E-TERRITORY: PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS ON SOCIAL NETWORKS VIRTUAL AND TERRITORIAL CHANGES

Abstract

Occupy Wall Street (United States), Arab Spring (the Middle East and North Africa), June Days (Brazil) are mega social protests that came out of virtual social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, they occupied the streets, they were placed under the spotlight of the mainstream media and they affected power relations, political schedules and territories. However, other protests originated on the Internet, smaller and with local impact, they are causing new arrangements to power games and the regional territory. Our goal in this article is to do a introductory theoretical and practical reflection about what we call e-territories: virtual places where people with historical references, territorial interests, regional projects and constructions of common  identities are together to dominate certain real territory. This idea was suggested due to the use of the mailing list List Cocoa (cacau-l@listas.unicamp.br) as discursive material during the preparation of a doctoral thesis. The “cloud e-territories” allow the real clippings territorial acquire new material and immaterial components, near and far, breaking the need for reflections that may unravel the constructions of geographical cutout today.