The network on the other side of the net: a multietnographic study on the public spaces with paid access to the Internet in Novo Hamburgo

Abstract

This article discusses the interaction and new social habits in public spaces with paid access to the Internet downtown in Novo Hamburgo. For this, raises the multiethnograpy, a method that combines ethnography, photoethnography, and netnography simultaneously. In the countryside, cafes (with wi-fi), cybercafés, and lan houses are observed, reported and discussed some of the characteristics of those places, which can be viewed as aggregations to cyberspace. Concrete examples are shown from photographs on the places, and urban notes describing the reality of online and offline spaces that serve as the link between physical and virtual. They are places where contemporary sociability happen, emerging from new forms of socialization, new lifestyles and new forms of social organization.