Austin Rueffer
Pronouns: he/him/his
Research Mentor(s): Jennifer Sierra
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Anthropology / LSA
Program:
Authors:
Session: Session 3: 11:00 am – 11: 50 am
Poster: 35
Abstract
Jennifer Sierra’s Ph. D. dissertation examines how Shipibo-Konibos (here onwards Shipibos), an Indigenous society in the Peruvian Amazon, participate in digital media technologies to defy social marginalization and expand and strengthen a sense of Shipibo community. In the past five years, Shipibos’ participation in digital communication technologies has hugely increased, favoring Facebook as the primary platform for Shipibos’ social media activity. Such popularity evidences Facebook’s sustained strength as a social media platform. Her dissertation investigates what makes this platform resilient among Shipibos, what Shipibos do on Facebook, and the implications the platform carries for Shipibos’ lives. Researching the resiliency of Facebook among marginalized peoples is critical, as the site has been linked to hosting mis- disinformation. I assisted Jennifer in her dissertation through data indexing which included translation of written APA citations into BibTeX format for the importing into Zotero Citation Manager, finding and cataloging PDF and ePub files of articles and books into easy-to-access Zotero folders, categorizing Facebook screenshots and audio files of interviews with Shipibos into thematic folders for easy access and ability to pull for the final dissertation writing process, and research into various transcription software best suited for Spanish speakers (and the ability to translate into English). My research was generally on the background of the larger scheme, an opportunity to see first-hand the required background work that goes into a project as lengthy and weighty as a Ph. D. dissertation, something that oftentimes gets overlooked in the methods and analysis portions of research articles and academic papers.
