Using the Internet in Civil Participation

In the era of globalization, methods of communication are evolving rapidly. Starting with the telegraph and radios, then the telephone, and now the internet we can almost instantaneously connect people across the world. Sectors of society that were able to successfully implement new means of communication reaped the benefits, including trade and education. However, one area that did not embrace new technology was civil participation, potentially isolating them from advances in creating change. Instead, more traditional formats of civil participation, such as paper voting, in-person townhalls, and street protests, remain. Yet, one successful organization called Nossas, in Brazil, has started to use the internet to encourage and implement civil participation. However, Nossas is also run by activists with excellent strategies for mobilization and implementing change. Therefore, it’s not clear if Nossas’s implementation of the internet in their methods, their activist strategies or a combination of the two, have been the source of their success.

In order to explore the source of Nossas’s success, we need to analyze their methodologies regarding both their implementation of activism and use of the internet. To begin, I used Shelly Arnstein’s concept of a ladder of participation to identify the extent that Nossas was able to empower citizens. I also accounted for empowerment due to the internet using the perspective of Ronaldo Munck about globalization creating powerful communities and Manuel Castells’ implication of the internet in globalization. Next, I analyzed Nossas’s strategies to implement effective change using the views of Peter Evans on institutional monocropping and livability. Finally, using Arjun Appadurai’s opinions on globalization and the social imagination, and with Castells’ analysis of the internet, I unearthed Nossas’s methods for spreading civil participation with the use of the internet. Additionally, in order to gain some context about the internet specifically in Brazil, I explored internet access over regions and demographics, and how that variation affected Nossas’s efforts.

Combining the results of these analyses shows that the source of Nossas’s success lies in their effective activist strategies and also their careful use of the internet. Nossas uses both the internet and their strategies to empower citizens. However, their only other use of the internet is to spur interest in civil participation, which is limited by unequal internet access. The rest of their success in creating effective change lies in their well-founded activist strategies. As a result, it appears that the use of just traditional methods for civil participation would result in similar successes as those that do implement the internet. Therefore, while Nossas’s use of the internet in their methods for civil participation helped further their goals of empowerment and increasing participation, their activist strategies were responsible for more of their success.

Criteria for Creating Effective Change

In her journal article “A ladder of civil participation” Sherry Arnstein discusses the necessity of citizen empowerment to create meaningful change. According to Arnstein, there are varying levels of citizen empowerment that lead to corresponding levels of change. She continues by describing what she calls, “the ladder of civil participation” with rungs in order from bottom to top including manipulation, therapy, informing, consultation, placation, partnership, delegated power, and citizen control (Arnstein 5). The lower rungs, Arnstein claims, are simply performative participation where citizens don’t have any real power and whose “real objective is not to enable people to participate in planning or conducting programs, but to enable powerholders to ‘educate’ or ‘cure’ the participants” (4).  Meanwhile the higher rungs demonstrate true civil participation where “have-not citizens obtain the majority of the decision-making seats” and can enact real change (4). The highest level on Arnstein’s ladder is citizen control, where participants are fully in charge of policy and have the right to negotiate any terms to change that policy (16). Arnstein says that this kind of participation is the “model most frequently advocated” and notes four separate cases in Cleveland Ohio, Selma Alabama, Harlem New York and with the Albina Corporation where implementing this model has enacted real change (16, 17). However, Arnstein also notes that even in these cases, there was never true citizen control because veto power rested with the city council (17). Nevertheless, Arnstein makes it clear that with more citizen empowerment comes a greater level of direct citizen impact.

As we move into the future, sociologists Ronaldo Munck and Manuel Castells provide some hope that the era of globalization may be the key to empowering citizens. Taking a transformationalist perspective, Munck summarizes the potential positive and negative effects that globalization may have on states and their citizens. He warns that with economic globalization comes deregulation, commodification and the potential for a decrease in working and living conditions, as well as the rampant increase in inequality for citizens (Munck 9, 12). On the other hand, Munck shows that through globalization “multiples levels or scales of society are all linked” by cultural, economic and social exchange (13). This interconnectedness makes “[i]ndividuals, social movements, organizations, and social networks all have agency and [not be] powerless” by simply being able to amass many citizens from many states (15). One such example is the Internet. As Castells explains computer networks were founded as a means to easily communicate data between scientists over large distances. However, they were quickly adapted as a means of simple text communication. From bulletin boards, to chat rooms and eventually the invention of the email, these computer networks led to the birth of so called “virtual communities” (Castells 50). As these networks merged to form the Internet, it became the host for these communities. Therefore, globalization, specifically the Internet, could also provide a new source of power, that could be harnessed into civil participation.

In order to effectively implement change, every participatory institution must be custom designed for its community. In this vein, sociologist Peter Evans argues that institutional monocropping is an ineffective method of implementing change. Evans defines institutional monocropping as “the imposition of blueprints [of participation] based on idealized versions of Anglo-American institutions” on other countries in order to spur change (Evans 30). However, trying to impose these formal structures on different places “without simultaneously reshaping the distribution of power that underlies” makes the formal structures obsolete (34). Instead, Evans argues that new participatory institutions should be built from local deliberation and knowledge (36). Evans supports this with a claim from philosopher and economist Amartya Sen’s that “decision-making institutions built on public discussion… offers the only way to adequately define desirable developmental goals” (36). Therefore, in order to have effective participatory institutions that act for issues and how citizens truly want, there cannot be institutional monocropping. Instead, citizens in each locality must be allowed to deliberate and form their own unique participatory institution.

Peter Evans further claims that change addressing livability is essential. Evans defines livability as the combination and balance of both livelihood and ecological sustainability (Evans 1). Livelihood consists of housing, good paying jobs and services such as waste management (1). On the flip side, ecological sustainability refers to good quality air, public parks and potable water (2). Evans argues that without the protection and improvement of both, a place is not livable (2). Evans applies this idea of livability to cities, because of the negative externalities imposed by the global markets on them (5). In cities, land becomes such a highly valued commodity that green spaces, air and water quality are destroyed or polluted to increase livelihood at the expense of sustainability (5). However, at the same time, many people who live in cities are in poverty and need that increase of livelihood. Therefore, Evans proposes that the most effective change in cities must improve livability to address both livelihood and sustainability.

Globalization leads to increasing demands for change, which can be achieved through access to the internet. As anthropologist Arjun Appadurai explains, globalization creates “flows that make disjunctures in fundamental issues such as livelihood, justice, equity, governance and suffering” (Appadurai 5). Some examples of these disjunctures include media depictions of well-being and standards of living that are not met, or discussions over human rights that lead to workforce demands from state-repressed minorities (5). These new ideas that standards of living could be improved is what Appadurai calls the social imagination (6). Specifically, he says social imagination is “a faculty that informs the daily lives of ordinary people… to consider migration, resist state violence, seek social redress, and design new forms of civic association and collaboration, often across national boundaries” (6). Therefore, as globalization increases there will be more flows of disjuncture that will awaken the social imagination of more and more citizens. Sociologist Manuel Castells notes in his book that the internet is one massive, cohesive network that spans around the world (Castells 50). The internet is also is able to rapidly disseminate information in matter of seconds, making it a clear agent of globalization (53). Combining these points, having access to the Internet exposes a person to globalization which in turn leads to a revival of their social imagination. This revival will urge them to push for change to improve their living conditions. Therefore, by having access to the Internet, people are more likely to seek change to improve their societies.

The potential of the Internet

In his TED talk, Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University, argued that the Internet should be used as a platform for civil participation. Shirky claims that every era develops a new medium to spread its revolutionary idea (Shirky) In 1440, that medium was the printing press and its ability to rapidly distribute information across the European continent made the scientific method possible. Since scientists were able to quickly share their data and results with others via scientific journals, they developed a set of guidelines to ensure that their conclusions were reasonable. As a result, science became a factual study of the universe and became as prominent as it remains today. Shirky argues that the new medium of today’s era is the internet, with the revolutionary idea being civil participation (Shirky).

In fact, the internet has already been implemented as a platform for civil participation. Meu Rio is an organization based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that helps empower citizens to participate in local politics (Orofino). It accomplishes this by using the internet as a backbone to rapidly organize and distribute information to its members, as well as providing a platform for citizens to share their projects and initiatives (Orofino). So far, Meu Rio has been incredibly successful. They’ve managed to save an elementary school from demolition, prevent evictions, and create a missing persons unit in the city’s police department (Orofino). Economist and activist, Alessandra Orofino, cofounded Meu Rio in 2011 in response to the extreme lack of civil participation she noticed in Rio. Today, Meu Rio has 160,000 members, with 40% aged 20 to 29, accounting for about 1 in 15 twenty-year-olds in Rio (Orofino). Orofino hopes to spread Meu Rio to cities around the globe to create “a network of citizen-centric, citizen-led organizations” in order to encourage civil participation nationwide (Orofino).

Orofino has had immense success in growing Meu Rio into a much larger, multi-faceted organization known as Nossas. Nossas describes itself as a “network of activism and civil engagement” (Nossas). Using Meu Rio as a start, they’ve created similar networks for cities across Brazil including Sao Paolo, Recife, Porto Alegre, Campinas, and Joao Pessoa, which all operate autonomously with grassroots organizers. While having independent leadership these networks have access to Nossas resources including activists and financial aid. Nossas has also created BONDE, a “technological tool created especially for activists” that helps people make websites to harness the power of the Internet, mobilize and act (Nossas). They’ve also created a free program to teach people methodologies and techniques for successful activism that occurs every two months (Nossas). Lastly, Nossas has helped to start solidarity networks for the LGBTQ+ and women suffering from gender-based violence, that connects them with lawyers and psychologists for free support. Some of these initiatives remain under the Nossas umbrella, receiving resources and financial support, but others have branched off to be completely independent. Notably, all of these initiatives use the Internet as a backbone of their operation to connect and spread information to people.

Nossas has been incredibly successful in mobilizing, organizing and creating meaningful change across Brazil using the Internet. According to their website, Nossas has been able to mobilize 1.6 million Brazilians to act to create change (Nossas). While this is a small fraction of the total Brazilian population of 211 million, most of Nossas’s initiatives were launched after 2015, making this participation still extremely impressive. From this mobilization, there have been more than 200 campaigns launched across the Nossas network resulting in more than 120 changes in public policy (Nossas). They’ve also been able to raise enough financial support to continue their mission of change. To remain impartial and independent, Nossas doesn’t accept monetary donations from public institutions, political parties or companies with public contracts (Nossas). Nonetheless, Nossas has been able to raise 3.4 million Brazilian Reals through crowdfunding (Nossas). Nossas is also very transparent with their finances and also their social statue, which is an outline of their beliefs and motivations, both of which they publicly publish on their website (Nossas). Therefore, as a well-funded and transparent network that has proven itself to deliver on real change, it seems like Nossas will likely be successful in continuing to encourage civil participation across Brazil.

Nossas’s Use of the Internet and other practices for Civil Engagement

Nossas empowers citizens by providing technical resources and trainings on civil activism and engagement. As noted by Shelly Arnstein, citizens need to be empowered in order for their participation to enact meaningful change (Arnstein 16). Nossas empowers citizens by granting free access to a variety of resources. First, Nossas has created BONDE, a piece of software that anyone can easily use to create websites for issues they care about. Nossas also funds free training sessions where they share strategies and methods for activism that they have used and developed with anyone who signs up. With these resources, citizens are better equipped to start grassroots campaigns in their own communities. However, the resulting level of empowerment is not very high on Arnstein’s ladder of participation, so these campaigns do not necessarily result in change. These resources merely give more citizens the opportunity to start effective campaigns for change, putting them at the participation rung of Arnstein’s ladder of participation, where power is redistributed but change is not guaranteed (13). Nevertheless, citizens are still empowered by Nossas’s efforts, meaning that they are more likely to enact meaningful change than before.

Nossas has harnessed further empowerment by using the medium of the internet to gather participants. Nossas notes in their social statue that they aim to enact participation and change through both virtual and in-person methods (Nossas). In his analysis of globalization, Munck claims that in the global era, new levels of interconnectedness will create powerful communities (Munck 15). Castells adds that one such medium for these powerful communities is the Internet (50). Therefore, by using virtual methods for spreading their message and creating tools for citizens, Nossas has access to powerful communities on the internet. With these virtual communities, citizens can gain greater empowerment by amassing more support for their campaigns. Thus, by implementing virtual methods for their goals, Nossas helps further empower the citizens that they aid.

Nossas fosters individual organizations with local activists to create unique institutions of participation. While Nossas is an umbrella organization for multiple cities across Brazil, they have created individual organizations like Meu Rio for each city they work in (Nossas). While these city-specific organizations still receive financial aid and advice from activists in Nossas, they are otherwise completely independent (Nossas). In fact, each organization is comprised of and formed by local activists in order to target the specific needs of each city (Nossas). By having these city-specific organizations, created by and for city locals, Nossas avoids the hazards of institutional monocropping that Evans warns against. As previously described, Evans defines institutional monocropping as trying to implement the same blueprint of participation across multiple communities (Evans 30). He warns that with this technique, informal power dynamics are ignored resulting in a lack of successful implementation (34). Instead, Evans argues for local deliberation and discussion to form effective institutions for participation, which is exactly what Nossas has implemented (36). With this structure of local organizations advocating for local change, Nossas has created institutions for participations with a better chance of successfully implementing change.

Nossas’s achievements have targeted aspects of livability, which are essential components of cities. On their website, Nossas defines their team as 25 “mostly young passionate and restless activists who share a common quality: the ability to observe what can and should change in the world to turn it into a more equitable, inclusive and sustainable place” (Nossas). In other words, the Nossas team is focused on implementing change that can help improve the livelihood and sustainability of their communities. As described by Evans, livability consists of both livelihood and ecological sustainability and improvements to both aspects are key for city life (Evans 1, 5). Clearly, Nossas has Evan’s livability in mind as a team and in their accomplishments. Recent change they’ve achieved in response to the COVID-19 pandemic include creating an emergency basic income scheme of 600 Reals, crowdfunding for indigenous and low-income communities, and delaying the college entrance exam for students due to school closures (Nossas). Nossas has also been at the fore front of banning plastic straws in cities across Brazil, creating more public spaces in Sao Paolo, and decontaminating water near Porto Alegre (Nossas, Minha Porto Alegre, Minha Sampa). By targeting change towards both livelihood and sustainability, Nossas has been incredibly effective in improving the livability of cities across Brazil.

Nossas is spreading access to and tools of the internet to increase citizens’ civil participation. As Appadurai explains, globalization leads to an increase demand for change as people begin to imagine the possible improvements to their livelihood and society (Appadurai 6). Castells furthers Appadurai’s claim, by explaining how the internet is a key force of globalization and thereby insinuating that with increased access to the internet there will be more demand for change (Castells 53). One of Nossas’s goals in their social statute, and the main reason why Alexandra Orofino founded Meu Rio and subsequently Nossas, is to increase demands for change through civil participation (Nossas, Orofino). To accomplish this, Nossas has been focusing on increasing access to the internet, particularly for low-income communities (Nossas). Just recently, to help with students learning from home during the pandemic, Nossas raised over 600,000 Real to pay for 4,600 students’ internet access (Nossas). Another one of Nossas’s goals in their social statute is to “create new technologies to encourage public participation” resulting in their development of BONDE (Nossas). Therefore, Nossas is harnessing the power of the internet to rapidly disseminate information as a method of spurring citizens to imagine change and participate.

However, internet access is unequal across regions and demographics in Brazil, making Nossas’s internet strategies less effective. As of 2019, only 78.3% people in Brazil were internet users, compared to 90% in both France and the United States (IBGE, European Commission, United States Census). Furthermore, there are disparities in access across regions in Brazil. As of 2019 in the poorer North and Northeast regions, about 70% of people had access compared to around 85% in the richer Southeast, South and Central West regions (IBGE). Within each region, there is also inequality between urban and rural internet access, with urban dwellers having 11 to 33% more access than their rural counterparts (IBGE). There are also discrepancies in internet access depending on education and age. As of 2019, 88% of students in Brazil have access while only 78% of non-students of student age (18-24), have access (IBGE). Similarly, only 74% of people over the aged 50-59 have internet access, which drops to 45% for ages 60-69 (IBGE). Lastly, 70% of those in communities below the poverty level do not have internet access (Nossas). For more information and graphics regarding internet access, see Appendix A. As a result of these inequalities, the internet strategies that Nossas uses to empower citizens and encourage participation are unequally implemented on Brazilian citizens. Specifically, these strategies disproportionately target wealthier, educated, and younger Brazilian citizens. Therefore, by utilizing the Internet, some of Nossas’s strategies are less effective, since access to the internet is unequal.

Evaluating the use of the Internet in Nossas

Through this exploration of Nossas, it’s become clear that their success is rooted in both well-founded strategies and their usage of the Internet. Nossas has been able to harness the internet as an aid to foster civil participation and change throughout many Brazilian cities. Yet, to create meaningful change, Nossas also implements traditional methodologies to empower citizens, and target important areas of issue. Furthermore, by using the Internet, Nossas limits its participants to citizens and cities with internet access. Therefore, while the Internet has helped Nossas become successful by empowering and raising awareness among those it reaches it also limits Nossas’s impact. As a result, while Nossas’s internet use has helped, it is mostly their well-founded activist strategies that has manifested their success.

The first key to successful participation lies in the empowerment of citizens, as described by Shelly Arnstein’s ladder of civil participation. Nossas ensures the empowerment of the citizens they reached by sharing a variety of resources, including software and trainings. They also connected citizens on the Internet, giving them access to powerful virtual communities, as explained by Ronaldo Munck and Manuel Castells. With the combination of these two methods, Nossas empowered citizens to a higher level of participation on Arnstein’s ladder giving them significant power to create change.

Another important factor in successful participation lies in creating effective change. In this regard, Nossas’s techniques were entirely traditional. They divided their organization into sub-groups led and formed by leaders in different cities, that only receive financial aid and guidance from Nossas. By doing so, Nossas was able to form local and unique institutions for participation that are far more likely to create change as explained by Peter Evans’s discussion on institutional monocropping. Nossas also targets change that addresses the livability of communities. Also explained by Evans, change must focus on livability to increase both the livelihood and sustainability of a community and make it a better place to live. Through these actions, Nossas achieves effective change in cities throughout Brazil, even without the use of the Internet.

Finally, to increase participation, Nossas harnesses the power of globalization within the internet to raise awareness. Many of Nossas’s achievements center around spreading internet access or creating tools for activists that they can implement on the Internet. These actions speak to their goal of increasing civil participation, since the Internet can act as an agent of participation and thus raise awareness, as explained by Arjun Appadurai and Castells. However, as of 2019 access to the Internet in Brazil is unequal across regions and demographics. Therefore, as access remains unequal, the tools Nossas creates can only be applied to Brazilians who are disproportionately wealthier, educated and younger, and who are likely more involved in participation than their counterparts. However, as Nossas works to increase access their goals of raising awareness and empowering more citizens will be reached.

As this analysis has shown, the primary source of Nossas’s success is their excellent activist strategies to empower, create and target effective change. Their internet use helps their goals, but also limits their reach. Therefore, while exciting new developments in technology have been able to reinvent communication and advance many areas of society, it’s not surprising that methods of civil participation have largely remain unchanged. Until access to the Internet becomes universal, limitations in access will accentuate disparities in its usage, particularly for sectors where participation is imperative. Until then, efforts for civil participation will continue using traditional methods that have been proven to be successful in reaching citizens and creating change.

Works Cited

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