Fisionomias das infâncias contemporâneas na cibercultura: crianças em vídeos virais

Abstract

As a central objective, this dissertation proposes to think: what are the faces of childhood in cyberculture, specifically in viral videos on YouTube? This dissertation is organized into 6 parts. Starting with the presentation “The networks that brought me here”, I follow to the first chapter, “Accessing Cyberculture”, seeking to problematize and conceptualize cyberculture, childhood, YouTube and viral videos, making possible physiognomies appear in this context in contemporary times. In chapter 2, “Flanking, diverting and collecting in cyberculture: everything comes without having to leave”, I bring the methodology and methodological procedures created for this research. The researcher cyberflaneur and the collector appear as central figures in this process, also allowing to reach the deviations that the study imposed on me. I bring the findings that I found in this path characterizing other childhood physiognomies. In chapter 3, “What childhoods do you see? - The countenances of an era in videos of daily life”, I work with the first videos that make up the corpus of this research, provoking reflections on the central themes of this dissertation, already presented in chapter 1. With them, we dismember these discussions necessary for understanding cyberculture, such as business, marketing and consumption, video react and memes. Allowing us to perceive more contemporary physiognomies. The fourth chapter, “Mosaic of Physiognomies”, is a junction of some contemporary physiognomies. They come from the work of analyzing videos and other elements such as comments. They are created in a dialogue with the figure of the voyeur and with characters from literature: Franz Kafka's Grete Samsa; the medieval Jester, recreated by cartoonist Ruis; and Mafalda, from Quino. Finally, in the sixth chapter “To fall into other networks,” some wires that connect and others not from what emerged in the research. In every chapter, physiognomies are appearing. As they are not fixed, it is sometimes difficult to grasp them. But they are materialized in this dissertation to help us understand the contemporaneity of childhoods.