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This chapter aims to investigate the uses and appropriations of mobile digital technologies and networks through an examination of their popular manifestations in Brazil. We take a phenomenologically informed hermeneutics approach to understand the nature of social interactions vis-à-vis mobile digital technologies in daily life. The multimodal strategy explores based on documents and quantitative data published by Brazilian research institutes and the press. In addition, using an autoethnographic approach, the authors’ direct observations also provide a contextual framework. Findings suggest that mobile devices and networks were employed as protest tools for individuals and social groups. This finding suggests the emergence of new forms of social organizations and the appropriation of mobile technology as a tool for citizen empowerment and cyber-activism that takes place both in virtual and physical environments in Brazil. These appropriations had direct implications for political protests and changed how they have been organized in Brazil since then. Mobile technologies have enhanced and multiplied possibilities for social interaction, information sharing, and media broadcasting, allowing for the questioning of traditional media and the content provided by them. This research provides a foundation for future analysis about the appropriation of digital technologies specifically related to their use as civic media that is applicable beyond Brazil, given that these technologies are spread in different contexts and countries.

This paper discusses the evolving nature of the symbolic meaning of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Exploring the kratophanous power of soccer in Brazil, we seek to explain how the relationship that Brazilians had with the 2014 FIFA World Cup reflects profound changes in a mutating society that has deep emotional connections with soccer but at the same time has started to reject the misuse of public resources and struggles to see corruption as a fact of life.

The authors conducted a netnography on Facebook communities and on Instagram, reviewed documentaries and short films, as well as press articles on the subject. Data was collected both retrospectively and concurrently. Analysis used open coding, moving up from the emic meanings extracted from the texts to an etic account of the phenomena (Cherrier & Murray, 2007; Thompson, 1997; Thompson & Haytko, 1997).

We argue that the duality of the Brazilian culture and the kratophanous power of soccer help understand the evolving nature of the relationship Brazilians had with the 2014 FIFA World Cup. We sustain that soccer in Brazil is viewed both as a sport – representing democracy and the hope of social mobility – and as an industry – echoing dissatisfaction with the status quo. Even if ideologically opposed to what the event represented, consumers were bound by very strong cultural connections built around soccer as a sport, a national passion. This changing nature of feelings and attitudes echoes marketplace tensions of a country passing through a democratization maturity process and of a culture in which its citizens find it easier to attempt to be many things at the same time than to take a stand.

This research analyzes the role of social tensions and national passions in relation to a global industry (soccer) and a mega event (the FIFA World Cup). We have looked at the influence of macro cultural forces and tension forces in a sporting event as our findings cannot be understood outside the context of network-based power (Labrecque, vor dem Esche, Mathwick, Novak, & Hofacker, 2013) with Brazilians mobilizing the structure of social networks in favor of their contextual interests. The tense and dynamic political environment in which this research was conducted shed some light on why the #naovaitercopa changed its meaning overtime.

The context of this research contributes to the literature on boycotting (Kozinets & Handelman, 2004; Lee, Motion, & Conroy, 2009), considering that most previous studies had not extensively explored situations where protests arise, obtain significant engagement, yet end up being unsuccessful. We answers the call made by Izberk-Bilgin (2010) for understanding how and why consumer attitudes toward certain types of consumption may change overtime and we demonstrate how the FIFA World Cup possesses kratophanous power in Brazil, and how this characteristic, which is strongly rooted in local culture, contributed to the failure of the boycott.

In this paper, we examine the social stratification in the favelas, urban slums, both in general and how it correlates with technology. The analysis is based on Weberian stratification theory, since it provides for a broad understanding of the different factors that make up the digital inequalities.

Based on a 10-month critical ethnographic research dealing with LAN houses and state supported telecenters in the favelas of Vitória, Brazil, we analyze how the use of technology by residents of such marginalized areas expands our understanding of Weber’s axes of stratification, namely class, status and political power. The data was drawn from user observations, Facebook interactions, and 76 semi-structured interviews.

The drug cartel members belonged to the higher class of favela residents due to their access to material resources and ability to afford smartphones and data plans. However, in terms of status groups, they did not represent the pinnacle of the community. Where status was concerned, the highest stratum of the community was composed of the “Facebook’s celebrities,” the few teenagers who knew how to produce content online, such as images and videos. An additional axis of social differentiation, related to political power, was observed during the 2013 protests in Brazil. Favela residents arrived late to the event and found themselves “fighting” for demands stipulated previously by the organizers who belonged to upper classes.

We highlight what access to ICTs can, and cannot, accomplish in a “highly disorganized,” conflict-ridden, and institution-poor environment. With that we hope to encourage academics and practitioners to do a better job in developing appropriate policies and technologies.

This chapter examines possible relationships between use of social media in online mobilization and mainstream print media coverage during the June 2013 protests in Brazil, a series of demonstrations which happened throughout the country initially around bus ticket prices.

In order to develop the research, we compared news from leading Brazilian newspapers (O Globo, Folha de S. Paulo, Estadão, and O Dia) with the activities of most influential Twitter users in the dissemination of messages about these events in the country during the period from June 01 to 30, 2013. The results show trends in the emerging dynamics of social organization that may indicate the role of old and new media in today’s Brazilian politics.

The research analyzed the extent to which the events occurring on the streets shaped and/or reflected user-generated social media content.

This article explains the process of construction and configuration of the Brazilian social imaginary on the global '68 using the daily press as source material.

It looks at the narratives conveyed by the press about the condition, situation, motivations, aspirations and capacity for action of young university students. The analysis is focused mainly on the usage of totalitarian language and permits an in-depth view of the reality of life in Brazil at the time and the role played by the students in the resistance to the dictatorship. It also includes an analysis of how other students' protests of 1968 – in Poland and Mexico – were portrayed through the media, and how they helped to shape the collective imaginary about Brazilian university students, situating it in a conjuncture of broader dimensions and connections.

The youth of Brazil, Poland and Mexico were represented as active political and social subjects, capable of defying, and sometimes profoundly upsetting, the established order. Violence and the discourse of violence were constant unifying elements in the narratives created by the daily press. This helped generate an image of university students which portrayed them as a rebellious, revolutionary and/or subversive sector of the population, responsible for one of the most extensive and profound social and political crises which those countries had experienced in decades.

This is the first study of the Brazilian reception of the '68 Polish and Mexican students' protest and its implications for the social narrative of students' resistance in Brazil.

Looking at a series of recent large street protests in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, the chapter examines the relationship between political action, urban space, and media use. We specifically look at what we are calling media epiphanies, moments in which the public becomes aware of its existence as a mediated public, that is, as a public that is forged through the use of a particular media. We rely on extensive participant observation and interviews for the description of the June 2013 protests and the subsequent massive rallies. We examine the materiality of the employed media and the experience of participants to understand the meaning of the phenomenon, for which we used a combination of Frankfurt and Toronto Schools approach. The strength of the fluid June 2013 protests in São Paulo questioned the political status quo and served as a trampoline for subsequent media demonstrations whose political impact relied as well on traditional cultural forms. The 2016 impeachment House vote, as a true media event, reconstructed, in positive and negative terms, the fractured political dialogue of representation. The concept of media epiphany can be used to assess the strength of demonstrations and the meaning of collective action in general. Identifying these phenomena, we can give focus to empirical research and better examine the complex intersections between forms of communications, physical environments, and the experience of the individual in contemporary cities.

Based on a lexical analysis of publications on 529 Facebook pages, published between 2013 and 2017, this research explores how Brazilian left-wing activist groups participate on Facebook to coordinate their opposition and engage in social struggles. This chapter shows how activist groups set up two main digital network repertoires of action when mobilizing on Facebook. First, in direct connection with major political events, the platform is used as a media arena to challenge governments’ political actions and second, it is employed as a tool to coordinate mobilization, whether these mobilizations are demonstrations on the street or at cultural events, such as at a music concert. These repertoires of action exemplify ways in which contemporary Brazilian activism is carried out at the intersection of online and offline engagements. While participants engage through these two repertoires, this network of activists is held together over time through a more mundane type of event, pertaining to the repertoire of action allowing the organization of mobilization. Stepping aside from opposition and struggles brought to the streets, the organization of cultural activities, such as concerts and exhibitions, punctuates the everyday exchanges in activists’ communications. Talk about cultural events and their related social agendas structures activist networks on a medium-term basis and creates the conditions for the coordination of (future) social movements, in that they offer the opportunities to stay in contact, in addition to taking part in occasional gatherings, between more highly visible social protests.

The aim of this chapter is to promote a reflection on how the smart mobs are established, despite the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, that took place in Brazil from June 12 to July 13, 2014, in comparison with the organizational model of the contemporary Brazilian public management, emphasizing that, in spite of “major reforms” carried out and of the progressive speeches, the focus continues to be the way to control the resources and the people, including the construction of Infrastructure for 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, especially based on Principle 10 (Anti-Corruption) of UN Global Compact initiative.

This chapter draws both on primary and secondary qualitative data, especially the literature of smart mobs, as well as public management models in Brazil, mainly based on Guerreiro Ramos, which constitutes the theoretical framework for the analysis, as well as “deep interviews” with citizens, which was protesting against the FIFA World Cup, that was analyzed through an interpretative approach, the phenomenography, based mainly on “International business, corruption and bribery” topic to develop a cross line framework.

The chapter provides an analytical framework to reinforce the growing practice of social control that can improve the public management model in Brazil through the development of the societal administration (substantive rationality); presenting that to the extent that the Brazilian government organizational model was not intended to “interact” with society, it has contributed to generate an unsatisfied demand for democracy in Brazilian citizens, whom support the United Nations Global Compact initiative and do not support the current model of the Executive Branch.

Given the recent smart mobs in Brazil and the lack of clear analytical axes for the orientation of research in organizational studies regarding the Brazilian public administration, as well as fragmentation in their respective academic production, it is hoped that these theoretical reflections and empirical results can contribute to promote academic progress for the Public Management in Brazil, as well as for the Corporate Citizenship all over the world.

The chapter introduces a general reflection on the relations between these study objects, in order to foster new research. It is expected that this work will help to increase the debate about the importance of the Brazilian public management, in particular, but the international public administration too (mainly the United Nations [UN] members states), to include substantive rationality for managers, so they can better understand and respond more effectively to the needs of citizens, companies, and organizations.