Teorias das Práticas; Gosto; Afeto; Etnografia; Tastemaker.
Name: ARTHUR LOPES AZEVEDO
Publication date: 05/09/2024
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ALFREDO RODRIGUES LEITE DA SILVA | Examinador Interno |
| CLAUDIA SIMONE ANTONELLO | Examinador Externo |
| EDUARDO PAES BARRETO DAVEL | Examinador Externo |
| LETICIA DIAS FANTINEL | Presidente |
| MARCELO DE SOUZA BISPO | Examinador Externo |
Summary: The present research aimed to understand the role of affect in the situated taste formation
practices of amateurs and how they can, within a community organized by taste, become
tastemakers. To achieve this objective, I developed qualitative research on four content
creators who work on the media YouTube, Instagram and X. They were understood as
cultural intermediaries, that is, tastemakers in a community organized around shared tastes.
To this end, I mobilized a theoretical framework that relates practices theories, theories on
tastemaking and theories about affect, adopting an epistemological perspective of practices
and a relational ontological perspective. This framework was used to analyze data produced
from ethnographic research in an online/offline continuum of social media, involving the use
of flanerie, an observational technique that allows the researcher to move through different
online and offline media and contexts, also conducting a semi-structured interview with the
content creator Lucas Maia, from the Refúgio Cult channel, and a research into visual
methods to analyze content developed by the interviewed. Such data were analyzed using
ethnographic analysis, guided by the spiral analysis technique, resulting in three categories
defined a posteriori: tastemaking, tastemaker and community. Each of them was debated on
an analytical axis, in order to intertwine data and theory in the construction of concepts that I
called amateur language, tastemaker language and content economy and digital communities.
This movement allowed me to design such an economy, analyzing the relational affects that
act in the emergence and maintenance of links between subject and object of taste, as well as
the micropolitical relationships that mark the occupation of a tastemaker position in a
community organized in a social media context. This thesis theoretically contributes to the
integration of pragmatic and Bourdieusian approaches to taste, by working together on the
emergence and maintenance of links, the process of taste formation and a relational dynamic
of capital together with the concept of tastemaker and the political dimensions of communities
and of affections. It also uses the concept of moments of goosebumps to specifically
contribute to the pragmatic approach by addressing the spatio-temporal, contextual and
situated elements that impact taste. Methodologically, the thesis also contributes to the use of
flânerie as a data production technique in a digital environment.
