Facebook has consolidated its position as the one-stop-shop for social activity among the poor in the global South. Sex, romance, and love are key motivations for mobile and Internet technology usage among this demographic, much like the West. Digital romance is a critical context through which we gain fresh perspectives on Internet governance for an emerging digital and globalizing public. Revenge porn, slut-shaming, and Internet romance scams are a common and growing malady worldwide. Focusing on how it manifests in diverse digital cultures will aid in the shaping of new Internet laws for a more inclusive cross-cultural public. In specific, this article examines how low-income youth in two of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations – Brazil and India – exercise and express their notions on digital privacy, surveillance, and trust through the lens of romance. This allows for a more thorough investigation of the relationship between sexuality, morality, and governance within the larger Facebook ecology. As Facebook becomes the dominant virtual public sphere for the world’s poor, we are compelled to ask whether inclusivity of the digital users comes at the price of diversity of digital platforms.

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Purpose – The purpose of this article is to shed light on opportunities for social capital during the conceptualization and initial implementation of innovative social enterprises dedicated to violence prevention and youth empowerment in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a two-tiered interview process over a nine-month period with 27 social entrepreneurs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, attention is given to with whom, where and in what ways these innovators accessed and utilized the skills and knowledge necessary to develop and administer social entrepreneurial programs. Findings – The findings reveal more than any other social actor the target population featured most frequently in interviews with social entrepreneurs. Research limitations/implications – Because of the small scale of the study and the specific focus of the social entrepreneurs, the implications of the study are not generalizable to social entrepreneurs across fields. Practical implications – The findings are valuable because they can inform future social entrepreneurs dedicated to violence prevention and youth empowerment about social relations they may wish to cultivate to access relevant social resources during the initial stages of social entrepreneurship. Social implications – Among other benefits, investing in social relations with the target population could help minimize top-down models, which have been a common criticism among third-sector social enterprises. Originality/value – The value of this study is that it adds insight into how the social entrepreneurs built trust among this critical group of actors as well as an analysis of the outcome of the social capital embedded in relations with the target population during the initial stages of social entrepreneurship.

For several decades 'Emerging' has been a staple prefix applied to such entities as markets, nations, democracies, cultures, and business opportunities. The term has been used to label virtually anything about "less developed" others deemed new to the world of market-led consumption, especially by corporate actors looking for new markets and consumers worldwide. This session explores theoretical and practical issues involved with doing industry ethnography within the 'Global South'. BoP (Base-of-the-Pyramid) was a powerful predecessor and marketing mantra that the late C. K. Prahalad made compelling by going beyond development ideology to characterise all 'segments' as active agents for at least for some kind of consumption. But, following BOP's demise as both a discourse and research program, what lessons can we, as ethnographers, learn from the way it tried to account for this contested category of consumers who are supposedly emerging-yet towards what? If BoP had had more of 'our' input might it have fared better, or simply imploded later?