Organizational Discourse and Digital Rights: Notes on the Proceeding of Private Educational Groups in Brazil During the COVID-19

Abstract

How, in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, have groups working in Brazilian private higher education evaluated the use of digital platforms in their educational processes? This was the motivating question for the elaboration of this article, which seeks to reflect, especially, on the presence or not of concerns related to the guarantee of digital rights in the organizational discourses of the four groups with the highest revenues in education in the country: Cogna, Yduqs, Ser Educacional e Ânima Educação. Understanding the importance of digital platforms in the construction of knowledge and, at the same time, the need to affirm digital rights, this text proposes to observe the extent to which issues such as the benefits of technologies, national and international laws that regulate the use of platforms and mechanisms to guarantee the privacy and the protection of personal data. To this end, the work analyzes positions expressed by these groups in institutional texts published on their official websites since the beginning of the pandemic. In general, it is concluded that there is an uncritical perspective in the adoption of digital technologies, which can be verified, for example, in the finding that none of the content published by the four companies mentions legal instruments, such as the General Data Protection Law, nor does it problematize aspects such as inequalities in internet access or risks to users' privacy.