Surely the digital divide is not the internet’s fault?
The ideas I’m putting down in this post are not quite complete and I would like to hear your views on them. Please comment.
Recently I’ve been having quite a few conversations about social media where people are expressing quite a high level of scepticism. A common view is that we should be careful when promoting social media because not everyone has access to the necessary technology to use it.
For example, someone recently said that the internet is a bad thing because it creates inequality. Another view I often hear is that social media is only relevant in a Western context.
In this I sense a high level of technological determinism that I think that we need to question as much as the Western, social media ‘hyper-optimism’ of, for example, Clay Shirky.
The digital divides are clearly real, however. As Pippa Norris says:
A global divide has become strikingly evident in the chasm between industrialized and developing societies. A social divide is apparent in the access of rich and poor in each nation. And within the online community, a democratic divide is emerging between those who do, and do not, use
Internet resources to engage, mobilize and participate in public life.
But by focusing only on the technology itself as the cause of these problems is, in my view, a case of gross technological determinism. Norris puts it this way:
Cyber-optimists hope that the development of the Internet has the capacity to reduce, although not wholly eradicate, traditional inequalities between information-rich and poor both between, and within, societies. In contrast, cyberpessimists believe that the digital technologies will reinforce and exacerbate existing disparities.
I believe that we need to move away from both these extremes. We need to see the benefits that new technology can bring, while at the same time working (perhaps with the help of social tools) towards bringing about the kind of social change needed to ensure that everyone can make use of the benefits that social technology brings.
In their study on the use of mobile phones in Khartoum, Brinkman, De Bruijn and Bilal argue that most studies on the use of information technology in Africa focus only on how society is transformed by new technology, not how new technology and its use is also transformed by society:
The concept of appropriation points to a multi-directional approach: transformations do not only take place in the societies into which the new technologies are launched, the technologies are also transformed under the influence of local creative usages and the processes of becoming embedded in a historical, cultural context.
The also identify these two extreme views – one in favour of and one against – technology:
Views range from interpretating new ICTs as Western hegemony and capitalist exploitation ruinous to African traditions to automatically lauding new technologies as beneficial for the development and progress of the African continent
Both of these views are equally technologically determinist, in my view.
As Francis Nyamnjoh has said: “for way too long the focus has been on what ICTs do to to Africans. It’s time to focus on what Africans do with technology.”
I think that the use of technology needs to be looked at from a holistic perspective. The fact that everyone does not have access is not something that should be blamed on the technology itself.
What we need to look at are the socio-economic factors that create inequality and oppression.
That is what we need to fight. Not the internet.
Photo credit: CharlesFred on Flickr
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Hey Pontus,
(he’s a gangster, that man!) .
First up, thanks for the ’special mention’, Shannon gets a lot of attention already
Second, also connected with the tag, is that I don’t think I clarified my position on social media tools, partly because I am still forming an opinion about it. Nothing concrete there at the moment.
Going back to my presentation, it struck me much afterwards that I had sort of dismissed something quite important as trivial. If nothing else, the Pink Chaddi campaign had got us talking about an issue that would otherwise be brushed under the carpet. Of course, I am saying this at the cost of implying that girls being beaten up wouldn’t have made the news or shocked us. That would have happened nonetheless. The Facebook campaign, however, kept the agitation alive and fresh, prolonging it beyond the normal attention tv news pays to such incidents. It prevented a situation where people nuisanced by it didn’t just look the other way and hope that it would go away! That is a major achievement in itself, because it kind of forced people to confront themselves and admit that something needed to be done.
I read Jo Bardeol for my Transnews essay and Bardeol draws up a three-layered structure (shudder… shudder…) in which new media plays the not insignifcant role of “mediatising” horizontal communication. This is signifcant, as it indicates that there is communication or simply more communication and interaction in a context that was previously sort of free(or freer?!)of such activity.
So social media does have a role to play! And even more so in conjunction with the kind of lives we live today.
But you still have to educate me about technological determinisn. Because from what I understand, we too are indulging in the same!
Phew! Hope have made sense. We’ll talk some more on this
Two somewhat simple thoughts I have:
1) The abstract does not explain anything; it itself must be explained;
2) No need to hope or fear, but find new weapons.
So, firstly, Internet or social media itself does not mean anything. Rather, it would be good to look at where these utterances are made and which assemblages they tie into. There is a tendency in academia to stick our heads up our asses and talk only to each other. But a theory is good only as far as it connects to something. So I would look case by case by case what is going and what assemblages/networks the theories connect to assess what they are doing and what is their utility. Who reads them? Who are they targeted towards? The problem as is rightly noted in the criticism is that we tend to too often naturalize a proto-Californian techno-hippie subject position to talk about digital culture and its utopian potential which is probably more about their twisted mix of zen, decaf coffee,
utopian entrepreneurship, capitalism light and its conceptions of free information than it is about what these technologies actually do in different parts of the world. So first explain the production of the discourse rather than use this discourse to explain what is going on.
Secondly, and somewhat related, there is a flaw in critical theory when it tries conflate academic criticism with getting things done. Yes, sure, there are socio-economic inequalities. Yes, sure, the criticism of Californian Ideology and digital techno-fetishism has its place and time. But these criticism are misplaced when we try to do something practical with these technologies: we are talking about techne (practice of doing something) rather episteme (the practice of understanding something) – both of which operate under different registers of practice. So what we should look at when we want to use social media practically for some purposes is, given the context, what can be done rather than what should be done? This I believe has to be experimental as we never know exactly how they can be use as contingency is a key characteristic of practice. Beware the hylomorphists
.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Hylomorphism#Modern_Ideas
Worst of course is when we buy into our bullshit. When we take one such theory such as the utopianism of the Californian techno-hippies as given and try to apply it to a different place without getting to know the specifics of what is going on.
Suprisingly, we talk about Apple and iPhone incessantly. But it seems Nokia is still increasing its market share globally. Wonder why?
http://mobile.venturebeat.com/2010/02/02/nokia-extends-presence-in-emerging-markets/
@Azar ‘Mediating horizontal communication’. Interesting. The fact that people are talking about something is a story.
@objetpetitm So the best thing is to stop talking about it and just get on with it?
@pontusw: i call it “poke with a stick” methodology. that is, find out by doing. similarly, theory serves it place.