Internet as a Field
Parimal Kumar Roy, Mashitah Binti Hamidi, Shamoli Roy · Advances in religious and cultural studies (ARCS) book series · 2022
The chapter demonstrates how the Facebook platform has become an important field complement to the classical ethnographic genres in the Santal community of Bangladesh. The authors focus on this social network as the most popular one globally regarding the number of registered users and as the leading platform for Santal groups. As of April 2022, about 15 Santal online groups and pages of both open and closed types and differences in numbers of users and activity degrees are registered on Facebook. Despite the internal peculiarities of these Santal groups, the main goal of the communities under consideration is to consolidate the participants. Such a platform creates practical tools for maintaining social ties and space of constant communication beyond being connected to a physical location.