2024-03-29T12:39:00Z
https://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/cgi/oai2
oai:pubs.cs.uct.ac.za:706
2019-10-10T15:33:36Z
7375626A656374733D3130303033313230
74797065733D6A6F75726E616C70
https://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/706/
Exploring Mobile-only Internet Use: Results of a Training Study in Urban South Africa
Donner, Dr Jonathan
Gitau, Ms Shikoh
Marsden, Dr Gary
Human-centered computing
Using an ethnographic action research approach, the study explores the challenges, practices, and emergent framings of mobile-only Internet use in a resource-constrained setting. We trained eight women in a nongovernmental organization’s collective in South Africa, none of whom had used a personal computer, how to access the Internet on mobile handsets they already owned. Six months after training, most continued to use the mobile Internet for a combination of utility, entertainment, and connection, but they had encountered barriers, including affordability and difficulty of use. Participants’ assessments mingled aspirational and actual utility of the channel with and against a background of socioeconomic constraints. Discussion links the digital literacy perspective to the broader theoretical frameworks of domestication, adaptive structuration, and appropriation.
2011
Journal article (paginated)
application/pdf
en
https://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/id/eprint/706/1/750-4634-1-PB.pdf
Donner, Dr Jonathan and Gitau, Ms Shikoh and Marsden, Dr Gary (2011) Exploring Mobile-only Internet Use: Results of a Training Study in Urban South Africa, International Journal of Communication, 5, 574-597.