Futures of Learning

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.

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

World Bank. 2008. World Bank Data and Statistics. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/DATASTATISTICS/0,,contentMDK:20535285~menu
PK:1192694~pagePK:64133150~piPK:64133175~theSitePK:239419,00.html, Accessed February 27, 2009.

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 showed the pervasiveness of new media technologies in India, as Indians flocked to sites like twitter, flickr, utube and blogs to post eye witness and other accounts of the events. CNN argued that ‘social media appeared to come of age and signaled itself as a news-gathering force to be reckoned with’ (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/mumbai.twitter/), and the incident lends itself to examining to creation of an (alternative) public sphere with the help of new media technologies. In this post, I will focus on India’s social networking sites, the virtual spaces created by and around the Indian diaspora, as well as on the use of the internet for economic development purposes.

Social Networking Sites

According to a report released in February 2009, visits to social networking sites in India increased by 51 percent during 2008, to 19 million visitors in December 2008 (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2728 ). Orkut is by far the most popular social networking site in the country, followed by Facebook. Still, academic studies of how young people use these sites are just beginning to emerge.

A comparative study of Indian and US university students showed many common communication patterns in their use of social networking sites (Marshall et al 2008). What was more interesting were the differences, however, as Indian students’ behavior seemed to be significantly more individualistic than that of US students. This was surprising to the researchers, since Americans are thought to live in a more individualistic society than Indians. Concretely, almost 70 percent of Indian students made their profile public/visible for anyone to see, versus only 28.6 percent for US students, who were more likely to make their profile visible to friends only.  Indian students were also more likely to either engage a stranger contacting them, or to tell him/her to leave them alone, which was found to be in contrast with an (Indian) collectivist ethos that is supposed to be less trusting and more evasive of strangers.  Indian students are also more likely to have online friends whom they have never met before, which shows that they use social networking sites to make and sustain friendships, something that is not the case in the US.  In sum, Indian students seem less cautious about online privacy than their American counterparts, and are more forward with strangers they meet on the site (Marshall et al 2008).

Of particular importance in the Indian youth context is the use of new media technologies as a bridge between traditional and modern forms of social networking, such as can be found in dating and marriage sites. Adams and Ghose (2003) discuss the creation and use of ‘matrimonial sites’ wherein parents and (now) individuals themselves place want ads describing their particular attributes and desires for a marriage partner. While in North American contexts, sites like http://www.match.com and other dating websites make the transactional nature of relationships more apparent, sites like http://www.shaadi.com and others have extended and (in some cases) made easier the practices associated with arranged marriages in India. By allowing young people to place their own ads, such social networking sites are enabling them to navigate the tension between arranged and love marriages, providing a sense of choice for Indian youth operating within the constraints of Indian values surrounding education, status, caste, religion and complexion (Sharma 2008).

The internet is also offering a way to express otherwise suppressed issues and desires. Some studies have shown the growth of chat rooms in suburban areas, where they are frequented by predominantly 18 – 22 year-old males who assume an online identity in order to meet new people (Rangaswamy 2007a). There is also a convergence of social networking sites with mobile platforms; recently Virgin Mobile India announced a partnership with MySpace for making its social networking services available on Virgin Mobile WAP-enabled phones in India (http://www.campaignindia.in/feature/all_about_mobile_social_networking).

In regards to blogging, in July 2008, the Indian Ministry of Human Resources and Development issued a report recommending to make blogging, community radio, robotic kits and other technology devices part of public school curricula (http://southasia.oneworld.net/ictsfordevelopment/indian-schools-to-use-new-age-technologies ). The report states that “blogs are powerful tools to support creative writing that can be published and shared not only with the teacher but also with peers and the world, alike. Spreadsheets, databases, concept maps, and hypermedia authoring tools (Web development tools) to encourage critical thinking could also be encouraged.” Blogs are indeed a good way to express critical thinking; the aftermath of the Delhi Public School scandal, described in my mobile phone post last week, led to intense online activity of young people in blogs and discussion fora. While the blogs were more racy and packed with innuendoes against school administrators, the discussion fora raised issues of privacy, freedom, morality and responsibility among the users of the cell phones, the tenor being that new media technologies are an invincible force that are here to stay. Their advance into Indian society cannot be stopped by government bans, which also resonates with the quote that ended my game blog last Friday.

Blogs also played an important support role after the Mumbai attacks, as individuals set them up in order to provide vital information, for example about which hospitals needed blood donations, and to help family members search for each other. Twenty-nine-year-old blogger Harish Iyer published his mobile phone number and email address on a blog he set up soon after the attacks began (http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/). In the following 20 hours, he received around sixty phone calls and 100 emails from people desperate to find loved ones (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/bloggers.mumbai/index.html). It was flickr however that was the preferred medium of the ‘citizen journalists’ that provided instant and constant news feeds and updates about crisis. An article by CNN estimated that 80 tweets were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/mumbai.twitter/. However, the deluge of messages also revealed some of the shortcomings of the medium: on the one hand the lack of proper contextual information by most people sending the messages, and on the other the recycling of (sometimes incorrect) information. As blogger Tim Mallon put it, “I started to see an ugly side to Twitter, far from being a crowd-sourced version of the news it was actually an incoherent, rumour-fueled mob operating in a mad echo chamber of tweets, re-tweets and re-re-tweets.” This ability of new media technologies to spread rumors and support nationalistic and other discriminatory feelings has been commented on already in the China posts. While we have not seen the same extent in India, the BJP-Hindu Nationalist movement is starting to use the internet to spread its message (Chopra 2008).

On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court served a notice to Google for allowing a hate campaign against India, in reference to a community called ‘We Hate India’ created on Orkut, which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2136970.cms). Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut to report the community as bogus to Google, which eventually deleted the community has now been deleted, but not before it had spawned several ‘We hate those who hate India’ communities. In addition, prior to the 60th Independence Day of India, Orkut’s main page was revamped, with a stylized Orkut logo written in the Devanagiri script and colored in the Indian national colors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut). This shows the extent to which new media technologies in general, and social networking sites in particular, are embedded in the offline world of its users. Much more research needs to be done on this in the Indian context. One group of internet users on which academic research is well under way are Indian expatriates.

NRIs in Cyberspace

NRIs, or Non Resident Indians, is an official socio-legal category for Indians living outside of India. There are estimated to be about 25 millions of them, living mainly in neighboring countries, as well as the US, Malaysia and the UK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indiandiaspora.jpg). Given these numbers, it is not surprising that much of the research on Indian internet practices focuses upon the broader Indian diaspora and their use of the internet.

A recent edited volume by Gajjala and Gajjala (2008) examines the range of ways in which cyberspace helps to build bridges between India and the diaspora, which in turn builds on a 2006 special edition of the New Media and Society journal (Gajjala 2006). The various articles are focusing on the IT industry, entertainment, political movements as well as questions of belonging. What emerges from these studies is the importance of who defines and participates in internet practices in the context of an increasingly flexible global economy.

Mitra (2006) focuses on US South Asian immigrants’ use of “cybernetic safe spaces” to give voice to their Indian (immigrant) identity, which they are unable to express in other contexts. These online spaces are used to recreate cultural and religious practices of identity formation, as immigrants feel increasingly threatened by the sociopolitical and economic backlashes against them in a post-9/11 environment. Relatedly, cybershrines, virtual worship sites as well as cultural and heritage portals allow Indians abroad to access spirituality in a virtual way, and the majority of orders for products and services from these sites come from outside India (Barbar 2001). Mallapragada (2006) looks at the relationship between home, homeland and homepage in the 1990s and the creation of an Indian-American web that reflects the politics of belonging for NRIs. An important aspect of this is to access news from back home, via newspapers and other news sources, also of the ‘nationalist jingoist’ kind (Brosius 1999). On the other end of the political spectrum, Dalits and other low castes are using the internet as a means of organizing (Thirumal 2008, Chopra 2006). This suggests that the internet and other new media can provide the possibilities for establishing an alternative public sphere.

In this regard it is important to pay attention the possible reproduction of existing power dynamics, especially as access to the internet can be barred for already marginalized groups (Sreekumar 2006). Until more research on (local?) Indian participation on the internet occurs (cf. Tacchi 2006), we do not know the extent to which these discourses and practices are part and parcel of everyday Indian’s lives or the extent to which non-elites in India possess space and voice in these networked public cultures. This raises once again the question of the use of new media technologies for development purposes, which is always part of the Indian case.

Internet for Development

In the Indian context, the internet’s macroeconomic effects have been remarkable, with the rise of the country’s software and business processing industries, which have led to improved lives for a growing middle class. Acquiring computer skills are seen as crucial in joining this national destiny, and there are large numbers of private schools training youth in marketable and commercial computer skills (Biao 2007). Biao’s ethnography of bodyshops in Andhra Pradesh and Australia situates the IT business in a rich socio-cultural context, exemplary is his analysis of the increasing importance of dowry to pay the fees for IT schools.

Computers are also a compulsory subject in public schools, and as I stated in my first post, lead to increased computer and internet consumption in Indian homes. Here, e-mailing, chatting, browsing as well as computer game downloads are all subject to censorship and monitoring, especially as they are seen as distractions from learning (Rangaswamy 2007b). On the other hand, youth argue that general internet skills will help them in the work world, such as browsing for information about prospective schools, getting information for job interviews, and communicating with alumni.

Besides the campuses of the likes of Infosys and Wipro, it is call centers that have most forcefully captured the national economic imagination. Shome (2006) theorizes how the cultural politics of Indian call centers, and the global flows of information technology through them, manifest new and emerging frameworks of hybridity and diaspora. Such frameworks point to new relations of race, belonging, and colonialism and unsettle many of the prevailing assumptions through which diaspora and hybridity have been typically understood (Mitra 2008). McMillin (2008) and Mirchandani (2008) look at the ways in which working in call centers structures engagements with new media and technology, and how it affects the family and social life of middle class families.

In talking about the emergence of an (alternative) public or political sphere through the internet, it is also important to mention the many e-government initiatives that have been started in several Indian states in order to bring state and local governments closer to citizens (Sreekumar 2007, Schwittay 2008). As is often the case with the use of technology for development, high hopes and easy assumptions about the possibilities of especially marginalized groups to learn about, apply for and receive government assistance and other services online have given way to more realistic assessments. These show the ways in which new media technologies have to be embedded in people’s everyday lives, and in turn have to take political, socio-economic and cultural contexts into acccount in order to be truly meaningful and to realize their full potential.

References Cited:

Adams, P. and R. Ghose (2003) India.com: the construction of a space between. Progress in Human Geography, 27(4), 414–437.

Barbar, A. (2001). Diaspora, Cybershrines and the Woman’s question in media (review article).  Gender, Technology and Development, 5, 289.

Biao, X. (2007). Global ‘Body Shopping:’ An Indian Labor System in the Global Technology Industry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Brosius, C. and M. Butcher. (1999) (Eds.) Image Journeys: Audio-visual media and cultural change in India. New Delhi: Sage.

Chopra, R. (2008).  The Virtual State of the Nation: Online Hindu Nationalism in Global Capitalist Modernity. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Chopra, R. (2006) Global primordialities: virtual identity politics in online Hindutva and online Dalit discourse. New Media & Society, 8, 187-206.

Gajjala, R. and V. Gajjala. (Eds.) (2008) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Gajjala, R. (2006). Editorial: Consuming/producing/inhabiting South-Asian digital diasporas. New Media and Society, 8, 179.

Mallapragada, M. (2006). Home, homeland, homepage: belonging and the Indian-American web. New Media & Society, 8, 207-227.

Marshall, K. et al. (2008) Social Networking Websites in India and the United States: A Cross-national Comparison of Online Privacy and Communication. Issues in Information Society, 9(2), 87 – 94.

McMillin, D. (2008). «Around Sourcing»: Peripheral Centers in the Global Office. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Mirchandani, K. (2008) Practices of Global Capital: Gaps, Cracks, and Ironies in Transnational Call Centers in India. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Mitra, A. (2008). Working in Cybernetic Space: Diasporic Indian Call Center Workers in the Outsourced World. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Mitra, A. (2006). Towards finding a cybernetic safe place: illustrations from people of Indian origin. New Media & Society, 8, 251-268.

Rangaswamy, N. (2007a). ICT for Development and Commerce: A Case Study of Internet Cafes in India. Paper presented at the 9th international conference on social implications of computers in developing countries. Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Rangaswamy, N. (2007b). The Aspirational PC: Home Computers and Indian Middle class Domesticity. Unpublished paper prepared for Microsoft Research India.

Schwittay, A. (2008) A Living Lab: Corporate Delivery of ICTs in Rural India. Science, Technology and Society, 13(2), 175-210.

Shome, R. (2006) Thinking through the diaspora: Call centers, India, and a new politics of hybridity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9 (1), 105-124.

Sreekumar, T.T. (2007) Decrypting E-Governance: Narratives, Power Play and Participation in the Gyandoot Internet. Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 32 (4), 1-24.

Sreekumar, T.T. (2006). ICTs for the Rural Poor: Civil Society and Cyber-Libertarian Developmentialism in India. In G. Parayil (Ed.), Political Economy and Information Capitalism in India: Digital Divide Development and Equity. (pp 61-87). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sharma, A. (2008). Caste on Indian Marriage dot-com: Presence and Absence. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Thirumal, P. (2008) Situating the New Media: Reformulating the Dalit Question. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Tacchi, J. (2006). Information, Communication, Poverty and Voice. Paper presented at Mapping the New Field of Communication for Development and Social Change, 5-8 July 2006, University of Queensland.

In 1997, the first major portal Daum began its free email service and subsequently opened Internet cafes (public forums) two years later. Since its early days, online space in Korea was rarely considered as purely cyber or virtual space occupied by techno-geek. Instead, the strong connectivity between online and offline reality defines Internet as an inextricable part of techno-culture in Korea. While the excessive commercialism of internet culture often becomes the target of cultural critique, its potential as an alternative public space that can harbor diverse voices free from the regulations of authorities and can nourish new ways of civil democracy attracts the attention of both Korean and foreign scholars. The early buzz about Ohmynews is a typical example of celebrating the new form of ‘citizen journalism’ (Rheingold, 2002). Cho (2007) assesses that these vigorous civil and voluntary experiments characterize early days of Internet in Korea (1998-2002) as “temporary self-regulated space,” until it was eventually governed by commercial networks.

In this context, it is not surprising that ‘online community’ is at the center of the discussion. Since early 2000s, online community, housed in several major portals such as Daum and Naver, has become the main site for online activities. These domestic portal sites yield the enormous power of structuring Korean Internet culture in unique ways. For example, among general Korean Internet users, Naver is the most popular search engine with its famous Jishiin, one of the early crowd sourcing search system if not the first to incorporate the ‘collective wisdom.’ Although Naver’s search engine mostly provides information within its own network, Korean users prefer its easy and quick access to useful information garnered from its huge database of individual blogs, public forums, news and multimedia content. Naver and Daum occupy 88.3 percent of domestic search engine market while Google falls short with 2.1 percent share (NIA, 2008). At the same time, numerous online communities and public forms in these sites, spread across diverse categories such as tastes, ages, and vocations, tend to be more influential than individual power bloggers in shaping public opinion (i.e. Daum Agora Café). When the controversial social issues arise, they easily turn into the sites for public debate that often accompanies new forms of political actions such as online petition, cyber protest, and the relay of banners. In 2008, Daum alone had around 7.3 million cafes running and the average of 3000 – 4000 new cafes opened daily (www.daum.net).

Young people are main residents of this online space. Their activities in various online communities have become the central focus of the discourse on cyber youth culture. In conversation with the overall changes of Korean society in political and cultural sphere since the 1990s, Bae (2003) and Yoon (2001) define the ‘Net’ generation as a new social group growing out of online community. In the same vein, Choi (2005) argues Net generation embodies a new form of identity that blends newly emerged individualistic lifestyle and anonymous networking in online space, which is distinguished from the existing social behaviors of older generations. This socio-psychological approach constructs the image of Korean youth who easily accept the cyber space as an extension of the real world and enjoy exploring diverse new media tools for self-expression (Hwang, 2000; Soh, 2002).

In particular, interest-driven online communities are major playgrounds for Korean youth. They are the center for active knowledge building and informal learning that is motivated by diverse leisure activities. According to Cho (2006), in 2003, 99.1 percent of Korean adolescents who used computers daily, logged in to the Internet and 89.1 percent of them has a membership in more than one online community: Each person had an average of 13.7 communities. The overpowering presence of the youth in online community is increasing each year. In 2003, 77.7 percent of the Daum café user is in their teens and twenties and they also make the majority of the café managers (Kang, 2003). Young people join online community activities primarily “to share with same interest and taste” (62.9%) and continue engaging with them “in order to attain information or knowledge”(39.9%) (Hwang, 2003). Fan communities are full of these shared learning activities, often about other cultures. For example, it is common for young people to teach each other basic level Japanese in a typical portable game fan community (Cho, 2006). The popularity of online community-based activities is often attributed to its function as the emotional outlet for youth in Korea, where alternative play culture and the democratic communication structure across generations tend to be repressed in real life. In that sense, youth targeted online communities such as Sayclub (Kang, 2003) and Damoim (Kim, 2003) meet their desire to hang out and carve out their own space outside of adult supervision and social pressures.

On the other side, blogging is another prevalent online practice. In fact, Korea “boasts the second largest number of bloggers in the world, surpassed only by the Unites States of America” (Choi, 2006). However, it is interesting that blogging in Korea is closely linked with the adoption of social network sites (SNS). While blogs are considered to be the private space compared to the more public-oriented online communities, young people use blog primarily “to build and maintain social relationship” rather than to engage “journalistic or participatory activities” (Kim, 2006; Choi, 2006). Cyworld, one of the first SNS service in the world that was introduced in 1999, represents this culturally specific tendency in Korean blogsphere. Over 90 percent of Korean Internet users in their twenties are members of Cyworld (http://times.hankooki.com). Its phenomenal popularity and social impact generated cultural syndrome across generations, ages, and genders as its membership equates approximately to one quarter of the nation’s entire population. Referring to the obsessive use of Cyworld, new jargons such as Cying (doing Cyworld)’ and Cy-pein (Cy fanatic/geeks) have become popular additions to everyday conversation. In this context, it is not surprising that most Korean/English studies of SNS and blogsphere in Korea focus on Cyworld.

Most of all, it is the unique formal aspects of Cyworld that distinguish it from common blog applications and thus show how technology is culturally shaped and appropriated into a specific emotional technology. Cyworld provides a personal space called Mini-hompy, which MySpace adopted in a similar way, and Il-chon (literally, the first degree kinship) system, a tool to network with other Cyworld users (an equivalent to ‘neighbors’ in MySpace). In essence, by providing cute layouts, avatars, images, virtual goods, and hip multimedia content, Cyworld represents the cute aesthetics - the unique operating principle of popular culture in Korea as well as in Japan. This culturally friendly system (cute aesthetics, Il-chon) and easy application tools allow the user to express his/her identity through the customization of Mini-hompy and encourage migratory practice across interconnected digital media sphere (Hjorth & Kim, 2005).

Cultural factors are often accredited for the success of Cyworld since long-term human network maintenance is regarded as highly important in the collectivistic and interdependent Korean society. The adoption of blogging as a tool to reaffirm offline social relation is a pervasive phenomenon that is not limited to Cyworld: Relation-oriented blogs are generally more popular in Korea (Na et al, 2007). Korean youth also primarily engage with Cyworld to micromanage their social relationship (Kim & Yun, 2008). In fact, according to Jang & Nam (2006), the most frequented type of sites for Korean youth is Mini-hompy/blog. Café board ranks the second and Internet game site follows. Na et al (2007)’s comparative ethnographic study of blog-type young Internet users and game-type users reveal that blog-type interest users tend to valorize relation-oriented activity. However, young people adopt the careful ‘social’ filtering system by utilizing screening tools embedded in Cyworld (Choi, 2006). In this sense, Mini-hompy functions as a closed or controlled open space. Recently, the closed usage of Cyworld for securing personal space is increasing significantly as 30 percent of Cyworld users identify themselves as solely diary recorders (Hwang et al, 2008).

Overall, as in many other national contexts, youth Internet culture in Korea has met with ambivalent responses in public and academic discourse. Blogging is generally received as a positive activity since it motivates young Koreans to blog to build ‘self-respect’ and ‘self-identity’ (Kim, 2006). On the contrary, young people’s fun-oriented consumption/reappropriation of multimedia content in online space is more vulnerable to securitizing eyes. In fact, Internet has already replaced old media as the preferred mode of media consumption: Creating and sharing multimedia content has become common practice among Korean youth. Before Youtube grabbed the heart of global viewers, Korean online space was already flooded with busy file transmissions as soon as domestic media production softwares and commercial P2P sites and UCC sites (notably, Pandora TV and GomTV) opened their channels. In a broader context, this play culture that messes around with media content forms part of young people’s widespread practice of new media production, which I will dwell on in a following blog post.

Lastly, what is particularly interesting about Korean youth Internet culture is the increasing mobilization of young people for civic engagement through the use of diverse new media technologies. Recent ‘Candlelight Protests’ organized against American beef import in 2008 was a watershed moment because teenagers emerged as the new political agents (especially, teenage girls). Active and organized teenagers’ participation set off and sustained the event. On the first day of candlelight protest in May 2nd 2008, teenagers comprised 60-70 percent of attendees and the image of ‘Candlelight Girls’ immediately became the icon of this civil movement (Lee & Jung, 2008). Although the main cause for the protest was the resumed import of American beef with insufficient measures to screen mad cow disease that might affect their well-beings in the future, many argues that it was Korean teenagers’ ongoing dissatisfaction with the repressive educational system and fear for intensifying competition driven by new government’s educational policies (such as ‘Immersive English Teaching Program’) that triggered teenagers’ voluntary collective action.

However, ‘e-politics’ of Korean youth is not a sudden phenomenon. Candlelight girls have their predecessors. Social issues that mobilized Korean youth to participate in real action are diverse in their scope and scale, from more direct political events such as the 2002 presidential election (Kim, 2004) and the anti-American protest around the middle school girls accidental death by GI (Bhuiyan, 2004) to micro-level problems of educational systems. In particular, Lee et al (2007) traces preceding incidents that “digital natives” have collectively voiced out through online communities: ‘No Cut’ campaign (against rigid hairstyle controls in the secondary schools) in 2000, the protest against reformed university entrance selection system (2004), and the campaign of the ‘National Network for the Protection of Student Human Rights’ in 2005. Significantly, No-cut campaign is recorded as one of the first successful e-political movements of Korean youth that led to the revision of official policy.

Youth also brought new mode of political communication. Korean youth demonstrated savvy use of diverse communication channels in delivering their voices, which is clearly distinguished from the monolithic and centralized mode of dominant media. While online space provides the main channel to obtain and share information as well as to form the public opinion, mobile phone plays a key role in mobilizing and coordinating actions on the spot as well as recording/live broadcasting the progress of the event. These multiple forms of news get spread across diverse media channels including their own Mini-hompy/blog, SMS, and portal sites. At the same time, Lee (2007) highlights young people’s changed attitude toward political engagement, which has become more ‘fun’ oriented. In other words, young people tend to combine participation in social and political affairs with play, parody, humor, wit and caricature to express their feelings and opinions rather than direct criticism. Memorable scenes from the candlelight protest are inundated with creative picket signs of diverse causes and witty performances in a free speech podium. (i.e. skit, dancing, and singing). These displays of playful demonstration resonate with the comparatively unrestrained participatory culture of young people in Internet space. However, the significance and implication of these recent incidents and the e-politics of Korean youth are still under discussion and require more thorough analysis. As Park (2002) criticizes, while Internet provides the alternative public forum for young people to voice out easily, it does not automatically guarantee the actual attendance of young voters.

References

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