End-user engagement in the design of communications services: lessons from the rural Congo

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dc.contributor.authorChampion, Donna
dc.contributor.authorCibangu, Sylvain
dc.contributor.authorHepworth, Mark
dc.date.accessioned2018-01-31T09:51:15Z
dc.date.available2018-01-31T09:51:15Z
dc.date.issued2018-01-29
dc.description.abstractEnd-user engagement is considered essential when designing new socio-technical systems, but in the context of designing large-scale infrastructural systems, such as communications networks, this ideal is rarely put into practice. We examined the challenges in engaging end-users in the design of communications services, by exploring how communities from 15 villages in the rural Congo, incorporated mobile phones into their daily lives. To analyze the changes in social and cultural capital that resulted from mobile phone use, we applied Bourdieu’s capital theory. This analysis exposed the difference in perceived value of the communication services between end-users and the business owners of the infrastructure. The paper concludes by suggesting new forms of partnership with end-users in order to craft ways in which infrastructures, and related organizations and practices, can best cohere with local cultural views, specifics, beliefs, needs, or realities of concerned participants.en_UK
dc.identifier.citationDonna Champion, Sylvain K. Cibangu and Mark Hepworth. End-user engagement in the design of communications services: lessons from the rural Congo. Information Technologies and International Development, Volume 14, pp18-32en_UK
dc.identifier.issn1544-7529
dc.identifier.urihttp://www.itidjournal.org/index.php/itid/article/view/1583
dc.identifier.urihttp://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/12941
dc.language.isoenen_UK
dc.publisherUniversity of Southern Californiaen_UK
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/*
dc.subjectend-user engagementen_UK
dc.subjectcommunications infrastructureen_UK
dc.subjectsocial capitalen_UK
dc.subjectco-productionen_UK
dc.subjectparticipative approachen_UK
dc.titleEnd-user engagement in the design of communications services: lessons from the rural Congoen_UK
dc.typeArticleen_UK

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