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The Study of the Internet in Latin America

Achievements, Challenges, Futures

Raül Trejo Delarbre

The first Latin American studies of the Internet adopted cautious approaches, stemming from curiosity and fear of a new technology that seemed to have implications for all walks of social life no one could manage to clearly understand. Those studies had the pioneering spirit of explorers navigating uncharted waters. Although they did not always transfer well from monographic description to in-depth analysis, these initial investigations had the charm of novelty, accentuated by the fact that they were scrutinizing a tool of communication that seemed to have great democratic potential. Topics that interested these early researchers included the way people used the Internet and its derivations and applications; early discussions about the implications for teaching, journalism, and the law; the hints of new forms of socialization; and the first discussions around issues like anonymity, the growing influence of intelligent machines, rights of the author, and the exercise of freedoms as vast as they were occasionally contradictory. Interpretations of the Internet in Latin America were influenced, to a significant degree, by these initial investigations.¹

In this chapter, I offer a quick look at some of the main authors, examining several of the principal issues in Latin American social research about the Internet, digital media, and the information society. Although this is a very broad, complex, and heterogeneous region, there are various factors that justify an overall approach. Latin American countries share cultural traditions and practices and, of course, a common language, which means similar ways of appropriation with respect to information and communication technologies (ICTs). Even in Brazil, with a different native language, the use and learning of the Spanish idiom has been extended in recent years.

During this first decade and a half of academic studies of the Internet, Latin American researchers, like their colleagues in other latitudes, were building methodologies, defining mutual doubts, and sharpening the focus of research topics. Strictly speaking, we cannot talk about a specifically Latin American focus on the study of the Internet in the same way we can with studies of conventional communication media. Some authors, like the Brazilian Marques de Melo (1999), have identified a Latin American characteristic style in media research, induced by the peculiarities of political regimes, economic conditions, and cultural identities. Some examples that have been repeated across the Latin American subcontinent include the role that the press played in backing or contradicting authoritarian governments or dictators; the high concentration of television frequencies in just a few hands, which left almost no room for public service television programming; and the versatility of radio, which, in addition to its fundamental commercial qualities, has been used by community groups. I am not claiming that this characterizes all media in a geographical and cultural space as varied and vast as Latin America, but these characteristics have led to similar focuses on the part of a number of researchers in the study of mass communication in this region. Further, the folkloristic or voluntaristic conceptions of a fuzzy Latin American spirit, the linguistic and social conditions, among others, have contributed to create a distinctly Latin American cultural space. As Néstor García Canclini (1999), a prominent specialist in cultural and media studies in the region, explains the Latin American cultural territory: “The indigenous, the Afro-American, the European, the Latinity, the tropicality, etc., sometimes are convergent and, in another, separated” (p. 42).

The preeminence of two major analytical currents in the Latin American study of the media favored this similarity of focus. The first of these currents was functionalism, which originated primarily in US sociology. Functionalism was the theoretical goal of the first studies on communication media in a number of Latin American countries. Contrasting with this interpretive vein was the Marxist perspective, which circulated in the halls of our universities mainly during the 1970s and influenced many of the researchers who carried out the most well-known media studies during the following decades. During this time, the types of research and analysis that privileged the study of social contradictions were in conflict and represented different trends in Latin American media research. The conflict between these analytical currents has been overcome since the 1990s.

Those conditions have not been repeated, at least not in the same form, in Latin American studies about the Internet and new digital media. The expansion of the Internet has been one of the mechanisms of globalization of economies and cultures. The content and uses of this new technology, like its study, have expanded throughout varied latitudes, thanks to the Internet itself. The information exchange and discussion among scholars nowadays (even the acquisition of books, which was not easy a few decades ago) take place easily and rapidly over the Internet. Studies of the media, especially new media, come out so quickly that when enough interest is generated, they can be accessed almost simultaneously in any country. This situation, which influences the methods and mechanisms of academic work in any discipline, has particularly influenced studies of digital media. Those of us who looked for conceptual hooks or methods to study the Internet in the mid-1990s found foundational references in the works of Rheingold (1994), De Kerckhove (1995), Moore (1995), or Negroponte (1995). In Spanish, early commentators included the Spaniard Echeverría (1994) and, undoubtedly, Castells (1996, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2009). Manuel Castells's reflections about the Internet and the informational society have been well known among scholars worldwide. In Latin America, he is the most influential author on these issues.

In the 1990s, ideas and doubts about digital media did not circulate widely in Latin American universities, but they were attractive enough to at least pique the interest of researchers from various countries. Soon databases, statistics, and research results on the coverage of the Internet, and sometimes on the way people used it, began to spread. This information, posted online, could be accessed in Boston, San Francisco, and London, as well as in Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, and São Paulo. Those of us interested in these topics could follow the Internet's first steps, as the web began to gain notoriety and generate interest in society, practically from the outset. In addition to the wonder inspired by the new possibilities of the spread of information and interaction, which contrasted with the vertical model of the old media, we had the feeling that we were taking part in an unprecedented phenomenon.

From our university cubicles or from our own homes, using slow connections through telephone modems, and waiting minutes and sometimes hours for images or audiovisual files to download, those of us interested in the topic had the privilege of watching the social birth of the Internet. The technological inception of these changes had taken place through the improvement, in the 1970s, of the TCP/IP protocol that allowed the first computers to connect to this network, and later, around 1990, with the creation of the system of hypertext links that would weave the World Wide Web. But this communication resource was not introduced to a wider public until well into the last decade of the twentieth century, when the Internet started to expand throughout various regions, including Latin America.

The development of the Internet, along with its cultural and societal implications for our countries, has been part of the expansion of a globalization that has not displaced but has delimited local cultures. The digital divide continues to be a reality that we cannot ignore, despite our admiration for the flourishing of the information society. In 2010 in Latin America, approximately 32% of the population had an Internet connection (Internet World Stats, 2010). This was a monumental advance, especially if we consider that 12 years earlier, in 1998, just 1.5% of Latin Americans had access to the Internet (Trejo Delarbre, 1999, p. 262) and in 2003, only 8%. The fact that in 12 years this number grew more than 20 times, and that in eight years it quadrupled, shows the dizzying expansion of the Internet in this part of the world. But we must remember that still, in 2010, 68 out of every 100 Latin Americans lacked access to the Internet.

That intensive and extensive but irregular growth has had several consequences in the scholarly sphere. Although insufficient in many countries, the presence of the Internet in Latin America has garnered the attention, at times methodologically unorthodox, of a variety of fields. A diverse amalgam of disciplines, from engineering to sociology, philosophy, and anthropology, among others, has studied the modes, uses, and challenges of the development of the Internet in Latin America. From the lack of trust that seemed to prevail during the mid-1990s, when many were not aware of the Internet or considered it a simple instrument of ideological imposition, to the uncritical and excessively enthusiastic positions that mimicked analyses of the web from US authors, Latin American research has advanced a systematic and at times creative approach to Internet studies. This research has principally been carried out through the work of individual scholars, not through institutional efforts.

The interest in these issues has increased, especially in the last decade. Academic studies on the issue, no more than a dozen in 1996 and 1997, have stretched into the hundreds, or even thousands, if one takes into account university theses. Take just one example: at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 1995, two theses were submitted with topics related to the Internet. The following year there were six, and in 1997 there were 22. In total, between 1995 (the first year a thesis on the Internet was submitted) and 1999, there were 122 studies on this topic. Between 2000 and 2004, there were 388 studies; from 2005 to 2009, there were 495.²

The exchange between those interested in these issues continues to be precarious and the specialized forums are few. The Internet has been quickly accepted as a particular topic within Latin American studies of communication, especially in meetings of organizations like the Asociación Latinoamericana de Investigadores de la Comunicación (ALAIC).³ But its recognition as a medium in its own right has been late – in comparison to European and North American countries – in the priorities of research centers and in specialized university communications curricula. What follows is an account, though inevitably fragmentary, of Latin American contributions and investigations in the study of the Internet.

Alejandro Piscitelli: From Cyberculture to Facebook

Few authors in Latin America have undertaken a panoramic review of the cultural effects and social presence of the Internet. Almost all of the studies, especially since 2000, have been focused on specific developments and problems with the production and reception of Internet content. Alejandro Piscitelli, a professor of philosophy at Universidad de Buenos Aires, has been a pioneer in thinking about cyberculture in Latin America.⁴ Piscitelli's own education, which took him from philosophy to systems science, encompasses a variety of perspectives that pertain to the study of the Internet. His classic book, Ciberculturas: En la era de las máquinas inteligentes (Cybercultures: In the Era of Intelligent Machines), was published in 1995 and reissued seven years later (Piscitelli, 2002a) with a number of new annotations and annexes. In that book, Piscitelli insists on several coordinates: technological and cultural changes cannot be understood separately; the interaction between men and machines is making the world increasingly complex and should be studied from an anthropological perspective; hypertext opens new frontiers to the collective construction of sense; and the imbrications between television and computer will displace the book.

Piscitelli has brought a Latin American, but not a regionalist, reading to topics like nanotechnology, hypermedia, virtual spaces, and, of course, the Internet. Two of his books (Piscitelli, 1998, 2001) have analyzed the overlap of conventional mass media like television, which reaches a wide audience, with the Internet, which connects directly to its users, as well as the failed hopes raised by financial speculation of the digital economy. In Meta-Cultura (2002b), Piscitelli elevates the subject of his reflections and asks about the implications new media will have not only on the information that our societies receive, but also on our ways of thinking about and understanding the world. In a rigorous bibliographic exploration, he examines the cognitive transformations that the Internet has enabled and dispersed across diverse terrains: language, technology, culture, knowledge, and communication.

In 2003 and for the following five years, Piscitelli temporarily left the university to get involved in public administration as the head of Educ.ar, the “educational portal for the Argentine nation.” However, he did not stop writing about these topics, and in that time he published works like Internet, la imprenta del siglo XXI (Internet, the Twenty-First Century's Printing Press, 2005), where he discusses the emergence of blogs, the distribution of online content, and the educational uses of the Internet, among other topics. Piscitelli's practice with developing educational content, his teaching work in the Universidad de Buenos Aires, and his passion for the capacity of this new medium to articulate interests, affinities, and people, led him to create “El Proyecto Facebook,” or The Facebook Project (http://www.proyectofacebook.com.ar), with professors and students in the Introduction to Computer Science course in the Social Sciences department. The project involved research into the uses of Facebook, especially in learning. At the same time, it was an experiment in the use of the online social network as a space of exchange and discussion among students and teachers.⁵ In the effort to think with images (“pensar con imágenes”), Piscitelli and his more than 250 colleagues and students made videos, photographs, blogs, and other content in what they called an experience of participative education. The account of that experience (Piscitelli, Adaime, & Binder, 2010) included commentary from other Latin American professors, offering a precise and timely reflection on the abilities of online social networks to be used as a platform for learning, as well as a new way to impart, create, spread, and evaluate knowledge.

In an orthodox and pedagogically rigid environment like the one that still exists in many Latin American universities, Piscitelli's Facebook Project, developed between 2008 and 2010, was an innovative experiment. Piscitelli is one of the few Latin American scholars who has followed the Internet step by step. The continuity in this work, from his initial conceptual reflections in the 1990s to his experimentation with Facebook, has been pioneering in the Latin American research in this field.

The Information Society and the Digital Divide

The Internet's expansion brought critical approaches from the Latin American social sciences. In particular, the cardinal options outlined by Umberto Eco (1964) in his essential book from the mid-1960s – the apocalyptic and the integrated views – found a central place in the scholarly discussion about the web and its social implications. The broad view of the Internet's social and cultural implantation in Latin America was explained, in panoramic takes, by authors like Sánchez (1997) and Flores Olea and Gaspar de Alba (1997). They were the first to recognize the rapidity of Internet development and to claim that this new technological resource could have liberating uses and effects, but only accompanied by adequate public policies. Sánchez (1997) anticipated both the virtues and the limitations of the Internet. He noted that “the Internet unifies knowledge horizontally,” and that it is not the solution to our societies' cultural deficiencies; “nor is it adequate to think that the Internet itself could be the solution to global civil growth, given that the majority of the Internet will be put to quite frivolous use, for entertainment and the like” (p. 61).

Latin American research has focused not only on the Internet as a technology, but also more broadly on the information society as a political, social, and economic formation, starting with discussions about the various implications of the concept. Notably, some scholars considered the notion of an “information society” too panegyrical, while for others it was itself a diagnosis of a growing reality, though one that was not always advantageous as it replicated a number of social inequities. Some scholars maintained that the information society did not amount (at least mechanically) to an entirely new society, nor did it mean the improvement of the whole society. With that analytical frame, Crovi Druetta (2004a) and the authors gathered in her book argue that the information society amounts to more of a global patchwork of change than an entirely unique and distinct era. The key to understanding and advancing information and knowledge expansion, they maintain, is public policy actively developed by Latin American governments. However, this is one of the shortfalls or limitations suffered by Latin American countries. In my early work on the Internet (Trejo Delarbre, 1996), I analyzed such public policies in several regions. More recently, the Peruvian Villanueva (2005) has examined the usefulness of the Internet in public administration. Though less abundant, there are also critical reflections on the realities and very definition of the information society, most notably that of Pasquali (2003) from Venezuela. Pasquali has underlined several paradoxes. “Rather than an information society,” he writes, “ours is, more accurately, a ‘computerized’ civilization, an information-dependent one, to a degree directly proportional to the wealth of a country” (p. 219). Without underestimating the Internet's social and political relevance, Pasquali's work highlights the influence of corporations that are behind the expansion of digital connections and resources.

These studies and others like them offer more of a panoramic perspective than specific views about the information society and its emergence in Latin America. Especially in its early years, scholarly production related to the Internet was dominated by these more global perspectives. The Venezuelans Peña and Martínez (2008) have expressed concern for the scarcity of research that highlights the local:

Beyond the academy (but with its participation), the primary debate on the Internet in Latin America, especially in the final years of the twentieth century, revolved around the disjuncture between investing resources in technological infrastructure while failing to meet other social needs. In reality, the connection-versus-food dilemma so often invoked in these discussions is a false one. If a country or society does not have even the most minimal of comforts, including literacy, electricity, and telephone lines, then it will not have the material support to even introduce the Internet. But we can also recognize that this infrastructure is an indispensable part of development. These issues have been studied by Ricardo Gómez (2000), an Argentinean who resides in Canada, as well as by various multilateral organizations. Gómez remarks that information technologies are neither positives nor negatives, but neither are they neutral. They depend on the shape and direction of the societies in Latin America, where the access to informational resources is unevenly distributed. In spite of the communitarian telecenters, the majority of users constitute an elite group who are interconnected with the global market, with greater access to information, education, and other opportunities. This perspective on the Internet, which views it as an instrument that expands the gap between richest and poorest, was frequent in many diagnoses. However, authors like Gómez went beyond this view to insist on the development of a form of politics capable of creating and guaranteeing the social right to communication.

In an evaluation of the development of the information society in Latin America, presented in early 2003, the Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL, Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean) conceived the new information and communication technologies as

As a regional organization, CEPAL proposed to establish regulatory frames, which included, among other public policy actions, financing programs for connections coverage (especially wireless) and computer equipment with free software, ICT development in public education, special programs for the elderly, coordination between governmental offices in charge of these policies, and regional alliances (by several countries) to acquire hardware at lower prices from the transnational corporations.

In 2003 the Asociación Latinoamericana de Integración (ALADI, Latin American Association for Integration) published an extensive study on the limitations of connectivity in the region. Typically, research and discussion about the digital divide focused on the availability of connections. This study, in addition to the traditional understandings of the digital divide, proposed a methodology that took into account not only the proportion of Internet users, but also telephone coverage, the density of computers per person, and each country's economic situation (ALADI, 2003). The digital divide, according to the study, “describes the difference between countries, sectors and people with access to information implements and tools and the capacity to use them, and, in addition, those who do not have access, regardless of whether they have the capacity.” The study was completed by Rodrigo Diaz (Chile), Oscar A. Messano (Argentina), and Ricardo Petrissans (Uruguay). In addition, Petrissans produced the website “Sociedad Digital” (Digital Society) (www.sociedaddigital.org), which published an abundance of information on Internet public policy.

Latin American scholars have examined another dimension of the digital divide – that is, the question of a gender divide in Internet use. A question revisited over the past 15 years is how women in Latin American countries use the Internet. In a helpful review of former investigations, the Argentinean researcher Bonder (2002) describes the gender gap in access to technologies and suggests new angles for additional studies. Questions include, among others, how to increase women's access and training with ICTs, especially poor women; how to promote equal participation in decisions about the use of communications infrastructure (in both national and international institutions); and how to achieve an equal distribution of cyberspace in international organizations. Coca (2003) studied how the Internet had been used to increase women's political participation in Bolivia, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. Later, Leao, Lapa, and Amoroso (2009) documented the role of new technologies in both spreading stereotypes and denouncing violence against women in Brazil.

As this research suggests, the “digital divide” is a complex, multifaceted problem. Another effort to problematize any straightforward conceptualization of the digital divide is found in González (2008), who challenges whether it can be approached in the same way in every circumstance. González criticizes the overwhelming tendency to focus on the physical lack of connections while ignoring other deficiencies in ICT use. He also questions the practice of leaving it exclusively to governments to develop public policies governing ICTs, arguing for the wider participation of civil society in planning and establishing goals like social empowerment.

Beyond policy-oriented efforts to rationalize and organize information about Internet coverage and its insufficiencies, it is safe to say that in Latin America, save for a few exceptions, the public has little involvement in Internet policy and access remains a critical problem. As Argentinean Professor Del Brutto writes, “the internal public policies of each country are chaotic with respect to the ease with which the public can access the Internet. By chaotic I mean, given the timidity of the State and the expansion of the private sector, the public has little to no intervention” (Del Brutto, 1991). One exception has been Brazil and the publication of its exemplary Sociedade da Informação no Brasil: Livro Verde (Information Society in Brazil: Green Book), a collection of contributions from more than 150 specialists, organized by topic (public administration; business action; cultural content and identity; international cooperation; outreach; education; network infrastructure; regionalization; research and development; planning; and high-performance processing). The report's practical applications are evident in the sections that organize each of its eight chapters: “what it's about,” “where we are,” “where we're going,” and “what to do.” It suggests that the term information society is not just an expression: “It represents a profound shift in the organization of society and the economy; some would consider it a new techno-economic paradigm” (Takahashi, 2000, p. 5).

For the Livro Verde, the information society is also a global phenomenon with political, economic, and social dimensions that are not exempt from risk. In the poorest of the developing countries, the choice between groceries and connectivity is not easy. The states have a major duty to provide infrastructure and training to connect their societies to information networks, but also necessary is the coordination of social efforts. “Since the mid-1990s, countries and political blocks have faced the opportunities and risks associated with the future and, acknowledging the strategic importance of the information society, have then taken steps to ensure that this new era will benefit them” (Takahashi, 2000, p. 5). The Livro Verde proposed actions like legislative measures (for example, to facilitate electronic commerce), expanding Internet coverage to all Brazilians, promoting digital literacy and creating contents online committed to expanding and reinforcing Brazilian arts and culture, connecting computers in all the public libraries, and increasing digital resources like cellular phones and high-definition television across the country.

In January of 1999, Chile produced a similar document titled Chile: Hacia la Sociedad de la Información. Informe al Presidente de la República (Chile: Moving Toward the Information Society. Report to the President of the Republic of Chile) (Comisión Presidencial, 1999). In Central America, the Fundación Acceso (Access Foundation), with the participation of researchers like Kemly Camacho, Juliana Martínez, and Evelyn Zamora, produced useful monographs on the knowledge and diffusion of the Internet, as well as society's appropriation of it.⁶ In the Caribbean, since 1993 the Fundación Funredes (Funredes Foundation) – established in the Dominican Republic and headed by Daniel Pimienta – has done systematic analysis on the social uses of computer networks, as well as a study of the presence of Latin languages on the Internet.

These are just some examples of collaborations between researchers, public institutions, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have aimed to facilitate social access to the Internet. Now, over a decade into the new century, Latin American scholars interested in these issues have enough experience with the Internet to comprehend and compare costly omissions, excessive hopes, and, when they exist, successful policies on the development of the digital communications in this region. Unlike most academic studies about the traditional media that were distant from the public policies in that area – particularly between the 1960s and 1980s – research regarding the Internet and other digital resources has been more involved with public deliberation about these matters – even the critical positions. Most of the scholarly research has been as critical of the indulgent perspective as it has of the apocalyptic approach.

Complicating Internet Access Issues in Latin America

With healthy skepticism, Hopenhayn (2003), established in Chile, warns us not to confuse limited, if successful, Internet access programs with the lack of prospects that continue to define the Internet in Latin American countries:

The diversity of experiences and cadences with which the Internet has developed in Latin America has made it difficult to produce panoramic studies. Three German researchers – Herzog, Hoffman, and Schultz (2002) from the Instituto de Estudios Iberoamericanos (Institute of Iberian Studies, IEI) in Hamburg – made a laudable effort to make several of the first comparative reviews about these issues. In contrast to the availability of statistical information in European countries, Canada, and the United States, there have been persistent difficulties in obtaining hard data about media access and use, including the Internet, in most of the Latin American nations. Nowadays, in spite of the difficulties, we have seen a growth in statistical sources about media use in Latin American countries (international reports, national censuses, marketing research, quantitative case studies, and so on), creating a corpus of data and knowledge.

Contributions like these provide context for the study of more particular issues, such as how citizens use the Internet; the role the Internet plays in the creation, propagation, or dissemination of social and national identities; and the ways in which some social movements have taken advantage of the web. Various methodological frameworks have been employed to understand different ways of using the Internet. In addition to traditional quantitative methods from sociology, ethnographic and other approaches have been adapted from anthropology and other disciplines.⁷ Notably, Rafael Capurro (2000), a Uruguayan professor of computer science in Stuttgart, has emphasized the need for studies that examine the local, cultural dimensions of Internet use:

With the notion of “Internet for all” as a point of departure, various authors have examined experiments in communal uses. On the one hand, they find that social groups and movements employ the Internet to interact with each other, in addition to building a public, sometimes even global, presence that they would not have achieved under other conditions. The imbrication of the Internet with a large variety of social movements – often with opposing ideological leanings – has confirmed the political neutrality of the Internet as well as its capacity to help promote almost any cause. León, Burch, and Tamayo (2001) studied the Internet's ability to be used as an instrument as well as a space for the expression and development of social movements. The Mexican researcher Galindo Cáceres (1997, 2001, 2006) examined the Zapatista Army's use of the Internet, inspiring various other works on this topic (like those of the Spaniards Sierra [1997] and Vázquez Liñán [2004] and the Mexican Rovira [2009]), which seemed to confirm the Internet's radical potential to empower and give voice to even the most marginal social movements.

Another important line of study in the collective use of resources to access and express oneself on the Internet has focused on public access sites, some free and some that charge a fee, which have proliferated in Latin American countries. The financial and sometimes technical difficulties in connecting every home, or the desire for occasional privacy, particularly in the case of young people, have aided the rapid spread of computer centers and Internet cafés throughout the region. Over the past 10 years, studies have focused on the specific uses that benefit or facilitate these Internet access sites, the public policies that replace or complement them, and the users' experiences.

A number of these studies are worthy of note, providing an overall picture of the complicated issues of access that have defined Internet use across Latin America, as a host of actors from local communities to national governments have worked to bring connectivity to the region, with uneven results. Hernández Tapia (2004) compared the Digital Communication Centers created by the Mexican government around 2003 with family-run Internet cafés with better performance and coverage; in both cases, there were opportunities for users to improve their digital skills. Finquelievich and Prince (2007) studied Internet cafés in Argentina and verified the convenience of those places as a replacement for the hardware and connectivity that many people do not have in their homes. Colona (2003) discovered that the users of public Internet booths in Lima give greater credibility to the contents they find on the web than to accredited references. Fuentes Zurita, Yurén, and Elizondo (2008) did a detailed study of the use of Internet cafés in Mexico City and observed how the young people built their identities around the moments that they stayed in those places. Ways of communicating among themselves, and the peculiar expressions and iconic symbols that they use, are cultivated in the Internet café. Gonzalo Vega (2005) examined the Venezuelan government's plan to set up computer centers (infocentros) and found that, while the program made the social inclusion of its users easier, it did not stimulate their technological literacy. In the search for a desirable public policy in this area, Robinson (2007) had severe criticism for “e-Mexico,” the governmental program for Internet expansion, and proposed the creation of community centers with digital technology access (centros comunitarios digitales). What has seemed to emerge from these studies is an emphasis on the importance of the private enterprises (usually small parlors) that complement state action in the expansion of connectivity in Latin American countries.

Youth Cybercultures, Citizenship, and Urban Environments

Constant connection to digital devices influences almost all orders of contemporary life, but in Latin America there has been particular interest in understanding how digital media are both transforming and responding to changes in youth culture, citizenship, and urban environments. Latin American approaches to this new world have moved from a general initial look, often inflected with astonishment, to more astute observations made after over a decade of experience and research. With its integrated highways, avenues, and paths, the Internet itself has a reticular structure that can be compared to a major city. Its arteries run parallel or across each other, following the linked hypertexts that connect them. The same happens with Internet users. One can traverse the Internet with others, in search of others, or alone. This points to a deep ambivalence, common among commentators in Latin America, about the role of digital media in changing forms of youth culture, citizenship, and urban life. This ambivalence likewise is encapsulated in the words of Argentine researcher Diego Levis (2009), who has studied the effects of computers, televisions, cell phones, and other devices on people's relationships with media content and with one another: “we use technology to give us a better life in a better world. We must not allow the Internet to trap and immobilize us” (p. 278).

The interest in how young people approach and incorporate new technologies has generated very detailed studies with methodologies ranging from testimonials to participant observation, and from statistically representative surveys to in-depth ethnographies. Studies of the use of the Internet for educational purposes appear in a number of primarily technical works. From the pedagogical perspective, there are hundreds of reports and studies about the Internet in schools, as well as a vehicle for distance learning. In several countries, the learning capacities of the web have been harnessed more in private schools and universities than in the public education systems or by the public universities (which are the major educational institutions in Latin America). Among the conceptual reflections in this area, the Chilean Brunner's (2003) essay stands out for its critical focus on the Internet as an educational tool (underlining the errors but also the responsibilities of governments). The use of computers and the Internet in public libraries in Mexico was the subject of an extensive national survey, and then a book, by Santos and De Gortari (2009). The librarians appear in that research as the main enablers of the use of computers and the Internet, in addition to their traditional work as information archivists. However, it is very difficult for them to accomplish the task of enabling computer and Internet adoption because many of them have been trained in an analogical environment (a situation that is of course changing, albeit unevenly). The didactic use of computers by young people has also been the subject of both political and commercial projects. One Laptop per Child, for example, which has brought together diverse businesses and digital technology promoters, has been implemented in Uruguay.⁸ Undoubtedly, it is important that each child have his or her own laptop. But the hardware is insufficient without proper software, appropriate training for students and teachers, and adjustments in the educational system. The Uruguayan case is the first Latin American experience in massive distribution of computers to children and young people, and deserves more attention.

Another vital issue that researchers in Latin America have raised concerns the implications of young people's use of the Internet for digital labor practices, and the blurring line between leisure and work apparent in young people's uses of digital media. In one study, the Mexicans Crovi and Girardo (2001) examined how young people use the Internet, paying particular attention to the question of labor, or how young people learn to do digital work. The ability to use digital technologies is a competitive advantage for young people, they argue, but the way these technologies facilitate “telework” and “piecework” can easily translate into reduced labor rights in their transition to workers in a digital economy. In Peru, Quiroz (2004, 2008) examined the Internet as an aspect of youth media consumption, studying its use in both schools and public settings. He found that computer users felt greater freedom and developed new socialization skills, with more friends online and different ways to construct and express their identities. Of course, it is important to note that young people's use of the Internet in the home, as in schools and public places, has presented new challenges for both teachers and parents. Generational differences can be acute: while for parents the Internet is often associated with knowledge and intelligence, for young people it represents a new space for social life and leisure.

The use of the Internet, including image sharing and other multimedia forms, is now a part of the practices of identity formation for younger generations, at least among those with access. Contributors to Urresti's (2008) edited collection identified the characteristics of a slightly nebulous but engaged youth cyberculture in Argentina, for example. These researchers focused on a range of activities of Argentine youth, including their multitasking abilities, encounters with Messenger and other chat functions (which do not replace face-to-face relations), and the social contexts in which they learn to use computers and the Internet – namely, with their classmates or friends but not with their parents. As the research compiled in Urresti's collection shows, the Internet has become a propitious place for the formation of personal and collective singularities, even “urban tribes.”

Young people's use of digital media is deeply tied to the role of digital media in changing conceptions and practices of citizenship in Latin America. The Internet's capacity to create relations among people, groups, and institutions has made it essential to the construction of citizenship, understood as the ability of citizens to exercise their rights in an informed and participatory way. This has been the focus of investigators like Lozada (2004) and Martípnez (2004) from Universidad Central de Venezuela and Universidad del Zulía, in Venezuela. The Quito headquarters of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) has also supported various investigations on the use of the Internet in fostering practices of citizenship, as well as in specific aspects of public management (Cerbino & Richero, 2006), and on the social appropriation of new technologies in Ecuador, Chile, and Peru (Albornoz, Benalcázar, Rodríguez, & Paz, 2006; Albornoz, Cabrera, Palacios, Ramírez, & Villafuerte, 2007). In Brazil, Krohling Peruzzo (2005) has reflected on the contrast between utopias and social rights in efforts to build forms of democratic communication on the Internet.

Argentine professor Susana Finquelievich (Finquelievich, 2000; Finquelievich & Schiavo, 1998) has been particularly dedicated to studying the intersections between the Internet, citizenship, and the urban environment. “We have evolved from networks of citizens into cities, and from there to a world that is not smaller, but inextricably complex, in which local actions have global repercussions and vice versa” (Finquelievich, 2000, p. 18).⁹ The critical and policy-oriented perspectives of the authors that Finquelievich collects in her substantial edited volumes imbricate digital networks with public administration. But instead of e-government – that is, the use of digital resources in government operations and in its relation with the citizens–they are concerned with electronic governability (understood as the political efficiency of the government).¹⁰ In addition to studying the Internet in large metropolises, they present proposals to develop social participation, working from the Internet, in small municipalities. From the perspective of cyberculture studies, André Lemos (2004) has observed that in Brazil “cybercities are now considered as a way to reestablish public space, synergize diverse collective knowledge, and reinforce community ties” (p. 22).

Cyber-Journalism and Blogging

An innovation and a challenge, cyber-journalism has been a recurring subject for researchers in Latin America, like the Mexicans Islas (2002) and Navarro (2002), particularly in light of the interest that it has begun to generate in communication schools. Islas and Gutiérrez (2000) examined how the web serves as host to conventional media. These researchers head the Internet project, Proyecto Internet, on the Mexico campus of the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, where they edit the e-magazine Razón y Palabra¹¹ and are part of the ALAIC working group on the Internet and the Information Society. Crovi Druetta (2004b), and the authors that she gathered, discuss the role of the media in the context of the information society. As contrasted with the traditional media, which are subject to corporate priorities, the Internet has promised to offer the means for a new diversity of expression, although access difficulties have constrained those possibilities only to connected citizens.

As university communications departments started recognizing the explosion of the Internet onto the media landscape, studies developed for teaching purposes, but also in the professional field, examining the implications of the Internet for both journalism and entertainment. There are dozens of monographs and theses about online journalism, but comparative studies are still scarce. One of the most important studies was carried out by an Argentinean researcher living in Madrid, Luis Albornoz (2007), who did a comparison of the main online Ibero-American daily newspapers. Among other characteristics, he found a strong presence of brief news compared to other kinds of journalism, an abundance of advertising, more text than multimedia pieces, weak participation on the part of readers, and an increasing presence of creative professionals (journalists, photographers, and designers specializing in digital media).

Studies on the unique aspects of the Internet as a space of communication and interaction in comparison with conventional media are also growing. One pioneer in this field is Raisa Urribarri (1999), a professor at the Universidad de Los Andes in Trujillo, Venezuela, who applied Latin American communication theory to speculate on the participatory uses of the Internet. Later studies asked to what degree the Internet is displacing conventional mass media, or even whether attributes like interactivity and the personalization of content are leading to the end of mass media or journalism. This is the very question that contributors take up in Carlón and Scolari (2009): while some authors defend the prevalence of the printed book, others describe the new grammar in television brought about by digitization and the contrast created by online audiovisual formats like YouTube. Rather than conclusive assertions, approaches to new media are providing descriptions and conjectures about the next media landscape.

The rise, ease of use, and content of blogs are also of interest to Latin American Internet researchers, especially in their open-diary nature and the implications for journalism. One of the most comprehensive publications in this area was compiled by the Brazilians Amaral, Recuero, and Portella Montardo (2009). After a brief history of blogs, the authors suggest a method to study blogging that takes into account readers' participation. Appraising several Brazilian blogs, they saw these spaces as new mechanisms of political representation and, in other cases, as a new kind of journalism. In addition, the Federación Latinoamericana de Facultades de Comunicación Social (FELAFACS, 2008) dedicated an issue of its magazine to discussing the global and local dimensions of the blogosphere.

Affect and Collective Intelligence

In Latin America, the Internet has become a medium for new cultural manifestations and a site for the formation of social relationships that do not necessarily exist offline. Latin American scholars have examined these emerging cultural forms and relationships from different perspectives. To Piscitelli's work discussed above we can add the conclusions of another Argentinean, Romano (2000), who sees virtual communities as “new artificial psychological masses” (p. 6). To the degree that digital technologies are increasingly woven into our daily lives, they are both the forum and the vehicle for the exposition of public issues, as well as for topics and practices that in the past were confined to more private realms of individual consciousness. Internet researchers in Latin America have given some attention to the forms of interconnection between Internet use and the mental and affective lives of its individual users, as well as the new forms of collective consciousness, or “collective intelligence,” that the new medium seems to facilitate.

The fields of psychology and psychoanalysis are logical places for these lines of inquiry. From the camp of psychology, but free of disciplinary fundamentalism, the Uruguayan Balaguer Prestes (2003) took up an examination of the cultural implications of the Internet in the broadest meaning of the term. “The Internet is a new psychosocial space that each cybernaut can live in according to his desires, possibilities, and limitations,” he argues (p. 11). Subsequently, Balaguer Prestes (2005) analyzed subjects like Internet addiction, digital interfaces and young people, psychoanalysis and new technology, and postmodern conceptions of the body. The intertwining of exhibitionism and prudence, the exposing of private affairs that has turned into both a business and a social phenomenon, and the way that diverse expressions of individualities are multiplied on the Internet, are key issues discussed by the Brazilian professor Paula Sibilia (2008) in an intelligent book that incorporates psychoanalysis, literature, and social sciences. To her, intimacy has become spectacle, and that mutation means deep transformations in social relations and forms of subjectivity and self-conception. Affective relations in spaces like chat rooms, and the tensions between eroticism and censure, are discussed without preconceptions by Sánchez (2001). The possibilities of new technologies to open up the senses to unconventional perceptions are studied by Yehya (2001), who also includes an analysis of cyborgs and robots, and Gómez Cruz (2003), who discusses the relationship between cybersex and virtual communities.

The work of André Lemos and Pierre Lévy, independently and together, develops the notion of collective intelligence based on social and political participation through the Internet. For many years, André Lemos, along with Marcos Palacios, headed the Centro Internacional de Estudos e Pesquisa em Cibercultura (Center for the Study and Research of Cyberculture) in the Communications Department at the Universidad Federal de Baháa, in Brazil. Three working groups – on cybercities, online journalism, and Internet and politics – as well as the e-magazine 404nOtF0und, formed part of this academic collective. Later Lemos, in addition to maintaining an interest in topics related to the Internet city, dedicated himself to studying the cultural, aesthetic, and ethical implications of the Internet as well as cell phones and other digital technology. In 2010, he and Pierre Lévy published a declaration in favor of cyberdemocracy, which they argue could involve a new form of the state headed by collective and reticular intelligence (Lemos & Lévy, 2010).¹²

In the preceding pages I have presented an inventory, structured around a half-dozen topic areas, of Latin American research on the Internet: (1) the groundbreaking work of Alejandro Piscitelli and his Facebook Project; (2) the studies of the information society and the “digital divide”; (3) public access sites, communal uses, and the more complicated issues of digital access in Latin America; (4) youth cyber-cultures, citizenship, and urban environments; (5) online journalism and blogging; and, finally, (6) affect and collective intelligence. I now turn to a brief reflection on the possible future of Latin American studies of the Internet and digital media.

Analog Researchers, Retrained for the Digital World

Many of us who currently study the Internet have made the switch from the old analog world to the new digital context. Those of us of particular generations have already had years of experience doing academic work in predigital conditions, when the information society exploded into our lives and work. We have been, in Prensky's (2001) terms, digital migrants in at least three aspects. In just a few years, our daily personal lives have changed with the use of new technology. Additionally, part of the way we organize and carry out our work, and potentially our analytical and research routines, have changed thanks to the computer and the availability of information online. Finally, we have also shifted our topics of study to dedicate ourselves to these new technologies. In addition to thinking about the Internet, we continue to focus on some of our old subjects (conventional media, for example), and we are constantly thinking about the contrast between the vitality, so intense that sometimes it becomes hypnotic, with which new media develop and change, and the traditional media's more familiar and predictable routines.

The Internet and new media formats and technology interfaces are constantly changing. They are media in a process of evolving. In contrast, conventional media only go through minor modifications, while their format, rhetoric, and the very logic through which they communicate messages remain the same. If we were in Jurassic Park, we could say that the old media (television, print, radio, cinema) are like the lumbering diplodocus, while new media are more like a velociraptor. It is impossible not to pay attention to the former because we are used to them and they are an integral part of our daily perspective. However, we are not only in the presence of a reconfiguration of the old media but also facing new languages, structures, layouts, and contents in the digital environment. The mass media communication schema, based on one transmitter and many receivers, has experienced a radical change with the interactive and production capabilities of the Internet.

New media displace the previous media – and us – from one format to another, from one capacity to another. Following the steps of these new media to try to understand their internal logic and their consequences for society has required media scholars to adapt existing quantitative and qualitative methodologies and computer skills. This task also requires extreme patience, above all when we have to deal with outdated hardware or computer programs that do not always work the way they should, or when we have difficult or slow connections that turn the information superhighway into a dusty and sinuous country road.

There is not much time before we digital migrants, who in our academic lives have traveled from the analog world to the new context of computer networks, are displaced by younger researchers who since birth have been familiar with computers, modems, software, and, most of all, the possibility to download information on any subject or archive. The future of research will be in the hands of digital natives who do not marvel at the brilliant constellation of content and connections, because they have always lived with it. These researchers will not suffer the difficult and, for some, unending initiation that migrants from the old order had to experience. The technological update is an exigency for all of us but it is easier and more natural for those who have been educated in the digital context. However, it may be that they lack one essential thing that those of us who have experienced this transition still have: the element of surprise, which has allowed us to identify different characteristics of the uses and effects of digital technology.

Many of our investigations have concentrated on identifying new elements in the interactive, reticular, and creative capacities that these digital resources offer, because we naturally contrast them with the old analog resources. One of the threads of investigation on the Internet and new media during the last 15 years has been the contrast between what is now possible and what was no more than a dream before. Academic concerns about the digital divide, questions about where journalism or electronic government are heading, the variety of expressions of cyberculture, or the digital façades that education or socialization are acquiring are always defined in comparison with what existed before in these areas. Younger investigators will not have this perspective, so it may be more difficult for them to gain insights from those comparisons. They will be familiar with the analog world in which they continue to do some work, but it will be displaced by the presence of digital information and links in the most common of tasks, and perhaps seen as a historical curiosity. And the new generations may not have the same ability to be moved (or alarmed) by technological innovations, because, for them, they will be a natural part of the cultural and social environment.

These new researchers will cultivate a field that has been tilled by the first academics interested in these topics. Perhaps by then the study of the Internet and digital media will have acquired enough legitimacy and authority to be considered an essential part of the knowledge work of universities. At the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, in almost all of Latin America the study of this topic has developed through the individual desire and efforts of a few investigators. In our universities there is still not enough interest to compel academic groups to prioritize the research and teaching on the Internet and new technologies.¹³ The majority of those who have written and thought about these topics had to steal hours from class preparation and other activities. Many other colleagues, in addition to meeting their academic responsibilities, have to supplement their university salaries by consulting, offering courses in private institutions, or becoming entrepreneurs by promoting their own conferences. Surely as they are kept up and extended, studies on the Internet and various characteristics of cyberculture will find a place in the institution that allows them to expand and solidify as an academic discipline.

A researcher's object of investigation often influences his or her methods and routines. Academics' use of computer networks submerges them in an ocean of new communicative practices. Email, digital file sharing, and Internet teleconferences facilitate the frequent interaction with colleagues with whom we would otherwise only have contact at specialized meetings. Chatting, blogs, and wikis bring about the collectivization of knowledge and sometimes result in collaborative research. I am not proposing that all academic knowledge of the Internet and cyberculture be developed collectively. I do not share the sanctification of group work that is now in fashion, as if individual reflection and work should be definitively displaced in favor of group investigation and conclusions. But, however it is done, today research takes place in a world of varied and vast exchange in spaces connected via the Internet. Some authors argue that given “the cybercultural dimension of knowledge,” today “we are moving towards another culture of investigation, towards another way of understanding and carrying out investigation, the social-collective construction of knowledge based on new cultures of information and communication” (Galindo Cáceres, 2006, p. 219). It is difficult to say that all the old ways to gain knowledge and especially to produce knowledge (among others, individual research) have been displaced by new and always collaborative routines. But, undoubtedly, the digital environment generates new options – and exigencies – to discuss, exchange, and spread up-to-date academic work.

We are fortunate to be witnessing these changes. But the technologies of the information society have developed so quickly that we have not had enough time or distance to evaluate them. Perhaps now is the time to set a new pace and think more profoundly and extensively about new media, instead of overwhelming ourselves trying to keep up with every new technological invention. We no longer have, nor should we have, the need to constantly innovate, as if we could simultaneously follow every one of the technological changes that multiply in various devices, formats, programs, and experiences. Recalling the demands of flexibility and creativity that fueled the so-called new economy, Gómez Cruz purposefully singles out academic research:

For investigators of the media, the Internet is a topic of study, an instrument of exchange, a crucible of links, an alibi for surfers, and also, among many other things, a scene where cohesion and regional identities are constructed. If we make the effort to avoid – without ignoring – the temptations of the market and thus privilege critical analysis, we will be able to find greater social utility for our investigations.

Topics in this line of research over the coming years will be increasingly specific and will move from amazement to proposal design and even public demand to understand the effects and results of new digital technology. As one of the conclusions in a collection on communications research agendas needed in Latin America highlights:

This defining of research priorities does not mean we should not recognize the value of technological innovation. But we cannot be overly concerned with new gadgets when, as is the case in the majority of Latin America, there are not even public policies for the development of connectivity, and where broadband is the privilege of exclusive sectors in limited urban areas.

The more that it develops and diversifies, Latin American research on these topics will consolidate its own voices and characteristics. Although it is difficult to think of specific regional trends because, as I noted at the beginning of this chapter, we find ourselves in a field of study that is global by definition, we can take the trends and methodologies that researchers from other areas propose and adapt them to our own needs. To understand the Internet in each region or country it is important to take each site's contexts, uses, and conditions into account. The editors of a 2009 book on studies of the Internet in different regions and countries rightly explain:

These authors highlight the need to identify paradigms for the study of the Internet beyond investigations in Anglophone countries, and their work provides a panoramic perspective through scores of regions and topics. Nevertheless, their book does not include a chapter on research in Latin America or in the Spanish language, suggesting that the region and its scholars are still underrepresented in the dominant paradigm of Internet research.

Although they do not make up a school with its own theoretical models, Latin American researchers can identify common focuses and preoccupations to define lines and priorities of study in a broader context. The Colombian professor Omar Rincón (2009) has enumerated some points of affinity between those interested in social communication in Latin America, be they researchers or protagonists.

These Latin American qualities undoubtedly influence our approaches to the Internet. After 15 years of research on the web, we have ample knowledge, with descriptions and interpretations like those that have fed this chapter's bibliography. Now is the moment to take these and many other studies that proliferate in our universities and to analyze them from a perspective that is at once Latin American and global.

It is time to think about the Internet in terms of its contexts and deficiencies, as well as its possibilities for our countries. It is time that we do more than just bear witness to the technologically prodigious, though socially meager, present that digital information technology is creating at this moment. We have to think about the meaning of the changes that these technologies bring about, and not only in the sense of reviewing or taking inventory of the innovations. We need to generate more theory and fewer monographs, even if in the academic market conceptual reflection is not as attractive as enthusiastic description. In addition to witnessing, we have to understand the vast implications of the Internet, and for that we must understand the people who use, enjoy, suffer, and lack access to it.

NOTES

1 Piscitelli (1995) explores the world of intelligent machines, nanotechnology, and virtual spaces among other expressions of a new cyberculture; Trejo Delarbre (1996, 2006) seeks for features and problems in the information society and the lack of public policies in this region; Sánchez (1997) illustrates languages, politics, and socialization innovations in the virtual context; Finquelievich and Schiavo (1998) think about the urban spaces reenginered by telematic networks.

2 These are theses at all university levels (doctorate, masters, and bachelors) in all of the UNAM departments, be it basic science or engineering or social sciences and the humanities. The numbers per annum are as follows: 1995, 2; 1996, 6; 1997, 22; 1998, 51; 1999, 41; 2000, 66; 2001, 109; 2002, 51; 2003, 73; 2004, 89; 2005, 82; 2006, 168; 2007, 126; 2008, 60; 2009, 59. For all 15 years, a total of 1,005 theses focused on the Internet or related subjects. Investigation done with information from TESIUNAM (2010).

3 ALAIC (http://www.alaic.net) was founded in 1978. Currently, one of its 22 working groups is dedicated to the topic “The Internet, the Information Society, and Cyberculture” (“Internet y Sociedad de la Informatión y Cibercultura”).

4 “Cyberculture” studies should be distinguished from more sociological approaches to studying the Internet. Lemos (2003) provides a useful definition of the term cyberculture, which he understands as “a socio-cultural form that has emerged from the symbiotic relationship between society, culture and new micro-electronic supported technologies that sprung from the convergence of telecommunications and computer science in the 1970s” (p. 11).

5 Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have been studied by other Latin American scholars as well, including those who study media and those who, from a sociological or anthropological perspective, take note of the development of new forms of exchange and socialization. Islas (2007) details the turn that active users, or in mainstream terminology “prosumers,” have made from the consumption to production of online content. Yet another approach considers a new stage in Internet development, in which user participation establishes new forms of interaction. That phase, commonly known as “Web 2.0,” is examined in Cobo Romarn and Pardo Kuklinski (2007).

6 See the Fundación Acceso website at http://www.acceso.or.cr/. In Latin American scholarly and political discussion, the expression “social appropriation” is frequently used to designate a broad variety of teachings, uses, and benefits provided to people by information and communication technologies. “Social appropriation means resolving concrete problems of everyday life with the help of ICTs” (Martípnez & Fundación Acceso, 2001). In a broader sense: “The social appropriation of ICTs for development can be demonstrated in a number of ways, such as: by offering better medical information to patients, improving the quality of education through the use of innovative teaching resources; introducing varied, relevant programming into community radio broadcasting; increasing sales of local products in the marketplace; disseminating the results of local research; and coordinating action among diverse groups with common goals” (Gómez & Martipnez, 2001).

7 Examples of qualitative approaches to understanding Internet users are collected in Bonilla and Cliché (2001). There we can also find the fundamental analysis of Cabrera Paz (2001), from Colombia, on how students appropriate the Internet. In addition, based on extensive interviews, Winocur (2009) has examined the explosion of digital technologies – the Internet, computers, cellular phones – in the daily lives of young people, stay-at-home moms, migrants, and other sectors of the population. According to Winocur, “those who are lonely are no longer those who don't have anyone around, but those who are disconnected” (p. 157).

8 A study previous to this case can be found in Balaguer Prestes (2009).

9 Finquelievich has also specialized in analyzing the experiences of local development with digital resources (see Finquelievich, 2005).

10 Governability is a concept developed in political science. A Latin American expert explains: “we understand by governability a dynamic equilibrium state between the level of societal demands and the capacity of the political system to respond to them in a legitimate and effective way” (Camou, 2000, p. 283).

11 The website for Razón y Palabra can be found at http://www.razonypalabra.org.mx/

12 This argument updated a book that Lévy, a French philosopher, had published earlier (Lévy, 2004).

13 Some exceptions are André Lemos's team in Baháa and, although it is organized around a single department and is not a research project, Alejandro Piscitelli's work in Buenos Aires.

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