Desigualdades digitais e desigualdades estruturais: um estudo no contexto do desenvolvimento no semiárido brasileiro

Abstract

The development and asymmetric appropriation of Information of Communication Technologies (ICTs) have evidenced a new kind of inequality in the Network Society, the digital inequality. Although international organizations have stated that ICTs have convergent potential to reduce inequalities and poverty, the social dynamics seem to work opposite in an opposite way. Worldwide, just over half of the population (51.2%) is connected. In Brazil, however, almost 70% of the citizens are not homogeneously distributed in the territories. The lack of Internet access is the most visible face of the digital segregation, although it is not the only one. This work shows the results of an investigation on digital inequality within the scope of structural inequalities in Brazil, especially in the Brazilian semiarid region. The objective is to understand how these inequalities are evident in the territory and if there are singularities in their manifestation. Descriptive-analytical methodology, with a quantitative and qualitative approach, was used. For information collection, bibliographic, documentary and statistical research was carried out in national and international, physical and virtual databases. It started from a global panorama to be narrowed to local analysis of 94 municipalities of Brazilian Semiarid states. The findings seem to confirm the main hypothesis of the work: digital inequality phenomenon is inseparable from structural inequalities and follows its spreading pattern in the territories, revealing itself not as an isolated and new phenomenon, but also one of the faces of inequality. The most severe consequences fall on the portion of the population who is already marginalized in relation to other goods and services, aggravating the vulnerabilities and problems to which it is subjected.