Arrastão do Pavulagem and the digital city:

communication, cultural spectacle and interactions in pandemic times

Abstract

This research seeks to analyze how the parades of the Arrastão do Pavulagem, festivity that integrates the programming of the Arraial do Pavulagem Institute, now held on the streets of the city of Belém, in the state of Pará, happened in digital format, by taking as reference the digital social network Facebook, in the year 2020, due to health recommendations, on account of the Covid-19 pandemic. The research was developed from participant observation, conducted between June and July 2019, years in which the event took place in a face-to-face manner; netnography, conducted from April to July 2020, on the Arraial do Pavulagem Facebook page, during the period of social isolation; and interviews conducted with members of the Arrastão organization. Through the structuring of the Institute's communication for the Arrastão, markings about entertainment and sociability were analyzed in understanding about the dimensions and changes in information flows and interactions that crossed the event in the pandemic context. Such markings expanded beyond the very transposition and articulation between the street, now digital of 2020, and the street of 2019, when the processions took place in the face-to-face format. From the research it was possible to perceive challenges in the transposition of the material and the experience to the digital, as well as the construction of segmented content capable of keeping part of the audience of before, while enabling the conquest of new participants.