"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 s
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tories reveal the structural violence of the information age. But they also show how those oppressed by 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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"Reviews of the ICTD literature have noted a scarcity of studies about Latin American countries. We investigate (1) what are the alternatives to ICTD and English-language ICTD publication venues researchers utilize to disseminate their work and why they may do so, and (2) what methodological, theore
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tical, and contextual characteristics these researchers bring to their publications. The study takes a two-pronged approach to answer these questions: a survey of researchers who have conducted ICTD research in Latin America and an analysis of their ICTD publications. We find that researchers use an array of specific alternative and additional terms to describe ICTD research, that methodological and theoretical characteristics of the literature resemble ICTD in general, and that contextual coverage of the region is lacking. Our results prompt a set of recommendations for better incorporating scholarship about Latin America in the ICTD field as well as improving global coverage of the ICTD community." (Abstract)
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"The idea for this book came up during the fieldwork I did in Vitória, Brazil for my doctoral dissertation. My research aims to understand the experience of marginalized people in community technology centers and how this experience informs the ways we think about what constitutes “empowerment”
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and “disempowerment” vis-à-vis technology. The book “Favela Digital – The other side of technology” is an opportunity to show, in photos, the reality I lived in during six months visiting the marginalized communities of São Benedito, Bairro da Penha, Itararé, Gurigica, Jaburu e Consolação. Along with the team from Varal Communications Agency, I captured the everyday life in the favelas and how the residents use digital technology. My goal with this book is to make people aware that alternative use of such technologies, in these areas of social abandonment, is legitimate and deserves our attention. The photos are followed by testimonials given by residents, my own observations, or parts of academic papers. The texts critically engage the reader with social issues of technology use in favelas and in society in general. The book is also a way to highlight themes addressed by Social Informatics in order to trigger discussions involving the general public." (https://www.favela-digital.com)
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