Facebook in Brazilian Schools: Mobilizing to Fight Back

ABSTRACT

In this article, we analyse how students used social media as a form of human–technology interaction for the organization, development, and expansion of activities in 4 social movements in Brazil. We analysed 122 Facebook pages maintained by the Four Movements using the cultural-historical activity theory framework and focused on the notion of collaborative agency in the development of the movements. We performed a qualitative analysis of this data to understand both how the movements developed and the results that the students obtained. Our findings suggest that by acting collaboratively, students expanded activities to other contexts.

Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to the reviewers, editors, and Juhanna Rantavuori for their valuable comments, which were essential for the development of this article. We also thank Corinna Lotz and Robbie Griffiths for proofreading the manuscript.

Funding

The first author of this work was funded by a CIMO scholarship (TM-12-8554), and Academy of Finland grant for the project “Concept formation and volition in collaborative work” (No. 253804).

The second author of this work was funded by Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, grant BEX 9581-138.

Additional information

Funding

The first author of this work was funded by a CIMO scholarship (TM-12-8554), and Academy of Finland grant for the project “Concept formation and volition in collaborative work” (No. 253804). The second author of this work was funded by Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel, grant BEX 9581-138.