The Social Network: How People with Visual Impairment use Mobile Phones in Kibera, Kenya

Living in an informal settlement with a visual impairment can be very challenging resulting in social exclusion. Mobile phones have been shown to be hugely beneficial to people with sight loss in formal and high-income settings. However, little is known about whether these results hold true for people with visual impairment (VIPs) in informal settlements. We present the findings of a case study of mobile technology use by VIPs in Kibera, an informal settlement in Nairobi. We used contextual interviews, ethnographic observations and a co-design workshop to explore how VIPs use mobile phones in their daily lives, and how this use influences the social infrastructure of VIPs. Our findings suggest that mobile technology supports and shapes the creation of social infrastructure. However, this is only made possible through the existing support networks of the VIPs, which are mediated through four types of interaction: direct, supported, dependent and restricted

News stories framed episodically offer more diversified portrayals of immigrants

This study investigated the representations of immigrants emerging from frames used in news stories in the two largest-circulation daily newspapers in Arizona: The Arizona Republic and the Arizona Daily Star. A quantitative content analysis of 380 stories published in the two dailies’ websites in 2013 found the news coverage of immigration generally unfavorable to immigrants. Stories framed episodically provided less negative representations of immigrants than stories framed thematically did. Journalists interested in producing more diversified coverage of immigration should consider writing more stories using a predominantly episodic frame