Designing social media for community information sharing in rural South Africa

Nicola J. Bidwell, Simon Robinson, Elina Vartiainen, Matt Jones, Masbulele Jay Siya, Thomas Reitmaier, Gary Marsden, Mounia Lalmas

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference Paper published in Proceedingspeer-review

22 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We reflect on long trials of two prototype social media systems in rural South Africa and their biases towards certain communication practices on information sharing. We designed the systems to assist people in low-income communities to share locally relevant information. Both involve communal displays, to record, store and share media, and users can transfer media between the display and their cell-phones. MXShare, which we report for the first time, also enables real-time, text-based chat but AR enables sharing only audio files asynchronously. Both systems were located at the same sites for community communication and co-present oral practices effected media recording and sharing. Their use reinforced differentiations in sharing information between older and younger people. We argue that designing social media systems to widen information access must respond to complex interactions between social structures and genres of communication.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationACM International Conference Proceeding Series
EditorsHelene Gelderblom, J.P. van Deventer, Aurona Gerber, Machdel C. Matthee
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages104-114
Number of pages11
ISBN (Electronic)9781450332460
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Sept 2014
EventSouthern African Institute for Computer Scientist and Information Technologists Annual Conference, SAICSIT 2014 - Centurion, Gauteng, South Africa
Duration: 28 Sept 20141 Oct 2014

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series
Volume28-September-2014

Conference

ConferenceSouthern African Institute for Computer Scientist and Information Technologists Annual Conference, SAICSIT 2014
Country/TerritorySouth Africa
CityCenturion, Gauteng
Period28/09/141/10/14

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