Magister Artium - MA / Telecentres in Malawi are being established to bridge the digital divide. Though the basic assumption is that once telecentres have been established many will adopt them, they are being used by a relatively small percentage of the population. However, limited systematic research has been done to understand why. The purpose of this study was to examine factors influencing the acceptance and use of telecentres and their services in Malawi. Specifically, the study aimed at establishing: the access and usage patterns of telecentres and their services; relevance of telecentre service to the community members; factors affecting the usage of telecentres; and challenges facing telecentres and their users. The study employed Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovation Theory which explains how innovations are taken up. This was a quantitative and qualitative case study of one Multipurpose Community Telecentre: Lupaso Telecentre. Questionnaires were given to 130 users who visited the Telecentre during a two-week data collection period in May 2014. Face to face interviews were conducted with three telecentre staff and management committee; and one Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority staff, the implementers of the project. Document and records analysis and observation were used to verify data from the Telecentre users, staff and the management committee; and to formulate some questions for interviews with some key informants. The study reveals that a majority (94.6%) view the Telecentre as an important project; it is improving human skills, increasing the finances and strengthening social capital of the community members and many (85%) users are satisfied with Telecentre service. The negative finding is that only a few people use and benefit from the Telecentre; there is uneven access: users are generally male, young, with low educational and income levels, farmers and Nkhondes; and the ICTs are not the chief attraction. The study finds that convenience and cheaper services; compatibility of services with community’s needs; communication channels, social system, visibility of the benefits of using the Telecentre; and complexity of ICTs influence the use and non-use of the Telecentre. Furthermore, the Telecentre and users are facing several challenges that have a negative impact on telecentre usage. Some of the challenges are: lack of Internet searching skills, frequent blackouts, lack of local content and high costs of services. The study concludes that working on these factors and challenges may help in increasing user base. Hopefully, the results will help those implementing and operating the telecentres on how best to attract more users to the telecentres. The results also add to the body of literature in general

O surgimento de novas Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação (TIC) tem levantando diversas análises e estudos sobre as relações sociais na atualidade. O acesso aos recursos tecnológicos se constitui em um forte instrumento de dominação, uma vez que não está ao alcance de todos. Um dos mecanismos criados na tentativa de minimizar a exclusão digital são os chamados telecentros comunitários, que disponibilizam acesso às tecnologias por parte da população menos privilegiada. É uma ação bastante empregada nos programas de Inclusão Digital da cidade de São Paulo - SP que possui somente 25,47% de sua população incluída digitalmente. Esta pesquisa se configura como um estudo de caso, realizado em um telecentro localizado na Zona Leste de São Paulo e teve como objetivo investigar se este equipamento pode ser compreendido como um espaço de Educação Social. A pesquisa de campo foi realizada por meio de questionário semi-estruturado, com amostra de 115 usuários. A análise dos dados coletados indicou que existe aprendizagem de dois tipos de conteúdos no local: informática e relações sociais mediadas ou não pelo computador. Os conteúdos aprendidos apontaram a especificidade da Educação no telecentro a cultura digital. Embora tenha sido possível verificar melhora na utilização dos recursos tecnológicos com o telecentro, o estudo aponta a necessidade de um projeto político e pedagógico como mecanismo para otimizar as ações desenvolvidas no local, pontuando que este trabalho, longe de ser caracterizado por uma prática não-formal, tem objeto próprio e é intencional. / The appearance of new Information and Communication Technologies has been discussed in several analyses and studies about the social relations in the present. The access to these technologies can be considered as a strong instrument of domination because a lot of people dont have means to benefit from these resources. The telecentres are a manner to reduce the digital exclusion because they allow the destitute population to have access technologies. This project has been widely introduced in São Paulo city, where only 25,47 % of the population is digital included. This research is a case study done in a telecentre located in the East side of São Paulo and aimed to investigate whether telecentres could be considered a place of Social Education. The field work was carried out through a semi-structured questionnaire applied to a sample of 115 users of the telecentre. The analysis of the collected data indicated the existence of two different types of learning contents: computer science and social relations mediated by the computer or not. The obtained contents showed the specificity of the Education in the telecentre: the digital culture. Though it has been possible to verify advances in the use of technological resources, this study points to the necessity of a political and pedagogical project which has the intention to optimize the actions developed there. It demonstrates that the Education developed in the telecentre is not a nonformal practice because it is intentional and has a proper object.

Thesis (M.A.(Media studies ))--University of Limpopo, 2007 / There is gross uneven access and utilization of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) between developed and underdeveloped communities in South Africa. As a result the majority of the underdeveloped communities which are mainly found in rural areas fail to participate in the global ICT arena. Rural communities’ especially rural women are subjected to deprivation, poverty and isolation. Government sought to reverse the situation through the provision of Telecentres and Multi-purpose Community Centres (MPCCs). To understand the plight of the rural women, different theories ranging from capitalism to socialism were reviewed in an attempt to trace the mode of South African production which caused the problem and some understanding of the solution possible. The theory of oppression by Paul Freire (1970) serves as the main point of focus on how rural women fail to utilize Telecentres and MPCCs. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were adopted in order to present the perceptual views of these women. Various methods of collecting data were used in order to have a wider perspective of how Telecentres and MPCCs are utilized by rural women. This includes a profound investigation through which a pilot study, participant observation, focus group, interviews and questionnaires became instrumental to the whole research. The findings of the pilot study conducted in Mogalakwena Hewlett Packard inclusive of community (HPi-community) reflected that there are discrepancies and deficiencies which exit between Mogalakwena HPi-community and the three Telecentres Botlokwa, Mankweng and Mohodi. The tripartite marriage between Government Hewlett Packard and the municipality enable the Mogalakwena HPi-community to provide better ICT facilities. The other three Telecentres fail to meet the standard of the Mogalakwena HPi- community due to the fact that they lack financial support. Participant observation assisted in discovering that ICT access created a good relationship between Botlokwa Telecentre and its neighbouring institutions. It was also discovered that most youths come for computer-skill acquisition. Focus groups interviews were conducted using English and the local language (Sepedi) in order to meet the rural women’s level of understanding. Through in depth analysis, the study indicates that poverty, unemployment, limited funding, illiteracy, and unavailability of ICT facilities for the disabled are the main issues that contribute to the low impact of Telecentre and MPCC utilization. Apart from this analysis, ICT access has a significant impact on the lives of rural communities especially women. However, there is still a need for an accelerated growth in ICT utilization. It is recommended that effective mechanisms be put in place to assist improve the situation in ICT provision. This must involve the people themselves taking initiatives, of course with the active support of government.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Bolivia’s coca-growing Yungas region, this thesis is concerned with how, on the most practical level, development projects might hold more relevance to the lives of their target groups than they have hitherto tended to do, as well as how the power imbalances that characterise the relationships between development organisations and local people may be understood and addressed. Beginning with the concept of ‘communicative ecology’ (Tacchi et al 2003) as a framework for exploring the multifariousness of communicative avenues and the interconnectedness of these within a system, I focus my analysis on the ecosystem of coca communications. I argue, however, that the concept of communicative ecology on its own has little meaning without adopting a political economy approach, which incorporates the work of attempting to understand the social and power relations that surround the production, distribution and consumption of resources, both material and cultural. As a way of analysing the strategies and potentials of people within the ecosystem of coca communications, I utilise Bourdieu’s (1990) notions of field, habitus and forms of capital, where the coca field characterises itself by virtue of the fact that all those who are a part of it are linked in some way through the production, exchange and consumption of both the coca leaf, and the values, meanings and discourses that surround it. It is concluded that the ecosystem of coca communications is linked intrinsically to the coca production system, in that individuals and groups have differential access to, inclination to use, and success in influencing the discourse via different communicative media, depending on their situation within the coca field. This refers to land ownership, labour, organisational participation, exchange and consumptive practices, which is translated into a system of capital accumulation and exchange. The thesis argues that development organisations will do well to consider a given locality in these terms in order to facilitate the implementation of ICT projects that are relevant and compatible with local social and communicational systems, and further, that these organisations must reflect upon their own role as ‘introduced organisms’ within local communicative ecologies. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1331441 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2008

O surgimento de novas Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação (TIC) tem levantando diversas análises e estudos sobre as relações sociais na atualidade. O acesso aos recursos tecnológicos se constitui em um forte instrumento de dominação, uma vez que não está ao alcance de todos. Um dos mecanismos criados na tentativa de minimizar a exclusão digital são os chamados telecentros comunitários, que disponibilizam acesso às tecnologias por parte da população menos privilegiada. É uma ação bastante empregada nos programas de Inclusão Digital da cidade de São Paulo - SP que possui somente 25,47% de sua população incluída digitalmente. Esta pesquisa se configura como um estudo de caso, realizado em um telecentro localizado na Zona Leste de São Paulo e teve como objetivo investigar se este equipamento pode ser compreendido como um espaço de Educação Social. A pesquisa de campo foi realizada por meio de questionário semi-estruturado, com amostra de 115 usuários. A análise dos dados coletados indicou que existe aprendizagem de dois tipos de conteúdos no local: informática e relações sociais mediadas ou não pelo computador. Os conteúdos aprendidos apontaram a especificidade da Educação no telecentro a cultura digital. Embora tenha sido possível verificar melhora na utilização dos recursos tecnológicos com o telecentro, o estudo aponta a necessidade de um projeto político e pedagógico como mecanismo para otimizar as ações desenvolvidas no local, pontuando que este trabalho, longe de ser caracterizado por uma prática não-formal, tem objeto próprio e é intencional. / The appearance of new Information and Communication Technologies has been discussed in several analyses and studies about the social relations in the present. The access to these technologies can be considered as a strong instrument of domination because a lot of people dont have means to benefit from these resources. The telecentres are a manner to reduce the digital exclusion because they allow the destitute population to have access technologies. This project has been widely introduced in São Paulo city, where only 25,47 % of the population is digital included. This research is a case study done in a telecentre located in the East side of São Paulo and aimed to investigate whether telecentres could be considered a place of Social Education. The field work was carried out through a semi-structured questionnaire applied to a sample of 115 users of the telecentre. The analysis of the collected data indicated the existence of two different types of learning contents: computer science and social relations mediated by the computer or not. The obtained contents showed the specificity of the Education in the telecentre: the digital culture. Though it has been possible to verify advances in the use of technological resources, this study points to the necessity of a political and pedagogical project which has the intention to optimize the actions developed there. It demonstrates that the Education developed in the telecentre is not a nonformal practice because it is intentional and has a proper object.

The overall aim of this research was to enhance the understanding of what affects the social impact of ICT in lifelong learning on disadvantaged women. In contributing to the field of social informatics, this research employs behavioural theories as strategy and analytic possibilities. This research mainly used the Kenyan digital villages as CRCs as settings but did also look beyond such establishments to provide a more solid picture. The studies were located in Kenya with complementary studies in Bolivia, Cameroon, Sri Lanka, and Sweden. The main strategies and methods used were case study, comparative education approaches, and observations and interviewing techniques. The findings suggest that ICT and CRCs have the potential to support disadvantaged women and their lifelong learning. However, the positive social impacts are limited because the arrangement of them generally does not favour vernacular languages, illiterate users, female owners and users, or non-students. In general, the use of ICT was sometimes perceived as forced, which is both a barrier and a stressor in the use of ICT in lifelong learning. It also emerged from the comparative studies that discussions among the participants in the CRCs largely covered issues in respect to 1) family and reproduction and 2) self-esteem, i.e. what settles the matter of the social impact of ICT in lifelong learning depends on change attitude among men and women. With minimal if not zero self-esteem a change that would make the difference or break a woman’s “legendary status quo” in order for a woman to feel that she can reach her goal or ambitions in lifelong learning would be difficult. Hence the lack of self-esteem is a stressor in itself. This research is valuable for stakeholders delving into issues of development and learning using ICTs, not only in Kenya but in a broader, global perspective. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 6: Submitted.</p>

The research focused on examining the interplay between innovations in information and communication technology (ICT) in three different micro-level settings with broader development processes within the emerging global economy of Mozambique. There is a great deal of concern among different national governments, international and national agencies about the role of ICT in development. The question often asked is how we can understand the contribution of ICT initiatives to the socio-economic development of a country. This research was conducted as follows. First of all, the nature of the problem was analysed from four points of view: globalisation, focusing on the global-local debate, discourses around development, transfer of ICT-based innovations to developing countries and the relationship between IS/ICT and organisational change in the context of a developing country. Secondly, a literature survey was undertaken to discuss these issues. The results of the literature survey guided the empirical research undertaken in two organisations and one rural community in Mozambique. Thirdly, the results of the empirical work were analysed with regard to the four perspectives discussed earlier. The research objective required the development of a framework for understanding the process of the adoption and use of ICT-based initiatives for development. Theories such as Actor-Network Theory, the Human Environment Model and Structuration Theory form the basis of a framework that was constructed using the results of the fieldwork. The framework is composed of three levels of analysis: the micro-level analyses the ICT-related initiatives by using the sociology of the translation process from an ANT perspective and by applying the due process model. The meso-level examines the social context within which the ICT-related initiatives are implemented. For this purpose the human environment model (HEM) is used. Finally, the macro-level attempts to describe the interaction between the ICT-related initiatives and socio-economic development. This part of the framework is addressed by the application of the structuration theory and concepts related to sustainable development. The proposed framework can be used as an analytical tool to guide the analysis of the process of implementation of ICT-based initiatives in organisations and communities, and can also be applied as a normative tool to support the process of introducing a new ICT-based initiative in organisations or communities, especially within the context of developing countries. The author argues that the use of this framework can enhance the likelihood of achieving institutionalisation of an ICT-based initiative within a particular organisational setting. Appendices mostly in Portuguese. / Dissertation (PhD (Information Technology))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Informatics / unrestricted