Digital Access amongst the Marginalized: Democracy and Internet Governance in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This article examines how new modes of governance and policies intended to expand Internet access unfold in the marginalized communities of Rio de Janeiro. In April 2014, Brazil enacted the Marco Civil da Internet (Civil Rights Framework of the Internet; MCI), an “Internet Bill of Rights” that promotes collaborative, democratic digital governance and regards Internet access as a requisite for civil rights. Rio's favelas (informal, historically low‐income communities) are territories where many of the intended beneficiaries of the access policies live. However, drug gangs often control favela neighborhoods and censor the digital access of residents; this is just one example of how Internet access in disadvantaged communities is tied to a number of broader sociopolitical realities and risks. Because these risks index larger disjunctions in contemporary Brazilian democracy, I propose that violence and informal governance in urban favelas creates a corresponding disjunction in the MCI's pledge of Internet access as a civil right.

Digital Access to Judicial Services in the Brazilian Amazon: Barriers and Potential

“…The objective is to verify whether the implementation of new technological solutions in the judiciary can contribute to access for people who live in regions far from physical judicial courts. It is also important to analyze whether the use of new technologies would be able to mitigate social inequalities, especially in access to justice (Omari 2018). Therefore, it is important to analyze the possible barriers and potential in this context.…”

Participatory design of a smart forest in the Brazilian Amazon using smartphones, algorithms, and ethnographic methods

“…The trend of the smart city—using smart technologies for urban infrastructure and management toward smart growth and new urbanism—started in North America and has spread across the world since the 1990s (Gaffney and Robertson, 2018). Brazil hosts one of the world's earliest and most successful smart cities, Curitiba (Hojda et al., 2019; Macke et al., 2018), as well as less successful examples like Rio de Janeiro, which suffers from limited urban infrastructure overall and limited access to existing infrastructure and personal smart devices for marginalized communities in particular (Gaffney and Robertson, 2018; Omari, 2018). Multidisciplinary scholars have argued that the concept of the smart city is an updated developmentalist narrative, promoted mainly by foreign investments and domestic governments in developing countries (Gaffney and Robertson, 2018; Hojda et al., 2019), pointing out that even successful smart cities like Curitiba are not smart enough from the perspective of ordinary citizens’ quality of life (Macke et al., 2018).…”

Utopia Digital: Non-governmental organizations and the making of consumers in Brazil’s “New Middle Class” shantytowns

“…Nemer and Gray (2019) express concern that women who gain access to digital inclusion projects are not disrupting existing, patriarchal structures, but rather giving those with privilege another object to exert their dominance. Similarly, Jeffery Omari (2018) discusses the parallel rhetoric relating to oppressive security policies in the favela and Brazil's recently enacted net neutrality laws. I see my institutional ethnography adding to this literature by revealing the classed and consumer mentalities in the favela that are filtered through the concept of digital utopia.…”