Exploring the role of technologies in building Syrian refugee community resilience

PhD ThesisWe are witnessing the largest humanitarian crises occurring within the digital age. The ubiquity of digital technologies has created a space for digital humanitarianism. Digital humanitarianism has been tied to concepts of community resilience by critics of both fields. Humanitarian academics call for a critical investigation of these concepts that accounts for the socio-political, cultural and economic contexts in which they are applied. However, empirical research at the intersection of digital humanitarianism and community resilience is lacking. In this thesis I explore how digital technologies may contribute to refugee community resilience, using an Experience-Centred Design (ECD) research approach to engage with Syrian refugee women residing in an informal settlement in Lebanon. Through the issue of food security, I engage in an exploratory study using focus groups, dialogue cards and the co-creation of an advocacy artefact to explore refugee participants’ understandings of community resilience and how a technology designed for improving refugee food insecurity can contribute to their community resilience. I further use paper prototypes to engage with participants to mimic potential future experiences of technologically mediated collective purchasing. The data collected with refugee participants is augmented by interviews with other stakeholders in the food aid system. Additionally, I use autoethnographic methods to reflect on the value of ECD within this context. I highlight the potential for community-designed humanitarian technologies to increase refugee agency, facilitate self-mobilisation and consequently contribute to refugee community resilience. I also emphasise the need, when designing technologies for community resilience, to account for subcommunities that form within geographically defined refugee communities. My findings extend the concepts of community resilience and digital humanitarianism by envisioning refugee-community-driven technology and using ECD as a methodology for designing with refugee communities

Othered, Silenced and Scapegoated: Understanding the Situated Security of Marginalised Populations in Lebanon

In this paper we explore the digital security experiences of marginalised populations in Lebanon such as LGBTQI+ identifying people, refugees and women. We situate our work in the post-conflict Lebanese context, which is shaped by sectarian divides, failing governance and economic collapse. We do so through an ethnographically informed study conducted in Beirut, Lebanon, in July 2022 and through interviews with 13 people with Lebanese digital and human rights expertise. Our research highlights how LGBTQI+ identifying people and refugees are scapegoated for the failings of the Lebanese government, while women who speak out against such failings are silenced. We show how government-supported incitements of violence aimed at transferring blame from the political leadership to these groups lead to amplified digital security risks for already at-risk populations. Positioning our work in broader sociological understandings of security, we discuss how the Lebanese context impacts identity and ontological security. We conclude by proposing to design for and with positive security in post-conflict settings.Comment: To appear at the USENIX Security Symposium 202

Security Patchworking in Lebanon: Infrastructuring Across Failing Infrastructures

In this paper we bring to light the infrastructuring work carried out by people in Lebanon to establish and maintain everyday security in response to multiple simultaneously failing infrastructures. We do so through interviews with 13 participants from 12 digital and human rights organisations and two weeks of ethnographically informed fieldwork in Beirut, Lebanon, in July 2022. Through our analysis we develop the notion of security patchworking that makes visible the infrastructuring work necessitated to secure basic needs such as electricity provision, identity authentication and financial resources. Such practices are rooted in differing mechanisms of protection that often result in new forms of insecurity. We discuss the implications for CSCW and HCI researchers and point to security patchworking as a lens to be used when designing technologies to support infrastructuring, while advocating for collaborative work across CSCW and security research.Comment: To appear at ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (CSCW) 202

Revolting from Abroad: The Formation of a Lebanese Transnational Public

Nowadays social movements are driven by networks of people who resort to social media platforms to rally, self-organise and coordinate action around a shared cause, which can be referred to as the formation of publics. Due to years of political instability, conflicts, corruption, sectarianism, economic collapse and declining living conditions, in October 2019 Lebanon witnessed uprisings which transcended into a wider social movement. As the movement unfolded, Lebanese diaspora members living across the world formed their own publics in support of the Lebanese revolution that interfaced with the local Lebanon-based publics. As such, a broader transnational public emerged as a result of the coordinated online and offline efforts between diaspora actors and local actors, which had a crucial role in mitigating the aftermath of the compounded crises that hit Lebanon. In this paper, through observation and interviews with Lebanese diaspora members, we contribute a socio-technical understanding of the formation of a transnational public, with a particular focus on the underlying infrastructures that enabled its creation. Furthermore, we surface the challenges in relation to sustaining such a diaspora public and its interfacing with local publics in Lebanon. We contribute empirical insights that highlight how different technological tools and platforms, coupled with social processes built within diaspora groups and with local actors, led to the formation of such a multilayered transnational public

Towards a conceptual framework for understanding the challenges in refugee re-settlement

Upon arrival to a host community, refugees and asylum seekers face immense challenges to rebuild their social capital that is critical in the process of their resettlement. Developing a holistic understanding of these challenges can provide significant opportunities to inform designers and services providers working with this demography. We adopt the lens of social capital coupled with an inquiry in to the heterogeneity of refugees and asylum seekers to gain a holistic understanding of various challenges that they with. We accordingly present a conceptual framework that has been iteratively built based on our four years of engagement with refugee communities. The framework highlights three important aspects: cultural backdrops, displacement-related stressor, and social resources in the host community. We offer several implications for technology design, policies, and the theory of social capital that can support members from these communities in their resettlement

Syrian Refugees and Digital Health in Lebanon

There are currently over 1.1 million Syrian refugees in need of healthcare services from an already overstretched Lebanese healthcare system. Access to antenatal care (ANC) services presents a particular challenge. We conducted focus groups with 59 refugees in rural Lebanon to identify contextual and cultural factors that can inform the design of digital technologies to support refugee ANC. Previously identified high utilization of smartphones by the refugee population offers a particular opportunity for using digital technology to support access to ANC as well as health advocacy. Our findings revealed a number of considerations that should be taken into account in the design of refugee ANC technologies, including: refugee health beliefs and experiences, literacy levels, refugee perceptions of negative attitudes of healthcare providers, and hierarchal and familial structures

Situating Service Design: Approaches to embedding Service Design in Voluntary Community Sector Organisations

Interest in integrating Service Design in the Voluntary Community Sector (VCS) is growing. However, research regarding how Service Design is being situated within such organisations is limited. We conducted a series of 14 interviews with Service Designers in seven VCS organisations in the UK that varied in size and structure. Interviewees also varied in level of seniority within their design team. Our findings highlight the different approaches used to integrate Service Design(ers) into VCS organisations depending on: the variation in role; position in organisational hierarchy; and broader working contexts. We present the features of these approaches as a way of enabling future organisational contextualisation of practitioners’ experiences. We hope to reduce barriers to organisational change needed for the successful integration of Service Design in VCS organisations

HCI for Blockchain: Studying, Designing, Critiquing and Envisioning Distributed Ledger Technologies

This workshop aims to develop an agenda within the CHI community to address the emergence of blockchain, or distributed ledger technologies (DLTs). As blockchains emerge as a general purpose technology, with applications well beyond cryptocurrencies, DLTs present exciting challenges and opportunities for developing new ways for people and things to transact, collaborate, organize and identify themselves. Requiring interdisciplinary skills and thinking, the field of HCI is well placed to contribute to the research and development of this technology. This workshop will build a community for human-centred researchers and practitioners to present studies, critiques, design-led work, and visions of blockchain applications