Futures of Learning

In the introduction to this blog series on new media practices in Brazil, I discussed how particular forms of new media embody the ethos of carnival, becoming a space where the norms of everyday life are suspended, reversed and reordered and people have a space to “forget” and reframe traditional boundaries and hierarchies. Bar, Pisani and Weber (2007) have made a similar case in their working paper “Mobile technology appropriation in a distant mirror: baroque infiltration, creolization and cannibalism”. Drawing upon the Latin American context, the authors argue that the three forms of appropriation in the region can be applied to our conceptualization of innovation and appropriation of technology. As they describe,

“At one extreme, we find cannibalism, a radical physical reaction later transformed in a cultural program. Cannibalism is appropriation trough dismembering, absorption, and chemical transformation. It appears as a reference in a Brazil’s Ministry of Culture program conceived to encourage multimedia creativity and open source tweaking. At the opposite end, baroque is a reaction of the mind. It is the appropriation of spaces through filling and layering, and generally does not imply direct confrontation. An infiltration strategy, it begins by occupying the edges, continuing to fill-in the available spaces until it makes the center marginal. In-between, creolization is appropriation through miscegenation, and detour (roundabout), through unpredictable mixing. A process, more than a condition, it does not need to be confrontational but generally leads to new power arrangements.” (Bar, Pisani and Weber 2007:15)

Drawing upon recent scholarship by Brazilian scholars as well as the work by Bar, Pisani and Weber (2007) and McCann (2008), throughout this blog series I have demonstrated how Brazilian’s new media practices reflect a commitment to the value of mixture, resistance and reversal. Examples of this include the Brazilian government’s receptivity to the integration of open source software use in the nations telecenters, the relatively laissez-faire attitude of the state towards piracy in relation to the video game industry as well as blogs, videos and sites such as Orkut and Overmundo to re-route traditional centers for the circulation and redistribution of new media. While this culture of resistance and rebellion may characterize many of the ways in which new media practices and discourse emerge, it is also evident that there are other media spaces where the freedom to experiment, explore and play in a carnival-esque fashion continues to be restricted, the barriers to participation reflecting long-standing hierarchies and inequalities. For example, the creative appropriation of the mobile phone whereby low income Brazilians return calls through the use of the local phone booth reflects as much of the forced creativity that undergirds everyday strategies to survive economically as it does the telecommunications industry to penalize Brazil’s poorest citizens through the extensive tariffs on calls for users of pre-paid plans. Similarly, Recuero (personal communication) notes that sites like Orkut are as much about the display of status and popularity as they are about sociality; upper class Brazilians rarely interact in a meaningful way with residents living in favelas even when they join in the same activity. In other words, and much like studies of the practice of carnaval in Brazil reveals (see Scheper-Hughes 1993, daMatta 1991, Lewis and Pile 1996), new media practices – even of the same media – are diverse and people in different social and economic locations throughout Brazil modes of engagement often reflect these inequalities, locations and dispositions which, in turn, engenders different meaning and interpretations of these practices.

In future research, the challenge will be to understand these practices within the particular social and historical conditions of Brazil as well as their significance in relation to other media practices throughout the world. There is much about about the Brazil case that reflects innovative, if not forward-looking, policies. For example the Brazilian government’s support of open source and Creative Commons, a distinct difference from the Indian government’s recent attempt to copyright traditional yoga poses. Yet, the efficacy of Brazil’s policies are also tied to a strong state that with prominent personalities, such as Gilberto Gil, driving these efforts. Now that Gil has stepped down and President Lula is facing the end of his term in the next few years, it is unclear the extent to which these policies will continue. At the level of research, there are definite ‘gaps’ in our knowledge of new media practices. My training as an anthropologist leads me to wonder more about the informal economy that has emerged around software, video games, mobile phones and new media production. I also want to know more about the practices that are connected to and supportive of people’s participation in Orkut, blogs, LAN houses, the remix of videos and other practices that are often rendered invisible, or partial, in these online milieu. Studies – ethnographic, qualitative and otherwise—of gaming are particularly absent despite Brazil’s rich gaming culture. It is clear that theoretically-driven empirical work needs to be done to extend and challenge existing understandings of new media participation.

A final note. In our early discussions of writing for this blog series, we expressed an explicit commitment to reading the research literature of local academics in the countries we wanted to explore in greater depth. Indeed, and with a few notable exceptions, much of what we know about new media practices in Brazil emerges from Brazilian scholars. The ability to engage in these literatures the span of days and months reflects the fact that many of the scholars involved study and participate in sites such as Flickr, Twitter and Orkut. Many scholars involved in internet and new media research also make a concerted effort to publish drafts of their work online on their blogs, personal websites and other sites in Portuguese and English. Although there are sites like Babelfish and other translation services to ease this burden, access to this material rests upon the good will, generosity and (importantly) the trust of “local” scholars to translate, share and even provide feedback on the interpretation of the innovative work that has not made its way through the lengthy peer review process and into journals and books. Over the next three weeks, Mimi Ito and Daisuke Okabe will continue to follow this commitment to understanding the national and transnational perspectives of new media practices in their co-authored blog series on the new media landscape in Japan.

References:
Bar, Francois, Francis Pisani and Matthew Weber. 2007. paper “Mobile technology appropriation in a distant mirror: baroque infiltration, creolization and cannibalism” May 15, 2007. Prepared for discussion at Seminario sobre Desarrollo Económico, Desarrollo Social y Comunicaciones Móviles en América Latina. Convened by Fundación Telefónica in Buenos Aires, April 20-21, 2007. http://arnic.info/Papers/Bar_Pisani_Weber_appropriation-April07.pdf, Accessed May 18, 2008.

DaMatta, Roberto. 1991. Carnivals, rogues and heroes. An interpretation of the Brazilian dilemma. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press.

Lewis, C and S. Pile. 1996. Woman, Body, Space: Rio Carnival and the politics of performance. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, Volume 3, Number 1(1):23-42.

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1993. Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Boit Tatá, Carnaval 2009, Rio
Orkut Rio de Janeiro. Photo by URBefotos. http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbefotos/3303037834/ (see also Goes’ Global Voices Blog)

The growth in internet use in Brazil has been tremendous. Whereas in 2000 only 2.9 per cent of the Brazilian population could be considered internet users, by 2006 this number jumped to 67,510,400 Internet users in December 2008, or 35.2 per cent of the population (ITU 2008). A recent study of internet practices in Brazil by comScore suggests that 85 percent of Brazilians age 15 and older who accessed the internet from home or work computers in September 2008 visited a social networking site. This represented a 76 percent increase compared to September 2007 (comScore 2008). Today, I focus upon the Brazilian internet, exploring the growth in use and the influence of the social network sites, blogging and the internet broadly throughout Brazilian society.

The Brazilian Internet, A Brief History
In contrast to the United States where it often feels as if the possibilities of civic engagement and public participation are only beginning to be imagined, one of the unique features of the Brazilian internet is the extent to which it realized the possibilities of the internet for activism. Much of this framing can be attributed to the role of AlterNex, one of Brazil’s first internet providers.  Created by an NGO and one of the key centers for research on contemporary social and political issues in Brazil (IBASE), AlterNex began exploring ways to link NGOs in Brazil with their international counterparts. To this end, AlterNex also played a fundamental role in hosting the proceedings and networking local and transnational activists involved in the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the 1993 Human Rights Conference in Vienna, a Population and Development Conference hosted in Cairo in 1994 and other key events (Albernaz 2002, McCann 2008). A subset of AlterNex members (including Carlos Afonso) created the Network of Information for the Third Sector, or Rede de Informacoes para o Terceiro Setor (RITS), to expanded its work to the web in the late 1990s (McCann 2008; Venn 1999). As McCann notes, “many of the NGOs participating in RITS offered Web access to residents of poor communities before “digital inclusion” was a term of political currency” (136). As I will discuss in more detail in the blog post on New Media Production, such efforts to connect and encourage participation in civic issues has continued in the work of Brazil’s many telecenters as well as the community groups created through social network and blogging sites.

Orkut
If there is one word that is almost synonymous with the internet in Brazil, it’s Orkut (LINK). With over 40 million Brazilian account holders on the site (Fragoso 2006, McCann 2008), recent estimates suggest that more than three-quarters of those who use Orkut list Brazil as their country of residence; Portuguese is also the dominant language on the site (Red Orbit 2008). Indeed, when the Brazilian government threatened to initiate a legal suit against the company to grant the government access and monitor some of the less desirable community activities (e.g. sex tourism), Google resisted, but eventually came to an agreement in 2006 with the Brazilian authorities in an effort to stay embedded within the Brazilian market. While Google did not give the government access to its offsite servers, the company promised to enhance their efforts to monitor and control Orkut’s content (McCann 2008:133). In addition, August of 2008 California-based Google made the decision to establish an office in Belo Horizonte, Brazil solely devoted to the management of Orkut.

Launched in 2004 by Google (the name of the site comes from its creator, Turkish developer Orkut Büyükkökten), the site encourages members to post pictures of themselves, link to other users or websites, trade photos, audio and video files in their “scrapbook”. While Orkut’s initial uptake can be attributed to its early arrival in Brazil (Facebook and MySpace arrived later), part of Orkut’s appeal is its strong community facility that structures interaction and conversation (the site is organized into five categories: “Home”, “Profile”, “Scrapbook”, “Friends” and “Communities”) (Recuero 2005).  Millions of communities exist and are as diverse as Brazilians themselves—local neighborhood groups and football teams, fan communities around football, music, films and notable people as well as more esoteric topics represent just a few of the communities Brazilians inhabit on Orkut. Recuero’s (2005) analysis of social capital in Orkut argues that the way Brazilians use the site to become popular and develop reputation typically undermines traditional hierarchies and methods of evaluation. Bryan McCann similarly contends that part of the success of Orkut revolves around Brazilian’s penchant for the creation of communities and networks which enable extensive discussions that, in content, often challenge the existing social and cultural structure of Brazilian society. Suely Fragoso (2006) suggests in her study of the site, for this reason Orkut has become an intercultural contact zone where Brazilians, Americans and other nationalities engage in extensive debate about current events and other topics. Through her exploration the ways in which Portuguese and English are selectively used in interactions on the site, Fragoso contends that the ways in which Brazilians use Orkut reflects a particularly Brazilian disposition to the practice (and salience) of sociality on the internet (see also Nafus, et. al. 2007).

The Brazilian Blogosphere
While Brazilians affinity for Orkut often dominates discussions of internet use in Brazil, blogging also is also popular. Data from ComScore report from December 2007, shows that Blogger.com alone was accessed by more than 6 million unique Brazilian visitors and Recuero (2008) notes that as of September 2007, over 9 million users (many of whom are youth) access and read blogs. This represents 46 per cent of Internet active users in Brazil. 

Like the communities in Orkut, blogs are varied in topic in scope. With this said, participation in the Braziliian blogosphere often revolves around political and popular culture and blurs the line between social connection and information sharing. For example, O Globo, a newspaper in Brazil, developed a place where residents could anonymously report crimes, both petty and larger in scope. The site was so successful that the paper created a related crime map that enabled residents and officials to identify problem areas (McCann 2008). Citizen journalists are also incorporated in O Globo’s Eu-Reporter site http://oglobo.globo.com/participe/ where images and brief summaries of pollution and other trouble areas are featured (SIG-III 2007). Overmundo http://www.overmundo.com.br/home/, a site founded in 2006 to enable the circulation of information about Brazilian culture, also has become an important space for Brazilians due to its unique system of review and ranking, its desire to subvert existing practices of dissemination (e.g. press relations and advertising agencies) as well as its encouragement of culture (and popular culture) outside of the traditional centers of cultural production, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Noteably, Overmundo uses a Creative Commons license.

Whereas Overmundo and O Globo’s sites are more closely structured by an organization, more flexible open-ended sites are also being adapted in interesting ways.  For example, Recuero’s (2005, 2008b) study of the appropriation of Fotolog, a photo-blogging site where people can upload and comment on digital photos to share with friends and others, looks at the intersection of information and communication in Brazilian’s engagement with a variety of internet practices. Based on two years of research, Recuero’s emphasizes the creation of carefully crafted digital identity, which includes a photoshopped image and a unique nickname, as well as the creation of groups for conversation. She further notes that for many Brazilians the purpose of participation revolves around the sociality posting photos enables . By contrast, Recuero and Zago’s (Forthcoming) study of the Twittersphere suggests “that Twitter is most used as an informational tool in Brazil, where values such as reputation, visibility, popularity, knowledge and information access are more important for users than social values such as social support.” In other words, whereas Brazilians subsume the informational dimensions of sharing (such as to inform others about crimes and social injustices) on sites such as Fotolog in the name of reinforcing social connections, participation on sites like Twitter (and even Overmundo) are driven by a desire to exchange information and the expansion of social networks (Recuero 2008a).

Conclusions
The internet in Brazil, particularly sites such as Orkut, Twitter, Overmundo and Fotolog, has clearly been transformative. It has expanded the way social capital is understood and practiced (Recuero (forthcoming, 2008a) as well as how Brazilians establish and maintain relationships. Bryan McCann (2008) makes the case in his recent book that that Brazilian’s use of the internet has resulted in the formation of the “Orkut Rule” wherein Brazilian’s develop “subcultural niches and crosscultural networks in ways that defy traditional hierarchies and the existing social canon” (McCann 2008:131). McCann further notes that transformative effects of the Orkut Rule and the subversion of traditional flows of information and communication are often mitigated by the ways in which the Brazilian government utilized key stakeholders known for their ability to shape public opinion rather than fund people directly (“The Petrobras Rule”, fn2) as well as the viral practice of making references wherein the people who become stars or famous become so via the “viral” recommendations of family and friends (“Virtual Pistolão Rule”). For McCann, the internet, and the emergence of the Orkut Rule, has helped to flatten social hierachies and, in turn, the ways in which culture is produced and reproduced in Brazil.

While these characteristics are clearly evident in the structure of sites like Overmundo and the use of social network sites like Orkut, it is also clear that we are only beginning to understand the everyday dimensions of internet usage in Brazil. As outlined in the introduction, there have been many efforts at the top-down level of the government as well as at the grassroots level to facilitate digital inclusion. Yet, it remains unclear whose internet we may be talking about as well as the extent to which such participation have truly transformed the well-entrenched hierarchies and inequalities in Brazil. Indeed, in their experimental class ethnography of Second Life in Brazil, Fragoso, et. al. (2008) note that the connection speed and other issues associated with access and the ‘digital divide’ negatively impacts many Brazilian’s ability to participate in such immersive environments. In the next blog post, I continue to explore these issues through a review of new media production activities and the digital inclusion movement.

Fn1: Recuero maintains her own blogging site in Portuguese: http://pontomidia.com.br/raquel/ on Social Media.
Fn2: Although I am unable to discuss this at length, McCann (2008) bases his concept of Petrobas rule on the dominance of Petrobras Holding in determining what is culturally valuable through its large investments in cultural programs. In 2006, Petrobras invested $100 million to cultural programs and sites like Overmundo were initiated through an initial grant from Petrobras.

References:
Albernaz, Ami. 2002 The Internet in Brazil: From Digital Divide to Democracy? New York University. http://www.aaplac.org/library/AlbernazAmi03.pdf, Accessed January 12, 2009.

comScore. 2008. Eighty Five Percent of Brazilian Internet Users Visited a Social Networking Site in September 2008. November 19, 2008. http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2592.

Fragoso, Suely, et. al. 2008. Learning to Research in Second Life: 3D MUVEs as meta-research fields. International Journal of Education and Development Using ICT 4(2)

Fragoso, Suely. 2006. WTF a Crazy Brazilian Invasion. In F. Sudweeks & H. Hrachovec (Eds.), Proceedings of CATaC 2006, pp. 255-274. Murdoch, Australia: Murdoch University.
Galperin, Hernán, and Judith Mariscal. 2006. Digital Poverty: Latin American and Caribbean Perspectives (REDIS-DIRSI, Lima, Peru)
content licensed under creative commons, available on-line in English at http://www.dirsi.net/espanol/files/DIRSI_BOOK-ENG.pdf, Accessed November 30, 2008.

Góes, Paula. 2008. The Greatest Street Party on Earth: The Brazilian Carnival Global Voices February 28, 2009, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/02/28/the-greatest-street-party-on-earth-the-brazilian-carnival/, Accessed March 1, 2009

Martini, Paula. 2008. Social Network Platforms in Brazil: The Videolog Case. Apr 24th, 2008 http://icommons.org/articles/social-network-platforms-in-brazil-the-videolog-case, Accessed March 11, 2009.

Martini, Paula. 2008. Web 2.0 in Brazil: The Overmundo Case. December 20, 2007. http://icommons.org/articles/web-20-in-brazil-the-overmundo-case, Accessed March 11, 2009.

McCann, Bryan. 2008. The Throes of Democracy: Brazil Since 1989. London: Zed Books.

Nafus, Dawn, Rogerio Paula and Ken Anderson. 2007. Abstract 2.0 If We Are All Shouting, Is There Anyone Left To Listen? Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings Volume 2007. Issue 1. October 2007: 66 – 77.

Recuero, Raquel. 2005. O Capital Social e as Redes Sociais na Internet.
In: XIV COMPÓS, 2005, Niterói. Anais da XIV Compós,

Recuero, Raquel.2008a Information Flows and Social Capital in
Weblogs: A Case Study in the Brazilian Blogosphere. In: ACM
Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, 2008, Pittsburg. Proceedings
of Hypertext. http://pontomidia.com.br/raquel/ht08fp009recuerofinal.pdf, Accessed February 10, 2009.

Recuero, Raquel. 2008b Appropriations of Fotolog as Social Network
Site: a Brazilian Case Study. In: Internet Research Conference
9.0. Copenhagen. Proceedings of IR 9.0, 2008. http://pontomidia.com.br/raquel/aoir2007.pdf, Accessed February 10, 2009.

Recuero, Raquel. 2005. Um estudo do capital social gerado a partir das Redes Sociais no Orkut e nos Weblogs. Trabalho apresentado no GT de Tecnologias da Comunicacao e da Informacao da COMPOS 2005, em Niteroi/RJ.

Recuero, Raquel and Gabriela Zago Forthcoming. Who do you follow: Social Capital Appropriation in the Brazilian “Twittersphere”. [Preview copy graciously provided by author(s)]

Red Orbit. 2008. Brazil has become a trailblazer in computer use. http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/250691/brazil_has_become_a_trailblazer_in_computer_use/, Accessed December 15, 2008.

SIG-III. 2007. Social Media and the Internet in Brazil. September 19, 2007. http://www.neasist.org/icisc/blog/?p=36

United Nations. 2008. Brazil: Summary Statistics. http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crname=Brazil, Accessed December 2, 2008.

Venn, Karri Munn. 1999 Case Study: IBASE/AlterNex (Brazil). Commons Group Articles. http://www.commons.ca/articles/fulltext.shtml?x=430, Accessed January 28, 2009.

Photo entitled Bateria Campeã, Published under a CC license by André Cherri

On February 20, 2009 millions of Brazilians began gathering throughout the country to celebrate carnaval, a four-day event that occurs each year in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday [fn1]. Known throughout the world for its colorful costumes, energetic music and dance competitions, Brazilians took to the streets of the nation’s mega centers of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Salvador as well as the smaller towns and cities which constitute much of Brazil’s interior. As the festivities commenced, images of outrageous and humorous costumes and scenes from school and street parades began making their way from the mobile phones and digital cameras of Brazilians (and foreign tourists) to Flickr, Fotolog and Orkut profiles (for examples, see Góes 2008). The viral spread of Brazilian carnaval within and outside of Brazil reflects the ease with which Brazilians have merged one of the most important cultural festivals with new media. In this introduction, I will provide a short overview of the new media landscape in Brazil, with particular attention to the social, economic, policy and telecommunications infrastructures that shape everyday practice.

Imagining and Enacting Free Culture
With the most internet users, cable TV subscribers and cell phones in Latin America, even an initial foray into Brazil’s new media landscape reveals how important national policies have become in the lives of Brazilians. What some supporters and critics have termed a leftist, techno-utopian approach to national development, the Brazilian government deregulated its telecommunications sector and encourages full competition in all areas. It also continues to be at the forefront of debates surrounding copyright and intellectual property in realms ranging from music and pharmaceuticals to the taxation on imported goods and proprietary software (McCann 2008).  Under the leadership of former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) and current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil has been particularly receptive to a range of ‘edge’ practices, such as Open Source, Creative Commons and the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. A testament to the country’s bold approach to the ownership and use of culture, media and technology, Brazil was first country in the world to require open source products from the research institutes and organizations who received government funding for the purposes of software development (Benson 2005, McCann 2008).

The value attributed to open source platforms and other dimensions of “free culture” are closely intertwined with the government’s desire to address the nation’s vast inequities. According to the Department for International Development (United Kingdom), Brazil represents one of the most unequal countries in the world. Ten per cent of the population possess around 48 per cent of Brazil’s national income, and 20 per cent of the poorest members of Brazilian society only have access to 2.5 per cent of the national income. In other words, over 40 million Brazilians live on less than $US 2 per day (DfID suggests that 20 million are living on less than $US 1 per day, see DfID’s Development Challenge Document, DfID 2008). The contours of inequality in Brazil correspond with a complex configuration of race, gender, class and geography. The vast majority of Brazilians are of mixed heritage; this mixture, or creolization, includes descendants of Portuguese colonialists, former Africans slaves and indigenous Amerindians. In addition, Brazil possesses the largest communities of Italian and Japanese living outside of Italy and Japan, respectively. There is also a substantial population of immigrants from Germany and the Middle East. While events such as carnaval celebrate the nation’s rich cultural diversity, the Brazilian populations living in the North – Brazilians of (largely) African descent in the Northeast regions such as Bahia, and Amerindians in the isolated Northwestern regions – continue to live in some of the poorest conditions in the country; living conditions tend to improve in the southern regions of the country. In addition to the ethnic and regional inequities, class plays an important role in the geography of poverty in Brazil. According to the World Bank, there were 192 million people living in Brazil in 2006. Approximately 85 per cent of this population lives in an urban center, the most populous being São Paulo (around 11 million) and Rio de Janeiro (just over 7 million). Salvador, Brasília (the national capital), Fortaleza and Belo Horizonte all have populations between 2 and 3 million (Holston 1989). As centers for finance, petrol, service and culture, many of the nation’s wealthiest citizens who live in guarded compounds and high-rise apartment buildings in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Yet, a significant portion of the population also live in favelas, informal settlements or slums on the hills and outskirts of town that, while roughly proximate to the availability of work and other resources, are characterized by cramped, crowded living conditions and are not formally recognized by the Brazilian state (See Holston and Caldiera 2005, Holston 2008). Without the income to access private schooling and other outlets, many occupants and their families live in favelas for generations.

New Media, Technology and Digital Inclusion
The Brazilian government’s support of culture, education, new media and technology reflects the broader concern with social justice and the potential of new media and technology to bridge the social and digital divides prevalent throughout Brazilian society. Alongside investing in the training of Brazil’s middle and elite classes in national universities to work in biomedical, technology and petrol centers, the government has strongly supported efforts towards digital inclusion among the poorest segments of society. In 2006, the Brazilian government instigated a national computer-for-all program designed to make available minimum configuration desktop and notebook models with free/open-source software. Many of Brazil’s working poor were enticed by this relatively affordable program for a computer that could be paid in 24 installments of 50 to 60 Reais, or less than $US 20 per month. Whereas in 2005 only 16 per cent of Brazil’s population owned a computer (ITU 2008), by 2006 2.2 million Brazilians, primarily from the middle and lower-middle classes, acquired their first computer. According to the 2nd Survey on the Use of Information Technology and Communications in Brazil conducted by the Center for Information and Management of Ponto BR (a non-profit organization established to implement the decisions of the Internet Managing Committee) close to 20 per cent of the population own a computer at home (Lopes 2006).

Like computer ownership, the number of households with internet access via modem and landlines lingered at 14.5 per cent in 2006 (Lopes 2006); broadband internet access was even scarcer at 3.54 per cent (ITU 2008). In 2007, 20.54 inhabitants per hundred had fixed phone lines (ITU 2008); the price basket for mobile telephone service cost about $US 26.20/month, while it is about $US 15.60 for a residential fixed line and $US 10.10 for internet services (Cellular-News 2008). According to the Brazilian Institute of Information on Science and Technology, general access to the internet expanded by 39 per cent in 2006, thanks to an increase in the number of digital inclusion points (DIPs). DIPs are public places, set up by institutions ranging from the Brazilian government to private companies to NGOs, where people can access computers and the internet. In the São Paulo metropolitan area alone, over 21 million inhabitants have access to 4000 DIPs. In addition to increasing the accessibility to computers and DIPs, the country’s top three fixed-line telephone companies - Telefónica of Spain; Tele Norte Leste Participações, or Telemar; and Brasil Telecom - agreed to provide a dial-up Internet connection to participants for 7.50 Reais, or less than $US 3, a rate which, according to Benson (2005), could enable approximately 15 hours of surfing online. As I will discuss in greater detail in Friday’s post on New Media Production, the provisioning of access to computers, technology and information through telecenters, home computers and discounted rates on internet access represents an important route for digital inclusion and democratization.

Mobile phones have also opened up opportunities for digital inclusion. As of September 2008, 90.64 per cent of the population was covered by mobile signal and the mobile phone penetration rate was 73.2 per cent as of September 2008, which translates into 140.79 mobile phone subscribers. 81.1 per cent of subscribers take advantage of pre-paid services. Vivo, a company controlled by Portugal Telecom and Telefónica (one of the three largest telecom conglomerates in the world), accounts for 42.28 million mobile connections, followed by Claro and TIM with each about 35 million connections. GSM is most dominant technological standard, accounting for about 86.6 percent of mobile connections. Vivo is the sole CDMA provider and the 3G market is dominated by Motorola, Nokia and LG (Cellular-News 2008). While it is unlikely that the most disenfranchished Brazilians have gained full access to the expensive phones and plans associated with mobile internet, next week I will outline in the blog post on mobile phones the extent to which mobile phones have become transformational devices in facilitating connectivity as well as avenues for employment for poor residents living in favelas and other, more isolated areas where, before the arrival of the mobile phone, people lived without access to permanent or reliable forms of communication.

The Possibilities of New Media
While inequality continues to influence, and be reproduced through, the uptake of new media and technology in Brazil, there are also tremendous possibilities being piqued by the integration of mobile phones, computers, video games and the internet at all levels of Brazilian society as well as practices which challenge our conceptions of what is possible in and through new media. A testament to the innovation and potential of Brazil, Brazil is the first of four countries who Goldman Sachs termed “BRIC” countries (“Brazil”, “Russia”, “India” and “China”), or “emerging economies” that have the potential to become economic powerhouses by 2050. In Brazil’s case, the rich and varied natural resources present in the form of petrol and plants in the Amazon as well as an established financial and service culture are viewed as part of the infrastructure for this growth. With an official literacy rate of 93.2 per cent among youth (and 89 per cent overall literacy, see World Bank 2008)[ii], Brazil also possesses one of the fastest growing youth segments throughout the world. Since 1980 the youth population has grown by 22 per cent; 47 per cent of Brazil’s current population is under the age of 25 (Geraci and Chen 2007, using figures from the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population division). Like other countries with large youth demographic (under the age of 25), unemployment remains a key issue. 18.1 per cent of youth between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed and close to 23 per cent of Brazilian women in this age group are unemployed (United Nations Millenium Development Indicators 2008). Many of the Brazilian government’s social justice agendas are designed to enhance and support the infrastructure and the training of its’ diverse and polarized population.

Over the next three weeks I will be focusing upon Brazilian’s use of new media by attending to the dynamic relationship between practice and the technological, bureaucratic and social infrastructures that shape everyday usage, drawing connections between Brazilian’s new media practices and the spirit of play, creativity and resistance characteristic of carnaval and other dimensions of Brazil’s new media culture. I will begin on Wednesday with a discussion of internet practices. The following week will discuss new media production online and in educational contexts and gaming. During the final week I will focus upon the mobile telephony landscape in Brazil. As with the blogs on India, Korea and China, I look forward to your thoughts and feedback.

Endnotes:
i. “Carnaval” is the Portuguese spelling of Carnival.
ii. The gross primary, secondary and tertiary school enrollment hovers between 88 to 90 per cent (World Bank 2008).

References:

Benson, Todd (2005) Brazil: Free Software’s Biggest and Best Friend. New York Times 29 May 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/technology/29computer.html, Accessed January 20, 2009.

Cellular-News. 2008. Brazil 2008 Customer Numbers. Cellular-News October 22, 2008. http://www.cellular-news.com/story/34268.php, Accessed December 5, 2008.

United Nations Millenium Development Indicators, July 2008 Data. http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx, Accessed January 20, 2009.

Geraci, John and Lisa Chen (2007) Meet the Global Net Generation. Paper from the New Paradigm Learning Corporation.
http://www.newtmn.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/meet_the_global_net_generation.pdf, Accessed February 5, 2009.

Góes, Paula. 2008. The Greatest Street Party on Earth: The Brazilian Carnival Global Voices February 28, 2009, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/02/28/the-greatest-street-party-on-earth-the-brazilian-carnival/, Accessed March 1, 2009

Holston, James. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Holston, James. 1989. The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Holston, James and Teresa P. R. Caldeira. 2005. State and urban space in Brazil: from modernist planning to democratic interventions. In Global Anthropology: Technology, Governmentality, Ethics, 393-416. Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier, editors. London: Blackwell.

International Telecommunications Union. 2008. ICT Indicator Database http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/DisplayCountry.aspx?countryId=27, Accessed March 5, 2009.

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