Social Media in Emergent Brazil

Since the popularisation of the internet, low-income Brazilians have received little government support to help them access it. In response, they have largely self-financed their digital migration. Internet cafés became prosperous businesses in working-class neighbourhoods and rural settlements, and, more recently, families have aspired to buy their own home computer with hire purchase agreements. As low-income Brazilians began to access popular social media sites in the mid-2000s, affluent Brazilians ridiculed their limited technological skills, different tastes and poor schooling, but this did not deter them from expanding their online presence. Young people created profiles for barely literate older relatives and taught them to navigate platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Based on 15 months of ethnographic research, this book aims to understand why low-income Brazilians have invested so much of their time and money in learning about social media. Juliano Spyer explores this question from a number of perspectives, including education, relationships, work and politics. He argues that social media is the way for low-income Brazilians to stay connected to the family and friends they see in person on a regular basis, which suggests that social media serves a crucial function in strengthening traditional social relation

Social Media in Emergent Brazil

Since the popularisation of the internet, low-income Brazilians have received little government support to help them access it. In response, they have largely self-financed their digital migration. Internet cafés became prosperous businesses in working-class neighbourhoods and rural settlements, and, more recently, families have aspired to buy their own home computer with hire purchase agreements. As low-income Brazilians began to access popular social media sites in the mid-2000s, affluent Brazilians ridiculed their limited technological skills, different tastes and poor schooling, but this did not deter them from expanding their online presence. Young people created profiles for barely literate older relatives and taught them to navigate platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Based on 15 months of ethnographic research, this book aims to understand why low-income Brazilians have invested so much of their time and money in learning about social media. Juliano Spyer explores this question from a number of perspectives, including education, relationships, work and politics. He argues that social media is the way for low-income Brazilians to stay connected to the family and friends they see in person on a regular basis, which suggests that social media serves a crucial function in strengthening traditional social relation

Social Media and Social Change in a Bahian Working Class Settlement

This thesis results from fifteen months of fieldwork in a working-class settlement located near an international touristic region within Bahia in the Northeast of Brazil. It addresses two main objectives: to offer an ethnographically-based description of the use of social media by working class Brazilians, and to examine the consequences of this use in relation to social change. The main theoretical framework I use comes from the field of linguistic anthropology. I examine locally traditional forms of communication that the anthropological literature calls ‘indirection’, a form of opaque speech that creates private spaces of interaction in situations of dense sociality. Indirection has been studied in postcolonial contexts as a means to protect socially vulnerable subaltern from everyday situations of conflict. The thesis moves from face-to-face uses of indirection to examine digital media enabling new possibilities for opaque communication. I also draw from this and other literature (analysing visual postings online) to posit that ‘private’ and ‘public’ are problematic notions to describe how my informants understand and use social media, so I propose as alternative the ethnographically-based notions of ‘lights’ on and ‘lights off’. Locals use the term ‘addiction’ to express the fascination they have for Facebook and WhatsApp, but while the Internet seems to symbolise modernity and prosperity, social media is used mainly for hidden acts of communication such as spreading rumours, gossiping, and for spying on each other. This suggests that, while appearing to be transformative, social media also reinforces forms of relations common in dense sociality such as the use of social control mechanisms. As such I posit that social media also serves the purpose of resisting changes associated with the expansion of formal work, the increasing presence of the state and the growing influence of Protestant Evangelical churches in low-income localities

How the World Changed Social Media

How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of nine anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and exploring the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet? Supported by an introduction to the project’s academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences.published_or_final_versio

दुनिया ने जैसे सामाजिक मीडिया को बदल दिया

दुनिया ने जैसे सामाजिक मीडिया को बदल दिया, हम क्यों पोस्ट करते हैं ग्रन्थ श्रृंखला का पहला ग्रन्थ है जो उन नौ मानवविज्ञानियों के निष्कर्षों पर जाँच करता है जिन्होंने दुनिया भर के समूहों में १५ महीने तक बिताया जिसमे शामिल है ब्राज़ील, चिली, चीन, इंग्लैंड, भारत, इटली, ट्रिनिडाड और टर्की. यह ग्रन्थ एक तुलनात्मक विश्लेषण को प्रदान करता है जो अनुसंधान के परिणाम को संक्षेप में प्रस्तुत करता है और राजनीति और लिंग, शिक्षा और व्यापार पर सामाजिक मीडिया के प्रभाव का पता लगाता है. दृश्य संचार पर बढ़ते हुए ज़ोर का परिणाम क्या है? क्या हम अधिक व्यक्तिगत या सामाजिक बनते हैं? क्यों सार्वजनिक सामाजिक मीडिया अधिक रूढ़िवादी होता है? क्यों ऑनलाइन समानता ऑफलाइन असमानता को बदलने में असफल होता है? कैसे मिमी इंटरनेट के नैतिक पुलिस बन गए? परियोजना के शैक्षिक ढाँचा और सैद्धांतिक शर्तों, जो निष्कर्षों के उत्तरदायी होने में मदद करते हैं, के परिचय से समर्थित होकर यह ग्रन्थ तर्क करता है कि सामाजिक मीडिया जैसे अन्तरंग और सर्वव्यापक वास्तु को समझने और मूल्यांकन करने का एक ही रास्ता पोस्ट करनेवाले लोगों के जीवन में तल्लीन होकर रहना है. तभी हम पता लगा सकते हैं कि दुनिया भर के लोगों ने जैसे सामाजिक मीडिया को अभी तक अप्रत्याशित तरीकों से बदल दिया हैं और उनके परिणाम पर आकलन कर सकते हैं

உலகம் சமூக ஊடகங்களை எப்படி மாற்றியிருக்கிறது How the world changed social media (Tamil)

How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and explores the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we becoming more individual or more social? Why is public social media so conservative? Why does equality online fail to shift inequality offline? How did memes become the moral police of the internet? Supported by an introduction to the project’s academic framework and theoretical terms that help to account for the findings, the book argues that the only way to appreciate and understand something as intimate and ubiquitous as social media is to be immersed in the lives of the people who post. Only then can we discover how people all around the world have already transformed social media in such unexpected ways and assess the consequences