The Facebook sin: Digital crafting in a Roma diaspora

Abstract

In a study of digital networks within a Roma diaspora from Western Romania, we refined our ethnographic knowledge of the population's use of digital technologies. We observed that they had developed specific «crafts» that reflected a cultural modeling of the smartphone-Facebook relationship. This modeling was characterized by concerns about institutional control and repression, as well as the influence of the sex-gender system and the increasing role of Pentecostalism in managing and valuing Facebook. Additionally, our experience highlights the importance of ethnographic understanding in developing digital techniques that produce culturally sensitive data. We confirm that responses to digital technologies are not universal, nor are the perceptions and interpretations generated in diverse sociocultural contexts. In this group at that specific moment, «living without Facebook» could be challenging, but there was also the constant risk of «sins» or transgressions through the smartphone that endangered their family, religious, and ethnocultural ties.