Community-based info-communication for rural territories: participatory collaboration tools for Fontoura

Resumo

Objectives | Concepts such as sustainability, inclusion, media convergence, collective and integrated participation, collective intelligence, sharing, flexibility, and transparency have gradually become more important than ever for government bodies in the tourism sector (Cunha, 2017; Almeida, 2017). This paper presents an ongoing project that is researching strategies suitable for enabling the promotion of rural areas through collaborative and communal info-communication activities. One of the project’s overall goals is to understand how digital connectivity and digitally supported good practices in rural destinations (República Portuguesa, 2016; UNESCO, 2019; Martela, Greve, Rothstein & Saari, 2020; European Network for Rural Development, 2020; McNaughton, Rao, Verma, 2020; Bethune et al., 2021; Borges-Tiago et al., 2022) may become an asset for low-density territories in terms of community empowerment and self-sufficiency. The study includes Aldeias de Portugal and Red Nacional de Pueblos Acogedores as its case studies.

Methodology | Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including a systematic literature review, questionnaires and interviews, tourists, visitors, and pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago and Fontoura residents were engaged and provided valuable insights for the ongoing research. Information gathered provided the respondents’ perception regarding the relevance of open web platforms in their tourist experience, what tourism points of interest and resources were they aware of, and how these resources could be used for promoting the rural community and its resources (Santos et al., 2021). Information gathered also helped to design an active strategy, focused on outlining issues such as uniqueness and authenticity, and how these issues may contribute to the development of the territory at economic, social, environmental, and cultural levels.

Main Results and Contributions | The results attained show that by allowing community members to engage in the content and resource design process stronger sense of community, togetherness, and belonging is naturally established. These emotions motivate community members to contribute with content for Fontoura's cultural mapping and other project outcomes, such as the proposal of a framework for promoting collaborative design with a focus on InfoVis (Lima, 2011) approaches when dealing with georeferenced tangible and intangible heritage (Duxbury, 2019). The findings show that the suggested framework can assist rural areas in realizing and leveraging their tourism potential. This study also acts as a pilot for community engagement in regions with low Internet coverage and speed. The main result of the project is to design a framework flexible enough to be replicated in similar territories, both in Portugal and Spain, where community participation and collaboration in the production of content to be shared on digital platforms may contribute to the empowerment of territories and the image and identity they want to project online.

Limitations | Tourism-related research involving elderly citizens and visitors, such as the one presented in the paper, is challenging at various levels. Older individuals in rural areas might be resistant to change and reluctant to engage in studies, especially concerning new technologies or any sign of change in their lifestyle. The project dealt with this limitation first-hand and developed empathy and confidence-building activities to gradually promote and maintain participant engagement. The framework proposed is still in the beta stage and needs to be further tested both locally and with another case in a different region to fine-tune some of the framework’s guidelines and steps.

Conclusions | Rural communities, their territories and heritage are often portrayed through the perspective of people and organizations that are not members of these communities. If we add a digital variable to this equation there is a risk of creating an image of how the community is seen and not as it sees itself. This paper provides a detailed overview of a project that bridges the current academic debate regarding guidelines and good practices suitable for the cultural mapping of rural communities. The framework proposed and designed by using the parish of Fontoura as a pilot case provides a participative approach to the challenge of mapping out the community’s true cultural essence. Practical Implications: Applying the proposed framework should help the community and region to preserve and promote their cultural heritage and be empowered as a destination worth visiting.