Symbolic Custodians on Facebook: Community Media Agents and Religious Practices in Faial

The digital mediatization of social life constitutes a pervasive process that extends – not unambiguously – to small, grassroots communities. On Faial Island, in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores, an informal group of non-professional photographers and videographers have integrated Facebook into their documentation of the island’s most cherished cultural and spiritual capital: the Holy Spirit and the patronal festivals. This practice has evolved into a modern custodianship of cultural and religious symbolism and memory. Drawing upon field and digital ethnographies combined with eight semi-structured interviews, this article examines how their practice has been integrated into the cultural and religious repertoire of Faial’s peri-rural communities, mediatizing representation, communication, memorialization, and access. Findings seem to indicate that these hyperlocal media agents provide valuable services to their communities, both locally and among the diaspora, through: (1) promotion of the island’s religious and cultural heritage; (2) virtual access to celebrations for those unable to attend physically; and (3) creation of material testimonies for future memory. Simultaneously, their practice seems to raise questions regarding reliability and ownership, posing new challenges to communities’ symbolic agency. Results demonstrate how Facebook integration into religious communitarian practices simultaneously promotes cultural resistance and pervasive cultural de-singularization.