"[...] in 2011, a group of more than 100 Havana residents decided to unify their hyperlocal networks into a larger structure. The Havana “street network” (or SNET) would soon become one of the largest such community networks in the world. At its peak, user estimates hovered around 100,000 IP add
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resses. Isolated from the internet and beyond the government’s control, young Cubans set their own terms on forums, social media platforms, and local websites. During the network’s decade-long golden era, it offered a rare example of citizen and community exchange in a country where the state carefully controls communication, until the state finally took it over. To many users, SNET’s amateur, volunteer intranet provided a better service than the network the Cuban government ultimately replaced it with [...]" (https://restofworld.org)
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"This article examines, with ethnographic lenses, the emergence of shared networks in the Tseltal and Zapoteco communities in Chiapas and Oaxaca (Mexico). ‘Shared networks’ are first-mile signal-sharing practices that articulate interconnection infrastructure and values of coexistence to, in the
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cases studied, extend the internet to areas where the services of existing larger internet service providers are unsatisfactory or unavailable. It argues that by infrastructuring their own local networks and interconnecting to the global internet, Tseltal and Zapoteco people are effectively internet codesigners, building Latin-Centric Indigenous networks and shaping internet governance from below. When comunalidad values, supported by unlicensed frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, towers, radio antennas, houses’ rooftops, routers, and cables, intersect with the values of the internet service providers and their policies, hybrids emerge. Shared networks are a result of what these hybrids enact and constrain, as well as evidence of the vivid struggles for a more inclusive and pluriversal internet." (Abstract)
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"Digital literacy research and practice typically presume certain conditions, such as an urban orientation and adequate, affordable access to connectivity and devices. But these conditions are not universal; for example, people in small, rural/remote Indigenous communities may seek to balance connec
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tivity challenges and digital innovations with land-based living specific to place and community. Drawing on efforts to broaden critical digital literacies to support Indigenous sovereignty, we consider how overlapping contexts of places, communities, and infrastructures intersect in the cocreation of appropriate digital literacy. Specifically, we discuss a series of virtually facilitated, participatory workshops that utilize “hacker literacies” and “infrastructure literacy” to reimagine connectivity infrastructure and demonstrate the potential of community networking in, with, and by rural/remote Indigenous communities. We also reflect on limitations of this work and identify lessons for future projects." (Abstract)
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"The digital divide is not a problem the market alone will solve. We need to do things differently. Globally there is a growing movement of community connectivity providers — including community networks, municipal networks, cooperatives, and social enterprises — connecting underserved communiti
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es, often at faster speeds and lower prices than incumbent providers. These are the networks we need to promote, support, and invest in. Yet, almost all of them struggle to access capital. This is a nascent movement and the financial tools and capital stacks have not yet matured to meet the needs of these networks and the communities they serve. We now need to cultivate the financial infrastructure that will allow community connectivity providers to grow and scale. This report is designed to provide a foundation of understanding about what these providers look like, their various ownership and operating models, and how they can be financed sustainably. It is a practical tool for those who want to build networks and for funders and investors. The report’s 10 case studies show where and how community connectivity providers are already getting the job done and demonstrate how underserved communities can build their own internet infrastructure and take control of their digital futures. We hope this report will help more communities to achieve digital equity, catalyze more funding for community connectivity providers, and accelerate access to the internet and digital tools so that everyone can fully participate in our digitalizing world." (Foreword)
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"David Nemer draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork to provide a rich account of how favela residents engage with technology in community technology centers and in their everyday lives. Their stories reveal the structural violence of the information age. But they also show how those oppressed by
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technology don't just reject it, but consciously resist and appropriate it, and how their experiences with digital technologies enable them to navigate both digital and nondigital sources of oppression—and even, at times, to flourish. Nemer uses a decolonial and intersectional framework called Mundane Technology as an analytical tool to understand how digital technologies can simultaneously be sites of oppression and tools in the fight for freedom. Building on the work of the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, he shows how the favela residents appropriate everyday technologies—technological artifacts (cell phones, Facebook), operations (repair), and spaces (Telecenters and Lan Houses)—and use them to alleviate the oppression in their everyday lives. He also addresses the relationship of misinformation to radicalization and the rise of the new far right. Contrary to the simplistic techno-optimistic belief that technology will save the poor, even with access to technology these marginalized people face numerous sources of oppression, including technological biases, racism, classism, sexism, and censorship. Yet the spirit, love, community, resilience, and resistance of favela residents make possible their pursuit of freedom." (Publisher description)
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"Fernanda R. Rosa explores the Indigenous networks, principles, and practices of internet infrastructure building and sharing in Tseltal and Zapoteco sovereign territories in Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico. More specifically, she uses the concept of shared networks to examine “the first mile signal-sh
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aring practices” (page 8) among these underserved Indigenous communities and highlight their active participation in designing their own first mile infrastructure as “internet codesigners” (page 8). The paper draws on extensive fieldwork that Rosa conducted in 2017 among different institutions and actors in Chiapas and Oaxaca - two states with the lowest Internet connectivity rates in Mexico - and illuminates it is the local community members, rather than the big internet service providers (ISP), that truly drive the first mile internet connection." (https://www.asc.upenn.edu)
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"Este trabajo de investigación examina el surgimiento de las redes compartidas en comunidades tseltales y zapotecas de Chiapas y Oaxaca (México): la primera milla de señal de internet compartido que articulan la infraestructura de interconexión y los valores de convivencia para extender el inter
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net a zonas donde los servicios de los grandes proveedores de internet existentes no son satisfactorios o no están disponibles. En los estudios de caso analizados, los pueblos indígenas se convierten en co-diseñadores de internet al crear la infraestructura de sus propias redes locales e interconectarse con el internet global. Este documento sostiene que se materializa un híbrido a nivel de la interconexión de redes cuando la comunalidad o la forma de estas comunidades, apoyada en frecuencias sin licencia del espectro electromagnético, torres, antenas de radio, tejados de casas, routers y cables, se une a los valores de los proveedores de servicios de internet y a sus políticas. Las redes compartidas son el resultado de lo que estos arreglos establecen y limitan así como la evidencia de las vívidas luchas de las redes indígenas latino-céntricas hacia un internet pluriversal." (Resumen)
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"Pensar la relevancia de la televisión hoy significa abordar los desafíos democráticos que ella enfrenta respecto a las coyunturas políticas, el contexto de convergencia mediática, el papel de los medios públicos y los procesos de innovación y ruptura en la ficción y en los géneros informat
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ivos. Todo esto en contextos complejos de polarización política, agudas crisis sociales y presiones a favor del replanteamiento del modelo neoliberal y de sus exclusiones e inequidades. En Los desafíos a las televisiones en América Latina dieciséis especialistas de distintos países del continente estudian el panorama actual y algunos procesos y experiencias en Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia y México. Este libro busca estimular el debate y el desarrollo de estudios críticos sobre la televisión y el ecosistema mediático en su relación con las culturas políticas, las políticas públicas y la in-novación en temas, narrativas y formatos, asumiendo los retos como oportunidades de cambios de rumbo y creación de nuevos derroteros para la producción, circulación y recepción crítica del medio televisivo." (Cubierta del libro)
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"The policy brief we hereby present to the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) includes recommendations and specific proposals to enable community networks in Brazil, considering extensive research in both the global and Brazilian context, the state of the art of these small, not-f
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or-profit players and the findings and experiences of 32 interviewees all related in some capacity to Brazilian community networks: internet access, spectrum management, the digital divide or research on information and communications technology (ICT) projects. We hereby summarise the priority areas that need to be addressed and the recommendations to reduce barriers and unlock the potential of Brazilian community networks." (Executive summary)
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"Este manual reúne informações a partir de experiências concretas de redes comunitárias no Brasil e América Latina para responder a perguntas como: o que são redes comunitárias? Que tipos existem? Como planejar, implementar, instalar e gerir uma rede comunitária? Dessa maneira, esta publica
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ção busca apresentar um conjunto de informações práticas e trazer uma visão geral deste campo, bem como reunir indicações de outros materiais que possam apoiar comunidades interessadas em imaginar, construir e manter redes e soluções de conectividade, tudo isso com muitas ilustrações e com base na educação popular." (Cubierta del libro)
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"This is the true story of how, against all odds, a remote Mexican pueblo built its own autonomous cell phone network – without help from telecom companies or the government. Anthropologist Roberto J. González paints a vivid and nuanced picture of life in a Oaxaca mountain village and the collect
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ive tribulation, triumph, and tragedy the community experienced in pursuit of getting connected. In doing so, this book captures the challenges and contradictions facing Mexico's indigenous peoples today, as they struggle to wire themselves into the 21st century using mobile technologies, ingenuity, and sheer determination. It also holds a broader lesson about the great paradox of the digital age, by exploring how constant connection through virtual worlds can hinder our ability to communicate with those around us." (Back cover)
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"This book brings together academic and activist work on community media, feminist, decolonial, and indigenous perspectives to digital activism, including Free and Open Communication in Latin America. The essays in this collection speak to major changes over the past decade that are reshaping digita
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l media uses and practices. The case studies presented here question many commonly held assumptions around global media ownership, sustainability, and access relevant to countries beyond Latin American contexts." (Publisher description)
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