Estratégia para análise da concentração de infraestrutura de acesso às tecnologias da informação e comunicação nos municípios da Amazônia legal Brasileira

Abstract

Access to information is a fundamental right in democratic societies, essential for economic development, social equality, improvement of social, health care, education services and governance. This study is situated on the Concentration of Access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the municipalities of the Brazilian Legal Amazon. For this, we developed the conceptual model from which we identify the main variables of ICT infrastructure in urban and rural households. Our strategy is to (i) analyze the ICT infrastructure concentration in Brazilian municipalities; (ii) analyze the spatial distribution of ICT infrastructure concentration in urban and rural households in Brazilian municipalities; and (iii) search for associations between parameters describing the ownership of ICT resources in urban and rural households with indicators for income, education, population size, and the existence of electricity in municipalities. To understand these associations at the municipality level, we use Bayesian Networks to reveal dependencies among the variables studied. The results of applying the proposed strategy show that for urban households, the average concentration in the municipalities of the Amazon for computers and Internet access and for fixed phones is lower than in other regions of the country; meanwhile, that for no access and mobile phones is higher than in any other region. For rural households, the average concentration in the municipalities of the Amazon for computers and Internet access, mobile phones, and fixed phones is lower than in any other region of the country; meanwhile, that for no access is higher than in any other region. The study shows that education, income, and population size are determinants of inequality in accessing ICT in Brazilian households. In addition, we advance to analyze the association between teenage motherhood and the representative variables of income, education, and computer and Internet access in the municipalities of the Brazilian Legal Amazon compared to other regions of the country. These networks pointed to the region as the influential variable on the high percentages of teenage mothers and households with computer and Internet access.