By enabling users to self-report their whereabouts and share it with a vast and diverse audience, location sharing systems can be useful means of projecting the self and expressing one’s social identity (an individual’s personal self-conception). Through three research studies, this thesis investigates how social identity influences the digital sharing of location. It does so by first exploring how people socially interact offline and then investigates how facets of this behaviour are enacted in location sharing systems. Thus, it offers insights into how offline social behaviour extends to digital spaces and how it impacts social interaction in the digital realm. This thesis finds that social identity not only influences digital location sharing, but in systems that enable social networking, is the very driving force behind the phenomenon. Users actively exhibit their identity through their location, using it as a means of communicating moods, emotions, activities, and experiences. Social identity impacts the places likely to be shared and those places, in turn, reflect one’s identity by revealing much about an individual’s personality and lifestyle. This research also discovers that aspects of offline social behaviour have not been replicated particularly well in the online world. Conventional location sharing systems often require users to broadcast their content to one homogenous ‘friends’ list. This model overlooks some of the key components of offline social behaviour such as multi-faceted identities, context-specific behaviour and the heterogeneity of human relationships. This can result in challenges when attempting to manage different facets of identity and can heighten anxieties about sharing as a whole. Recommendations are made on how such issues can be mitigated in future platforms. This thesis has implications for the design of future location sharing systems. By studying human interaction in digital environments, it also contributes to the Human Factors and HCI disciplines.

A prevailing urban phenomenon of the 21st century is that more people than ever before are living in informal settlements. As residents of informal settlements, the majority of shack dwellers can be considered socially, economically and politically marginalised citizens. The combination of poverty, marginalisation, and precarious living conditions has in many cases given rise to a vicious cycle. In this cycle, shack dwellers lack an effective voice and are unable to participate in political decision-making processes that affect their lives, leading to deepening deprivation and marginalisation. To break this cycle, the development of a genuine political voice of shack dwellers is essential. However, the process of developing a political voice in shack dwellers has only received scant academic attention and is poorly understood. One aspect of this process is the role of information communication technologies (ICTs) in enabling political voice. This has received some attention and has become a salient topic in academic study and development policy. Despite growing adoption of certain ICT tools by marginalised individuals, there is little evidence of their meaningful use for political voice. Access to ICTs is not the same as meaningful use of ICTs for political voice. Only a few studies have examined the issue of meaningful use of ICTs for political voice. This dissertation explores the factors influencing the processes by which marginalised individuals are able to develop a political voice, with a particular focus on the role of two increasingly ubiquitous ICTs – mobile phones and internet. A qualitative case study of a shack dweller grassroots organisation in South Africa (Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM)) is used to explore different types of political voice. The case study looks at the circumstances under which members of AbM are able to develop individual and collective forms of political expression, and the role that the use of ICTs play in this development. Data collected from semi-structured interviews and participant observation for this study suggests that, individual differences in combination with entrenched traditions and social structures based on patronage may undermine the development and or expression of political voice. However, active engagement in a grassroots organisation was found to be useful to overcome these limitations and for some individuals to develop their political voices. AbM members were able to engage in collective processes which led to the development of social bonds, trust, self-confidence, and critical reflection. Both the internet and mobile phones were found to play an important role in the development of political voice of AbM members. However, interaction between the use of ICTs and the development of a political voice is complex. In many instances the technology has enabled mobilization, as well as given individuals a feeling of security. Where this has happened, the appropriation and re-purposing of ICTs to fit the needs of AbM members has come about as a result of attaching meaning to these technologies, which did not exist before AbM. ICTs can facilitate the development of political voice, in particular by facilitating collective processes (e.g. mobilization), channelling support and trust, as well as raising self-confidence. Yet, as the case of AbM demonstrates, ICTs have not operated as a political equalizer within AbM. The use of ICTs for political voice might have even created new barriers for the development of political voice of some members. This dissertation brings together disparate stands of literature dealing with ICTs, political voice, social movements, empowerment, community psychology, and participation to conceptualise the development of a political voice. Moreover, a framework is devised to analyse the nature and the process of this development in marginalised individuals, as well as the role played by ICTs in this process. This dissertation aims to bring an understanding of the complex relationship between ICTs and political voice of marginalised individuals. An understanding of the process can provide important inputs to devise more effective design and implementation of policies and projects aimed at increasing political participation of an ever-growing population of disenfranchised and marginalised people living in informal settlements.

Today’s Internet of Things (IoT) is often employed to connect material artefacts to digital identifiers and a digital record of their history and existence. This has been heralded as a coming together of our material existences and our increasingly-digital lives. Bringing each object that we create, use and cherish into the IoT, is an outwardly appealing prospect. Using material objects is an accepted part of connecting with narratives and our history, and such a technological boon already enables the storytelling opportunities that are supported by rich digital records. However, in everyday life and in the practices that occupy them, people consider and share stories about the things that they feel to be meaningful to them in complex ways which do not necessarily conform to the expectations of the designers and developers who attempt to intervene and support such practices by focusing on the material objects at hand. This thesis draws upon observations from a thorough engagement with the community of practice of the Tabletop Miniature Wargaming pastime, which involves the acknowledged craft and use of objects deemed as meaningful, to reveal that the practitioners, in reality, construct their shared records and narratives around intangible Identities, both singular and collective, which they find to be the actual ‘meaningful things’ of their activities. These findings contravene the conventional emphasis on the material objects, and pose technological and conceptual challenges. Considering these findings through a lens informed by philosophical grounding, the thesis examines the distinctions between ordinary objects and extraordinary things; how things become meaningful; and the interplay between material and abstract things. The culmination of these efforts is the Meaningful Things Framework, which aims to help disambiguate the complex ways by which practitioners create, perceive and treat the meaningful things involved in their activities, and aid designers, developers and the communities themselves in understanding and supporting their practices.

Rural electrification has been a long-standing objective in many developing countries. For decades, the assumption and practice has been to build centralised generating capacity and transmit the electricity over national grids. More recently, interest has grown in using PV (photovoltaic) technology as a solution to the problem of rural electrification. A private household market for PV has been developing in Kenya since 1984 and now has more than 200,000 systems installed, sold through this private market. Consequently, it is widely hailed as a success story among developing countries. Until recently, Tanzania had almost no household PV market, despite interest from a number of actors, including some of those who have been involved in enabling the rapid growth of the market in Kenya. However, sales of PV began to grow quite rapidly from the early 2000s and the trend appears to be gaining pace, with an estimated 285 kWp sold in 2007, having risen by 57% in one year. At the time of the research, there were two large donor-funded PV projects underway in the country. The research attempts to explain the dynamics of the two PV niches over the past 25 years using strategic niche management as its theoretical framework. It finds that the Kenyan niche has benefited more from donor support than is usually acknowledged. The thesis also makes theoretical and methodological contributions. It offers a way to connect first and second-order learning to expectations and visions concepts; dimensions expectations and visions; and presents a tool for systematic investigation of socio-technical trajectory developments. The thesis also suggests a number of ways in which the strategic niche management framework could be enhanced. These include stronger theorising about learning, and the incorporation of power, politics and risk into the theory.