Building Broadband from the Bottom-up: Community Wireless Networks in the Brazilian Amazon

Investigating how rural communities in Latin America cooperate to bypass infrastructure and technological hurdles in accessing the Internet from the bottom up through the so-called community networks-"the Internet by the people, for the people." More specifically, I want to explore how rural communities use their technological know-how, local ontologies, and media cultures to assign new sociological meanings and functions to the emerging Internet infrastructures that are enabling them to participate in the global media economy. In particular, to critically examine case studies of community networks in the Amazon region, the largest rural and least connected region of the continent, by inquiring the following: How are community networks in the Brazilian Amazon situated in relation to rollout of information and media infrastructures by the Big Tech? What indigenous pieces of knowledge/ontology emerge in relation to these community networks? What do they reveal in terms of design, technological and media literacies, as well as postcolonial notions of power?