The Meaning and Importance of (e-digital) Citizenship for Poor Populations: A Case Study in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Abstract
In Brazil, even after 21 years of implementing digital inclusion policies, there is still a shortage of dimensions and indicators for the construction of statistical models to assess the effectiveness of these policies in terms of the exercise of citizenship, as a way of contributing to the reduction of infoexclusion in a global context of rising poverty levels in recent decades. The present study explores the meaning and the importance of citizenship for the poor through a questionnaire answered by 515 users from 84 telecenters in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), three dimensions with 31 indicators were obtained for citizenship and three dimensions with 33 indicators for digital citizenship. Assessed in the context of today's society, these dimensions proved to be complementary and inseparable for the effective exercise of citizenship. Thus, the results of this study contribute to the improvement of public policies for digital inclusion and fighting poverty.