Challenges and threats for civil society organized as networks: a case study of local social and electronic networks for organizations dealing with children and adolescents in Brazil

A study of the various civil society, governmental and hybrid networks working in Brazil since 1990 to implement the ECA, defined as: 'a process of change in the way children and adolescents were seen by law and society as a whole'. The article begins by presenting the context and implications of the emergence of the ECA in Brazil. There follows a brief literature review on social and electronic networks. The authors then summarise the outcomes of an action-research carried out in 2001-02 with local networks. In the first stage, two virtual workshops were conducted with representatives of all the 17 existent networks. In the second stage, these representatives acted as research partners handing questionnaires to all of their affiliated organisations, in a universe of 2,159 public and private institutions.

Key findings are as follows:

• The vast majority of networks were recent.
  
• Only 12% had accomplished 'electronic networking'.
  
• Less than half contained a legal public institution related to children.
  
• Even after 12 years, the full understanding and uniformisation of concepts based on the ECA was not completed.
  
• Although more than 70% of the organisations have computers, the number of computer per organisation is low as well as the number of computer with access to the Internet. From all the 752 organisations, 45% stated that they hardly ever access the internet and 45% access quite often. From the group that uses the internet, 90% go for the Internet just for searching of information.

(Condensed from abstract)