Land of the Disconnected

Uneven Connections: A Partial History of the Mobile Phone in Papua New Guinea

“…The introduction of mobile broadband in PNG lifted hopes that digital communications would lend greater transparency to government operations and aid in the fight against corruption (Logan 2012;Rooney 2012). 4 As early as 2009, with the launch of the Namorong Report (Capey 2013), Facebook groups and blogs reported and circulated news about alleged government malfeasance and failure of service delivery (see Logan and Suwamaru 2017). 5 The rapid spread of smartphones following the introduction of Digicel Broadband in 2011 increased the velocity of circulation and made news more accessible to more people.…”

“…The use of social media to organise, witness and document political protest first occurred in a big way in 2012 when for a brief, strange and tense period two different men claimed to be the prime minister of PNG (see Cave 2012: 12;Cranston 2013;Logan and Suwamaru 2017). In 2016, a public protest in Port Moresby that led to a tragic confrontation with police and the shooting of several university students was well documented on Facebook and other social media platforms.…”