Title: Anthropology: Taking it mobile
Author: kiwanja (Ken Banks)
Source: Build it Kenny, and they will come…
Date (published): 08/05/2010
Date (accessed): 10/05/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Anyone taking more than a passing glance at the kiwanja.net website shouldn’t need long to figure out my four key areas of interest. I’ve always maintained that if your ideal job doesn’t exist then you have to create it, and being able to combine my passions for technology, anthropology, conservation and development is for me – through kiwanja.net – that dream job.

Saying that, it doesn’t go without its challenges. Putting aside the difficulties faced by the global conservation and development communities, most of my thinking today centres around the sometimes uncomfortable tension between appropriate technology and the mobile phone, and the potential role of applied anthropology in helping us understand what on earth is going on out there. We can’t always rely on Indiana Jones, Hollywood’s answer to anthropology, to get us all the answers.

Title: Internet, schoolchildren and rural Pakistan: How to get community buy-in including for girls
Source: Association for Progressive Communications

Date (published): 10/03/2010
Date (accessed): 12/03/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
It was by coincidence that 29 year-old software developer Huda Sarfraz got involved in the Dareecha project. It was the first time the Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP) had directly taken on the social perspective of a project by taking technology to the people and the Lahore resident decided she would stay on and give it a try. Huda as part of Dareecha (meaning “window”) set about training school children and teachers from the rural Punjab to use the internet so that they could eventually create their own content.
And create content they did – with their new skills, students and teachers in rural villages created 57 new, locally-relevant school and community web sites, which they presented in a competition held by Dareecha in June and August 2009. The judging panel, comprised of government officials, academia and ICT experts couldn’t help but notice the strong presence of women and girls among the winners. This was a sign that the Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM), an evaluation methodology the Dareecha team had used to compliment other planning methods for the project, had helped them get through to a segment of the population other more traditional planning methods may not have achieved: women and girls.

Title: Communication Technologies in Latin America and Africa: A multidisciplinary perspective
Editors: Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Adela Ros Híja
Pages: 396 pp.
ISBN: 978-84-692-8402-5
Publisher: Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC)
Date (published): 17/02/2010
Date (accessed): 09/03/2010
Type of information: research volume
Language: English, Catalan
On-line access: yes (individual chapters in pdf)
Abstract:
As a result of the “Conference on Development and Information Technologies. Mobile Phones and Internet in Latin America and Africa: What benefits for the most disadvantaged?” held on 23-24 October 2009 at the IN3-UOC, we are happy to inform you that the book Communication Technologies in Latin America and Africa: A multidisciplinary perspective is now available

Introduction (English, Catalan)

Section 1. Shaping the economic sphere
Chapter 1: Mobile-based livelihood services in Africa: pilots and early deployments (English)
Jonathan Donner
Chapter 2: Mobile phones as a tool in the household production process Evidence from Puno, Peru (English)
Roxana Barrantes
Chapter 3: Mobile opportunities: Poverty and Mobile Telephony in Latin America and the Caribbean. The case of Mexico (English)
Judith Mariscal
Chapter 4: Broadband Internet access in developing countries: Universal service provision and pricing schemes (English)
Carlos Gutiérrez Hita and Juana Aznar Márquez

Section 2. Shaping communicative practices
Chapter 5: Managing the cost of mobile communication in Ghana (English)
Araba Sey
Chapter 6: Africa connects: Mobile communication and social change in the margins of African society. The example of the Bamenda Grassfields, Cameroon (English)
Mirjam de Bruijn
Chapter 7: From “lands at the end of the earth” to “lands of progress”? Communication and mobility in South-Eastern Angola (English)
Inge Brinkman and Silvia Alessi
Chapter 8: Imagined connectivity, poetic text-messaging and appropriation in Sudan (English)
Siri Lamoureaux

Section 3. Shaping migratory cultures
Chapter 9: Connectivity, Migration and Socio-Economic Development with a focus on the Maghreb (English)
Ivan Ureta
Chapter 10: ICTs in Senegal: between migration culture and socio-cultural and politico-economic positioning (English)
Aly Tandian
Chapter 11: Moving and mediating: a mobile view on sub-Saharan African migration towards Europe (English)
Joris Schapendonk
Chapter 12: ICT and codeveloppement between Catalonia and Senegal (French)
Papa Sow and Rosnert Ludovic Alissoutin
Chapter 13: Can the diaspora contribute to the development of their home countries? (English)
Ana M. González Ramos, Jörg Müller and Milagros Sáinz Ibáñez

Summing up (English, Catalan)

Title: Women and Mobile: Is It Really a Global Opportunity?
Authors: Anne-Ryan Heatwole with Katrin Verclas
Source: MobileActive.org
Date (published): 08/03/2010
Date (accessed): 08/03/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Today is International Women's Day and as we do every year, we are looking at the complex and intriguing issue of women and mobile technology around the world. A new report, “Women and Mobile: A Global Opportunity,” by the GSMA Development Fund, the Cherie Blair Foundation and Vital Wave Consulting, tackles the issue of the gender gap in mobile phone usage with a focus on low- and middle-income countries.

Title: IT for Change. Annual Report 2008-2009
Author: Anita Gurumurthy
Pages: 40 pp.
Publisher: IT for Change (ITfC), Bangalore
Date (published): 28/07/2009
Date (accessed): 14/01/2010
Type of information: yearbook
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
The year 2008-09 took forward ITfC’s journey of seeking conceptual anchors of equity and social justice in the emerging social paradigm underpinned by the new information and communication technologies (ICTs). We created some new pathways and furthered some old ones towards our mission to define the ICT and development (ICTD) arena through the lens of the marginalised. New technologies are the often unsuspected harbingers of a new world order. Unfortunately, the development sector and, particularly, progressive groups, are mostly not equipped to deal with the challenge of influencing the direction of change being shaped by the emerging techno-social models and paradigms. We identify this as a major blindspot in the global struggle towards progressive ideals and addressing this is a task we have set for ourselves.

Title: The shape of the project : Using Net for Social Change
Author: Nishant Shah
Source: www.cis-india.org
Publisher: Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
Date (published): 13/01/2010
Date (accessed): 14/01/2010
Type of information: research article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
The rise of the commercial Internet in the 1990s was accompanied by great expectations with regard to its democratising potentials. In several parts of the world, such potentials seemed to materialise when social movements snatched up new technologies to further their aims through revolutionising their methods. The emergence of Web 2.0 seemed to only multiply the possibilities, and since then, the use of social media for social change has received widespread attention worldwide. A consolidated study of this phenomenon in the Indian context has, however, been lacking hitherto. Under what conditions did the use of technologies for social change emerge in the Indian context? Who were and are the groups and individuals behind such initiatives? What shape does their online activism take? And how does it fit into the larger background, including that of organised activism, in which it is located? It is these questions that this research seeks to answer.
Using the Net for Social Change: Online Activism in India

Title: A Historical View of Pakistan Telecom Industry and Its Impact on Pakistan Culture
Author: Babar Bhatti
Source: State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan
Date (published): 28/12/2009
Date (accessed): 28/12/2009
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
Taimur Sikander has written an interesting article for Dawn about the long way that telecom has come in Pakistan and the impact of mobile phones and telecommunication on Pakistan society. I particularly like how he provides snapshots of the early days, and the way politics, arts and culture were shaped by telecom.

Title: Online Deliberation : Design, Research, and Practice
Editors: Todd Davies and Seeta Peña Gangadharan
Pages: 350 pp.
ISBN: 9781575865546
Source>: Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes, Volume 182
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Date (published): 04/11/2009
Date (accessed): 09/12/2009
Type of information: book
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf, Attention! 12,45 MB)
Abstract:
Can new technology enhance local, national, and global democracy? Online Deliberation is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, web designers, and practitioners.
Since the most exciting innovations in deliberation have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, research conducted on this growing field has to this point neglected the full perspective of online participation. This volume, an essential read for those working at the crossroads of computer and social science, illuminates the collaborative world of deliberation by examining diverse clusters of Internet communities.

Title:
Editor: Alan Finlay
Pages: 232 pp.
ISBN: 92-95049-73-X
Publisher: Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos)
Date (published): 13/11/2009
Date (accessed): 03/12/2009
Type of information: research report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf, 4,56 MB)
Abstract:
This third report in the GISWatch series is entitled "Access to online information and knowledge – advancing human rights and democracy" and reveals how vulnerable the internet as we know it is.

This third report in the GISWatch series is entitled “Access to online information and knowledge – advancing human rights and democracy” and reveals how vulnerable the internet as we know it is.

The report unpacks the key issues impacting on access to online information and knowledge, including discussions on intellectual property rights, knowledge rights, open standards and access to educational materials and libraries.

The report also offers an institutional overview and a reflection on indicators that track access to information and knowledge. 48 country reports –-ten more than last year— analyse the status of access to online information and knowledge in countries as diverse as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Mexico, Switzerland and Kazakhstan, while regional overviews offer a bird’s eye perspective on trends in North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Europe.

For the first time there is an innovate section that visually maps global rights as seen through the lens of Google searches, as well as a visual analysis of Twitter messages sent out during the recent Iranian political crisis.

The report has its own dedicated Global Information Society Watch website.

Title: ICTD – Is it a New Species of Development?
Authors: Anita Gurumurthy and Parminder Jeet Singh
Pages: 5 pp.
Publisher: CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
Date (published): 14/08/2009
Date (accessed): 02/12/2009
Type of information: research paper
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
This "Think-piece" based on an IT for Change Perspective Paper discusses issues of power in the field of information and communication technology for development (ICTD) and suggests reconstructing it from being based on a market economy model to being based on an 'open ICT ecology' model in which the global South has equal footing with the global North. From the Introduction: "The structural nature of what is a society-wide transformation, triggered by a new techno-social paradigm, makes it more and more evident that the core ICTD issue relates to the all important question of power; where the socially marginalised and disadvantaged groups are located in the new social configurations. A participant in a grassroots community video project for marginalised, [economically] poor women, describes the power shift associated with ICTs succinctly - 'But you cannot bribe videos; they tell honestly what our stories are'."

The emerging information society, according to the authors, is being shaped by a power struggle between a neo-liberalist faction that sees ICTD as an opportunity to deploy ICTs "in order to universalise market fundamentalism in all facets of life." Aided, as stated here, by its alignment with the worldview of those who see ICTs as neutral and equally beneficial to all, "...the hegemony of neoliberalism in ICTD has today been naturalised as the 'common sense' way of casting ICTD."

This article examines ICTD as a new species of development "between the two opposing poles of a socio-political understanding of 'development' on the one hand, and ICTD's dominant form as a neutral, apolitical and essentially moulded in market fundamentalist ideologies on the other. The arguments in this document are organised along three sections: the first unpacks the contested meanings of development that have informed ICTD through a political economy analysis; the second lays out defining attributes of the field and its study; and the third raises some issues for reconstructing this field."

via The Communication Initiative Network