Analysing appropriation and usability in social and occupational lives

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to understand how Bangladeshi farmers interact with mobile telephony and how they negotiate the resulting difficulties. In doing so, the paper seeks to identify how farmers integrate mobile telephony into their daily lives, and what factors facilitate and limit their use of mobile telephony. Design/methodology/approach -The research was based on ethnographic observation, interviews and focus group discussions, collected through four months of fieldwork, conducted in two remote areas of Bangladesh. Findings -It was found that Bangladeshi farmers' use of mobile telephony is inhibited due to language barriers, a lack of literacy, unfamiliar English terminologies, inappropriate translation to local language (Bengali) and financial constraints. However, the social, occupational and psychological benefits from mobile telephony motivate them to use and appropriate it through inventive use and adaptation.Research limitations/implications -The findings suggest that current understanding of usability needs to be interwoven with that about the appropriation of technology in order to develop a better understanding of the use and consequent integration of a technology in daily lives. Practical implications -The paper adds to the argument for a bottom-up approach for ICT-enabled intervention in development activities and for the mobile telephony manufacturers and network providers it contributes to understanding of the rural consumer market of a developing country. Originality/value -The paper presents an original conceptual diagram that combines the concept of usability and appropriation.

Manifestations, Drivers, and Frictions of Mobile Phone Use in Low- and Middle-Income Settings: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Rural India and China

“…Firstly, the study took place in rural field sites in two low-and middle-income countries. While it is possible to question the representativeness of the findings on this basis, my findings correspond to qualitative and survey research in other low-, middle-, and high-income countries (Basu & Foster, 1998;Chipchase, 2008;Dey et al, 2011;Fernández-Ardèvol, 2014;Medhi, Cutrell, & Toyama, 2010;Reisdorf, 2011), and they echo arguments of other bodies of development research, for instance the proximate illiteracy literature where literacy constraints are partially overcome through the presence of third parties (Basu & Foster, 1998;Basu et al, 2001;Iversen & Palmer-Jones, 2008;Maddox & Esposito, 2013). This degree of consistency makes it improbable that the documented manifestations and challenges of mobile phone use are somehow wonderful phenomena of poor, rural areas of Rajasthan and Gansu.…”

“…The regression models include thus vectors of Personali factors (Chipchase, 2008;Dey et al, 2011;Dodson et al, 2013); Technicali mobile-phone-specific factors Souter et al, 2005;Tenhunen, 2008;Wei & Zhang, 2008); Contextuali factors relating to complementarities and the technological environment (captured through village dummy variables) (Ndiaye & Zouinar, 2014;Wicander, 2010); and the Sociali context of the individual (D'Souza, 2010;Fernández-Ardèvol, 2014;Jeffrey & Doron, 2013;Oreglia & Kaye, 2012).…”

“…The qualitative literature has also suggested determinants of these patterns, for instance user characteristics (Chipchase, 2008;Dey, Newman, & Prendergast, 2011;Dodson et al, 2013), the technical specifications of the phone (Donner, Rangaswamy, Steenson, & Wei, 2008;Souter et al, 2005;Tenhunen, 2008;Wei & Zhang, 2008), or the social context and mobility patterns of individuals (D'Souza, 2010;Fernández-Ardèvol, 2014;Jeffrey & Doron, 2013;Oreglia & Kaye, 2012) (see Section 3 for further references). For example, user characteristics like illiteracy or old age can limit the engagement with mobile phones, or even render them unusable altogether.…”

In Search for Holistic ICT4D Research: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In general, the social-embedded studies attempt to resolve the lack of in-depth explanation of the social context of ICT4D in technology-transfer stream. Some of the studies in this stream focus on exploring the micro-level characteristics such as infrastructure, level of literacy, or language barriers, and then propose a bottom-up solution of ICT [11,12]. Other studies extend the bottom-up approach by exploring microlevel and macro-level characteristics simultaneously to explore the tangled relationship, hierarchical positions, interests, and concerns of all stakeholders [19,26].…”

“…Eventually, the focus on ICTs in much ICT4D research, which considers the impact of ICTs on developing countries as linear and deterministic [6,7], was seen as a potential culprit because it fails to acknowledge social structures in developing countries [8], as well as unique cultures, political motives, or institutional rules [9]. To date, ICT4D research is divided into two general schools of thought; contextualism, which is concerned with how to explore the social context [10,11,12], and technology-transfer that concerns how to catch up with the rapid technological development from developed countries [13,14]. Though most studies in each stream discuss both ICTs and the development, the focus and approach are significantly different, for example due to varying theoretical lenses, research method, or unit of analysis [15,16].…”