Cultural Wisdom of Minangkabau Ethnic Community for Local – Global Virtual Identity

Abstract

The development of digital technology is extending the opportunity to create a new identity of society. Digital technology enables cultural experience across boundaries, to new places of virtual world. Virtual identity functions as main differentiator of personal account in social media. It represents a personal being in virtual world. It also functions as a sign to culture and life’s value of the person behind an account. This paper discussed about the virtual identity use by the Minangkabau ethnic’s people in Facebook. Iconic artifacts of Minangkabau use in profile picture of the social media. Those artifacts valued with Minangkabau’s cultural wisdom. The approach use for this research is cultural studies, with the semiotic method use to search the relation between the image and the cultural wisdom representation of Minangkabau. The visual data collected by capturing profile picture in Facebook. The image analyzed as everyday symbolic and expressive practice and form of Minangkabau ethnic’s people. The picture is the iconic sign resembles to its conceptual object in certain ways. The result is the understanding of how profile picture function as indirect visual communication of local – global identity of Minangkabau ethnic people. The message convey in virtual identity relates the account and others in cyberspace.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2017.v8n1p325