Communicating Social Change in Perplexing Times
Category: <span>ICT4D</span>

Category: ICT4D

Resisting digital colonialism: weaving digital autonomies in the margins

How do civil society actors, pushed to live in the margins of capitalism, appropriate and use digital technologies to advance their own strategic goals? This essay intends to advance an answer to this question by exploring some of the material and geographic – therefore socioecological – dimensions of information and …

Understanding Electronic Colonialism Theory and how it can contribute to a postcolonial reading of ICT4D

So far in our decolonization journey here on Perplexed Periphery, I have talk about the defining the need for a decolonization of aid practices and the digital marketing of voluntourism and the consequences on local communities. To add to our previous discussions, I’d like to suggest a reflection on eColonialism …

Harnessing the power of ICTs for equality: what is missing.

The last decades have been marked by an unprecedented technological explosion, where the digitalisation of society has increased prosperity, and global population is living on average longer and under better conditions. In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic that caused significant disruptions to livelihoods, persistent inequalities that were already on …

Communicating Poverty

My last blog post discussed the lack of attention that the Yemeni conflict is getting by the public at large and western media in particular. It also highlighted the extreme poverty within the country, the decreasing funding by the international community and the devastating consequences that leads to. Today’s post, …

Mobile connected women = empowered women?

Technology is fostering individuality, leveraging democratic participation, and it has expanded women’s voices around the world, supporting global change movements and activism campaigns1. A paradigmatic illustration of this is the #BringBackOurGirls social networks’ movement around Boko Haram’s kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria back in 20142 (read more about it here …

Silencing women. How ICT creates both boundaries and opportunities for social change in Iran.

  “What is morality police?” I wondered as I first read about the unprecedented death of Mahsa Amini back in September. Her life was lost at only 22 during a family visit to Tehran after her arrest by the morality police- Islamic religious police which detains violators of the Iranian …

Projects, life-hackers and the future of aid

The time of reckoning has come The “project approach” – which relies on temporary, discrete, linear initiatives to close gaps defined by technicians and politicians  – of humanitarian interventions is not future-ready. Built on the economic and technological achievements of the 1950s that brought us the Marshall Plan and the …

ICT for Empowerment and Change

Sungai Watch was founded in 2020 by three siblings united behind the mission to tackle river pollution in Bali. With Indonesia being the second largest plastic polluter of the oceans and the country’s struggle with managing its waste, local action is needed. The Watch, along with over 50 ‘River Warriors’ and hundreds of volunteers, have …