Imaginando outros mundos possíveis : a politização de conversações online sobre migração no site Cubadebate.

Abstract

With this research, we aim to analyze how politicization processes of online conversations about migration emerge on the Cuban Cubadebate website (2013-2017), through three interactional dynamics: a) the creation of online interactional scenes; b) the performative actions of the interlocutors (anonymity, appointment, disidentification, asymmetries, etc.); and c) the narratives across everyday language, the temporalities that intertwine individual and collective experiences. Migration crosses several temporalities in the Cuban imaginary of the revolutionary period and fuels discussions about values, demands, concerns and desires of the commentators interacting in the site. We adopt a theoretical approach that addresses the relational constitution of the interlocutors and their modes of political agency through conversation, from the collective reconfiguration of ways on how they make and think the common world. Thus, we propose an analytical model of online conversation that encompasses the examination of the messages and the discursive architecture of the site. The Discussion Tree scripts (Python), an open source package developed specifically for this research allows to visualize the hierarchical interactions and discussion threads of online conversation graphs trees. We also analyze, concurrently, the institutional environment of Cubadebate, as well as its articulation with characteristics of the broader social and political context. We analyzed 28 conversations occurred during some key migration moments of the selected period, in order to understand processes of politicization that would be linked to the strategies of creation of interactive scenes by the interlocutors, the mobilization of testimonies, narratives of themselves and other expressive forms of conversation and reflective-creative deployments in the connection of temporalities. The research aims to contribute to the development of studies of politicization of online conversations under an extended space-time perspective, taking into account the characteristics of the online environment and the peculiarities of this phenomenon in societies not aligned with the standards of Western democracy.