Futures of Learning

“… te amo sms” By JGil Published Under a Creative Commons License, November 8, 2008.

Brazil possesses the largest mobile phone industry in the Latin American region and the sixth largest mobile phone market in the world (Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu and Sey 2006; Barrantes and Halperin 2008, Tigre 2008).  As I discussed in the introduction to Brazil, there are 140.79 million mobile phone subscribers spread among 9 operators who receive licenses on a national and regional basis, the most popular being Vivo, a company owned by Telefónica and Portugal Telecom, with 45 million subscribers as of December 2008. 86.6 per cent of subscribers use GSM. ITU numbers suggest that as early as 2003 there were more mobile phones in Brazil than landlines (see also Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu and Sey 2006:16-17). Although penetration rates in Brazil have historically been lower than other countries in Latin America – according to Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu and Sey (2006:10) in 2004 penetration rates were around 36 per cent compared with 62 per cent penetration rate in the smaller nation of Chile – in September 2008 the mobile phone penetration rate was 73.2 per cent, a number that signals significant growth in a four to five year time span. 81.1 per cent of the entire mobile phone market is prepaid. Within this context, the youth market represents an important and potentially powerful segment of the current subscribers. According to De Chiara (2004), 40 per cent of new mobile phone subscribers were under the age of 25 and, given the relatively youthful age of Brazil’s population, this number is expected to grow. In today’s blog post, I will be focusing upon mobile phone practices in Brazil as they are shaped by a variety of factors, including class, income, geography and other forms of social location. In addition, I explore the economic dimensions of the mobile phone, with particular attention to the ways in which the integration of mobile phones throughout Brazilian may be contributing to issues of economic development.

Modernity, Distinction and the Mobile Phone

Reflecting what are seen as the two extremes of Brazilian society, academic and popular research on mobile phones in Brazil tends to focus upon the differences between the two segments of Brazilian society—wealthy elite whose consumer tastes tend to reflect interests, tastes and lifestyles of their North American, European and Japanese counterparts (Wilska and Pedrozo 2007) and the lower income areas of Brazil. de Souza e Silva notes that among the highest income populations (primarily located in Rio de Janiero and Sao Paulo), features such as video, cameras and internet access are increasingly popular, but there remain limitations in the types of phones available and the ability to use these features given that mobile phones are expensive and high cell phone tariffs have made the use of cell phones in Brazil one of the most expensive in Latin America (Barrantes and Halperin 2008). As de Souza e Silva characterizes the situation:,

“All these examples show that although high-end services are available, or at least in developmental phase, they still target a very small portion of the population, providing evidence that even within the high-income population, cell phones are still mostly used for voice communication. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that when we look at usage of these high-end services, we are talking about less than 1% of the population.”

Nascimento (2004) also notes that both ownership and ownership of phones with the latest features serves as a means of social distinction among wealthier high school students, possession being the display of status (cited in Silva 2006, see also Nicolaci-da-Costa 2006).  However, parents of wealthy teens also note that provisioning a mobile phone can also be done for safety; among the wealthiest Brazilians, the fear of kidnapping children and holding them for ransom is common and the mobile phone is viewed as a way to keep connected to their children (and other family members), although indications that mobiles are also an incentive for petty theft (BBC2 2006, Osava 2009).

While their phones may lack the latest features, concerns about status also underpin many lower income Brazilians motivation to obtain a mobile phone. For example, Silva (2008), who is conducting research in Florianopolis, Bar (personal communication) and de Souza e Silva (2007) note that the acquisition of a mobile is particularly significant in according a sense of being modern. Because living without a mobile or with an older model mobile is a source of embarrassment and shame, many low income Brazilians will make significant sacrifices to obtain a phone. Some individuals in Silva’s ongoing study in southern Brazil have been so driven to keep up-to-date with the latest phones and fashions that they exchange their mobiles on an annual basis, despite the fact they often never use it.  Many of the participants in her study keep very little credit on their phone and only use it to receive phone calls. According to Osava (2009), “Nearly 81 percent of cell phones in Brazil use the pre-paid calls systems, and a large proportion are used only to receive incoming calls, because their owners never, or hardly ever, purchase phone cards. Therefore the cost of these cell phones was limited to the initial outlay when they were bought. Market researchers Frost and Sullivan (2006) estimate that pre-paid subscribers talk four times less than post-paid subscribers and many Brazilians use the phone to make a call, but drop the connection akin to what Donner (2007) has described as “flashing” or “beeping” in Ghana, Uganda and other contexts. Often when low income Brazilians receive a call, they look at the recorded number and use a public phone to return the call in order to avoid the cost of purchasing a new phone card (Silva 2008, Frost and Sullivan 2006). In some cases, sharing phones has also been noted (de Souza e Silva 2007).

One of the significant differences in the use of mobile phones in Brazil is the difference between mobility and connectivity. In many parts of the United States, East Asia and Europe, mobile phones have been celebrated for the mobility they enable (Ito, Okabe and Matsuda 2005, Ling 2004, Jain 2002). Because fixed line telephony has always been expensive and, for the lowest income populations, almost inaccessible without the use of illegal electrical and telephone connections (see de Souza e Silva 2007), few individuals articulate the value of the mobile phone to the functionality of mobility. Rather, and as we have seen elsewhere in the global south (Donner 2008, Horst and Miller 2006), the mobile telephone is critical for the connectivity it enables. In other words, while the mobile phone complements and extends ones connectivity among high income Brazilians, the mobile phone is the sole form of communication among low income Brazilians (Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu and Sey 2006). What does appear to be unique about the Brazilian case is the extent to which people still rely upon the existing public infrastructure, particularly pay phones, as an important mode of communication. As Bar (personal communication), Silva (2007) and others have noted, this reflects the mobile telecommunications continued commitment to encouraging subscriptions via phone plans and high-end services.

Economic Benefits of the Mobile Phone

“carregadores e baterias” Photo by fbar March 17, 2007. Published under a Creative Commons License.
Throughout the world mobile phones have had important implications for work and the management of time between home and workspaces. Indeed, Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu and Sey ’s (2006) recent volume on mobile communication throughout the world devotes an entire chapter to examining how the mobile phone has changed the relationship between these two dominant spheres of life. Within the global south, a significant amount of attention continues to be directed towards the implications of the mobile phones to contribute to income generation (e.g. Donner 2006, Hammond and Prahalad 2004, Horst and Miller 2006, Jenson 2007).  Francois Bar [fn 1] is conducting research in Brazil on motorbike couriers in Sao Paulo. Bar (personal communication) estimates that there are anywhere from 160,000 to 500, 000 large and small-scale couriers in the city who use their mobile phones to coordinate work in the congested streets of Brazil’s business capital. Primarily young and male, the majority of motorbike couriers work for a range of small and large companies. One of the issues that Bar’s ongoing work explores is the extent to which phone plans reflect and/or shape the economic benefits of being a motorbike courier. As Bar describes, young male motorbike couriers own mobile phones on a pre-paid basis and spend their days waiting for a call from a potential employer. This means that they remain completely dependent on a potential employer to facilitate contact and maintain communication. Notably, those with post-paid phone plans are usually more successful economically than their pre-paid counterparts because they can initiate contact and, in some instance, begin to develop relationships with other couriers who they trust to complete a particular job that is not convenient due to time or distance.

Depending on one’s perspective, the economic benefits of the mobile phone is also reflected in the emergence of an informal economy around the theft, refurbishment, resale and circulation of stolen mobile phones. Indeed, many residents of favelas only purchase phones from individuals in the community who traffic in the theft of stolen and cloned mobile phones. This practice became particularly common with the emergence of Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) that enables users to move SIM cards between devices (de Souza e Silva 2007). In July of 2003, the Brazilian government mandated that all phones should be registered in an effort to prevent cloning of mobile phones (Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu and Sey 2006) and de Souza e Silva (2007) notes that in 2005 there were efforts to create an “integrated system” whereby phones could not be activated or re-activated in a different state, or by a different operator. A testament to the success of this informal industry, mobile phones made the list of the top items stolen in Brazil in 2007.

Conclusion
While the maintenance of social connections has been highlighted in the foundational work on mobile phones, there are a number of practices in Brazil that have the potential to add new dimensions to the foundational literature on the mobile phones. For example, the continued reliance on voice amongst Brazilians is attributed to cost such as high subscription rates and phone calls. de Souza e Silva (2007) notes that there are difficulties in defining mobile phone culture in Brazil as the formal measures and the division of units of analysis into states or federacions in Brazil often overlook or diminish socioeconomic disparities, such as rural-urban distinctions within states as well as the complex social geography prevalent in Brazil. For example, in some regions mobile phones are actually cheaper and easier to maintain given the cost of maintaining landlines. These distinctions not only reflect geography and population density as well as social and historical variations in different regions of Brazil. For example, in contrast to other regions of Brazil where people tend to make calls to family who live nearby, many mobile phone users living in regions where migration is common more frequently use their phones to call people in other states or regions. For example, Frost and Sullivan (2006) note that in the state of Bahía, “more than half of rural mobile telephony users make calls to other regions of the country; while close to 80% receive calls from other areas” (32). In addition, in the capital Brasilia, mobile phone penetration rates are quite high and recent estimates suggest that there are more mobile phones than people (Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu and Sey 2006; Silva 2007), a trend which is likely due to the presence of the Brazilian government as well as the ease with which cell phone towers could be integrated within the planned town which is shaped like an airplane (some describe it as a butterfly). In effect, the existing case studies of mobile phone practices in Brazil are interesting precisely because they push back at our understandings of the nature of mobile phone and mediated communication as well as the relationship between place and mobile phones, challenging our understanding of traditional markers of difference (e.g. rural and urban, suburban, urban as well as upper and lower class) may or may not be relevant categories of distinction within Brazil and in other locations throughout the world.

fn 1: Francois Bar chairs the Research Working Group for Investigating the Social and Economic Impact of Public Access to Information and Communication Technology (IPAI) is a five-year, CAD $7.2-million research project sponsored by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. http://www.ipairesearch.org. He is also involved in the project Comunicaciones Móviles y Desarrollo en América Latina (CMDAL), with support from Fundación Telefónica. In this project he is working with Manuel Castells, Hernán Galperin and Mireia Fernandez-Ardevol.

References:
Bar, Francois. Personal Communication. Interview Los Angeles, CA October 22, 2008.

Barrantes, Roxana and Hernan Galperin. 2008. Can the poor afford mobile telephony? Evidence from Latin America. Telecommunications Policy 32 (2008) 521–530

BBC2. 2006. Brazil’s Evolving Kidnap Culture. BBC2 Online 13 April 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4898554.stm, Accessed February 2, 2009.

De Chiara, Marcia (2004) ‘Pequenos e Poderosos Ditadores do consumo’ (Small and
Powerful Dictators of Consumption), O Estado de São Paulo, 30 May, 2004, B, p. 4.

de Souza e Silva, A. (2006). Interfaces of hybrid spaces. In A. P., Kavori & N. Arceneaux, (Eds.), The Cell Phone Reader: Essays in Social New York: Peter Lang.

de Souza e Silva, Adriana. 2007. Cell phones and places: The use of mobile technologies in Brazil. In Harvey J. Miller’s Societies and Cities in the Age of Instant Access. Springerlink.

De Souza e Silva, Adriana. 2008. Alien Revolt (2005-2007): A Case Study of the First Location-Based Mobile Game in Brazil. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine Spring 2008: 18-28.

Donner, Jonathan. 2007. The Rules of Beeping: Exchanging Messages Via Intentional “Missed Calls” on Mobile Phones. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1).
Donner, Jonathan. 2006. The use of mobile phones by microentrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda: Changes to social and business networks. Information Technologies and International Development 3 (2): 3-19.

Donner, Jonathan. 2008. ‘Research Approaches to Mobile Use in the Developing World: A Review of the Literature’,The Information Society,24:3,140 — 159

Frost & Sullivan. 2006. Social Impact of Mobile Telephony in Latin America Report. http://www.gsmlaa.org/files/content/0/94/Social%20Impact%20of%20Mobile%20Telephony%20in%20Latin%20America.pdf, Accessed November 5, 2008.
Hammond, Allen L. and C. K. Prahalad. 2004. Selling to the Poor. Foreign Policy, No. 142 (May - Jun., 2004), pp. 30-37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4147574, Accessed February 21, 2006.

Horst, Heather A. and Daniel Miller. 2006. The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication. Oxford and New York: Berg.

Jensen, Robert. 2007. The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector. Quarterly Journal of Economics August 2007, Vol. 122, No. 3: 879–924.

Jain, Sarah Lachlann. 2002.  “Urban Errands: The Means of Mobility.” Journal of Consumer Culture, vol. 2(3): 419–438.

Nascimento, Francisca Silva do. 2004.Os últimos serão dos primeiros: uma análise sociológica do uso do telefone celular. 133f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Sociologia) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, 2004. Texto completo enviado por correio eletrônico.

Nicolaci-da-costa, Ana Maria. 2006. Cell phones: a “God-given gift” for mothers of youngsters. Psicol. Soc.,.19 (3):108-116.
Osava, Mario. 2009. Cell Phones - Democratising Communications. IPS News March 21, 2009. http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36094, Accessed March 21, 2009.

Silva, S. 2008. Living with Mobile Phones in Brazil. Material World Blog June 2008 http://blogs.nyu.edu/projects/materialworld/2008/06/living_with_mobile_phones_in_b_1.html, Accessed July 2, 2008.

Teleco. 2009. Estatísticas de Celulares no Brasil: Total de Celulares (Jan/09): 152,4 milhões. http://www.teleco.com.br/ncel.asp, Accessed March 16, 2009.

Tigre, Paulo Bastos. 2003. Brazil in the Age of Electronic Commerce. The Information Society 19(1): 33 — 43

Wilksa, Terhi-Anna and Sueila Pedrozo. 2007. New technology and young people’s consumer identities: A comparative study between Finland and Brazil. Young 15:4 (2007): 343–368

Gilberto Gil Image by Joi Ito, http://blog.ito.com/dmp/in-japanese-gilberto-gils-talk-at-google-zeitgeist-google-zeitgeist.html

From music, food and dance to religion, architecture and the particular form of Portuguese spoken by Brazilians, Brazilian culture is often characterized by its ethos of mixture and creolization. While poverty rates, class and racial divisions suggest that the country is a long way off from attaining the aspirations articulated in the wider public discourse, the stress on culture, creativity and, most recently, the values of remix culture represents one of the unique features of the new media landscape in Brazil (Bar, personal communication). Indeed, there has been a huge effort from the government to push digital remix culture thanks in no small measure to Gilberto Gil.

Gilberto Gil, Brazil’s Minister of Culture from 2003 to 2008, virtually embodies this spirit of remix. Originally from Salvador in the Northeastern regions of Brazil, Gil rose to prominence in the 1960s for his politically inspired songs and activism which led to his exile in London for three years (1969-1972) during the reign of Brazil’s military regime. After returning to Brazil, Gil continued to create and perform music (he is often attributed with introducing reggae to Brazil) and promote Afro-Brazilian cultural forms in carnival (the Afro-Brazilian afoxé tradition). In the late 1980s, Gil was elected into government in the state of Bahia and in 2003 President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva appointed Gil as Brazil’s new Minister of Culture. Noteably, Gil was only the second black person appointed a member of the nation’s cabinet. Almost immediately after being appointed Gil established a relationship with Creative Commons and began working towards making music available for free in digital formats. Under the leadership of Gilberto Gil, The Brazilian Ministry of Culture has been using its DPIs to create a network of free software multimedia studios to support free cultural transmission (Ferraro, Bria and Persico n.d., Kenny 2005). One of the foci of the Pontos de Cultura (Points of Culture) is to create an archive of Brazilian music, which will be stored in digital form and governed by a license inspired by free software’s GPL.

In today’s blog post, I will focus upon new media production (especially videos) in online spaces. I will then turn to new media production activities and the ways in which the integration of new media into these programs are utilized to address issues of inequity, literacy, violence and crime among Brazilian youth.

New Media Production Online

Video-sharing sites are prominent in Brazil. In July of 2008, comScore (2008) estimated that there were 11.5 million visitors to YouTube, 8.3 million visits to Globos Videos, 1.5 million visitors to MSN Video, 1.1 million videos to StartVG.com and 756, 000 visitors to WeShow.com. While the more traditional media outlets such as Globo Media, Abril and Grupo Folha have historically played a role in the dissemination of music, film and other cultural forms, sites like Overmundo (see blog post on internet practices) continue (SIG-III 2007). 

In terms of content, Brazil’s new media production resembles what occurs in the United States (see Lange and Ito Forthcoming), India and China. Viral videos range from commercials, old clips of popular television shows such as Big Brother Brazil, telenovelas and comedy to ones that celebrate Brazilian culture. For example, there are a number of films focusing upon great moments in Brazilian football and football legends such as Pele or Ronaldinho:

Ronaldhinho Movie

There are examples of capoeira, the martial arts form historically practiced by Afro-Brazilians. In some cases these are movie clips of capoeira practioners in films competing against other forms of martial arts, the commentary often focusing upon the relative merits (and often the dominance) of Brazilian capoeira. In other cases, these videos are celebrations of particularly skillful individuals, such as this remix of Brazilian dancer bboy performing capoeira:

Bboy Aranha - Watch the best video clips here.

Bboy Aranha

There are also examples of random individuals messing around in front of a camera, such as this video of a woman dancing Brazilian-style:

Gatinha Gostosa Pernão Sarado Brasileira Dançando Funk - The best bloopers are here

Gatinha Gostosa Pernão Sarado Brasileira Dançando Funk

In addition to online videos posted by ordinary Brazilians, there has been a concerted effort to make Brazilian culture more prominent online or, to use one of Gilberto Gil’s phrases, to “tropicalise” the internet. For instance, the Canto Livre project was designed for the archival and circulation of “free music” made in Brazil, for Brazilians (and the world) to remix and re-create. Another focus is to work with groups active in the areas of music or video, indigenous crafts or capoeira, graffiti and circus, which will be equipped with multimedia hardware, free software and a budget in order to produce, document and freely share with the world their cultural expressions (see Wizards of Oz 2005).
While music and videos celebrating the creativity and culture of Brazil may originate in Brazil, it is also clear that non-Brazilians are generating commentary and adaptation of Brazilian cultural forms. One example are the range of videos (and commentary) teaching and demonstrating capoeira, a practice that has gained in popularity internationally alongside karate. We also see the localization of content, such as the remix and translation of Anime Music Videos into Portuguese:

Naruto AMV Brasil

From the viral circulation of new media productions on sites like Orkut where local networks are reinforced to more open spaces like YouTube where, in conjunction with recommendation systems, the content helps to determine modes of engagement, Brazilian’s engagement with new media production online reflects and continues to create further opportunities for transnational cultural flows.

New Media Production Programs for Youth

While the traffic in new media is widespread, a range of NGOs and other governmental organizations have prioritized new media programs that focus upon issues of access and equity for youth, particularly disenfranchised youth. Although government initiatives such as Proinfo are directed towards improving access in schools, 2005 estimates suggest that only 16.7% of schools had access to the internet (2www.pnud.org.br). In October 2007, the Ministry of Education executed a bid for the acquisition of 90,000 computers with Debian GNU/Linux 4 pre-installed as well as wireless cards, wireless routers and laser printers, to be installed at 9,000 schools, at least 3,000 of them in rural areas (http://times.debian.net/1189).

Alongside access, much of the academic literature focuses on the impact of the introduction and use of computers in schools (Braga 2007a; de Fatima D’Assumpcao Castro and Alves 2007; Sorj and Remold 2005), how to create effective digital learning environments (Blikstein and Cavallo 2003; Franco and Deus Lopez 2005) and how these contribute to the overall aim of creating a Brazilian Information Society (Jorente 2008). A dominant education portal is EduKBR, which was conceived as a virtual internet community to enhance the quality of education through access to online information, activities, cooperative projects communication/interaction tools in Portuguese. The site is set up for use by schools, youth and their parents and education professionals (Lucena 2002, 2001). Similarly the School of the Future is an interdisciplinary, self-sustaining research laboratory of the University of Sao Paulo, which has developed a series of research and development projects to explore the potentials of new information technologies to advance learning (Litto 2006). The projects include a focus on virtual learning communities for primary and secondary schools, the creation of multimedia digital libraries on the web, principally for humanistic learning; the production of learning objects, and their appropriate repositories, for science education at all levels of study; the creation and development of public-access telecentres in low-income neighborhoods, featuring web-based mini-courses; the furnishing of useful information on interfacing with government agencies to a sector of the population normally inexperienced with citizen’s rights, and weekly online surveys to determine the information needs and practices and opinions in general of this heretofore “excluded” segment; and the development of a community of chief information officers of Brazilian and Latin American institutions of higher learning so as to foster the exchange of experiences and the formation of regional partnerships. In these efforts, the general concern is with creating a digital media literacy (Braga 2007b; Fatin and Girardello 2008) that will help students become global citizens (Lima and Brown 2007) and experiment in a safe environment (Cavallo and Couch n.d.).

In addition to providing access and new environments for learning in schools, there are a number of initiatives that provide a space for youth, often from marginalized areas, to engage with digital media technologies. Rather than just being about tinkering with technologies per se, these initiatives have several objectives: providing a safe space to keep children of the streets and out of gangs, providing them with access to technology and thereby bridging the digital divide, and giving them ICT skills that might ultimately lead to better employment prospects. The best known initiative is the Committee for Democracy in Information Technology (CDI) http://www.cdi.org.br, a non-governmental, non-profit organization with the broader mission of promoting the social inclusion of low-income communities by using Information and Communication Technologies as tools for building and exercising citizens rights. In the program, students learn how to use computers and software while discussing issues of particular interest to their community, such as human rights, environment, sexual education, health and non-violence. It is also aimed at filling at vacuum in public education.Another initiative is the Kidlink House (KHouse) Internet centres, which serve students at local schools, street kids, youth in a local community, and indigenous kids. KHouse goals include keeping kids off the street, motivating street kids to return to school, promoting literacy, supporting kids through difficult times, and giving youth more control over their lives. The first KHouse was opened in March 1996, in the RioData Centro of PUC-RJ, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (http://www.kidlink.org/english/general/history.html).

Although authoritative figures are difficult to locate, about 80% of the world’s computer hackers are thought to operate from Brazil (Red Orbit 2005) and 60 to 70 per cent of the software and hardware available in Brazil are thought to be pirated. Estimates suggest that 80 percent of computer crimes are committed by teens, HackerTeen was created to provide online training in computer skills that students can access remotely. An attempt to channel the so-called negative use of their skills into more positive outlets, participants in this program are presented with materials in the form of comic books, with work plans described as “missions” that teens must complete using the skills they have learned. Designed as a form of edutainment, the program integrates a belt system like Karate - from white-belt beginner to black-belt advanced - to measure training progress. According to the program, 78 per cent of the young people who have earned black belts have found employment in the Brazilian IT job market (http://www.hackerteen.com/pt-br). Similarly, Vamos blogar (http://blogar.org), a literacy curriculum based on multimedia weblogs for street children in Rio de Janeiro, was established by Saori Fotenos as part of the Reuters Digital Vision program at Stanford University. It works in partnership with local NGO Projeto Uerê at an alternative school in Rio (http://projetouere.blogspot.com/) and targets lack of self-esteem and employability skills amongst this at-risk population. The project is designed to build competencies around self-generated content for motivation. It also provides kids with something to do, gives them jobs off the streets and out of illicit trades (http://rdvp.org/fellows/2005-2006/saori-fotenos/).

Other programs include:

City of Knowledge digital media project led by Gilson Schwartz at the University of Sao Paulo (Schwartz 2008).

The Amplifying Voices after school program (Fotenos and Rohatgi 2007)

The MobileED platform developed by the media lab at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in collaboration with the Meraka Institute in South Africa, has pilot projects in Brazil (Kuner and Vosloo 2007).

Conclusion: The Value of Culture and Creativity

One of the unique facets of Brazil’s stance towards the internet and new media has been its continued encouragement of creativity and the expression and development of Brazilian culture. Brazil is also a heavy user and promoter of open source software, predominantly Linux, which is used by governments, universities and even supermarkets (Red Orbit 2005). Coupled with the Brazilian government’s sociopolitical stance on the virtues of open source software for the creation of social and digital inclusion, the affordability of Linux and the use of recycled and refurbished computers provides an important motivation for the use of free software. As Marcelo D’Elia Branco, coordinator of Projeto Software Livre Brasil, states, “information technology and Brazilians were a perfect marriage. Brazilians historically were interested in innovation, but they didn’t have good schools or universities, so they depended on their own creativity. The Internet is all about this kind of grass-roots creativity” (Red Orbit 2005). Indeed, when Lawrence Lessig’s visited the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, he saw tents where young people (not only Brazilians) learned how to use open-source media editing software and then making their own media productions (Lessig 2005). Such examples demonstrate the promise of Brazil’s innovative and, at times, radical perspective on the value of culture and creativity central to new media production.

References:

Blikstein, Paolo and David Cavallo. 2003. “God Hides in the Details: Design and Implementation of technology-enabled learning environments in public education.” Proceedings of Eurologo 2003 Conference

Braga, Denise Bertoli. 2007a. “Lack of access to new media and digital technologies and complexities of collective sharing of software and computers.” Language and Education 21 (3): xx.

Braga, Denise Bertoli. 2007b. “Developing Critical Social Awareness through Digital Literacy Practices within the Context of Higher Education in Brazil.” Language and Education 21 (3): 180-196.

Cavallo, Alice and Couch, Alicia n.d. “Virtual Forum Theater - a computer supported collaborative learning environment for underpriviledged children.”

Department for International Development n.d. The Development Challenge for Brazil. http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/brazildevchallenge.pdf, Accessed January 26, 2009.

comScore. 2008. Brazilians’ Engagement with Online Multimedia Content Impeded By Lack of Home Broadband Penetration. September 17, 2008

Fantin, M and G Girardello. 2008. “Digital Literacy and Cultural Mediations to the Digital Divide.” In Selected Readings on Global Information Technology. Hakikur Rahman (ed.) Idea Group

de Fatima D’Assumpcao Castro, Maria and Luiz Anastacio Alvez. 2007. The Implementation and Use of Computers in Education in Brazil: Niteroi City/Rio de Janeiro.” Computers & Education 49 (4): 1378-1386.

Ferraro, Mathilde, Francesca Bria and Oriana Persico. n.d. “Synergies between Pontos de Cultura and Ecosystems.” Paper presented as part of the Digital Ecosystems initiative of the European Union (http://www.digital-ecosystems.org). http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:B7a3ggtJhr0J:www.digital-ecosystems.org/book/pdf/4.6.pdf+brazil+digital+media+youth, Accessed December 9, 2008.

Fotenos, Saori and Rohatgi, Deepti . 2007. “Amplifying Youth Voices in the Developing World.” New Directions for Youth Development 2007? (116): 117-126.

Franco, Jorge Fereira and Roseli do Deus Lopez. 2005. “Converging Interactive Media, Arts and Culture at Basic Education as Support for Enhancing Individuals’ literacy.”

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

Jorente, Maria José Vicentini. 2008. “Digital Inclusion Initiatives in Brazil: Improving Education and Information Seeking Behavior through Government-Academic Partnerships.” Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 34 (3): p30-33.

Kenny, Jack. 2005. “Open Revolution.” Times Educational Supplement 11/4/2005 Issue 4659, Special section p31-31.

Kuner J. and Vosloo. 2007. “Mobile Storytelling and Video Sharing for Inter-Cultural Communication.” http://ebusiness.tc.msu.edu/cct2007/files/kuner.pdf, Accessed January 25, 2009.

Lange, Patricia G. and Mizuko Ito. Forthcoming. Creative Production. In Ito, et. al’s Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Pre-release copy at http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/book-creativeproduction, Accessed March 3, 2009.

Lessig, Lawrence. 2005. The People Own Ideas! Technology Review 108 (6): 46-53.

Lima, Clarisse and Scott Brown. 2007. “ICT for Development: Are Brazilian Students Well Prepared to Become Global Citizens?” Educational Media International 44 (2): 141-153.

Litto, F. M. 2006. “Learning with technology in Brazil: a study in contrasts and conquests.” Advanced Technology for Learning 3(2): 62-8.

Lopes, Roberta. 2006. Summary of 2nd survey on technology use. http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/7523/1/, Accessed December 12, 2008.

Lucena, M. 2002. “EduKBr Portal: an Environment Concerned with Quality of Information in the Brazilian World-Wide Web.” In G. Richards (Ed.) Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2002 (pp. 2654-2655). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Lucena, M. 2001. “An Educational Portal Oriented to the Development of Dynamic Learning Communities on the Internet in Brazil: The EduKBr Portal.” In C. Montgomerie & J. Viteli (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2001 (pp. 1174-1175). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Red Orbit. 2005. Brazil Has Become a Trailblazer in Computer Use. September 25, 2005. Knight Ridder Washington Bureau http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/250691/brazil_has_become_a_trailblazer_in_computer_use/, Accessed January 15, 2009.

Schwartz, Gilson. 2008. “Digital Emancipation and Local Development in Brazil.” Paper presented at Media@LSE Fifth Anniversary Conference September 2008. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/Conference/, Accessed March 3, 2009.

SIG-III. 2007. Social Media and the Internet in Brazil. September 19, 2007. http://www.neasist.org/icisc/blog/?p=36, Accessed March 3, 2009.

Sorj, Bernardo and Julie Remold (2005) “Numerical Fracture and Education in Brazil: Inside and Outside the School.” Education et Societes 1: 75-89.

Wizards of Oz. 2006. Brazil: The Free Culture Nation. September 16, 2006. http://www.wizards-of-os.org/programm/panels/authorship_amp_culture/brazil_the_free_culture_nation.html, Accessed February 10, 2009.

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.

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