Orality, Gender and Social Audio in Rural Africa

Bidwell, Nicola J.; Reitmaier, Thomas; Jampo, Kululwa

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-06498-7_14

Cited by 5 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…As inhabitants have no access to mains electricity, we deployed two solar-powered, cell phone Charging Stations, designed in Cape Town and re-designed in Mankosi (Bidwell et al 2013a). The trial of Audio Repository ended 2.5 years ago, and we subsequently deployed another iteration, Our Voices, which run on three tablets and enables sharing files between tablets when they connect to a wireless mesh network (Bidwell et al 2014a). However, I do not focus on Our Voices here and discuss MXShare only in terms of its influence on Audio Repository.…”

Section: Place and Prototypesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Tribal Authority mediated most decisions in deploying the Stations and tablets, and thus affected use of MXShare and Audio Repository, but our respect for protocol permitted us to engage with other inhabitants and, later, focus on women in the subsequent iteration (Bidwell et al 2014a). Tribal Authorities are responsible for local governance of 36 % of SA's population but are separate from other political and administrative bodies.…”

Section: Local Researchers and Other Inhabitantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We deployed Our Voices on three tablets including one overseen exclusively by women in Ridge. However, despite easy access the women do not often use it (Bidwell et al 2014a, b) rather they eagerly and repeatedly requested, and engaged in, workshops about Our Voices, even when already familiar with using it (Bidwell et al 2014a). It seems that, whilst inhabitants sometimes say that they 'act as one', it is the nuances of speech, song, gesture and movement that articulate being together most explicitly.…”

Section: Genres That Disembody Voicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People's rhythms in interacting with the tablet continuously adapted to each other and this enabled several people, especially women, to coordinate in manipulating the interface, even though the device is not designed for multiple people to touch (Bidwell et al 2014a). Like a handshake, this joining of people is not just symbolic but the bodily becoming of a synchronized whole.…”

Section: Genres That Disembody Voicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even in direct transcription, the words of a speaker are signed by their writer (Irobi 2008). I often try to tackle this paradox by authoring with LRs (see : Bidwell et al 2014a;Bidwell and Siya 2013;Bidwell et al 2013a, b;Bidwell et al 2011a). Yet, whilst LRs are integral to my knowledge, the genres of articles reconfigure our experiences in essentializing categories and do not let their bodies speak.…”

Section: Plural Sites Of Imaginationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa

Bidwell

2014

AI & Soc

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Efforts to design voice-based, social media platforms for low-literacy communities in developing countries have not widened access to information in the ways intended. This article links this to who describes the relations that constitute personhood and how these relations are expressed in designing and deploying systems. I make these links oriented by critique in human-computer interaction that design continues a history of colonialism and embeds meanings in media that disrupt existing communication practices. I explore how we translated 'logics' about sociality through logics located outside of the rural South African community that we targeted for design and deployment. The system aimed to enable inhabitants to record, store and share voice files using a portable, communally owned display. I describe how we engaged with inhabitants, to understand needs, and represented and abstracted from encounters to articulate requirements, which we translated into statements about technology. Use of the system was not as predicted. My analysis suggests that certain writing cultures, embedded in translations, reify knowledge, disembody voices and neglect the rhythms of life. This biases social media towards individualist logics and limits affordances for forms, genres and other elements of communication that contribute to sociality. Thus, I propose oral practices offer oppositional power in designing digital bubbles to support human togetherness and that we can enrich design by moving the centre-a phrase taken from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Moving the centre: the struggle for cultural freedoms, James Currey, London, 1993) who insists that liberation from colonialism requires plural sites of creativity. To realize this potential, we need radically different approaches that enable symmetrical translation.

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Section: Place and Prototypesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Local Researchers and Other Inhabitantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Genres That Disembody Voicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Genres That Disembody Voicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Plural Sites Of Imaginationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa

Bidwell

2014

AI & Soc

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Land, Letṧema and Leola: Digital Transformation on a Rural Community’s Own Terms

Magoro

Bidwell²

2022

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology

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Situating Asynchronous Voice in Rural Africa

Bidwell

Siya²

2013

Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2013

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Abstract. Designing for oral users in economically poor places has intensified efforts to develop platforms for asynchronous voice. Often these aim to assist users in rural areas where literacy is lowest, but there are few empirical studies and design tends to be oriented by theory that contrasts the mental functions of oral and literate users, rather than by local practices in social situations. We describe designing an Audio Repository (AR) based on practices, priorities and phone-use in rural Africa. The AR enables users to record, store and share voice files on a shared tablet and via their own cell-phones. We deployed the AR for 10 months in rural Africa and illiterate elders, who have few ways to use free or low-cost phone services, used it to record meetings. Use of, and interactions with, the AR informed the design of a new prototype. They also sensitized us to qualities of collective sense-making that can inspire new interactions but that guidelines for oral users overlook; such as the fusion of meaning and sound and the tuning of speech and bodily movement. Thus, we claim that situating design in local ways of saying enriches the potential for asynchronous voice.Keywords: Oral users, Rural Africa, Asynchronous voice, Social media. IntroductionMost of the world's 800 million illiterate adults live in economically poor regions; in fact, interpolating Worldbank indicators, in Africa fewer people can read and write than there are cell-phone subscriptions [23]. Cell-phones offer many new opportunities to people in technology-sparse regions but they may also amplify gaps between oral and literate users and this has motivated recent efforts to develop asynchronous voice platforms for rural settings where literacy is lowest. Such efforts include interactive voice applications and services for cell-phones to record and access content produced locally, or by authorities or NGOs [19,27,31,39] or participate in citizen journalism or online social networks [25,29]. However, there are few empirical studies [29] and design tends to be oriented by theory that contrasts the mental functions of oral and literate people, not by practices in social situations. In this paper we describe a system we deployed in rural South Africa to enable users to record, store and share voice files for free. We aim to show that situating design in local ways of saying can inspire new interactions for asynchronous voice; thus, we start by claiming that theory currently orienting design for oral users omits factors that can prompt ideation.

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Orality, Gender and Social Audio in Rural Africa

Cited by 5 publications

References 29 publications

Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa

Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa

Land, Letṧema and Leola: Digital Transformation on a Rural Community’s Own Terms

Situating Asynchronous Voice in Rural Africa

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