Implementation of a rewards based negotiation module for an e commerce platform

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been widely deployed in developmental programs and this has lead to the creation of a new field – ICT for Development (ICT4D). Within the context of ICT4D, various e-services are being developed, including e-Commerce, e-Government, e-Health and e-Judiciary. ICT4D projects allow Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) in rural areas to increase sales and gain a market share in the global market. However, many of these ICT4D projects do not succeed, because they fail to bring enough financial value to SMMEs due to the form they currently have. An obvious example is e-Commerce, which should be a source of revenue for business organizations, but most often is not. This thesis presents the design and implementation of a rewarding and negotiation application for a shopping portal to improve the marketing of products for rural entrepreneurs. The shopping portal has been set up for the Dwesa community, a marginalized area in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The proposed system, called the Dwesa Rewarding Program (DRP) enables customers buying online to get points for some of the activities carried out on the shopping portal. It also allows customers to negotiate and make offers whilst purchasing and get rewarded for buying online. The novelty of the system is in its flexibility and adaptability. One achievement of this system is the establishment of negotiation rules which allows fairness in rewarding customers. This should in turn lead to increased sales on the e-Commerce platform in marginalized areas and subsequently increased effectiveness of ICT4D for socio-economic developmen

Overcoming the Digital Divide: SMS-Powered Crowdfunding Models for Marginalized Regions

Crowdfunding literature primarily assumes the phenomenon as internet based. With the untapped potential of crowdfunding activities in marginalized regions, little is known of the viability of non-internet-based crowdfunding models in explaining crowdfunding success and how they compare with internet-based models. Non-internet-based crowdfunding models proliferate due to digital divide infringements. This research leverages fit-viability perspectives and crowdfunding literature to explain the significant differences in utilizing either model for crowdfunding. Based on our analysis, SMS-powered crowdfunding models offer a more equitable opportunity for success in terms of both social and economic readiness, as compared to internet-based models. We offer theoretical and practical implications to support our analysis

Feasibility of Zakat-based Crowdfunding for Marginalized Farmers in Bangladesh

The arrangement of funds and financing for the agriculture sector in Bangladesh is still considered in crisis that is coupled with concurrent uncertain situations like population growth and natural disasters. Therefore, specific financial terms such as Zakat that are based on and practiced in Islam, the religious origination of the major-ity of Bangladeshi, at the same time highly appreciated and carried out by other countries are found well complementary to agricultural project financing. The pur-pose of this study is to explore the feasibility of using zakat-based crowdfunding as a means of supporting marginalized farmers in Bangladesh. This study employs a case study approach, using secondary data sources to conduct a thematic analysis of za-kat-based crowdfunding for marginalized farmers. The findings of the study indicate that zakat-based crowdfunding can be a viable solution to support marginalized farmers in Bangladesh. The relevance of the study is in place due to the urgency to solve the problems of agricultural financing in Bangladesh. The study recommends the establishment of a zakat-based crowdfunding platform that caters specifically to the needs of marginalized farmers in Bangladesh. However, the study also identifies some limitations, such as the lack of primary data and the context of generalizability. Despite these limitations, the study concludes that zakat-based crowdfunding can effectively support marginalized farmers in Bangladesh, and further research in this area is warranted

Conservation and crime convergence? Situating the 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference

The 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Conference was the fourth and biggest meeting on IWT convened at the initiative of the UK Government. Using a collaborative event ethnography, we examine the Conference as a site where key actors defined the problem of IWT as one of serious crime that needs to be addressed as such. We ask (a) how was IWT framed as serious crime, (b) how was this framing mobilized to promote particular policy responses, and (c) how did the framing and suggested responses reflect the privileging of elite voices? Answering these questions demonstrates the expanding ways in which thinking related to crime and policing are an increasingly forceful dynamic shaping conservation-related policy at the global level. We argue that the conservation-crime convergence on display at the 2018 London IWT Conference is characteristic of a conservation policy landscape that increasingly promotes and privileges responses to IWT that are based on legal and judicial reform, criminal investigations, intelligence gathering, and law enforcement technologies. Marginalized are those voices that seek to address the underlying drivers of IWT by promoting solutions rooted in sustainable livelihoods in source countries and global demand reduction. We suggest that political ecology of conservation and environmental crime would benefit from greater engagement with critical criminology, a discipline that critically interrogates the uneven power dynamics that shape ideas of crime, criminality, how they are politicized, and how they frame policy decisions. This would add further conceptual rigor to political ecological work that deconstructs conservation and environmental crime

Cyberfinancing for Economic Justice

This Article argues for the socially optimal regulation of online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and crowdfunding to advance economic justice in the United States. Peer-to-peer lending websites, such as Prosper. com orKiva.org, facilitate lending transactions between individuals online with-out the involvement of a traditional bank or microfinance institution. Crowdfunding websites, such as Kickstarter. com, enable individuals to obtain financing from large numbers of contributors at once through an open online request for funds. These web-based transactions, and the intermediary organizations that facilitate them, constitute emerging cyberfinancing markets. These markets connect many individuals at once, across class, race, ethnicity, nationality, space, and time in an interactive and dynamic way. During a time of significant economic distress in the United States, these markets also represent an unprecedented economic development opportunity for historically marginalized economic actors. Yet, no legal scholar has addressed the implications of these developments for economic justice in the United States. Drawing from the fields of law and geography, social networking theory, and comparative institutional analysis, this Article conceptualizes these new markets as cyberspaces, similar to geographic spaces, whose laws, norms, and rules will partially determine who will benefit from the economic opportunities that arise in these spaces. The recently enacted Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act does not facilitate substantial distributive justice in crowdfunding markets. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which produced a report in response to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act\u27s mandate that it study theP2P lending industry, has also failed to recommend a regulatory structure that will facilitate economic justice. This Article recommends that a range of federal regulators such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the U.S. Treasury Department (Treasury), should collaborate to implement a revised Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that would promote economic justice in these markets

Surviving in the Land of Opportunity: Outcomes of Post-Crisis Urban Redevelopment in the United States

How we develop cities in the twenty-first century remains a subject of contentious debate worldwide. As neoliberal strategies are implemented in redevelopment projects, public safety nets are reduced and low-income communities of color in declining urban neighborhoods become particularly vulnerable. This multiple case study seeks to understand the experiences of post crisis urban redevelopment for low-income communities of color in 5 major U.S. cities. The data I analyzed include 101 short videos from the interactive documentary platform Land of Opportunity, documenting the process of post-crisis urban redevelopment in New Orleans, New York, Chicago, Detroit, and San Francisco. In doing so, I discovered that residents\u27 experiences vary greatly based on redevelopment strategy that was employed and the level of resident involvement in the redevelopment process

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund's Western Balkans Program: Midterm Impact Assessment

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) commissioned an impact assessment of its Western Balkans program from 2010 to 2015. As the team who carried out this assessment, our overall conclusion from the assessment is that the RBF program in the Western Balkans is having meaningful positive impact, and it is relevant to the developments in Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and the rest of the region. We believe the program is well designed and is achieving a lot with a relatively small amount of money

The creative content programme and audiovisual e-platform: An institutional analysis of UNESCO\u27s influence on the development of independent documentary content and production practice

This dissertation is an institutional analysis of two interrelated UNESCO (United Nations Education Science and Cultural Organization) activities. These include the Creative Content Programme, and the Audiovisual E-Platform, an online catalogue and social networking hub for independent filmmakers/media producers from the global South. Contained by these activities, the author focuses the multi-method approach on gender and access by (A) conducting an analysis of the composition of programs and practices of the Creative Content Programme and the E-Platform; (B) conducting textual analysis of documentary media and interviews with Diaspora women producers; and (C) participating in and observing community-based multimedia production practice. The research reveals that the Creative Content Programme and the E-Platform shape media practices and content to meet UNESCO values and policy objectives. Further, independent and local production practices considered successful results of institutional activities are documented, and the video is promoted through the E-Platform website. Together, the Creative Content Programme and the E-Platform contribute to the creation of a culture consisting of selected producers, practices, and content determined as representative of the institution. Still, local women and other marginalized media producers struggle to express local lived experiences. These struggles are evident in approaches to story development, production, and the media industry. As systems of power, UNESCO\u27s Creative Content Programme and E-Platform influence media production and reveal tensions between institutional policies, and transnational media economies that specifically affect those at the margins in a developing community

Selling rural China: The construction and commodification of rurality in Chinese promotional livestreaming

With promotional livestreaming transforming the digital culture and e-commerce landscape in China, rural streamers take this opportunity to not only harvest economic rewards but also construct rural identities and associated imagery. Employing a digital ethnographic approach, this article closely explored how rural spaces and rural labor activities are constructed and commodified in Chinese promotional livestreaming. I argue that although rural streamers’ creative use of platform-afforded liveness and interactivity enriches Chinese digital culture by making everyday life in rural spaces visible, this constructed rurality is, however, flattened, decontextualized, and romanticized – thus, ready to be commodified and sold to the audience. In addition, agricultural labor is made hyper-visible, generating the possibility for demystifying said labor process, while other forms of labor, mainly affective labor and labor for negotiation with the platforms, are made invisible, undervalued, and exploited, deepening the precarious condition of such platform-dependent labor

Reading The Apprentice: Commerce, Culture, and the Manufacturing of Reality

This study examines the six original seasons of the reality television series The Apprentice as a postmodern, cultural artifact. Grounded in Burke’s (1967) “literature as equipment for living,” and Brummett’s (1984) consideration that televised content constitutes literature, the theory of “televised discourse as equipment for living” provided the guide to examine the series. Hall’s (1980) “reading against the grain” oppositional reading technique was utilized to interrogate both the manifest and latent content. The content of the series may indeed provide the audience with a guide to ideological beliefs of both commerce and culture, thereby creating a manufactured reality for its viewers. Discussions include the genre of reality television, marketing techniques that utilize modern sponsorship with product/brand placement, consumerism, social commentary, business discourse, and the mythos of the American Dream