Integrating Indigenous culture into STEM education is a critical process in building pathways to justice and diversifying design. This process serves to (re)center our conceptions of STEM education by challenging strictly Western notions of STEM, representing an opportunity for learning not just in curricular design, but in technological design as well. Postcolonial computing scholars have critically examined design processes, highlighting the dominance of Western knowledge undergirding cross-cultural design. However, such efforts have yet to fully leverage insights from national curricular (re)centering initiatives. We take up this opportunity through a qualitative case study of an educational outreach organization in British Columbia, Canada, a subsidiary of a nation-wide effort in curricular integration of Indigenous and Western STEM material. Applying postcolonial computing thought, we offer enrichments to theory by providing an empirical basis for a) integrating resiliency, b) politicization in design, and c) arguments for (re)centering epistemological authority in computing. These contributions both enrich theory and enhance the practice of cross-cultural design by encouraging and exploring an Indigenous (re)centering of our understanding of both curricular and technological design.

PurposeHelping others use information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as mobile phones, can be beneficial for individuals and communities. In urban refugee communities, displaced and living far from home, collective behaviors with mobile phones can generate a sense of belonging. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential for these offline behaviors to generate a sense of community among urban refugees.Design/methodology/approachUsing quantitative evidence, the authors examined the relationship between collective behaviors, such as sharing or helping with a mobile phone, and sense of community. The authors analyzed survey data collected from urban refugees in Rwanda via multiple regression to test hypotheses related to the impact of collective behaviors on sense of community, as well as the mediating role of ICT self-efficacy and gender.FindingsThe findings suggest that collective behaviors with mobile phones have a positive relationship with sense of community, driven primarily by providing assistance as compared to sharing. ICT self-efficacy was positively related to sense of community. However, collective behaviors' impacts differed by gender, suggesting that social dynamics influence this relationship.Originality/valueWhile the extant literature highlights the various roles of mobile phones in refugees' lives, less is known about the social aspects of use and its potential to help overcome isolation by fostering a sense of community. The authors extend this literature to a novel context (urban refugees in the Global South), testing a model that incorporates other factors that may play a role (e.g. self-efficacy and gender). These findings are valuable to urban refugees, due to difficulties in re-building a sense of community and increased ICT access.

The increasing use of social media like YouTube as a news platform provides new opportunities for the public to react to news reporting. This convergence produces multi-narrative framings of police violence-related evidence that requires further attention, especially given the potential impact on state accountability processes. Using a frame analysis of news outlets and content analysis of comments on YouTube, we identify frames, responses, and the multi-narrative framing that results from this converging environment. Our findings suggest a triumvirate of competing frames around police brutality, with mistrust of media complicating the role news media plays in accountability.

Peace teams work in the trenches of demonstration in liberal democracies.When situations between different parties can escalate to violence, they deploy various tactics and tools to de-escalate the situation. Their work navigates a web of institutions and actors, as well as tools that introduce their materiality into de-escalatory practices. Depicting this system stands to highlight how Peace Teams an maximize their capacities both socially and technologically. However, to date there is no cohesive social and material account of Peace Team work. This study adopts a sociomaterial perspective of demonstrations through the eyes of Peace Teams and their de-escalatory tactics, using semi-structured interview and focus groups. We provide theoretical insights about the sociomaterial nature of de-escalation as being a confluence of social and material intra-actions, and argue for bases of trust as an underlying mechanism to account for the configuration of particular sociomaterial assemblages as manifest in the protest-repression nexus.

Technological mediation describes the process where internet service providers (ISPs) translate telecommunications network innovations from the “technological frontier” to their particular commercial context. Although the original conception defined three obstacles during this process (technical, commercial, and structural), how these obstacles unfold has yet to be fully investigated. Using a qualitative case study with a rural ISP, we identify extensions to the model, in particular emotional response during mediation and their relationship to the dynamic elements mediation process. This illuminates how commercial market maturation impacts the organizations adopting these technologies, and the impacts of experience on the dynamic nature of technological mediation.