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Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa

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Abstract

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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Acknowledgments

I thank all inhabitants of Mankosi, especially LRs (Masbulele, Bongiwe, Roico, Nomphello, Senzo, Mvuzo, Nowelthu, Thumeka, Azola, and Khululwa), my neighbours and friends (Kholeka, Sibongile, Lusy, Nellie, Thatiswa, Maddy, Andre, Pedro, Domi, Roger, Judy, Nelsie, Carlos, Prune and Cody): Ndiyabulela kakhulu ngempatho endenze ndaziva ndikhuselekile kwilali yenu nangokundifundisa ukunimamela. I am grateful to Gary Marsden for the Charging Stations, his friendship and his vision that is lived in Thomas Reitmaier, who designed and developed Audio Repository and Our Voices and engaged willingly with African orality. I thank Simon Robinson and Matt Jones for tablets and MXShare, Sam Merritt for early ideas about Nguigi wa Thiong’o, Lesley Green for pointing me to Sloterdijk and Alan Chamberlain for alerting me to Irobi. I am grateful to Mounia Lalmas, Paula Kotze and Bill Tucker for their support, and Marion Watson, truna, Lilly Irani, Paul Dourish, Lisa Nathan and Satinder Gil for their confidence in me. Finally, I thank the reviewers of this article for their provocation and guidance. Our work was funded mostly by CSIR-Meraka, South Africa and partially by EPSRC Grant (EP/H042857/1).

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  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Namibia, Private Bag 13301, Windhoek, Namibia

    Nicola J. Bidwell

  2. Department of Informatics, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

    Nicola J. Bidwell

  3. Digital Ethnography Group, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

    Nicola J. Bidwell

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Correspondence to Nicola J. Bidwell.

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This article is dedicated to Irie, Pebee and Vinca Jampo.

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Bidwell, N.J. Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa. AI & Soc 31, 51–77 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-014-0564-5

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