ABSTRACT
The history of Internet diffusion in Latin America can be characterized by a complicated series of negotiations between often conflicting groups of actors, including national governments, multinational corporations, international social movements, and regional non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Within this history, different actors often get compartmentalized and thus isolated from each other: the state and corporations combat each other over issues of deregulation and privatization (e.g. Noam 1998) while NGOs work with larger social movements and transnational advocacy networks (TANs) to promote international issues or causes (e.g. Keck and Sikkink 1998; Willetts 2011). Complicating these relatively narrow categorizations, we argue that the ability of NGOs in Brazil to incorporate access to, and training in how to use, information and communication technologies (ICTs) in community development projects, such as professionalization for the workforce, technology literacy, and helping create alternatives for young people to criminal activity (Sorj 2003; Jambeiro and Straubhaar 2005) is intimately linked to the national political economic environment produced through interactions between regulatory bodies, established corporations, entrepreneurs, and local activists.
