Mediatransformation in Ethnography and the Birth of Ethnoblogging (The Case of the Khanty of the Tromyegan River)
Today, millions of people around the world know some of the Khanty reindeer herders, hunters, and fishermen of the Tromyegan River. These taiga residents are the “stars” of the new youth now, and their amateur videos on the Internet are sometimes more popular than federal TV-shows. Several years ago, according to the governmental program, 4G cell towers were built in the Khanty ancestral lands near the village Russkinskaya (Surgut Region), broadband Internet coming to the reindeer herding camps. Reindeer breeders began filming their daily lives and uploading their videos and photographs to the Internet, and the worldwide web suddenly made them “idols”. These local stories of extraordinary success are an example of the emerging ethnoblogging phenomenon and a sign of the global technical and cultural transformation. This is a study of how technology is changing the lives of indigenous peoples. How cyber reality merges with reality, and cyber ethnicity becomes the integral part of modern ethnicity. How the habitual patterns of behavior and activity change, and locality is rather easy to connect with globality. How new authorities are born and mental boundaries break down. This is an analysis of the controversial phenomenon of ethnoblogging and an attempt to understand what it is: a simulacrum or a long-awaited ethno-renaissance.