Can social media messaging benefit those in the Global South who are visually impaired?

Globally, 285 million people are visually impaired, a quarter of whom live in India. The disease burden results in significantly lower employment and productivity. The national blindness prevention strategy aims at eyecare promotion through health behaviour change by raising awareness. Traditionally, this strategy relies on healthcare information disseminated through radio, television, mass media campaigns, printed medium, and interpersonal communication. Despite their appeal, these communication channels have constraints related to their cost and infrastructure. Moreover, social remoteness resulting from gender and cultural bias, illiteracy, rigid societal hierarchy, and sociocultural prejudices, acts as a major barrier to accessing this information for people from marginalised and disadvantaged communities.    

Alongside the inadequacies of the traditional information channels, there has been a demographic frameshift in many developing countries like India, which results in differential and patchy developmental practices. Consequently, India is now facing an aging population and an epidemiological change toward non-communicable diseases. This has been further compounded by rapid and unplanned urbanisation, economic migration to larger cities with over-burdened infrastructure, a lack of universal access to healthcare, and a widening digital divide. Unsurprisingly, this is putting enormous pressure on existing inadequate public health services and worsening eye health outcomes for those belonging to socioeconomically challenged backgrounds.  

However, effective public health service providers can address poor eye health outcomes, using simple measures like addressing the knowledge gap amongst disadvantaged members of society, easier access to regular eye check-up clinics, advocating hygienic practices, dispelling myths and unscientific healthcare practices and taboos, provision of cost-effective surgeries, and mobile health services. This approach has the potential of empowering the communities with new knowledge by addressing social determinants that act as a barrier to accessing eye healthcare, and their negative impact on vision. Additionally, this strategy is in alignment with the United Nation’s vision of sustainable developmental goals for 2030¹, as this will help poverty reduction, increase productivity, and address the inequity of health, education, and gender. This argues for the case of improving eye health care as principally a human developmental issue. Aligned with the UN strategy, is the ambitious goal of the World Health Organisation to provide Universal Eye Care, irrespective of geographical boundaries and socioeconomic divide².  

Over the past decade, there has been an exponential increase in social media usage in developing nations like India. In particular, the penetration of WhatsApp, a social media platform that allows the exchange of audio-visual material through a free-to-use user-friendly platform, has increased to the extent that this may be regarded as an important communication channel, particularly so for the rural, remote, and socioeconomically challenged communities³. WhatsApp has the potential to reach all communities, rich or poor, urban or rural, and facilitate two-way communication in real-time. In the Indian context, it provides a desirable platform for health communication and can be used in eye healthcare care, to improve outcomes.   

In my thesis titled “WhatsApp In Health Communication: The Case Of Eye Health In Deprived Settings In India” [link to full PDF], I have tried to explore the benefits and challenges of using a social media communication platform like WhatsApp in addressing the knowledge gap on eye health among deprived members of the society^4–6. The participants in this project were a large urban tertiary eye care institution (Susrut Eye Hospital) and a group of women residents from a deprived setting in a village near the eastern Indian city of Kolkata. Over a series of educational sessions undertaken at a school close to the deprived community, audio-visual content matter on eye health, carefully prepared by Susrut, was disseminated using WhatsApp as the health communication channel. This process was facilitated by two neo-literate facilitators who were also resident members of the deprived community, and participants were actively encouraged to pose questions and queries to Susrut using the WhatsApp channel.

Fig 1. Conceptual flow of information in the study

Fig 2. The flow of information between the providers and the recipients through WhatsApp

Acceptability of WhatsApp-based information dissemination amongst the study participants was high with reported benefits of increased awareness of eye diseases, their preventative management, remedial measures, and the availability of affordable eye care services. Additionally, study participants found WhatsApp technology appealing and intuitive. The resultant increase in self-confidence, consequent to heightened awareness, boosted social empowerment and enabled study participants to challenge prevalent social and cultural norms.

In conclusion, my study demonstrated that WhatsApp can be effectively used as a suitable vehicle for information dissemination on eye care in mediating behavioural change in deprived settings. Findings from this study may be considered in developing policies that develop and disseminate eye care information. This low-cost technology has the potential of being used as a data collection tool, for information governance and surveillance, and in situations of urgency. The wider implications and impact of this study lie in disseminating healthcare information related to other important public health issues to marginalised populations. 

References:

1.         THE 17 GOALS | Sustainable Development, https://sdgs.un.org/goals 

2.         World Health Organization. Universal eye health: a global action plan 2014-2019. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/universal-eye-health-a-global-action-plan-2014-2019

3.         WhatsApp. Statista Research Department. https://www.statista.com/topics/2018/whatsapp/#topicOverview

4.         Maitra C, Rowley J. Delivering eye health education to deprived communities in India through a social media-based innovation. Health Inf Libr J 2021; 38: 139–142. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/hir.12370

5.         Maitra C. WhatsApp In Health Communication – The Case Of Eye Health In Deprived Settings In India. Manchester Metropolitan University, https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/627599/1/WhatsApp%20In%20Health%20Communication%20-%20The%20Case%20Of%20Eye%20Health%20In%20Deprived%20Settings%20In%20India.pdf  (2021).

6.         Maitra C, Rowley J. Using a social media based intervention to enhance eye health awareness of members of a deprived community in India. Inf Dev 2021; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02666669211013450

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Development Transformation as the Goal for Digital Transformation

Richard Heeks, Bookie Ezeomah, Gianluca Iazzolino, Aarti Krishnan, Rose Pritchard & Qingna Zhou

There’s a lot of talk currently about digital transformation for development.  Sometimes styled “DX4D”, a quick definition would be radical change in development processes and structures enabled by digital systems.

Digital transformation is thus not a goal.  Instead, development transformation is the goal and starting point.  But what kind of development transformation?

In this post, we summarise what development transformation would mean under different development paradigms, and some implications for digital.  The table below is not exhaustive of the various paradigms and it rather brutally simplifies rich and complex ideas.  However, it does help clarify two key DX4D tenets:

• Vision Matters: unless you know where you want to get to, digital can’t help take you there.
• Visions Differ: different paradigms aim for very different destinations and, hence, different journeys in the application of digital.

If you have paradigms you’d like to add or you have improvements to offer on what’s in the table, do let us know.

Development Paradigm	Essence?	Transformation?	Digital Implications?
Neoliberal	Markets and market relations are the central foundation for economic development.  They, and not government regulation or vested interests, are the best way to allocate development resources and to generate productivity improvements and growth.  The state acts to support market-driven development. Neoliberalism is thus about the reformatting of politics, society and individuals according to market logics, the pursuit of profits, and individual responsibility principles.	Stabilisation to reduce government expenditure.  Liberalisation to roll back state regulation, subsidies and other interventions in markets and the private sector.  Privatisation to transfer ownership from public to private sector.	Digital, particularly via platforms, must enable the formation and presence of markets in all sectors, and a step change in market functioning via datafication and machine-readability of market actors and processes. Digital will also enable the development of private sector responsibility for public service delivery, and major improvements in efficiency of remaining public sector functions.
Structuralist	Particular socio-economic structures inhibit development.  For dependency variants, it is unequal relationships of exchange between core and periphery, whether understood in terms of countries, regions, or more immaterial geographies.  For Marxist and related anti-capitalist paradigms, it is unequal relationships of exchange between capital and labour.	The exploitative socio-economic structures must be broken away from and/or replaced.  From a dependency perspective, at the extreme, this means autarky and a focus on localised systems of production and consumption.  From a Marxist perspective, it means the end of capitalism and its replacement with structures of common ownership.	Digital must support radical structural change based around localised production and/or cooperative or similar ownership structures.
Sustainable	Ensuring resource usage does not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs; with variants ranging from green growth through to de-growth.	Major reductions in resource usage including improvements in efficiency of resource-using processes.  Major reductions in polluting outputs from processes. Internalisation of negative environmental externalities so as to gauge the true cost of economic growth.	Digital must support a step-change in resource usage and polluting outputs of all economic and social processes, including those involving digital itself.  Digital must also support environmental mapping and monitoring to track progress of sustainability.
Human Development	Development as freedom; in particular economic, political, social, security and informational freedom for all so that no-one is left behind and all have the opportunity to be and to do what they wish.	Changing contexts so that there is equality of opportunity and equality of choice; especially for those currently denied those opportunities.	Digital must be not just accessible but usable and appropriable by all.  It must then support the ability of all to choose the kind of lives and livelihoods that they value; thus requiring some customisation to individual contexts rather than a blanket equality of access to assets, institutions and livelihoods.
Decolonisation	Reversal of the current and legacy negative impacts of colonisation.	Enabling sovereignty and “self-determination of indigenous peoples over their land, cultures, and political and economic systems”[1].  Also understood – and drawing on the post-development roots of one strand of decolonisation – as the identification, challenging and revision or replacements of “assumptions, ideas, values and practices that reflect a colonizer’s dominating influence and especially a Eurocentric dominating influence”[2].	Digital must be accessible, usable and appropriable by indigenous peoples, enabling them to exercise self-determination.  Digital sovereignty will enable local “control over digital assets, such as data, content or digital infrastructure, or over the use of those assets”[3] and prevent uncontrolled extraction of value from these assets by others. For the latter understanding of decolonising transformation, digital must empower those who have been disempowered by Eurocentric domination of epistemics and discourse, and enable them to engage with and challenge that domination.

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Photo by Javier Miranda on Unsplash

[1] https://globalsolidaritylocalaction.sites.haverford.edu/what-is-decolonization-why-is-it-important/

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decolonize

[3] https://oxil.uk/publications/2021-01-20-plum-digital-sovereignty/Plum_Aug_2020_Digital_Sovereignty_states_enterprise_citizens%20%281%29.pdf

Digital tourism and marginal providers after the crisis

“Bouncing back” in tourism should not be about connecting local providers to platforms but ensuring that available online tools provide inclusive outcomes

As tourism has become global it has become an important part of the economy in a number of countries of the global south. It brings foreign currency into the economy and provides a surprising number of jobs to those who provide services. For all the ethical and environmental issues it poses, in countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Tanzania and Rwanda, the loss of tourists during the pandemic led to crises. Vast swathes of workers and firms have had to move into other sectors with broader implications for economies.

A major imperative following the crisis has been to ensure that tourism can bounce back. Institutions such as the OECD and the UN, as well as development donors and governments have pushed recovery plans with significant “digital tourism” components. Embracing digital tourism is seen as a quick win. Tourists have grown more used to online platforms – whether that be booking hotels, arranging transportation, sharing tourism experiences or posting reviews. The vision of recovery plans is that if local providers can embrace platforms, not only will they become more efficient, but drive forward tourism demand.

Drawing on recent research examining platform practices of small/marginal tourism service providers in Indonesia and Rwanda [1], we argue these visions for digital tourism may have limits. This research highlights three major considerations: the contexts of the adoption of platforms by tourism firms, the inflexibility of tourism platforms, and how tourism development may better be guided by grassroots online practices.

Platform use by small service providers

With several decades of investment in internet connectivity, the costs and barriers to internet use have been reducing, leading to growing use. This is especially the case for businesses in tourism, where digital tourism is becoming the norm. In both Indonesia and Rwanda, major global platforms such as TripAdvisor, Uber, Booking.com, Airbnb, Google maps and Traveloka are now well-established.

With the growing ubiquity, we might say that platforms are moving from something that forward-thinking firms opt into, to being non-negotiable for all firms. It is now almost like an infrastructure that firms need to be part of. This is true even amongst more marginal service providers such as tour guides, tiny hotels and those providing cultural activities who would use mobile devices to be part of such platforms.

Whether they want to go online or not, they are aware they are being mapped, rated and discussed online.

The complexity of tourism platforms

At first glance platforms seem to offer significant potential. They are easy to sign up for tourism providers and provide a way to quickly reach and interact with tourists across the globe. They often offer services such as online payments and booking systems that can make operations more efficient.

However, for small tourism providers platforms remain a challenge. While it is easy to join, successfully harnessing these platforms requires a broad range of technical skills. Successful firms need to be adept at website design, digital media skills and social media use to be able to stand out.

Challenges are not just about the capabilities of service providers, platforms are often highly complex and inflexible. For example, in Rwanda, small hotels were spending time and resources trying to move up search rankings on platforms. In Indonesia, some providers of tourism services were trying to negotiate algorithmic pricing systems.

With local support from platforms often non-existent and limited flexibility, small providers in these countries often suffered in competition with larger and foreign providers who were better places to make gains from being online.

Agency of tourism service providers

Even with these significant challenges, small service providers were able to combine digital tools for benefits – using shared calendar software, mobile apps, cloud sharing, online translation and social media to collaborate with customers and better fit with their daily needs.

Moreover, in Indonesia some tourism enterprises have come together to collaborate in more social- or environmentally-orientated online spaces.  In some other countries, we have also seen the success of commercial platforms more attuned to small enterprise needs and activities (e.g. South African platform Nightbridge)

These types of activity are very different to the policy prescriptions of joining the platform “juggernauts” for pandemic recovery. They suggest alternative ways forwards for small tourism providers – by amplifying the bottom-up activities already occurring outside mainstream platforms, and by being aware that service providers are negotiating multiple platforms and online software.

Summary: Bouncing back and “digitalisation”

These experiences of tourism and the goals of pandemic recovery are mirrored in other sectors in the global south. Governments and donors are not sitting back but seeking to play an active part in recovery through support. And, like tourism, one of the areas that are repeatedly mentioned is “digitalisation” – supporting so-called “inefficient” small firms to connect and use digital platforms for economic gain. 

But as this research shows, the reality is that platforms pose challenges. Connecting online is often no longer the major barrier. Rather platforms fit poorly with the skills of small firms and their growing complexity favour better-financed firms. They rarely adapt to the challenges faced in global south contexts.

Blindly shepherding firms towards adopting large platforms may negatively affect small providers. Interventions should rather support more creative uses of technology and leverage the unique relationships and applications that could afford more inclusive outcomes.

[1] This article is based on the recently published paper:

Foster, C., & Bentley, C. (2022). Examining Ecosystems and Infrastructure Perspectives of Platforms: The Case of Small Tourism Service Providers in Indonesia and Rwanda. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 50

An open-access version is available to download.

Latest Digital Development Outputs (China, Data, Economy/Platforms, Inclusion, Water, Rights, Sustainability) from CDD, Manchester

Recent outputs – on China Digital; Data-for-Development; Digital Economy / Platforms; Digital Inclusion; Digital Water; Rights; and Sustainability – from Centre for Digital Development researchers, University of Manchester:

CHINA DIGITAL

“China’s digital expansion in the global South” presents recordings of nine presentations at a CDD international workshop that discusses the implications for the global South of China’s emergence as a digital superpower.

“Understanding the evolution of China’s standardization policy system” (open access) by You-hong Yang, Ping Gao & Haimei Zhou, investigates the evolution of China’s technology standardization policy system in the period from 1978 to 2021.  

DATA-FOR-DEVELOPMENT

A DC State of Mind? A Review of the World Development Report 2021: Data for Better Lives by Hellen Mukiri-Smith, Laura Mann & Shamel Azmeh, reviews the World Development Report (2021) on data governance.

DIGITAL ECONOMY / PLATFORMS

“Examining ecosystems and infrastructure perspectives of platforms: the case of small tourism service providers in Indonesia and Rwanda” (open access version available) by Christopher Foster & Caitlin Bentley, analyses tourism platforms from the perspective of small and marginal service providers. It is useful to move away from ideas of platform leaders organising ecosystems from the top-down, towards more emergent behaviours of service providers in multi-platform environments.

Automation and industrialisation through global value chains: North Africa in the German automotive wiring harness industry by Shamel Azmeh, Huong Nguyen & Marlene Kuhn, examines the implications of automation on the global map of production and the position of developing countries in global value chains. Through the case of the German automotive wiring harness industry, we examine the implications of ongoing automation processes on production in North Africa.

“Digital public goods platforms for development: the challenge of scaling” (open access) by Brian Nicholson, Petter Nielsen, Sundeep Sahay & Johan Saebo.  We articulate the notion of digital global public goods and examine the development of DHIS2, a global health platform inspired by public goods, focusing on the paradoxes that arise in the scaling process. A presentation of the paper to the Pankhurst Institute, University of Manchester is available on YouTube.

DIGITAL INCLUSION

“Digital inequality beyond the digital divide: conceptualizing adverse digital incorporation in the global South” (open access) by Richard Heeks, presents a new model to understand how inclusion in – rather than exclusion from – digital systems leads to inequality.

“Revisiting digital inclusion: a survey of theory, measurement and recent research” (open access) by Matthew Sharp, sets out a framework of core components of digital inclusion, surveys current measures of digital inclusion, and makes suggestions for how future research could be more rigorous and useful.

DIGITAL WATER

“Water ATMs and access to water: digitalisation of off-grid water infrastructure in peri-urban Ghana” (open access) by Godfred Amankwaa, Richard Heeks & Alison L. Browne, finds water ATMs to be incremental infrastructures delivering relatively limited and operational-level value, but also producing new and contested socio-material realities.

RIGHTS AND DIGITAL

“RaFoLa: A Rationale-Annotated Corpus for Detecting Indicators of Forced Labour” (open access) by Erick Mendez Guzman, Viktor Schlegel & Riza Batista-Navarro, describes a dataset of news articles categorised according to forced labour indicators. The articles were annotated with rationales, i.e. human explanations for placing them under specific categories, to support the development of explainable AI systems.

“Hustling day in Silicon Savannah: datafication and digital rights in East Africa” (open access) by Gianluca Iazzolino, Michael Kimani & Maddo, is a cartoon on the winners and losers in Kenya’s booming tech scene. It translates, for a non-academic audience, the authors’ research on how digital technologies are reshaping the informal economy in the global South.

SUSTAINABILITY AND DIGITAL

“Exploring financing for green-tech SMEs in East Africa: current trends and risk appetite” (open access) by Aarti Krishnan, reviews the financing of green-tech SMEs in East Africa including different financing at different enterprise lifecycle stages, in different sectors, and across different countries.

“Applications of Industry 4.0 digital technologies towards a construction circular economy: gap analysis and conceptual framework” by Faris Elghaish, Sandra T. Matarneh, David John Edwards, Farzad Pour Rahimian, Hatem El-Gohary & Obuks Ejohwomu, investigates the interrelationships between emerging digital technologies and the circular economy, concluding with the development of a conceptual digital ecosystem to integrate IoT, blockchain and AI.

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Antecedents of Significant Digital Development Research

This post is a cheat because it’s actually summarising a paper on organisational – not digital development – research.

It’s by the leading organisational theorist – and confutation of nominative determinism – Richard Daft, and I read it just before I started my PhD.

Based on a survey of organisational researchers, its findings feel relevant to digital development.  Significant research . . .

– Is an outcome of the researcher’s involvement in the real world

– Is an outcome of the researcher’s own interests, resolve and effort

– Is chosen on the basis of intuition

– Is an outcome of intellectual rigour

– Reaches into an uncertain world to produce something that is clear, tangible and well-understood

– Focuses on real problems

– Is concerned with theory, with a desire for understanding and explanation

Not-so-significant research is the opposite: expedient, quick and easy, lacking personal commitment from the researcher, lacking theoretical thought and effort, and so on.

While planning and clarity mark out the latter stages of significant research, it is the outcome of an organic process of intuition, integration of ideas from different fields or chance meetings, that starts with uncertainty.  Precisely planned, tidy, clean and clearly-defined research most likely leads to small results (research funders please take note!).

That all seems to fit equally-well with digital development research but, of course, these criteria come from a researcher perspective, not that of other stakeholders.  See what you think.

If you’d like to read the paper, it’s not so easy to find:

 – Daft, R. L. (1984). Antecedents of significant and not-so-significant organizational research. In: T.S. Bateman & G.R. Ferris (eds), Method and Analysis in Organizational Research. Reston Publishing, Reston, VA, 3-14.

Or, there’s a firewalled update:

– Daft, R. L., Griffin, R. W., & Yates, V. (1987). Retrospective accounts of research factors associated with significant and not-so-significant research outcomes. Academy of Management Journal, 30(4), 763-785.

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Income of Gig Work vs. Previous Job in Pakistan

Richard Heeks, Iftikhar Ahmad, Shanza Sohail, Sidra Nizamuddin, Athar Jameel, Seemab Haider Aziz, Zoya Waheed, Sehrish Irfan, Ayesha Kiran & Shabana Malik

Does the transition to gig work improve incomes in Pakistan?

Many workers join gig work platforms in the belief that their incomes will improve, but is this borne out in practice?  To investigate, the Centre for Labour Research interviewed 94 workers based on six platforms across three sectors: ride-hailing, food delivery, and personal care.

Of these, 51 were able to tell us what their previous monthly income had been in their most-recent employment prior to joining the platform[1].  Stated income varied from the equivalent of US$60 per month up to U$1,200 per month, and averaged US$220 per month[2].

After moving into gig work, average gross income was slightly higher, at US$240 per month but, as the graph below shows, there was a much more differentiated picture behind the average, with around 40% of respondents earning less gross income (red-bordered blue columns) than they had done previously.

However, as the graph also shows, things looked worse when comparing net income (orange columns).  For the great majority of prior jobs, work-related costs were small (only work-to-home transport, which we calculated based on typical commuting journeys in Pakistan to be just under US$18 per month; i.e. less than 10% of average gross income).  But for gig work – much of which relies on journeys by vehicle and continuous internet connectivity – the costs of petrol, maintenance and data eat heavily into gross income.  In addition, for some (only a few in our Pakistan sample) there are costs of renting their vehicle.[3]

These costs represented, on average, 65% of gross income and knocked average net income for gig workers down to just US$85 per month.  When we compare before-and-after for net income, then, we found more than 70% of our sample were earning less than in their previous job, and 45% earned over US$100 per month less.

This was especially an issue for ride-hailing drivers and it does reflect the particular circumstances during our interview period of late 2021 to early 2022: a drop-off in demand for travel due to Covid, and a steep rise in petrol prices.  Indeed, so bad was the problem that just over a fifth – 21 of the 94 – were reporting negative income.  That is, they were effectively paying to go to work as their costs exceeded their gross income; something to which the platforms responded in May 2022 by dropping the commission taken from drivers to 0%.

While recognising the challenging period for gig workers covered by our fieldwork, nonetheless, this does suggest that – by and large – gig work is not delivering the income boost that workers often hope for.  They may, for example, be lured by gross income figures, not realising how much lower net income will be.  Gig work does provide a livelihood – 40% of our sample were unemployed in the immediate period prior to joining – but it is not really fulfilling its promise.  It also falls far from decent work standards: five-sixths of those we interviewed took home less than a living wage.

If you’d like to know more, please refer to the 2022 Fairwork Report on Pakistan’s gig economy.

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[1] Those who stated what their prior employment had been gave the following job descriptions: BPO operator, Teacher (2), Housekeeper, Shopkeeper, Gas company worker (2), Safety officer, Business person, Tanker driver, Ride-hailing driver with another platform (3), Traditional taxi driver (3), Farmer, Builder, Computer operator, Cook, Technician, Shop assistant, Domestic worker, Government worker

[2] This average is some way above the overall average earnings of US$140 per month but well below formal sector average monthly salary of US$480.

[3] For further detail, see this discussion of the breakdown of ride-hailing passenger payments.

Digital Inequality Beyond the Digital Divide

How can we understand digital inequality in an era of digital inclusion?

As the open-access journal paper, “Digital Inequality Beyond the Digital Divide: Conceptualising Adverse Digital Incorporation in the Global South” explains, the digital divide has been an essential and powerful concept that links digital systems with inequality.

But it is no longer sufficient.  A majority of the global South’s population now has internet access and is included in, not excluded from, digital systems.  Yet, as the figure below illustrates, that inclusion also brings inequalities – the small farmers in digital value chains losing out to large intermediaries; the gig workers whose value and data are captured by their platforms; the communities disempowered when they are digitally mapped.

Figure 1: From an Exclusion-Based to an Inclusion-Based Perspective on Digital Inequality

We need a new conceptualisation to explain this emerging pattern.  I refer to this as “adverse digital incorporation”, defined as inclusion in a digital system that enables a more-advantaged group to extract disproportionate value from the work or resources of another, less-advantaged group.

As shown below, I have inductively built a model of adverse digital incorporation, based around three aspects:

Figure 2. Conceptual Model of Adverse Digital Incorporation

Future digital development research can apply this model deductively to cases of digital inequality, and can further investigate the digitality of adverse digital incorporation. 

For digital development practitioners, the challenge will be to achieve “advantageous digital incorporation”: designing digital interventions that specifically and effectively reduce existing inequalities.  This means going beyond digital equity to digital justice: addressing the underlying and contextual causes of inequality not just its surface manifestations.

For further details, please refer to the paper; “Digital Inequality Beyond the Digital Divide: Conceptualising Adverse Digital Incorporation in the Global South”.

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How Does Technology Affect Smart City Governance?

What is a Smart City?

A Smart City (SC) capitalises on technology, proper governance and collaborations between the various stakeholders to comprehensively promote city prosperity and eventually improve the quality of citizens’ lives.

Figure 1. Envisaging the smart city[1]

Cities are agglomerations of economic, social, and cultural benefits[2]. On the other hand, cities are increasingly confronted with issues such as diminishing public management efficiency, backward infrastructure, traffic congestion, environmental pollution, and general security concerns, among others.

The Smart City is a concept that has evolved around the world to solve urban problems and enhance urban development. Several municipalities, such as Cape Town, Ottawa, San Diego, Southampton, Barcelona, Seoul, and Shanghai, have developed SCs to serve citizens better and improve the quality of citizens’ lives.

What is Smart City Governance?

New governance patterns are required to manage SCs. The governance models for SCs could be divided into two categories:

• Some of the governance models are technology-driven, focusing on the role of big data and technology.
• Other governance models emphasise the human and institutional factors,  such as the role of governance structures, citizen-centricity, social capital, human resources and stakeholders.

At the intersection of these two, Smart City Governance (SCG) emerges mainly due to the growing roles of technology and human capabilities in the functioning of cities, which gives the government the opportunity to optimise the governance process and outcomes. A typical description of SCG is “crafting new forms of human collaboration through the use of ICTs to obtain better outcomes and more open governance processes” [3].

How does technology affect SCG?

The technology revolution has altered the city governance model. The impact of technology on governance models is roughly in two directions. One is to use technology to strengthen the government-centric bureaucratic model, and the other is to use technology to distribute decision-making power to more stakeholders.

• Technology contributing to the concentration of power

The case in Shenzhen, China shows how technology can strengthen a top-down governance model. The Shenzhen government propagated a programmatic document for SCG, the Shenzhen Municipal New-Type Smart City Construction Master Plan, in 2018[4]. In this plan, the SC structure of Shenzhen includes three layers and two supports, as outlined in the figure below.

The primary layer is the SC Sensory Network System, which mainly includes sensor networks, communication networks, and computing storage centres; the middle layer provides support for government decision-making, which is composed of the Urban Big Data Centre and SC Operation and Management Centre; the top application layer includes four parts public services, public safety, urban governance and smart industries.

In this scenario, technology is the core element of governance and is used to strengthen the government’s decision-making and implementation capabilities. In this kind of governance model, technology is used to collect public management-related data and information, help make governmental decisions and finally reinforce the rationality and efficiency of government.

Figure 2. Shenzhen’s smart city structure [5]

• Technology contributing to the decentralisation of power

On the other hand, technology may give impetus to the bottom-up governance model. For example, in the case of Amsterdam Smart City (ASC)[6], the Amsterdam Economic Board governs and funds it using an open web-based platform. This platform allows stakeholders to communicate and disseminate information in a fair and transparent manner. Furthermore, open-house programmes and open gatherings help citizens communicate and empower themselves. This case demonstrates how technological innovation has aided in the distribution of information and power to more stakeholders in ASC.

Figure 3. Amsterdam Smart City

In conclusion, data and information bestow stakeholders’ power and legitimacy in urban governance to a certain extent. From the standpoint of technology, the power distribution of data and information may affect the governance model towards decentralisation or concentration.

References

[1] https://www.arcweb.com/industries/smart-cities

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/studies/pdf/citiesoftomorrow/citiesoftomorrow_final.pdf

[3] Bolívar, M. P. R., & Meijer, A. J. (2016). Smart governance: Using a literature review and empirical analysis to build a research model. Social Science Computer Review, 34(6), 673–692. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439315611088

[4] http://www.sz.gov.cn/zfgb/2018/gb1062/content/post_4977617.html

[5] Hu, R., (2019). The state of smart cities in China: The case of Shenzhen. Energies, 12(22), p.4375

[6] https://amsterdamsmartcity.com/

Workshop on China’s Digital Expansion in the Global South

China is fast-emerging as a global digital superpower and has a rapidly-growing digital presence in other low- and middle-income developing countries of the global South.  Yet research to date has been relatively limited on this rising phenomenon which is having important economic, social, political and geopolitical impacts.

This online workshop – held 1000-1730 (UK time/BST) on Thursday 21^st July 2022 – presented new findings based on primary research in the global South, and also provided a space to reflect on the agenda and collaborations for future research.

Recordings of the presentations in the three main workshop session can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjghFTNvDEIyEUpx7nlYqWDKeA5JkWczL

The workshop timetable is shown below:

1000-1200:

The Future Research Agenda on China’s Digital Expansion – Richard Heeks, Angelica Ospina, Chris Foster, Ping Gao, Xia Han, Nicholas Jepson, Seth Schindler & Qingna Zhou (University of Manchester)

Learning Along the Digital Silk Road? Technology Transfer, Power, and Chinese ICT Corporations in North Africa – Tin Hinane El Kadi (London School of Economics)

China’s Digital Expansion in Africa: South to South Cooperation or South Dominance? – Grace Wang (Stellenbosch University)

1300-1445:

Chinese Digital Platform Companies’ Expansion in the Belt and Road Countries – Yujia He (University of Kentucky)

Global Developments of Chinese E-commerce Livestreaming: Case of AliExpress and Lazada in Southeast Asia – Xiaofei Han (Carleton University)

Transnational Governance behind Chinese Platforms’ Overseas Content Moderation: A Case Study of TikTok’s Global Reach to Southern and South-eastern Asia – Diyi Liu (University of Oxford)

1500-1645:

The Chinese Surveillance State in Latin America? Evidence from Argentina and Ecuador – Maximiliano Vila Seoane (National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina) & Carla Álvarez Velasco (Institute of Higher National Studies, Ecuador)

China’s Expansion in Brazilian Digital Surveillance Markets: Between Public Actors and Foreign Enterprises – Esther Majerowicz (Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte) & Miguel Henriques de Carvalho (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)

Alibaba in Mexico: Adapting the Digital Villages Model to Latin America – Guillermo J. Larios-Hernandez (Universidad Anahuac Mexico)

1645-1730:

Future Research Agenda Activity

The workshop was co-hosted by the University of Manchester’s Centre for Digital Development and Manchester China Institute

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Graphic credit: ASPI at https://chinatechmap.aspi.org.au/

COVID-19 and the Unsettled Questions of Digital Governance

A meeting on e-commerce at the World Trade Organisation, source: WTO photos

How will ongoing debates on digital governance shape the future of digital development?

One of the important implications of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the further acceleration of growth in the digital economy and the expansion of cross-border digital flows. Driven by the pandemic, large and small businesses across the world adapted their business models by shifting completely or partially to internet-based models. As a result, digital transactions, within and across countries, increased dramatically over the last couple of years. While measurement of such flows is challenging, some reports estimate that global Internet Protocol (IP) traffic was expected to more than triple between 2017 and 2022 and that domestic and international IP traffic in 2022 will exceed all Internet traffic up to 2016.

This growth has intensified the debates around digital governance. These debates have begun prior to the pandemic as the growth in the digital economy on the one hand and the move by some states to adopt “interventionist” digital policies drove intense discussions on how to govern the digital world and where to draw the line between sovereignty of states on the one hand and the need to adopt international rules and norms to maintain the global nature of the digital world.

The success of some countries, particularly China, in building digital capacities and firms through selective, and often limited, integration in the global digital market have intensified those debates as other countries began to look to the Chinese model as a guidance for their digital strategies. As a result, questions around the appropriate forum to govern digital issues, the limits of state power vis-à-vis international rules and norms, and the applicability of such rules to different economies have dominated digital policy debates for a number of years. Some of those debates have taken place within regional blocs such as the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) while others have taken place within international bodies that are focused on digital governance such as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

While these debates continued in different forums, a difficult link between digital governance and the international trading system was established largely as a result of pressure from the advanced economies. Issues such as data flows, source code and algorithms, and cybersecurity, amongst others, became increasingly linked to trade regimes with recent trade agreements adopting digital chapters that include rules on a range of digital issues.

While the link between trade agreements and the digital world is not always clear (while some cross-border flows are trade flows, a huge percentage of these flows are not trade-related, and the two are very difficult to separate), the trade regime offered an established forum with the ability to produce binding and enforceable rules to govern the digital space. Today, negotiations on digital issues continue in a number of multilateral, regional, and bilateral trade forums as states pursue different visions of the digital economy and how to govern digital flows. The advanced economies, in particular the United States, the EU, Japan, and Australia in addition to emerging economies such as India and China are the key drivers of these processes.

The implications of such processes for development issues are profound, and often overlooked. The economic and social value of data, for instance, is not yet fully understood and, as such, it is unclear what adopting binding international rules around data flows will exactly entail. Some argue that developing countries will benefit from global open data policies as it gives them an opportunity to integrate in the digital economy and to achieve technological progress. Others, however, question this position and argue that developing countries should resist any rules that could undermine their policy space to adopt digital policies. As discussions on these issues continue in different forums, more engagement from digital development scholars is needed.

In the context of the dramatic expansion of the digital economy driven by the pandemic, better understanding the implications of digital governance for digital development particularly in lower-income and smaller developing countries is crucial to help shape the processes driving digital governance and to ensure that digital rules do not undermine the objectives of economic and social development that are increasingly tied to digital issues in today’s world.