twofold. As an active member of her church in Balduíno, she does not feel comfortable in the settlement interacting with people with other reli-gious affiliations – particularly Afro- Brazilian relireli-gious groups, which are demonised by evangelical Christians. In this regard, Marina attributes to Facebook and WhatsApp the solution to remaining part of both worlds.
In university she was able to develop friendships with people whom she admired independently of their religious backgrounds; although she was mostly physically absent, she was able to participate in their conversations and to show that her faith did not blind her critical thinking.
Marina sees this effort to socialise beyond the circles of religious affiliations as a contribution to the evangelical community. She success-fully presents herself outside of church circles as an ‘open- minded evan-gelical’, and in doing so helps to reduce the prejudices associated with evangelical Christians. At the same time – and in a similar way to the case of Maria, discussed above – Marina also used social media to keep in touch with her friends and the community from her church in the settlement.
She followed their everyday conversations and remained respected and admired in her local social groups. Because of this capacity to intercon-nect these two groups, she confronted a deep- rooted local tradition of women straightening their hair (often using dangerous chemicals and hot iron tools). Her proximity to black pride advocates who were study-ing at the same university made her aware of the consequences of colo-nialism and segregation in Brazil, and she gradually adopted a new Afro look. She posted the transitions as selfies on Facebook, and the support she received online helped her to face up the resistance she experienced in the settlement.
Although Marina went to university and Maria only finished second-ary school, both used social media to support an effort to spend part of their days outside the settlement. The final case of this chapter analyses the use of social media by someone who does not want to live in Balduíno.
‘I want to have my own place’
Jonas’s father is an accountant whose family came from São Paulo, and whose mother, born in the settlement, is an experienced maître at the region’s five- star tourist resort. Their home is located only a couple of blocks from the settlement’s commercial centre. It is a small but cosy two- bedroom house that is constantly being improved – as his father explained humorously – because Jonas’s mother ‘doesn’t want to look bad’ in front of her church friends. In contrast to most others in their street, therefore,
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their home looks new: it is nicely painted, with sophisticated tiles and a nicely kept flower garden. Jonas, aged 16 years and only one year away from finishing secondary school, has a bedroom similar to many stereo-typical, middle- class teenage bedrooms shown on television programmes.
At the bedroom entrance is a doormat with the image of the iPhone’s unlock slide button, while on his bed is a red and pink pillow that his girl-friend gave him, featuring a selfie of them together surrounded by red hearts.
Jonas is a popular and friendly teenager. He likes hanging out with his neighbours and school peers, but at the same time being in the set-tlement is not helping with his plans for the future. He is still not sure whether he will go to university to study biology, engineering or law, but he is certain that in a few years time he will have a university degree. New private institutions now offer undergraduate and graduate programmes more attuned to the budgets, interests and educational deficiencies of working- class students. In addition, government scholarships are now available to students from low- income backgrounds to pay for university fees. University students living in the Coconut Coast also have free trans-port, facilitating a daily commute to and from Salvador where universi-ties are located. However, because he attends public secondary school in Balduíno Jonas’s prospects for the future are reduced. His teachers regu-larly do not show up for class, and many of his peers like it that way; for them, being in class (as in Diego’s case) is a necessary drag. This is where social media comes in.
Jonas and his closest friends are constantly a step ahead of his peers in their online habits. He started using WhatsApp earlier than most and, while locals tend to prefer to be in the same online places as everyone else (see Chapter 2), Jonas likes to explore.33 When celebrities such as the footballer Neymar started publishing photos on Instagram, he also became a regular user and was excited when another Brazilian ‘living in the United States(!)’ started liking his photos and interacting with him.
Recently he has been one of the first locals to use SnapChat. In short, social media helps Jonas to cultivate relationships with people who are not necessarily living in the same place as him, but who share his inter-ests and ambitions.
‘Networked individualism’ is a concept describing how digital com-munication becomes an alternative for those living inside ‘small, densely knit groups such as households, communities, and workgroups’.34 Instead of being ‘embedded in groups’, digitally mediated social relations allow the person to become the focus of networks of sociality, ‘not the family, not the work unit, not the neighbourhood, and not the social group’.35
Just like Jonas, networked individuals use their online connections ‘to find support, solve problems, and improve their knowledge and skills’.36
Jonas estimates that only three out of ten of his peers will enter a university undergraduate programme, and fewer will be able to start a career using their degrees. As success stories he mentions a woman from the settlement who finished a law degree and is doing well after she opened Balduíno’s first law firm, a dentist who also has his clinic there and a nutritionist who now works at a physiotherapy clinic. But although he acknowledges that (especially as the country’s economy slows) few people with university degrees can achieve work oppor-tunities in their field of study, they still have better prospects of being employed in more prestigious office jobs in hotels. As he says, these peo-ple are going after their dreams; they are not simply ‘acomodados’ (peo-ple who are laid back). Acomodados, he explains, are content to live in a home on top of or next to those of their relatives. Instead, he wants to afford his ‘own place’ (meu espaço) – not on top of his parents’ home, not even on the same street. His use of social media mirrors his intention: to achieve financial independence through a career and probably to move away from Balduíno.
Conclusion
The main question that this chapter intended to answer was whether locals are using social media for educational purposes and, if so, how this might be influencing their chances of improving their socioeconomic situ-ation. This seems a tough objective considering how education itself is a complex and sensitive issue in Balduíno. While schools have improved radically since the 1990s, they also have become a disputed space in the settlement. Like Diego, most students see the advantages of finishing sec-ondary school in order to have the diploma, but they are not particularly interested in paying attention to what teachers have to say during classes.
However, despite the complexity of this issue, as the various cases pre-sented show, the answer to the question raised by this chapter becomes straightforward after we clarify what we mean by ‘education’. So below are the three main consequences of social media in Balduíno, based on the analysis presented.
If we take the view of education being the outcome of attending public schools as they exist today in the settlement, social media is both a threat to education and is increasing the visibility of the stresses of a poor system. Maria says that her aspiration for formal employment out-side of the settlement resulted from her contact with peers, rather than
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with teachers. Diego sought to finish secondary school only because of the symbolic value of the diploma in the regional job market. For Jonas the local school is a demotivating place, with frequently absent teachers and peers (dismissed by him as acomodados, or laid back) who are actu-ally quite happy if teachers are not there. As social media has become more popular, and young people now have 24/ 7 access to the internet in their pockets, it becomes increasingly evident that students are not interested in school as an institution. Such a situation lies behind the complaint from staff that social media has a negative impact on students’
work. In fact, as they have alternative ways of exchanging information and interacting with each other, it is harder now to convince students to engage and participate in classroom activities.
However, if we ask whether social media has helped people in the settlement to learn and to develop themselves professionally, the answer is clearly yes. Diego may not have chosen to pursue a career in technol-ogy, but this does not keep him from ‘messing around and geeking out’
to solve practical software and hardware problems. Even more apparent is the evidence that locals with no previous interest in reading and writ-ing are now practiswrit-ing these skills as they use social media. They have learned not only through the experience of communicating using tex-tual posts, but also because they are anxious about writing such posts correctly. Similarly children from lower- income backgrounds arrive at school with a greater awareness of the alphabet and of words, and of how to operate computers.
Finally, social media helps with the social aspect of transition-ing to new possibilities of work and employment. This chapter showed how, in the cases of Ricardo and Maria, relations can become difficult for those with personal ambitions that differ from local norms and tra-ditions. In the 1990s Ricardo was ostracised and ridiculed for choos-ing to pursue a university degree, and Maria’s choice to prioritise a career over family still has the effect of distancing her from her mother.
Even today many locals from impoverished rural backgrounds resist formal employment, and are at best ambivalent about education for their families.
WhatsApp and Facebook were used by both Maria and Marina so they could be present in the settlement and nurture their local relation-ships while they were away. They kept their social networks, remained part of the flow of gossip and continued to display attention and support to their family and close friends. Jonas’s case is similar but also comple-mentary to theirs. He spends most of his days physically in the settlement,
and yet his plans include a univrsity degree, which will hopefully open up new career opportunities. Though he still inhabits ‘small, densely knit groups’, through social media he becomes the focus of his individual net-work, surrounded by others more attuned with his aspirations. In short, social media has become both the settlement one can keep close to when away and the wider horizons of city life that one can experience while still living in Balduíno.
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