Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa

dc.contributor.authorBidwell, N.J. (Nicola)
dc.date.accessioned2015-08-28T09:26:31Z
dc.date.available2015-08-28T09:26:31Z
dc.date.issued2016-02
dc.description.abstractEfforts to design voice-based, social media platforms for low-literacy communities in developing countries have not widened access to information in the ways intended. This article links this to who describes the relations that constitute personhood and how these relations are expressed in designing and deploying systems. I make these links oriented by critique in human–computer interaction that design continues a history of colonialism and embeds meanings in media that disrupt existing communication practices. I explore how we translated ‘logics’ about sociality through logics located outside of the rural South African community that we targeted for design and deployment. The system aimed to enable inhabitants to record, store and share voice files using a portable, communally owned display. I describe how we engaged with inhabitants, to understand needs, and represented and abstracted from encounters to articulate requirements, which we translated into statements about technology. Use of the system was not as predicted. My analysis suggests that certain writing cultures, embedded in translations, reify knowledge, disembody voices and neglect the rhythms of life. This biases social media towards individualist logics and limits affordances for forms, genres and other elements of communication that contribute to sociality. Thus, I propose oral practices offer oppositional power in designing digital bubbles to support human togetherness and that we can enrich design by moving the centre—a phrase taken from Ngu˜gı˜ wa Thiong’o (Moving the centre: the struggle for cultural freedoms, James Currey, London, 1993) who insists that liberation from colonialism requires plural sites of creativity. To realize this potential, we need radically different approaches that enable symmetrical translation.en_ZA
dc.description.embargo2017-02-27en_ZA
dc.description.librarianhb2015en_ZA
dc.description.sponsorshipCSIR-Meraka, South Africa and partially by EPSRC Grant (EP/H042857/1).en_ZA
dc.description.urihttp://link.springer.com/journal/146en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationBidwell, NJ 2016, 'Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa', AI and Society, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 51-77.en_ZA
dc.identifier.issn0951-5666 (print)
dc.identifier.issn1435-5655 (online)
dc.identifier.other10.1007/s00146-014-0564-5
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2263/49645
dc.language.isoenen_ZA
dc.publisherSpringeren_ZA
dc.rights© Springer-Verlag London 2014. The original publication is available at : http://link.springer.com/journal/146.en_ZA
dc.subjectPost-colonial computingen_ZA
dc.subjectDecolonizing designen_ZA
dc.subjectOral practiceen_ZA
dc.subjectPersonhooden_ZA
dc.subjectVoice-based systemsen_ZA
dc.subjectRural Africaen_ZA
dc.titleMoving the centre to design social media in rural Africaen_ZA
dc.typePostprint Articleen_ZA

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