Social Media in Emergent Brazil

260 Pages·2017·14.83 MB·English

by  Juliano Spyer

S Juliano Spyer
o
since the birth of the internet, low-income Brazilians have c
received little government support to help them access it. i
a
in response, they have largely self-financed their digital
migration. internet cafés became prosperous businesses in l

working-class neighbourhoods and rural settlements, and,
m
more recently, families have aspired to buy their own home
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computer with hire purchase agreements. As low-income
d
Brazilians began to access popular social media sites in
i Social
the mid-2000s, affluent Brazilians ridiculed their limited
a
technological skills, different tastes and poor schooling,
but this did not deter them from expanding their online
i
n
presence. Young people created profiles for barely literate media

older relatives and taught them to navigate platforms such e
m
as Facebook and WhatsApp.
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Based on 15 months of ethnographic research, this book g
aims to understand why low-income Brazilians have e
n
invested so much of their time and money in learning about
t
social media. Juliano spyer explores this question from a
B in emergent
number of perspectives, including education, relationships,
r
work and politics. He argues the use of social media reflects a
contradictory values. Low-income Brazilians embrace social z
i
media to display literacy and upward mobility, but the same l
Brazil
technology also strengthens traditional networks of support
that conflict with individualism.
Juliano Spyer is Honorary research Associate at
UCL’s department of Anthropology, where he also
obtained his Phd. His research interests include
digital anthropology and online research
methods. Previously, he created and managed s
p
social media projects in the United states and y
e
Latin America, and published the first book about r
social media in Brazil (Conectado, 2007).
Cover design:
rawshock design
Free open access versions available from £35.00
www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press
Social Media in Emergent Brazil

Social Media in

Emergent Brazil
How the Internet Affects Social Change
Juliano Spyer
First published in 2017 by
UCL Press
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Available to download free: www.ucl.ac.uk/ ucl- press
Text © Juliano Spyer, 2017
Images © Authors, 2017
Juliano Spyer has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
to be identified as author of this work.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from The British Library.
This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non- commercial
Non- derivative 4.0 International license (CC BY- NC- ND 4.0). This license
allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work for personal and
non- commercial use providing author and publisher attribution is clearly stated.
Attribution should include the following information:
Juliano Spyer, Social Media in Emergent Brazil. London, UCL Press, 2017.
https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/ 111.9781787351653
Further details about Creative Commons licenses are available at http:// creativecom-
mons.org/ licenses/
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ISBN: 978– 1– 78735– 166– 0 (Pbk.)
ISBN: 978– 1– 78735– 165– 3 (PDF)
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DOI: https:// doi.org/ 10.14324/ 111.9781787351653
To my parents Ana and Marcos, for pointing the way, and to Thais, for
sharing the adventures.

Introduction to the series Why We Post

This book is one of a series of 11 titles. Nine are monographs devoted
to specific field sites (including this one) in Brazil, Chile, China,
England, India, Italy, Trinidad and Turkey – they have been published
in 2016–1 7. The series also includes a comparative book about all our
findings, How the World Changed Social Media, published to accompany
this title, and a book which contrasts the visuals that people post on
Facebook in the English field site with those on our Trinidadian field
site, Visualising Facebook.
When we tell people that we have written nine monographs about
social media around the world, all using the same chapter headings
(apart from Chapter 5), they are concerned about potential repetition.
However, if you decide to read several of these books (and we very much
hope you do), you will see that this device has been helpful in showing
the precise opposite. Each book is as individual and distinct as if it were
on an entirely different topic.
This is perhaps our single most important finding. Most studies of
the internet and social media are based on research methods that assume
we can generalise across different groups. We look at tweets in one place
and write about ‘Twitter’. We conduct tests about social media and
friendship in one population, and then write on this topic as if friendship
means the same thing for all populations. By presenting nine books with
the same chapter headings, you can judge for yourselves what kinds of
generalisations are, or are not, possible.
Our intention is not to evaluate social media, either positively or
negatively. Instead the purpose is educational, providing detailed evi-
dence of what social media has become in each place and the local conse-
quences, including local evaluations.
Each book is based on 15 months of research, during which time
the anthropologists lived, worked and interacted with people in the local
language. Yet they differ from the dominant tradition of writing social sci-
ence books. Firstly they do not engage with the academic literatures on
vii
social media. It would be highly repetitive to have the same discussions
in all nine books. Instead discussions of these literatures are to be found
in our comparative book, How the World Changed Social Media. Secondly
these monographs are not comparative, which again is the primary func-
tion of this other volume. Thirdly, given the immense interest in social
media from the general public, we have tried to write in an accessible
and open style. This means we have adopted a mode more common in
historical writing of keeping all citations and the discussion of all wider
academic issues to endnotes.
We hope you enjoy the results and that you will also read our com-
parative book – and perhaps some of the other monographs – in addition
to this one.
viii INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES WHY WE POST
Acknowledgements

This work has been done in continuous co- operation with several friends
from the settlement where the evidence used in this book was obtained.
They were active collaborators with whom I openly discussed my ideas
about, and understanding of, technology, family, social life, prejudices,
personal history and affection. Unfortunately I cannot mention any of
their names here to protect their privacy.
My wife and I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Professor
Daniel Miller, my mentor and supervisor on this project. He has offered
generous amounts of feedback, support and patience with my shortcom-
ings and delays. Above all, he has been an exemplar of a scholar: one
that loves the discipline and loves doing research. We are also thankful
to Daniel’s wife, Rickie Burman, for offering encouragement in past years
and for welcoming us many times into their home.
This project involved a team of researchers who worked together
for several months before leaving for field work, then kept in regular con-
tact by reading and commenting on each other’s monthly reports, and
finally collaborated further to produce an online course, a comparative
volume and their own individual monographs. Thank you to Dr Elisabetta
Costa, Dr Jolynna Sinanan, Dr Nell Haynes, Dr Razvan Nicolescu, Dr Tom
McDonald, Dr Shriram Venkatraman and Dr Xinyuan Wang.
Dr Alex Pillen, my second supervisor, has been part of this aca-
demic adventure only since I arrived back from the field, but she has indi-
cated and then helped me to navigate a body of literature in the discipline
essential to analysing central aspects of my ethnography. More impor-
tantly, her availability to read and comment on my chapters, and her
enthusiasm for the potential of the research, transmitted much needed
support during the writing process.
Dr Rosana Pinheiro-M achado offered 20 very rich pages of commen-
tary after reading an initial draft of this monograph. She has also given me
informally, during the opportunities we had to meet, insightful guidance
regarding my work, as well as about anthropology in Brazil and in general.
ix