Stratification of Internet Users in Brazil

There is this idealistic vision of the Internet as the great equalizer.  If Internet access is offered cheaply and enables the entire population to have access, this becomes an equalizer that will level the socio-economic barriers to success.  In the beginning, Internet access was quite expensive, especially since it was necessary to have a personal computer and a telephone line.  In time, there are more and more public access facilities (e.g. libraries, Internet cabinas, etc), the internet population has grown.

We will now cite some survey data from the 2003 TGI Brasil study.  This is a survey of 10,624 persons between the ages of 12 to 64 years old interviewed during 2003.  Within the TGI Brasil study, 30.0% of the respondents indicated that they had used the Internet within the last 30 days.  When separated by socio-economic level, the results are shown in the chart below.  Internet access is still highly skewed by socio-economic level.  The argument would be that with falling costs and better educational opportunities, the internet penetration will eventually catch up.  This is the experience in the more advanced Internet countries such as the United States.  This may or may

(source: 2003 TGI Brasil)

The argument would be that with falling costs and better educational opportunities, the internet penetration will eventually catch up.  This is the experience in the more advanced Internet countries such as the United States.  This may or may not happen in Brazil.  However, we are more interested in another aspect of the development.  We want to ask the question about whether a lower-class person getting on the Internet means full equality to all the services.  In the next chart, we show the list of activities that the Brazilian Internet users have engaged in over the past 30 days.

(source: 2003 TGI Brasil)

In the next graph, we show a correspondence map of the relationship between Internet activities and socio-economic level.  We note the following:

• Socio-economic level AB persons are much more likely to be making financial investments, book airplane tickets, make reservations for hotels and do on-line shopping.  These are high-priced activities that imply the ability to pay.
• Socio-economic level C persons are more likely to be checking out the news, reading magazines, checking out sports news, look at dirty photos, and so on.
• Socio-economic level D persons are more likely to play online games, visit chatrooms, do instant messaging, and so on.
• At the center of the correspondence map are those activities that are common to all socio-economic levels --- etc, listen to radio, listen to music, etc.

(source: 2003 TGI Brasil)

This information would suggest that the Internet will not make people 'equals' overnight.  The situation is perhaps no different from opening a large public shopping mall --- it is true that everyone can come inside the store, but you have to have money to buy the merchandise.  Of course, the shopping mall analogy is crude and far and away from being the whole story of the Internet.  Among many things, one can obviously point to the photologs of Brazil --- what shopping mall have tens of thousands of private citizens displaying their photo albums in return for nothing?

(posted by Roland Soong on 2/07/2004)

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