Futures of Learning

Piratão, Boit Tatá, Carnaval 2009, Rio, Published under a Creative Commons License by URBefotos

According to Lugo, et. al (2002), at the turn of the century Latin America represented “a marginal segment of world sales: only 2 percent of the world consumption of software and hardware” related to video games. Despite the relatively low numbers associated with official video game consumption, popular discussions of gaming and video games suggest that there continues to be a widespread adoption of, and passion for, video games. For instance, when Video Games Live came to Brasilia for a performance to celebrate video game culture and art in September of 2007, the show was sold out (see a video promo of Video Games Live in Brazil in Brasilia on September 30, 2007. Between 2005 and 2006, media giant Globo integrated kids playing a virtual reality game Conquista de Titã (Titan’s Conquest) into their daily ‘TV Xuxa’ program. Brazil’s gaming culture is also noted throughout the gaming blogosphere for the proliferation of different games and gaming consoles (e.g. Spanner 2005), particularly NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) games (http://www.nesplayer.com/pirates/index.htm). Abragames, (Associação Brasileira das Desenvolvedoras de Jogos Eletrônicos), Brazil’s primary gaming association, consistently works with the Ministry of Culture to promote and enhance the local gaming industry, a reflection of an ongoing debate concerning the extent to which the industry should expand and even nationalize the production of software (Lugo, et.al. 2002 note that Brazil has been fairly conservative in this respect). This dichotomy between the official gaming industry discourse about of games and the presence of gaming culture in Brazil stems, at least in part, from the high cost of video game consoles and software in Brazil due to high importation taxes as well as the pervasiveness of video game piracy in Brazil (Rapoza 2005). According to TexPine (2008), the situation can be described as follows:

“Game piracy is endemic: 94% of PC retail games and nearly 100% of console games are pirated. Not even the richest youth of the country bothers to buy original console games, which cost US$ 98. Like everyone else they can easily spot illegal street vendors selling pirated games for US$ 8 or less. On online-distributed games, even low-cost Brazilian titles in Portuguese like Brasfoot (US$ 7) and CaveDays (US$ 14,5) are hacked by piracy-dedicated blogs, foruns and Torrent sites.”

In the first half of today’s blog post I explore the relationship between video games, piracy and the development of the gaming industry. In the second half, I draw upon popular and academic research on video games to examine the discourses and practices surrounding video games and gaming in Brazil, and consider the implications of these practices for future research on the theories and practices of gaming.

A Brief History

Brazil’s entrée into gaming coincided with the release of the Odyssey in 1981 and the Atari system in the late 1980s. As noted previously, high importation fees enforced by the Brazilian government made the systems difficult to acquire and ardent gamers began looking for alternative ways to expand their game play. Starting with Atari consoles, a full scale industry around cloned console systems emerged (lstr 2000, Spanner 2005). Around 1990, the Brazilian company Gradiente released the Phantom System, an NES clone which effectively transformed the NES into the dominant platform in Brazil, despite the fact that Nintendo did not formally release its console in South America (TSR 2000.). By the mid- 1990s, Brazilians had customized various consoles so that they could accept Nintendo games that came from Japan and the United States (Nintendo’s two largest markets). This continued with the release of the Playstation. According to Spanner (2005),

“This completely turned the tables on the way Brazilians perceived their game playing experience as compared with the rest of the world. The software was already there, available in vast and diverse quantities, and would play in almost any console bought, so the buyer’s quandary came in the form of deciding exactly which NES or Atari compatible clone offered the features they wanted. Software wasn’t a concern; it was the hardware that mattered.”

While gamers may view Brazil as a gamer’s paradise, the persistence of piracy has discouraged companies such as Sony to sell games in Brazil. As Rapoza (2005) notes, Brazilian game developers cannot create games for the PlayStation2, and consoles such as the Xbox and Nintendo systems are not sold. Because the pirated video game market is so rich and varied, “A game that might sell a million original copies in Wal-Mart in the United States will sell fewer than 10,000 in the Wal-Marts of Brazil” (Rapoza 2005). One of the more interesting responses to this climate of piracy is the increasing support of online games by software companies who charge subscriptions for use on a monthly basis. This enables companies to check the licensing of software and establishes online distribution channels which are often free. Games that follow this model are Ernia and FutSim. (Wharton School of Business 2004). Although a recent, and somewhat public, confiscation of a piracy operation might suggest a shifting attitude by the Brazilian officials who want to encourage the development of the local gaming industry, the large scale production of video game hardware and software seems destined to continue.

The State of Play

Inclusão digital, SAO PAULO -SP - 11.01.2008 - INFORMATICA - Nitro Lan House, localizada no Grajaú. Nas palavras do dono, “aqui abre mais lan house que boteco”. Folha de S. Paulo. Published under a Creative Commons License by Paulo Fehlauer

The debates about a shift in focus to the local video games market also reflect broader debates within Brazilian society about the ‘effects’ of media and their social value, most prominently the association between video games and obesity as well as violence. As early as 1999, Quake was also banned (along with 133 other games). In 2008, Everquest and Counterstrike were banned by a judge in Brazil deeming them “dangerous to consumers health” (LA Times 2008). Counterstrike, whose content was localized to mimic the favelas in Rio de Janiero and involved characters such as police offers and drug traffickers vying for control of the area, was considered particularly disturbing given players ability to fight the police. Two months later, a judge consulted with psychiatrists and others before announcing his decision that the video game Bully should be banned due to the association of violence in schools (Delahunty 2008). While there has in general been outrage and protests by the gaming community, more cynical commentators note that these bans only help the publicity for a particular game that the industry itself will not make money from in Brazil one can count on the wide availability of bootleg copies.

Much like we see in school and afterschool programs in the United States, these attitudes towards video games also impact the accessibility to gaming. Bar (personal communication) notes that telecenters and POS make it a point to ban gaming and other activities, such as accessing Orkut, downloading music, that are viewed as “unproductive” or “a waste of time”. While the field of game studies, new media and learning reveal the importance of gaming for entertainment, collaboration, organizing and mobilizing and civic engagement (see Gee 2004, Ito and Bittanti Forthcoming, Ito, et. al. Forthcoming, Kahne 2008, Squire and Steinkhuehler 2005), it is clear that video games continue to be perceived as antithetical to the educational and civic missions of the telecenter effort. This attitude has two implications. In the first instance, and coupled with efforts to offer low-cost loans to individuals and families to purchase computers for use at home, many youth and others who enjoy playing video games simply do not use the telecenter. The second, more common practice is the use of LAN houses.

In his blog post to Overmundo, ronaldoweread (2008) notes that roughly one-third of Brazilians use the internet at cybercafe’s and LAN houses which offer relatively cheap access (prices vary between R$0,50 the R$1,50 per use to play games or access the internet with a broadband connection). Unlike telecenters which restrict activities, LAN houses have become a central site for playing games, updating and checking Orkut pages and socializing more generally and have transformed these spaces into a hotbed of activity for youth and others. Bar (personal communication) suggests that the use of LAN houses is not just a low-income phenomenon, isolated to individuals who cannot afford a home computer or reliable internet access. Rather, he found that many people are co-opting (and paying for) private and for-fee internet cafes precisely for the social purposes, such as hanging out as well as more formal practices such as LAN parties. In other words, even as the lowered cost of computers and the internet reduces the need to share computers and thus creates the possibility for more networked forms of social interaction surrounding games, Bar suggests that face-to-face socialization surrounding games – what Ito and Bittanti (forthcoming) have termed “recreational gaming” – continues to be important, if not preferable for many Brazilian youth.

In addition to LAN houses and parties, Adriana De Souza de Silva carried out research on the emergence of mobile gaming. Brazil’s first Location Based Mobile Game (LBMG), Alien Revolt was released by the MInd Corporation in 2005 and was operated by Oi in Rio de Janeiro. The game narrative involves a battle between alien forces who invade earth and the humans who resist them. Players then choose their team and the type of character they will be and begin the battle, or duel, in the physical site of the city. As she notes, “Players up to three kilometers apart can see each other on their cell phone screen radar. The closer the opponent, the larger the character appears on the screen. Like in Botfighters, shots are more accurate at a close range” (21). This feature is enabled by the use of java-enabled Nokia phones. Collaboration between plays is structured into the game and a sense of community emerged for players of the game, evidenced by the creation of a group in Orkut. While De Souza de Silva (2008) notes that games are generally quite popular in Brazil, her research also highlights the current limitations which impact the widespread adoption LBMG in countries like Brazil where, even in the second most populous city of Rio de Janeiro, participation remained limited to around 300 people (in a city of 13 billion people). De Souza de Silva attributes to the high financial costs of participation, including the purchase of an expensive handset and the high cost of internet enabled services, a topic I will discuss in more detail in next week’s post on mobile phones.

Conclusion

Between pirated consoles and other hardware, the presence of gaming in LAN houses and the emergence of location-based mobile gaming, popular and academic accounts of gaming suggest that gaming is an important dimension of everyday life in Brazil. In addition, gaming is prevalent across the socioeconomic spectrum. Indeed in Tobias Hecht’s (1998) study of Brazilian street children, he notes that “street children often stick together—stealing together, using drugs together, playing video games together - often without apparent interest in doing these things with other children” (158). Yet, despite the pervasiveness of gaming throughout the country and its status as an important site for game innovation (whatever the legalities of these innovations may be), we still know very little about the dynamics of everyday gaming. There may be a number of reasons – the prevalence of piracy and practices that occur outside of the legal framework may be a difficult site to access and ultimately may jeopardize some of the communities researchers may study. The stigma of study gaming may also not sit well with funding agencies, other researchers as well as institutions that undervalue the importance of popular culture and/or do not want to legitimize activities widely perceived as unproductive, particularly for youth. What is clear is that Brazil offers a rich arena for understanding and theorizing connections between new media and learning.

References:

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. http://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/publications/bitstream/1840.2/1953/1/IEEE_AlienRevolt.pdf, Accessed November 10, 2008.

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.

Delahunty, James “Dela”. 2008. Video game ‘Bully’ banned in Brazil. AfterDawn April 13, 2008 http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/13640.cfm, Accessed December 1, 2008.

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

Gee, James Paul. 2004. Situated language and learning: A critique of traditional schooling. London: Roultedge.

Góes, Paula. 2009. Brazil: Introducing the Web, a “Digital Baptism” Global Voices Sunday, March 8th, 2009. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/03/08/brazil-introducing-the-web-a-digital-baptism/, Accessed March 9, 2009.

Hecht, Tobias. 1998. At Home in the Street: Street Children of Northeast Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ito, Mizuko and Matteo Bittanti. Forthcoming. Gaming. In Ito, et. al’s Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Kahne, Joe, Ellen Middaugh and Chris Evans. 2008. The Civic Potential of Video Games MacArthur Foundation Occassional Papers September 2008. http://www.civicsurvey.org/White_paper_link_text.pdf, Accessed October 20, 2008.

LA Times. 2008. Blogs: Brazilian video game ban angers fans. February 5, 2008. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2008/02/brazilian-video.html, Accessed December 2, 2008.

Lugo, Jairo, Tony Sampson and Merlyn Lossada. 2002. Latin America’s New Cultural Industries still Play Old Games: From the Banana Republic to Donkey Kong. Game Studies 2(2), http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/lugo/, Accessed November 5, 2008.

TSR. 2000. Aqui se faz aqui se paga: The NES in Brazil. Lstr’s NES Archive: Brazil. January 20, 2000. Champaign, IL. http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/nes/brazil/brazil.html, Accessed March 2, 2009.

ronaldo we read. 2008. Festa Na LAN House. Overmundo October 1, 2007. http://www.overmundo.com.br/overblog/festa-na-lan-house, Accessed March 10, 2009.

Squire, Kurt and Constance Steinkuhler, C.A. 2005. Meet the gamers: Games as sites for new information literacies. Library Journal. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA516033.html

TexPine. 2008. How Piracy can break an industry: the Brazilian case. http://texpine.com/2008/02/15/how-piracy-can-break-an-industry-the-brazilian-case/, Accessed January 25, 2009.

Tori, Bernandes and Nakamura. Teaching Introductory Computer Graphics Using Java 3D, Games and Customized Software: a Brazilian Experience. Interlab

Wharton School of Business. 2004. Brazil: High Taxes and Piracy Challenge the Promising Market for Video Games. Universia Knowledge Wharton July 28, 2004. http://wharton.universia.net/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=814&language=english&specialId, Accessed March 2, 2009.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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