Everyday life Internet use in Brazil : technological and social conditionings

This paper focuses on internet use in Brazil for everyday life purposes: to communicate with people and government, to get information, for educational and leisure activities and to get access to goods and services. How social and technological conditions of internet use relate to purposes of use is a question posed here. This question regards the perspectives of information society in Brazil and, especially, the perspectives of community building and civic engagement in the country through the use of information and communication technology resources. The data used in the analyses were obtained from the Annual Survey of the 2005 Brazilian Census Bureau. It is a representative sample of the Brazilian population, involving interviews with more than 408 thousand individuals. Previous studies using these data source show that several dimensions of the digital divide in the country are still substantial. New evidences sought here focus especially on the aspects of Internet use for everyday life that can also be considered as dimensions of social capital. The comparison of the results obtained here with other evidences from both developed and developing countries contributes to the discussion about the perspectives of digital divide. Issues and data presented here also aim at contributing to the discussion about the complex relationship that exists between information technology and society, and for the perspectives of ICT in developing countries due to their structural position in the global economy, which might restrict or define conditions of Internet access and use