Theorizing ICT and society in the Brazilian context: a multilevel, pluralistic and remixable framework

in this paper we present a multilevel and pluralistic conceptual framework that is particularly useful for brazilian researchers investigating information and communication technology (ict) based social changes from a community/societal level of analysis. the framework is influenced by three theoretical perspectives: social shaping of technology, structurationist view of technology and contextualism. it integrates four main concepts - relevant social groups, interpretive frames, negotiation and technology-in-practice - organized in terms of three dimensions - context, process and content. the framework, already applied to 12 different research projects led by brazilian scholars during the last four years, is seen as a work in permanent transformation and open to reuse, revision, remix and constant revalidation.