The Digital Divide Objectified in the Design: Use of the Mobile Telephone by Underprivileged Youth in Sri Lanka

Most discussions on the digital divide have predominantly focused on social disparities in the physical accessibility of information and communication technologies ICT, and the proposed solutions are related to providing low cost access to the underprivileged. The mobile phone has been considered as a good solution due to its relatively low cost. This paper, based on an empirical study in Sri Lanka, demonstrates that even though the underprivileged population has adopted the mobile phone, most of the computer based communication facilities available in the phones are 'inaccessible' to such users due the objectification of broader social inequalities in the design of phones. In other words, the digital divide is objectified in the design.

[1]  K. Hellmann.  Consumerism as a way of life , 2013 .

[2]  Brian P. Bloomfield,et al.  Bodies, Technologies and Action Possibilities , 2010 .

[3]  Ruth Oldenziel,et al.  Europe’s mediation junction: technology and consumer society in the 20th century , 2005 .

[4]  Keval J. Kumar,et al.  Telecommunications and Development , 2006 .

[5]  Jack Challoner.  Desirable Future?: Consumer Electronics in Tomorrow's World , 2008 .

[6]  B. Doolin,et al.  Towards Critical Interpretivism in IS Research , 2005 .

[7]  Michael Young,et al.  Understanding Technology in Education , 1991 .

[8]  R. Barbour.  Doing Focus Groups , 2008 .

[9]  B. Latour.  Technology is Society Made Durable , 1990 .

[10]  M. Warschauer.  Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide , 2003 .

[11]  T. Pinch,et al.  Users as Agents of Technological Change: The Social Construction of the Automobile in the Rural United States , 1996, Technology and Culture.

[12]  Tapan S. Parikh.  Mobile phones may be the right devices for supporting developing world accessibility, but is the WWW the right service delivery model? , 2006, W4A '06.

[13]  Ian Hutchby,et al.  Technologies, Texts and Affordances , 2001 .

[14]  H. Mackay.  Consumption and everyday life , 1997 .

[15]  Madeleine Akrich,et al.  A Summary of a Convenient Vocabulary for the Semiotics of Human and Nonhuman Assemblies , 1992 .

[16]  J. Aker,et al.  Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa , 2010 .

[17]  Ayesha Zainudeen,et al.  Social Influence in Mobile Phone Adoption: Evidence from the Bottom of Pyramid in Emerging Asia , 2009 .

[18]  Johannes A.G.M..  The deepening Divide: Inequality in the information society. , 2005 .

[19]  Brandie L. Martin,et al.  Mobile Phones and Rural Livelihoods: Diffusion, Uses, and Perceived Impacts Among Farmers in Rural Uganda , 2011 .

[20]  Handan Vicdan,et al.  A New World of Literacy, Information Technologies, and the Incorporeal Selves , 2008 .

[21]  Ayesha Zainudeen,et al.  Are the Poor Stuck in Voice? Conditions for Adoption of More-Than-Voice Mobile Services , 2011 .

[22]  Michael Hammond,et al.  What is an affordance and can it help us understand the use of ICT in education? , 2010, Education and Information Technologies.

[23]  I. Hutchby.  ‘Incommensurable’ studies of mobile phone conversation: a reply to Ilkka Arminen , 2005 .

[24]  Wiebe E. Bijker,et al.  Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change ed. by Wiebe E. Bijker, John Law (review) , 1994, Technology and Culture.

[25]  P. Thomson.  Schooling the Rustbelt Kids , 2020 .

[26]  Beyond The Black Box , 2005 .

[27]  Flis Henwood,et al.  Critical perspectives on technologies, in/equalities and the information society. , 2000 .

[28]  Martyn J. Lee.  Consumer Culture Reborn: The Cultural Politics of Consumption , 1993 .

[29]  Danny Miller,et al.  Materiality: An Introduction , 2005, Materiality.

[30]  Anuradha Bhamidipaty,et al.  SymAB : Symbol-Based Address Book for the Semi-literate Mobile User , 2007, INTERACT.

[31]  Jonathan Donner,et al.  Research Approaches to Mobile Use in the Developing World : A Review of the Literature , 2007 .

[32]  Rodney L. Stump,et al.  Exploring the Digital Divide in Mobile-phone Adoption Levels across Countries , 2008 .

[33]  Kalle Lyytinen,et al.  The 3G transition: Changes in the US wireless industry , 2006 .

[34]  Madeleine Akrich,et al.  The De-scription of Technical Objects , 1992 .

[35]  V. Oost,et al.  Materialized gender: how shavers configure the users' feminity and masculinity , 2003 .

[36]  Mark Paterson,et al.  Consumption and Everyday Life , 2005 .

[37]  Different Directions in the Mobile Internet: Analysing Mobile Internet Services in Japan and Europe , 2005 .

[38]  Lucas Graves,et al.  The Affordances of Blogging , 2007 .

[39]  Rohan Samarajiva,et al.  Who’s got the phone? Gender and the use of the telephone at the bottom of the pyramid , 2010, New Media Soc..

[40]  Jack Linchuan Qiu.  The accidental accomplishment of Little Smart: understanding the emergence of a working-class ICT , 2007, New Media Soc..

[41]  Udo Richard Averweg,et al.  Visions of Community: Community Informatics and the Contested Nature of a Polysemic Term for a Progressive Discipline , 2011 .

[42]  Richard A. Krueger,et al.  Focus groups : a practical guide for applied research / by Richard A. Krueger , 1989 .

[43]  W. Orlikowski.  Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work , 2007 .

[44]  R. Hill,et al.  Globalization and Technological Achievement: Implications for Macromarketing and the Digital Divide , 2004 .

[45]  Pierre Bourdieu,et al.  Outline of a Theory of Practice , 2020, On Violence.

[46]  N. Oudshoorn,et al.  Introduction: How users and non-users matter , 2003 .

[47]  M. A. Sey,et al.  Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective (Information Revolution & Global Politics) , 2006 .

[48]  V. Braun,et al.  Using thematic analysis in psychology , 2006 .

[49]  P. Bourdieu.  Forms of Capital , 2002 .

[50]  Jack Linchuan Qiu,et al.  Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective , 2009 .

[51]  Edward D. Lazowska,et al.  Designing an Architecture for Delivering Mobile Information Services to the Rural Developing World , 2006, Seventh IEEE Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems & Applications (WMCSA'06 Supplement).

[52]  Ian Hutchby,et al.  Aspects of the sequential organization of mobile phone conversation , 2005 .

[53]  R. Abraham.  Mobile Phones and Economic Development: Evidence from the Fishing Industry in India , 2006 .

[54]  Madanmohan Rao.  The Wireless Tsunami , 2003 .

[55]  Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol,et al.  Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective (Information Revolution & Global Politics) , 2006 .