Moving the centre to design social media in rural Africa

摘要: Efforts to design voice-based, social media platforms for low-literacy communities in developing countries have not widened access information the ways intended. This article links this who describes relations that constitute personhood and how these are expressed designing deploying systems. I make oriented by critique human---computer interaction continues a history of colonialism embeds meanings disrupt existing communication practices. explore we translated `logics' about sociality through logics located outside rural South African community targeted deployment. The system aimed enable inhabitants record, store share voice files using portable, communally owned display. describe engaged with inhabitants, understand needs, represented abstracted from encounters articulate requirements, which into statements technology. Use was as predicted. My analysis suggests certain writing cultures, embedded translations, reify knowledge, disembody voices neglect rhythms life. biases towards individualist limits affordances forms, genres other elements contribute sociality. Thus, propose oral practices offer oppositional power digital bubbles support human togetherness can enrich moving centre--a phrase taken Ng?gă? wa Thiong'o (Moving centre: struggle cultural freedoms, James Currey, London, 1993) insists liberation requires plural sites creativity. To realize potential, need radically different approaches symmetrical translation.