football and most of these friends were from Chennai and some weren’t even native Tamils and hailed from West Bengal or Kerala where football is much more popular. So, while some reeled off statistics they had collected from their office colleagues and from newspapers, they did accept that the discussions on football weren’t as intense as cricket.

The online forums/discussion groups of upper middle class residential apartments also did not have any messages asking for people to join in a public viewing of the sport. However, talking to an International school in the area revealed that they had football coaching sessions over weekends. Attending a few sessions over the last couple of weekends showed that the fathers normally encouraged their sons who were attending coaching sessions to watch World Cup matches. There was a strong family (father-son) bonding that was visible through their discussions on Football on the practise ground. Some were constantly referring to a few You Tube videos of player interviews and techniques. But, other than a few matches they watched during weekends at home or at a Star hotel, most agreed that watching live action of the World Cup just didn’t suit their schedule or timing. However, they did catch up with the scores on the internet.

There were a few men who did agree that they used football as an excuse to go out drinking (alcohol) together as a group. But they just didn’t bother posting about it online, as they didn’t want their wives to know that they were out boozing in the pretext of watching Football.

Most of my male informants did agree that they had played football and liked the game, but it was soon very clear that playing a sport needn’t necessarily transition to following the sport.

Interviewing and constantly checking for updates on Facebook profiles of my informants about their interest in football revealed yet another dimension – women loved cricket more than they did football. None discussed football. Football, they said was very masculine and somehow it just didn’t suit them. However, they did accept that if they had grown up watching football as they did cricket, maybe they would have loved it and changed their favourites. But, it just doesn’t seem to be happening in the near future.

In conclusion, football still hasn’t diffused into the boundaries of Panchagrami as it has in Chennai. As the area transitions, there might be a greater number of Football fans in Panchagrami. Further, the timings do hinder those who might want to give it a try in Panchagrami. As the final match of the World Cup gets closer, maybe people would be much more interested and would start following the World cup. However, at least people catch a glimpse of it in newspapers or on television sets and do update themselves and the situation isn’t as bad as hockey – supposedly India’s national sport – of which people know much less than they know of football.

THE WORLD CUP ON SOCIAL MEDIA WORLDWIDE
This article is part of a special series of blog posts profiling how social media is affecting how ordinary people from communities across the planet experience the 2014 World Cup.

• Brazil: “Why aren’t they protesting?”: low-income Brazilian’s views on the World Cup
• Chile: Seeing red: watching the World Cup in Northern Chile
• China (North): Online and under the covers: the World Cup and social media in rural China
• China (South): “Watch the World Cup – watch the fun and the world”
• India: Football World Cup 2014: Observations from Panchagrami
• Italy: ‘We are more united for the World Cup than for Christmas!’: the World Cup in Italy
• Trinidad: “It ain’t ova till its ova” – Spectacular sports and social media: the World Cup in El Mirador
• Turkey: “Turks have no other friends besides the Turks” – a Turkish saying
• United Kingdom: Englishness, the World Cup and the Glades

The very first night I spent in my fieldsite in Northern Chile, the national team qualified for the World Cup. I had no TV, no radio, and internet only through my smartphone. But I knew every time the team scored. Horns honked, dogs barked, whistles cut through the evening air, a dull roar of shouts bouncing off one another between the small homes, and six floor apartment buildings hung around the city like the fog that rolls in every afternoon from the Pacific Ocean. When the opposing team scored, you could hear the low rumble of grumbling viewers. By the game’s end, the horns were honking again, fireworks were being set off, and I ventured to my balcony to see people waving large flags in the street.

After nine months in this working class city of 100,000 people, football is back, and it is everywhere. Though advertising in general is limited, people find individual ways to visibly express their excitement about World Cup. The single bar in the city has no signs outside or inside advertising that they will be open for games. Restaurants have no specials. This is possibly because people tend to watch at home with friends and family, grilling meat, and drinking beer, rather than watch in in a more public place. Or perhaps people feel inclined to watch from home because there is no incentive to watch in a public place. Either way, the result is clear. When I watched one afternoon game at the bar, I was one of only 5 patrons (all the others being 20-30 something men who seemed to know the bartender on duty). In fact, the family and friends joining together in each private home usually outnumbered those gathered in the bar.

The few instances of businesses advertising World Cup specials were limited to interntional companies. The hardware store (owned by US company Home Depot), and one supermarket (owned by Walmart) had special giveaways advertised, and of course the Coca Cola and Becker beer cans on sale throughout the country are decorated with football themed designs. But on a local level nothing commercialized about the World Cup. Instead, people have individually created visible practices associated with supporting their national team—wearing red football jerseys, setting off fireworks, and posting a great deal on social networking sites. These posts began about a week before the World Cup began, in anticipation.

Many of the Facebook posts were typically Chilean in style, in that they were humorous memes. Some compared the team’s coach, Jorge Sampaoli, who is bald, to bald reggaetón singer Pitbull. Others, in anticipation of a match against the Australian team, featured pictures of kangaroos in compromising positions. Others posted sarcastic cartoons about the blindness with which Chileans follow football, or “Survival Guides” for those uninterested in the games. Politically involved young people often posted links to articles about the protests in Brazil, often followed by an image supporting the Chilean team, and commenting on their sense of feeling torn between the game they love and the capitalist exploitations behind the event. “Vamos Chile…..a pesar que el trasfondo del mundial es una mierda no pueden negar que el futbol es hermoso sobretodo cuando gana chile” [Let’s go Chile…..it’s a shame that the transformation of the World Cup is shitty, but they can’t negate that football is beautiful and above all when chile wins”

On the day of the game, posts turned more personal. Young men and middle-aged mothers alike post on Facebook invitations to friends to watch the game in their homes, often enticing them with photos of beer or food accompanied by a Chilean flag or football. Local businesses such as Chinese restaurants suggest customers should “put their orders in now to go along with The Red” (the nickname for the national team).

The experience of watching the games was captured in photos posted on Facebook and Instagram. These usually consist of people wearing red football jerseys, red, white, and blue wigs, hats that look like footballs, and other variations on festive attire, while standing next to a large television displaying a match. Others display the meats being grilled while watching the game. Even those stuck at work during games. Posted selfies at their desk while draped in the national flag. The large percentage of men working in mining operations several hours outside of the city were not left out. A few hours later, after they’ve finished their twelve hour shift, workers in the nearby copper mines post their cell phone videos of hundreds of their coworkers erupting as they watch a goal being scored from the company dining hall.

But more telling than these orchestrated photos and videos were the immediate reactions to the game that were posted in simple messages on Facebook. When there was something to cheer about, my Facebook feed instantly filled with simple statements of “conchetumare” (a somewhat all-purpose expletive), “weon!” (somewhat equivalent to ‘dude’), “vamos chile mierda” [let’s go chile. shit!], and  of course, “goooollllll” after every score.

After the games, Instagram and Facebook again filled with photos of people celebrating in the streets. Huge crowds gathered in plazas to set off fireworks, sing fight songs, and generally continue the party. People posted videos of the national hymn being sung at the start of the game. These were not just young people, but grandparents and mothers carrying young children. Of course, the posts stopped about two hours after the game ended, but I could still hear the singing and fireworks through my closed window late into the night.

And then, the next day, in further, but subdued celebration, memes reappeared teasing opponents who lost, or chastising referees blamed for a Chilean loss. After defeating current world champion, Spain, a photo of an airplane bearing the Spanish flag, with “gentlemen, start your engines” was shared by many people.

Overall, on non-game days, about 20% of posts are related to the world cup. On game days, this rises slowly until they peak during the actual game the make up more than 60% of posts from the 90 people I follow on Facebook. Similarly, among Instagram users from my fieldsite, about 80% of photos posted during game time have something to do with the game. Clearly, for many people, life stopped in order to watch the game. Yet, in order to actively participate in a community of fans, social networking provided an outlet for humor, pride, predictions, and even gut reactions to plays. This may have something to do with the fact that people are watching in small groups in private spaces, rather than large numbers gathering in the local bar. While family members got up to dance and toot horns after each goal scored when I watched from friends’ homes, they seemed to want a more collective experience. This desire was summed up by my friend’s uncle, who after Chile’s win over Spain quickly declared, “Let’s all go outside and see what’s going on in the streets. If there’s a party happening we need to be a part of it.”

It is also worth noting that the number of posts on either social media site that reference support for a team other than Chile is almost non-existent. There is a somewhat large population of Colombian immigrants in the fieldsite, and thus, the Colombian team has had a few posts in it’s support. By overwhelmingly, the posts reference the team of the poster’s home nation. The World Cup is not about the world, but about Chile’s place in it, and Facebook, rather than acting as a window to a “global civil society” (Tomlinson and Young 2006:1) rather functions much as Anderson described early national newspapers as foundational to a sense of community as a nation. In fact the simultaneity he described (1983:37) has gone into warp speed as people have moved from reading the same daily news items, to being able to immediately comment on an acquaintance’s “conchatumadre” just seconds after a Chilean player scores. This Saturday, Chile will battle home team Brazil in the second round of the tournament, and might be eliminated. If that happens it will be interesting to see if excitement and Facebook posts continue, as people in my fieldsite cheer on other South American teams, or if the exit of the Chilean team will mean an absence of attention to the World Cup both in media consumption, and social media curation. Then again, maybe predictions will be right and we’ll never get a chance to know, because Chile will win it all!

References

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1983.

Tomlinson, Alan, and Christopher Young, eds. National identity and global sports events: Culture, politics, and spectacle in the Olympics and the football World Cup. SUNY Press, 2006.

THE WORLD CUP ON SOCIAL MEDIA WORLDWIDE
This article is part of a special series of blog posts profiling how social media is affecting how ordinary people from communities across the planet experience the 2014 World Cup.

• Brazil: “Why aren’t they protesting?”: low-income Brazilian’s views on the World Cup
• Chile: Seeing red: watching the World Cup in Northern Chile
• China (North): Online and under the covers: the World Cup and social media in rural China
• China (South): “Watch the World Cup – watch the fun and the world”
• India: Football World Cup 2014: Observations from Panchagrami
• Italy: ‘We are more united for the World Cup than for Christmas!’: the World Cup in Italy
• Trinidad: “It ain’t ova till its ova” – Spectacular sports and social media: the World Cup in El Mirador
• Turkey: “Turks have no other friends besides the Turks” – a Turkish saying
• United Kingdom: Englishness, the World Cup and the Glades

I am living about two hours away by bus from the stadium where Holland humiliated Spain (5-1) and Thomas Mueller stole the spotlight from Cristiano Ronaldo after Portugal’s 4-0 defeat to Germany. Yet the World Cup has not impacted significantly upon the lives of those living in this working-class village I call Baldoíno. In general, my informants believe the allegations of overspending and misuse of public money in building the infrastructure for the tournament to be true, but instead of protesting and complaining they exhibit considerable excitement about the event itself. My impression, based on 14 months living here, is that this apparently contradictory position is understandable because as well as the problems they face there are also good reasons to celebrate.

Baldoíno is already in a celebratory mood, not particularly because of the World Cup, but because June is the month of festivals including those in homage to Saint John and Saint Peter. Though important across the nation, they are much more celebrated here in the Northeast of the country than in other parts. But aside from the days of Brazil matches and these popular festivities, life hasn’t changed significantly here: everyone is working and shops are open during normal hours. The main change the World Cup brought is that schools are closed during the 40+ days of the tournament, a decision that obliged parents to monitor their children while at work.

Group gatherings and online communication

The feeling that nothing special is happening is evident both online and offline on those days when Brazil is not playing. Then the World Cup disappears from everyone’s newsfeeds just as if the competition were taking place elsewhere. But when the team is scheduled to perform, businesses close about one hour before the match and employees are generally released from duty. As they gather to watch the game, they also connect with wider groups of family and friends through status updates and other online actions. Humour is not just an element of this conversation but almost the reason for it to take place. Here are some quotes of status updates the on  17 June, the day Brazil and Mexico tied 0-0, which resemble the mood of the conversations happening among people sitting together:

The result was not what we expected, but the mess [with friends at home] was awesome! Go Brazil!!

You can run an anti-doping exam on this goalkeeper and find that he has hot pepper on his blood…

What a game, bro. It’s tough!

At that same night, I went online to share my own photos and differently from the previous or the following days, most of my newsfeed was about the game. Here are the types of interactions that I noticed:

• Updates posted about the game including snapshots taken during the match and predictions of the final score; also general comments about things happening in the village related to the game;
• Humorous memes about various subjects such as sport commentators’ meaningless remarks, or about a particular player’s physical attributes shared by women;
• And photo albums about their day watching the game which attracted the attention of various circles of friends to tag, like, comment, and share these photos;

What’s there to celebrate?

As we approach the last matches of the initial phase of the tournament, international newspapers such as The New York Time (here) and The Wall Street Journal (here) reported that the apocalyptical predictions about the World Cup did not happen. Air travelers have been able to reach their destinations with no more than the normal problems; the stadiums have been finished on time for the matches and are operating accordingly; and there hasn’t been strikes or massive protests similar to those that happened about this time last year. In addition, there are three further causes to why my informants are also choosing to be positive about the event:

• For most, the idea that the country is in poor condition is more abstract than real. Their families have lived through generations without having the means to buy consumer goods that mark social distinction. Today items such as cool TV sets, cars, microwave ovens, and tablets are no  longer exclusive to upper-class households. The perception seems to be that the alleged corruption scandals have not harmed low-income Brazilians since their lives are better now.
• Corruption, social injustice, and exploitation are not new experiences for them, so the understanding appears to be they must take what is positive from unfortunate circumstances. Everyone I ask say they believe the corruption allegations are true, but that there is nothing to be done about them now. As an informant explained: it would be a waste not to enjoy the spectacle that has already been paid for.
• I also feel that many in the village share a certain pride for the fact such important event is happening in their country and also that Brazil is among the best in the world at this popular sport. Although they are aware that they are more exposed to social injustices than the middle and upper classes, there is a shared sense of personal achievement that becomes more apparent with the World Cup happening here and not elsewhere. The honour of hosting such event reflects this group’s feeling of economic growth. This perception has been amplified by the fact the competition has been exciting and that so far the national team has been performing, if not brilliantly, at least satisfyingly and no worse than rivals such as Germany and Argentina.

It’s not just about football

The point that combines these arguments is that low-income Brazilians in my field site are not exclusively celebrating football, but also the success of having had a collective and apparently lasting movement upward. None of my working class informants can afford tickets to World Cup matches, but they have been given a privileged position at stadiums thanks to the popularization of cable programming, high definition TVs and digital transmission. In common with what happens within the football stadiums, they will be together with a lot of people and consume mostly the same foods and drinks commonly served at these venues: various grilled meat dishes, beer and colas.

Brazilians are internationally known for loving football and playing it with passion and creativity. Football is also associated with class mobility, as historically it has allowed people, especially non-whites with less economic means, to earn visibility and wealth. Now contemporary low-income Brazilians may be celebrating that they no longer need football to acquire relative wealth and visibility. I am not suggesting everyone in Baldoíno has the same experience in terms of economic growth. Many are still struggling to enter the formal workforce due to various limitations including poor schooling and disinterest for having regular jobs. But as a group, they can finally sit and enjoy the games at the comfort of their homes through their new TV sets. And the social media is here to make this reality visible and hence more lasting.

THE WORLD CUP ON SOCIAL MEDIA WORLDWIDE
This article is part of a special series of blog posts profiling how social media is affecting how ordinary people from communities across the planet experience the 2014 World Cup.

• Brazil: “Why aren’t they protesting?”: low-income Brazilian’s views on the World Cup
• Chile: Seeing red: watching the World Cup in Northern Chile
• China (North): Online and under the covers: the World Cup and social media in rural China
• China (South): “Watch the World Cup – watch the fun and the world”
• India: Football World Cup 2014: Observations from Panchagrami
• Italy: ‘We are more united for the World Cup than for Christmas!’: the World Cup in Italy
• Trinidad: “It ain’t ova till its ova” – Spectacular sports and social media: the World Cup in El Mirador
• Turkey: “Turks have no other friends besides the Turks” – a Turkish saying
• United Kingdom: Englishness, the World Cup and the Glades

The town I have called El Mirador is the gateway to one of the most remote regions in Trinidad. Just ten minutes from the town centre, you are surrounded by bush, farming land and fishing villages. Most of the year, it’s a quiet sleepy place. The town is hub; just as many people work outside of the town as the amount of people that work in the town, in local businesses or in the public sector. As an area that developed in the second half of the twentieth century, it also has more of a mixed population than other parts of Trinidad. Like many country towns around the world, normative views are fairly conservative. Political opinion is split fairly equally between the largely East Indian-supported party the UNC and the mostly African-supported party, PNM.

In a usually un-extraordinary place, the town comes alive around events; religious holidays, Christmas and Carnival. Shop fronts transform, local up-market bars and eateries hold themed nights and the World Cup is an additional reason to do what Trinidadians know best: have a good time.

In the first ten days of the World Cup, which ended with a national long weekend of the Corpus Christi and Labour Day public holidays, I watched matches in three family homes, one restaurant and two bars in the town. Facebook is the dominant social media in El Mirador and out of the 250 Facebook friends I have accumulated as part of the Global Social Media Impact Study, 13 posted about the World Cup regularly, as it unfolded. These informants were aged between 17 and 23. For informants in their late 20s and above, the World Cup didn’t seem to impact on how they post. An additional 26 people were tagged in posts and through conversations with informants and, to use the local term: through ‘macoing’ (looking into other people’s business) profiles on Facebook, those tagged watched a game or two in a group with the person who tagged them. I took note of 53 posts and all together, there were more than 100 comments, usually banter, commentary, jokes or discussion, 17 memes and 4 videos. 3 of the local bars I followed advertised World Cup screenings and 3 chain businesses had World Cup promotions.

After the first week, commentary died down a little and since Trinidad isn’t competing this year, the favourite teams appear to be Latin American countries (Brazil, Argentina and Chile) and African competitors (Cote D’Ivoire and Cameroon)

If we follow Tomlinson’s idea that how people view global sports can be better understood if we understand a site’s economic and political dimensions (2006: 2), Trinidad’s history and geographical location can explain the popularity of these teams. There is absolutely no interest or support for the English and US teams but I would only be speculating the reasons why at this point.

When I look closer at the comments and memes, the social media trend in El Mirador in respect to the World Cup becomes clearer, the event is appreciated as a spectacle. The temporary nature of the event attracts attention and fascination, which is probably why even though the competition is getting more intense at it draws towards the finals, the attention on social media is waning. lthough the second week may have just dipped in posts and will increase again towards the finals. How Trinidadians experience temporality and transience has been explored in quite a lot of depth (Birth, 2007, 1999, Miller, 1994) as well as the spectacular, which culminates at the time of Carnival (Ho, 2000). The build up to the event is often enjoyed as much as the event itself, as we see for example with pre-Carnival parties (‘fetes’) which start after Christmas and end the weekend before Carnival Monday. The widest advertising for those is not on mainstream media, but through Facebook events with open invitations.

The nature of posts reflect Trinidadian social life characterised banter and hanging out. The matches are something to comment on and talk about with no particular reason than just to enjoy socialising.

Memes appeal to humour and skill and precision of sportsmanship is appreciated in its moment, as a spectacle.

Commentary and posts are funny, good natured or used to start a conversation with others, although there was an odd racially-based or post with more political commentary.

On weekends in particular, the ‘lime’ (a Trinidadian term for hanging out) moves from social media and watching matches at home, to watching them with others in their homes or in public bars or restaurants.

In the upcoming weeks we will see if commenting on the World Cup on social media will decline or intensify as the competition heats up. It will then be school holidays and judging from the long weekend where there were less World Cup posts, Trinidadians in El Mirador may leave World Cup sociality on social media to being out more and enjoying the World Cup in the company of others.

References

Birth, Kevin K. Bacchanalian sentiments: Musical experiences and political counterpoints in Trinidad. Duke University Press, 2007.

Birth, Kevin. “Any Time is Trinidad Time”: Social Meanings and Temporal Consciousness. University Press of Florida, 1999.

Ho, Christine GT. “Popular culture and the aesthetization of politics: Hegemonic struggle and postcolonial nationalism in Trinidad carnival.” Transforming Anthropology 9.1 (2000): 3-18.

Miller, Daniel. Modernity, an ethnographic approach. Berg Publishers, 1994.

Tomlinson, Alan, and Christopher Young, eds. National identity and global sports events: Culture, politics, and spectacle in the Olympics and the football World Cup. SUNY Press, 2006.

THE WORLD CUP ON SOCIAL MEDIA WORLDWIDE
This article is part of a special series of blog posts profiling how social media is affecting how ordinary people from communities across the planet experience the 2014 World Cup.

• Brazil: “Why aren’t they protesting?”: low-income Brazilian’s views on the World Cup
• Chile: Seeing red: watching the World Cup in Northern Chile
• China (North): Online and under the covers: the World Cup and social media in rural China
• China (South): “Watch the World Cup – watch the fun and the world”
• India: Football World Cup 2014: Observations from Panchagrami
• Italy: ‘We are more united for the World Cup than for Christmas!’: the World Cup in Italy
• Trinidad: “It ain’t ova till its ova” – Spectacular sports and social media: the World Cup in El Mirador
• Turkey: “Turks have no other friends besides the Turks” – a Turkish saying
• United Kingdom: Englishness, the World Cup and the Glades