Minding the gaps: cultural, technical and gender-based barriers to mobile use in oral-language Berber communities in Morocco

Resource type
Conference Paper
Authors/contributors
Title
Minding the gaps: cultural, technical and gender-based barriers to mobile use in oral-language Berber communities in Morocco
Abstract
The proliferation of text-based applications in the Mobiles for Development (M4D) domain tends to privilege the conventional wisdom that texting is a ubiquitous skill among mobile phone users. This view obscures many real and present barriers to using SMS and mobile features, most critically where low literate and/or oral language-dependent communities cannot rely on text as a viable communications system. This paper investigates mobile "utility gaps" -- the spaces between high rates of mobile phone ownership and low use of productive features on mobile phones. These gaps preclude the adoption of many text-based development initiatives, which in turn affects the potential impact of such initiatives. Working with low-literate Berber-Muslim women in a predominantly oral-language community in rural southwest Morocco, we have found that an overall lack of functional literacy and numeracy is a major contributor to a mobile utility gap in that community. Non-standard mobile phone interfaces, a complex language environment with both Arabic and Berber dialects and multiple alphabets and gender-specific cultural norms also present significant impediments to using mobile phones as a development strategy in the Berber communities studied. Furthermore, we explore the paradox of social networks where a reliance on others to assist with phone use is often coupled with surveillance and a loss of privacy. These results are potentially relevant to projects involving other indigenous communities in North Africa.
Date
December 7, 2013
Proceedings Title
Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development: Full Papers - Volume 1
Place
Cape Town, South Africa
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
Pages
79–88
Series
ICTD '13
ISBN
978-1-4503-1906-5
Short Title
Minding the gaps
Accessed
2020-08-06
Library Catalogue
ACM Digital Library
Extra
shortDOI: 10/ggxwgh
Citation
Dodson, L. L., Sterling, S. R., & Bennett, J. K. (2013). Minding the gaps: cultural, technical and gender-based barriers to mobile use in oral-language Berber communities in Morocco. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development: Full Papers - Volume 1, 79–88. https://doi.org/10.1145/2516604.2516626