This is another blog from the UCL project Why We Post written by Juliano Spyer (@jasper). The project is researching the uses and consequences of social media around the globe. The online course has now finished, but will be restarted in the coming months. There are also seven more books to be launched, that can be downloaded for free via Open Access. Follow their twitter @UCLWhyWePost for more information and check out their website to learn about the different discoveries they have made.
The last four months of 2015 were tough. I was locking myself in a
claustrophobic student carrel every day, spending 9 hours staring at a computer
screen but not being able to finish the final draft of my book. I began having
trouble sleeping and pictured a clock ticking everywhere I went. But the source
of this anxiety – as I realized later – was a prolonged and unconscious struggle
to say something about my research while the evidence was pointing the other
way. I wanted very badly to conclude on my book saying that this poor settlement in
Brazil had a lot of problems, but that because of social media things are
changing for the better. But they aren’t.
This realization came after a long conversation with a friend that kindly
took the time to read a previous draft of my book. The last chapter is about the
effects of social media on relationships between people that are not relatives
or friends. I did not notice this before, but I ordered the cases in a way to
construct an argument that social media was empowering locals to protest against
injustices. But this friend summarized her impression of that chapter saying
that despite all this fuss about social mobility in Brazil, people are still
living as second rate citizens. If a relative is murdered, not just they have to
accept that the police will not investigate: they also have to keep quiet or
risk being subjected to more violence.
The internet and particularly social media is everywhere in this settlement.
Teenagers and young people are crazy about it but adults and older folks also
share the excitement. There is the enchantment with the new possibilities of
being in touch with people and also the pride related to having a computer and
to be able to use it. It shows that they are not as “ignorant” [illiterate] as
others might have thought and the PC looks good in the living-room next to the
flat screen TV. But how much of this represents real change and how much is – as
my friend’s commentary indicates –just an appearance of change?
In short, I wanted to sympathise with “the oppressed” and also show the
internet is empowering. And in order to claim that, I denied the basic evidence
of what they do with social media. It is not about learning, though that
happens. (For instance, they are much more interested in reading and writing in
order to better use things like Facebook and WhatsApp.) However, their reason
for wanting to be on social media is mostly to flirt, to share some (very)
gruesome videos and to spy on one another and gossip about it.
Evangelic Christianity is much more clearly responsible for “positive” change
there than the internet or social media: the protestant ideology promotes
literacy and education, helps people get and keep their jobs, reduces the
incidences of alcoholism and family violence. Social media, on the other hand,
is usually not for opening and expanding the access to information and to new
relationships, but to restore and strengthen local networks. Facebook and
WhatsApp are in some cases a possibility for young people to harness the desire
to study and move beyond their subordinate position in society, but it is also
intensely used for social control – i.e. for spying and spreading rumours
attacking people who want to challenge conformity.
The picture I have now is not as neat and “positive”. But perhaps the best
contribution an anthropological research has to offer is just that: to challenge
generalizations and expose how contradictory human relations can be.
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