Internet and Citizenship in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro

The purpose of this paper is to show the partial results of a research about the uses of the Internet by the population of the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, seeking grants for the answer of the following questions: in what ways and to what extent the Internet has contributed to the practice of citizenship among these populations? Methodologically, at a theoretical level, it is, rst, to problematize the very notion of citizenship. The empirical level of the research consists is the analysis of reports of free navigation on the Internet, produced during 2011, by students of Augusto Motta University Center atn(Unisuam), located in the neighborhood of Bonsucesso, periphery of Rio de Janeiro. All students involved in the study live in the suburbs or in the Baixada Fluminense. On the periphery. The original hypothesis of the research, whereby the free navigation on the Internet would not reveal any relevant form of citizen action, here identi ed with the universe of counter-hegemonic communication, proved to be almost entirely correct.