Priyank Chandra

Agency in Assistive Technology Adoption: Visual Impairment and Smartphone Use in Bangalore

Studies on technology adoption typically assume that a users perception of usability and usefulness of technology are central to its adoption. Specifically, in the case of accessibility and assistive technology, research has traditionally focused on the artifact rather than the individual, arguing that individual technologies fail or succeed based on their usability and fit for their users. Using a mixed-methods field study of smartphone adoption by 81 people with visual impairments in Bangalore, India, we argue that these positions are dated in the case of accessibility where a non-homogeneous population must adapt to technologies built for sighted people. We found that many users switch to smartphones despite their awareness of significant usability challenges with smartphones. We propose a nuanced understanding of perceived usefulness and actual usage based on need-related social and economic functions, which is an important step toward rethinking technology adoption for people with disabilities.

Market Practices and the Bazaar: Technology Consumption in ICT Markets in the Global South

Local informal markets or bazaars play a central role in embedding the adoption, consumption, and reproduction of digital technologies within the economic and cultural fabric of the Global South. This paper presents ethnographic accounts of informal ICT markets in two sites, one in India and the other in Bangladesh, and assesses how technology consumption unfolds within local practices. Building on social practice theory, this paper depicts the role of materiality, relationships, and situated knowledge in the functioning of a bazaar. We discuss how this knowledge expands our understanding of the evaluation of technology and technical expertise, and the persistence of these informal spaces despite the uptake of corporatized technology marketplaces. We argue that the bazaar represents a special kind of local voice that enriches the HCI scholarship in postcolonial computing.

Gender and accessibility in Rwanda and Malawi

We examine the role of mobile devices in access to social, economic, and architectural spaces and resources by people with vision impairments in two urban agglomerations in Rwanda and Malawi using a survey and open-ended interviews. We discuss ways in which the intersection of gender and disability distinguishes the ways men and women experience access in their respective societies.

Informality and Invisibility: Traditional Technologies as Tools for Collaboration in an Informal Market

This paper explores how actors in local markets in the Global South adapt traditional communication technologies to successfully collaborate to sustain the markets and their business practices. Drawing on ethnographic observations at a local technology goods market in Bangalore, India, the study details the use of a landline telephone intercom system as the primary tool for business communication in the market. Through analyzing how the intercom system relates to informality and physical space, the paper argues that it bridges the formal with the informal, and helps facilitate informal business practices while also allowing them to remain hidden from the formal regulatory gaze of the state.

Order in the Warez Scene: Explaining an Underground Virtual Community with the CPR Framework

The paper analyzes the warez scene, an illegal underground subculture on the Internet, which specializes in removing copy protection from software and releasing the cracked software for free. Despite the lack of economic incentives and the absence of external laws regulating it, the warez scene has been able to self-govern and self-organize for more than three decades. Through a directed content analysis of the subcultures digital traces, the paper argues that the ludic competition within the warez scene is an institution of collective action, and can, therefore, be approached as a common-pool resource (CPR). Subsequently, the paper uses Ostroms framework of long-enduring common-pool resource institutions to understand the warez scenes longevity and ability to govern itself. Theoretical and design implications of these findings are then discussed.

Speaking their Mind: Populist Style and Antagonistic Messaging in the Tweets of Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Nigel Farage, and Geert Wilders

The authors in this study examined the function and public reception of critical tweeting in online campaigns of four nationalist populist politicians during major national election campaigns. Using a mix of qualitative coding and case study inductive methods, we analyzed the tweets of Narendra Modi, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, and Geert Wilders before the 2014 Indian general elections, the 2016 UK Brexit referendum, the 2016 US presidential election, and the 2017 Dutch general election, respectively. Our data show that Trump is a consistent outlier in terms of using critical language on Twitter when compared to Wilders, Farage, and Modi, but that all four leaders show significant investment in various forms of antagonistic messaging including personal insults, sarcasm, and labeling, and that these are rewarded online by higher retweet rates. Building on the work of Murray Edelman and his notion of a political spectacle, we examined Twitter as a performative space for critical rhetoric within the frame of nationalist politics. We found that cultural and political differences among the four settings also impact how each politician employs these tactics. Our work proposes that studies of social media spaces need to bring normative questions into traditional notions of collaboration. As we show here, political actors may benefit from in-group coalescence around antagonistic messaging, which while serving as a call to arms for online collaboration for those ideologically aligned, may on a societal level lead to greater polarization.

Assistive technologies and autonomy in a cyborg world

This note discusses the use of cyborg theory to study assistive technology (AT) use by people with visual impairment (VI) in development contexts. We argue that the deep intimate interconnections that people form with their AT, while allowing them to become cyborgs, also become the means by which they can be regulated and controlled. This is a concern for ICTD, which strives to consider the instrumental outcomes of technology implementation as it is interwoven throughout peoples lives. Applying Lessigs model of regulation to a cyborg body, we discuss the implications for protecting autonomy in AT use by people with visual impairment.