In the four posts that I have previously written on this blog, I have reflected in a free, relaxed way about new technologies and social change. I have tried to contemplate issues such as voice, discourse, and power, and agency and perspective concerning digital transformation. In this fifth post, I would like to problematize in a more methodical way how new technologies and social change are related.
Introduction
Stopping to think about the concepts we use is essential. It is because the way we generate those concepts is a collective process. We share a conceptual map that relates concepts to their associated content and a linguistic system. Otherwise, we would not be able to communicate and exchange its meaning with other people in an understandable way (Hall, 2012: 5).
Moreover, these words and their concepts – precisely because they are collective legacies – are relevant indicators of social transformation.
Etymology is an exceptional example of this. It allows us to witness in situ the weight that social transformation has on a concept. And understand that, just as societies are constantly changing, so are the words and meanings that their members share.
This is why we spend so much time defining concepts. And it is particularly important that we continue to do so in the digital age.
Our collective perspective of what exists and how we want to demonstrate it (ontology and epistemology) is like a path that we are creating together. Words and their concepts are like tiles that we leave behind on our way, but that we continue to need to construct the path ahead of us.
Why social change?
As we know, within the social sciences, and particularly in development studies and Com4Dev, there is a very extensive debate on the term development (Tufte, 2017: 21). Historically, this idea has served to favor and glorify the interests of geopolitically dominant societies (Kothari et al. 2019: xiii). In other words, the so-called ‘Global North’.
In order to question this domination, some authors have grown the term post-development. Others choose to redefine the concept itself to provide it with a more inclusive meaning. Instead of favoring ‘colonialism, neocolonialism and neoliberalism’ (Bassey in Kothari et al., 2019: 3), there has been an intention to decolonize it: to turn it into a human and ecologically sustainable concept vs. the historical omnipresence of economical ‘progress’.
To this end, authors such as Amartya Sen define development as ‘a process of expansion of the true freedoms that humans enjoy’ (Sen, 1999: 3) ‘to lead the kind of lives they value – and have reason to value’ (Sen, 1999: 18).
This definition contrasts with markedly colonialist conceptions based on the still deeply entrenched Western model of economic ‘progress’ ‘in an international network of institutions from the United Nations to NGOs’ (Kothari et al. 2019: xiii). These are colonial conceptions because they favor homogenization and violence derived from cultural hegemony, and they rank countries and human groups based on the hegemonic vision.
Another trend is to refer to social change rather than development. When we speak of social change, we refer more specifically to human processes that question and try to confront the structural conditions of power and injustice that take place in human societies (Tufte, 2012: 14). It is a complex concept based on the notions of social justice, collectivity, agency, and governance (Tufte, 2012: 21).
In my opinion, this perspective is not only interesting but is actually very close to the redefinition of development that we saw earlier proposed by Amartya Sen.
It links with what Touraine calls ‘a new social thought’ (Tourraine, 2009, retrieved in Tufte, 2012: 1) and collects the insights of countless authors who have led theories like the post-colonialism, post-development, decoloniality, feminisms and feminist economics, critical pedagogy, cultural studies, etc.
Focusing on social change involves prioritizing the fact that every individual and group has the right to be recognized and respected (Tufte, 2017) and that power structures, and therefore inequality, are realities that involve and interrelate in a ‘rhizomatic’ way (Deleuze & Guattari, 1972: 13), involving all groups, societies, and nation-states locally, transnationally and geopolitically.
This means, therefore, that development, post-development, or social change can never be based on the Global North – or any organization that incorporates its interests – imposing a path of transformation that benefits its own economic, cultural, social, and political model; but in the individual and collective capacity to project possible futures that allow people to live a life worth living (Pérez Orozco, 2014).
And what does this have to do with new technologies?
New technologies have brought a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift that precisely turns ICTs into indissoluble elements of the organization of political and socialization spaces (Tufte, 2017: 21). For this reason, we must resort to notions such as the previously described when problematizing the relationship between new technologies and social change.
What good is all the debate that we have summarized above if one of the most widespread definitions of ICT4D is the following?
‘The application of an entity that processes or communicates digital data in order to deliver some part of the international development agenda in a developing country’ (Heeks 2018: 10).
Leaving aside the very interesting reflection that Heeks makes on how to define the relationship between development and digital technology that Tony Roberts collects in his article Digital Development: what’s in a name?, I would like to use the previous definition to complicate the idea at stake here.
I believe that these types of definitions reproduce and reinforce the power of the dominant economic development discourse. Rather than promoting transformative counter-narratives that favor social change, they strengthen power dynamics (Gusfield, 1981; Levy and Egan, 2003; Kebede, 2005; retrieved in Ahmed et. Al., 2012: 9).
As Sharath Srinivasan and Claudia Abreu Lopes explain, a true approach to ICT4D must prioritize the incorporation of the voices of disenfranchised populations or groups (Abreu & Srinivasan, in Hemer & Tufte, 2016: 168). To address new technologies from a communication perspective for social change, the media and technology must serve to propose ‘new possibilities for more inclusive and amplified citizen voice in social and public life’ (Íbid).
The term ‘voice’ is very significant when we speak of social change. As Couldry explains, when we refer to the voice we prioritize the creation of counter-narratives. In other words, by attending to the voice as a ‘process’ and as ‘value’ we observe principles of social transformation that understand people as complex subjects that have their own rights. On the contrary, the dominant neoliberal discourses deny precisely these voices and conceive people as passive, abstract categories (Couldry, 2010: 3).
These voices do not correspond solely to what Heeks generalizes as ‘developing countries’. The crises that the world is going through have multiple and intersecting natures: they affect life, bodies, hunger, violence, emotionality, aspirations, the environment, the social, the cultural, the political, the spiritual, etc. And they do so in a ‘systemic, multiple and asymmetric’ way, conditioning the rights of communities, groups, and individuals that inhabit all corners of the planet (Kothari et al. 2019: xiii).
New technologies can be an opportunity to question that unique discourse that represents the hegemonic vision of development, to make a more complex analysis of exclusion, and enable ‘bottom-up, participatory’ articulation (Tufte, 2017: 31).
‘New technologies of voice’ (Couldry, 2010: 140-141)
In his book Why voice matters, Couldry defines five new ways in which information and communication technologies can enable voice.
Firstly, new technologies are making it possible for more voices to be amplified and reach a greater number of audiences (despite the digital divide that we will refer to later).
Second, there is a significant mutual perception of these new emerging voices. In other words, not only a Yanomami indigenous group shares a campaign denouncing the destruction and theft of their lands, but a person like me, from Spain, can share it with their peers and make it part of their reflections.
Third, new forms of organization and social and political collectivity emerge that would have been impossible before the appearance of the internet: as is, for example, the impact of new technologies on citizen movements and protests.
Fourth, what we conceived as possible spaces for political organization changes, proposing new possibilities that are not meetings or the forms of grouping that we previously knew. Digital possibilities of political activism appear that do not require that people know each other or share context.
And in fifth place, all these previous possibilities generate ‘new ways of listening.’ The relationship between governments and the population changes, because political agents can no longer say they are unable to listen to people’s demands.
This produces a new scenario of opportunity that favors collective articulation and ICT4D, but…
Do new technologies represent only benefits for social change and social justice?
Of course not.
As we have said previously, the new technologies are deeply embedded in social and political reality. When analyzing social change you cannot always separate the online from the offline.
Devices such as smartphones are permanently present both in the protests and in the lives of a large part of the activists participating in the new protest movements (Poell & van Dijck, 2018: 8). I consider that this is also applicable to other forms of collectivity or bottom-up action such as associations, cooperatives, etc. And in a far less ubiquitous way, it also impacts people most affected by the digital divide and their access to public recognition.
Therefore, it is vital to bear in mind that the Internet is a very complex medium in constant transformation with a series of structures and specific power relations that not only do not favor processes of social change but can also hinder them.
Digital structures
The Internet is an extremely dynamic medium and therefore very unstable (Poell & van Dijck, 2018: 8). This affects both the individual capacity to be part of or promote processes of social change, as well as the community itself. When activists or people with a coinciding interest in social transformation interact in an online space, a ‘collective subjectivity’ is generated that is at permanent risk of being disaggregated into its individual components (Juris, 2012: 266 retrieved in Poell & van Dijck, 2018: 6 ).
One of the most transformative events for social interaction and therefore collective action that digital transformation has brought about are social networks. These platforms contribute considerably to the democratization of the voices that we have indicated. However, social networks are not designed to favor social movements (Poell & van Dijck, 2018: 6). Its objective is to facilitate ‘the systemic collection and analysis of user data to enable various forms of targeted advertising and services (Couldry, 2015; Fuchs, 2011; van Dijck, 2013).
Therefore, these platforms can of course hinder social change. They do so through the operation of their interfaces and algorithms through policies such as the ‘Real name policies’ that pose a risk to the lives of activists in areas of violent conflict or the offending content regulation that gives platforms power to censor reports of violations of human rights (Poell & van Dijck, 2018: 7).
To this, we must add the so-called ‘Data revolution’, data mining and surveillance tools and control either from governmental institutions or the so-called GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon) (Doctor, 2015) to individuals and groups (Milan, in Hemer & Tufte, 2016: 60-63).
Do new technologies benefit Global Margins?
The digital divide is not only about access to technology. It also refers to the way in which new technologies reproduce or reinforce unequal access to power, justice, and recognition.
While it is true that there is increasing access to ICTs around the world and that successful ICT programs are carried out to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; ITU 2016) in the Global Margins, authors such as Unwin or Deichmann & Mishra point out such as these projects ‘do not go to scale, or are unsustainable’ (Unwin in Graham, 2019: 43).
Techno-optimist discourses tend to presume prompt universal access to new technologies and guarantee their benefits in the fight against poverty and citizen participation (Deichmann & Mishra in Graham, 2019: 21). The reality is that most powerful groups (communities, countries, companies, etc.) benefit enormously from new technologies, while the most vulnerable not only hardly benefit from them, but are now even more disadvantaged than they were before digital technologies came about (Deichmann & Mishra in Graham, 2019: 21-24; Unwin in Graham, 2019: 43-46).
Ecological damage and social costs
We cannot speak of social transformation and new technologies without committing to the ecological and social impact that digital transformation entails (Caffentzis in Kothari et al, 2017: 37-39).
It makes no real sense to speak about counter-narratives to neoliberalism and neocolonialism unless we pay attention to the impact that this industry has on human and civil rights and the continuous exploitation of the finite resources of an already collapsed planet (Ibid.).
As reflected in the article in Waste colonialism and the disposable culture addicts, ‘the production, consumption, and waste management of technological devices represent ‘one of the major causes for water, air, and soil pollution, human exploitation, and data insecurity’.
All this destruction and the garbage it generates directly affects the most vulnerable populations, reproduces inequality, and therefore denies social and environmental justice.
Changes in psychosocial paradigms
Finally, all these reflections on social change and new technologies coincide, as is logical, with psychosocial and socio-political transformations that derive, partly, from how this new offline-online world affects us – both individually and collectively.
Some examples are polarization, political disaffection, the virality of disinformation and fake news, or other specific social phenomena such as the creation of echo chambers, the silence spiral (Noelle-Neumann, 1995) or confirmation biases (Bayón, 2020).
Not surprisingly, these realities and the way they nurture power dynamics and inequality also affect the relationship between technology and social change.
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Conclusions on the blog experience
Reflecting on new technologies and social change is a complex exercise that has been a considerable challenge for me. Having done it in the context of creating a blog with four women from different parts of the world that I mostly did not know before, has been a unique and very enriching experience.
We have been able to put into practice and experience principles of participation that we all stand for. And sharing this experience on these terms with these people has taught me a lot. It has shown me how much an idea grows when adding different perspectives. I have learned a lot from the skills of my colleagues and established worthy relationships through the internet.
I give special value on how much I have learned to prioritize partnership, rather than imposing individual views. It has been really interesting to put our different bits of knowledge at the service of the group without appropriating spaces.
And last but not least, this exercise has involved facing fears and emotional obstacles and has coincided with illness and other life difficulties. Remarkably, we have taken care of and helped out each other and I have learned much from this too.
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Word count: 2519
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