The Use and Appropriation of the Mobile Telephony Technologies by the Rural Bangladeshi Farmers

This paper is based on the initial understandings gained from the first half of my doctoral research, that investigates how the mobile telephony technologies can be used and appropriated by the rural Bangladeshi farmers and what could be the potential impacts of such interaction. The research tries to find a relation between the issues raised by the ICT for development literatures and the theoretical underpinnings gained from information systems and marketing. This paper has been developed after the completion of the four month long doctoral fieldwork. An action research approach was undertaken through an intervention by providing the farmers’ groups with mobile telephones. The fieldwork project also provides a model for community based use of the mobile ICTs which can connect the rural farmers among themselves and with the local community based technology centres that have internet connectivity. The farmers’ perceptions about the mobile telephony technology before and after the intervention were collected through interviews and focus group discussions. Ethnographic tool in the form of diary notes describing researcher’s personal observations about the culture and social structure was used to complement the interviews and discussions. The paper provides a snapshot of the theoretical underpinning for the research and a description of the fieldwork. The paper also discusses how the data will be interpreted and analyzed.