Community Voice as Data: Affordances of Participatory Videos for International Program Development

International program development is a complex process involving many stakeholders. Current international practice affords limited, if any, opportunities for direct community-led input into the program commissioning process, resulting in programs that may not meet the specific needs of communities on the ground. Community voice is one source of data that could help focus the design of effective development programs and interventions. However, development programs are primarily formulated based on representative and often quantitative data conducted by experts from outside the community. Through a participatory video production process with disadvantaged women farmers in rural Bangladesh, we explore the opportunities for including meaningful community voices in these institutionalized processes. We present practical design implications for how community-generated voices can act as rich data, establishing confidence, community bonds and senses of accountability to inform early stages of project development, and to specifically augment and contextualize other data sources

The gender-technology divide or perceptions of non-use?

There exists a widely acknowledged gender divide in rural India that is perceived to complicate, often cripple, women’s access to various new media technologies, including mobile devices that their male counterparts have been using for several years. My research takes a deeper look at this divide to offer a more nuanced understanding that extends beyond the dualism of use and non-use and deconstructs the popular notions that rural Indian women are digitally illiterate, have little time or inclination to use technology, or would find it to be of little use. I analyze the role that patriarchal practices play in structuring the perceptions of women’s interactions with mobile phones using qualitative data collected over multiple site visits to Raebareli district in rural Uttar Pradesh (India)