Theorizing ICT and society in the Brazilian context: a multilevel, pluralistic and remixable framework.
| Autor | Pozzebon, Marlei |
| Cargo | Report |
Introduction
For a number of reasons, countries like Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRICs) are increasingly the focus of worldwide attention. Although the ultimate goal of most of that interest is commercial, related to expanding business activities and political relations, research also plays a part. Particularly in the ICT (information and communication technology) area, there are a growing number of publications targeting emerging and developing countries (Avgerou, 2008), and often, specifically the BRIC group. Most of the time, those publications have been written by researchers not native to, nor living in, those parts of the world. Brazil is no exception to this scenario.
Data from international studies on Brazilian academic production shows significant growth in the last two decades: from about three thousand articles published in Thomson Reuters indexed journals in 1989 to nearly twenty thousand in 2007. Thus, in relation to the overall scientific world, the percentage of articles with at least one Brazilian author jumped from 0.56% in 1989 to 2.02% in 2007. Brazil now ranks thirteenth in publications, surpassing the Netherlands, Israel, and Switzerland (Regalado, 2010). As stated by the country's former Ministry of Science and Technology (Rezende, 2011), Brazilian academic production grew three times faster than the world average from 1982 to 2009. Despite being significant, these quantitative figures may not represent equivalent growth in qualitative scientific production since global impact of Brazilian science is still only 63% of the world average (King, 2009).
Since Brazil's academic output is currently highest in agricultural sciences, engineering, mathematics and physics, Brazilian management forums have recently been pondering evidence that IS research studies investigating ICT in the Brazilian context are not widely published internationally. Even if Brazilians occasionally appear as co-authors in some publications, researchers, research groups and leading international publications that focus on emerging or developing countries are most often affiliated with North American or European institutions. The special issue on Information Technology Research in Brazil published by the Journal of Global Information Technology Management, in April 2009, seems to be an exception, with a fully Brazilian-authored group of articles published in an international journal.
This might suggest that Brazilian IS researchers are not very active in producing knowledge about development and technological change from the perspective of their own context. However, a quick look at Brazilian IS research production shows that national and regional conferences in the management area are proliferating and that ICT occupies an important position. The most relevant examples are: the ADI (Administration of Information) track at ENANPAD (the annual conference of the Brazilian Academy of Management) and ENADI, a biannual IS conference in which a growing number of Brazilian IS researchers take part. There are also a number of Brazilian journals focused on management in general, and even some on ICT in particular, demonstrating consistent quantitative growth in academic production in the area.
In addition to extant locally published academic production, evidence suggests that the vast Brazilian territory is becoming a correspondingly huge laboratory for ICT-related social and business innovations, with an increasing number of studies of ICT innovation experiences being reported (Avgerou, 2008). This represents a priceless opportunity for researchers concerned with organizational and social implications of ICT to develop further research programs in the Brazilian context. In the particular case of Brazil, notable areas featuring innovative use of ICT are: government and public administration (Barbosa, 2008), banking technology (Diniz et al., 2009a), digital inclusion (Lemos & Martini, 2010), mobile use (Saccol, Manica, & Elaluf-Calderwood, 2011) and e-democracy (Cunha & Pozzebon, 2009), among others.
In this paper we present one view of theorizing on ICT and society through a conceptual framework that has been influential in recent Brazilian research focusing on ICT-based change at the community/society level of analysis. The framework is multilevel, pluralistic and remixable, in the sense that it is being appropriated and adapted by IS researchers in Brazil and collectively transformed and rebuilt. It is important to note that although we argue that remix and mash-ups are part of Brazilian culture and are reflected in academic activity as well, the framework presented in this paper can also be adapted by researchers from other regions. This can be considered particularly true for situations where innovative incorporation of new technologies that were first created and disseminated in developed countries, such mobile phones, are opening up new ways to understand social implications of ICT.
Brazil, a Fascinating Laboratory of ICT Innovation
A number of ICT innovations exemplify how the use of ICT in Brazil over the last decade has opened up opportunities for creating original research in the IS field. In 2010 Brazil joined the group of countries with more than one cell phone subscription per inhabitant, and Internet access by the low-income population has grown significantly: despite government investment in free access telecenters, it is the LAN house phenomenon--small facilities that provide internet access at affordable rates--that is responsible for increasing Brazil's connectivity level without any specific public policy being directed towards it. A report from the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee reveals that more than 70% of the poorest population segment access the Internet through one of the more than 90,000 LAN houses spread across the country, compared with only 5% that do so at government telecenters (Comite Gestor da Internet no Brasil [CGI], 2010). L. A. Silva and Gushiken (2010), by mapping the distribution of points for Internet access in the outskirts of a Brazilian capital, show how the LAN houses represent a constant reinvention of social actors from the low-income stratum entrepreneurially appropriating a modernity not designed for them. The LAN house phenomenon is creating new forms of social and economic interaction, and new emerging and open business models, whose impacts and consequences are still largely unknown.
Brazilian banking technology has also proved to be innovative in its use of ICT. The correspondent banking model was put in place to provide the low-income population with access to financial services all over the country (Diniz et al., 2009a). A report from Brazilian Banking Federation (FEBRABAN) indicates that the 150,000 correspondent points in the country account for 6% of all banking transactions. Correspondent banking is also the fastest growing bank channel, serving mostly the poorest and most remotely located populations (Federacao Brasileira de Bancos [Febraban], 2010).
Applications like electronic voting and income tax declarations via the Internet have attracted international attention since the 1990s; either, as in the former case, because of the level of efficiency or, as in the latter case, because of the millions of people involved. The Brazilian voting system is noteworthy, with Brazil being the only country in the world where a fully electronic ballot is the means by which over 100 million voters choose their representatives every two years in a simple, fast and transparent way, an important instrument helping to enhance democracy in the country (Saccol et al., 2011). As pointed out by Avgerou, Ganzaroli, Poulymenakou, and Reinhard (2009, p. 135), the electronic voting system of Brazil is seen as a "trustworthy mechanism of producing election results that accurately represent the choices of the electorate". The transition to electronic voting has also affected what kinds of politicians are elected, reducing the capacity of political machines to manipulate electoral outcomes, thus "benefiting candidates of Brazil's major national parties, who tended to rely less on local machines to win votes through fraud", as mentioned by Hidalgo (2010, p. 1).
UNESCO's 2010 report on Creative Economy identifies some Brazilian innovations as noteworthy, particularly those related to the creative commons movement. Formally initiated in Canada and the US, the creative commons has found one of its biggest exponents in Brazil. Proposing a new way of dealing with intellectual property, particularly with regard to digital culture (all cultural artifacts that can be digitized, like music, photos, videos, images, drawings, paintings, texts), creative commons represents the freedom of collectivity, which benefits from knowledge and art, creation and recreation (Leal & Souza, 2010). Books, cases studies and reports centering on ICT-related phenomena are being published with focus on the music industry, where movements like techno-brega and funk are explored to illustrate the potential of open business models (Lemos & Castro, 2008).
The last but not the least important illustration is the work being developed around themes like social technologies (Dagnino, 2009) and social residence (Fischer, Roesch, & Melo, 2006). This stream of research reflects an increasing concern with designing technologies for social inclusion and is guided by a pragmatic approach that is interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, and policy-oriented in nature (Dagnino, 2006; Instituto de Tecnologia Social [ITS], 2011). Significant Brazilian participation in social networks (Ahmad, 2011) and the impressive growth rate of Brazilian e-commerce, already accounting for almost 30 million online customers (Webshoppers, 2011), are representative of the country's insertion into the digital economy and of the remarkable opportunities to be better explored by Brazilian researchers.
Despite the fact all these innovative...
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