Goa Hippy Tribe: theorising documentary content on a social network site

In the 1970s, a wave of young Western hippies descended on the beaches of Goa
in India. Forty years later, some of them reconnected on the social network site
Facebook and planned a reunion. This event, and the Goan hippy community then
and now, are the subjects of a documentary called Goa Hippy Tribe, produced by
Australian documentary maker Darius Devas. Funded by Screen Australia, SBS and
Screen New South Wales, Goa Hippy Tribe is the first Australian documentary to
be produced for the social network site Facebook. In this article, I consider how
documentary in a social network context might be theorised. While the concept
of the database narrative is most often invoked to explain user interactivity in
online documentary, social networks such as Facebook invite different forms of
interaction, and therefore raise distinct theoretical questions. In particular, Goa
Hippy Tribe demonstrates the potential for the audience to engage creatively and
communally with documentary.

Nash, K. (2012) “Goa Hippy Tribe: theorising documentary content on a social network site”. In: Media international Australia Vol 142 Pp. 30—40, DOI 10.1177/1329878X1214200105

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