The article is focused thematically on the uses and meanings of media for (some) young people in Recife, a million-inhabitant city in the northeast of Brazil. The article brings together the perspective of Anne Line Dalsgaard, a long-term anthropological field researcher who is familiar with the everyday lives and social conditions for growing up in Recife, and the findings of a short-term, interview-and observation-based media ethnographic study, conducted by Norbert Wildermuth. The concept of imagination as potentially both an enabling and a limiting practice in the consumption of media is discussed centrally in this attempt to contribute to an empirically grounded understanding of the role that media play for youth in their striving to 'find a place in life' . In the empirical context presented in the article, imaginations, expanded and circulated by a globalized media circuit, are appropriated and interpreted locally and under particular socio-economic conditions.
Globally, huge investments are made in information and communications technology (ICT) as an undisputed and essential component of almost all activities -state and corporate. ICT-facilitated strategies are, by now, also an integral part of international development cooperation. The rapid and global spread of ICTs -particularly the Internet and mobile telephony -is making information available instantly and at low cost to a degree unprecedented in history. They can be used to seek, receive, create, and impart information by anyone, at any time, and for any purpose.By reconfiguring the relations between states and between citizens and states, the global proliferation of ICTs has caused fundamental shifts in both human's public and private life spheres, including patterns of civic engagement and governance (Chadwick 2006). Put more bluntly, the ubiquitous presence of ICTs in our lives raises key question regarding their role and influence on the values, processes, and outcomes of public bureaucracies and representative institutions, including political parties and legislatures, democratic pressure groups; social movements; and global governance institutions.The innovative use of new ICT-enabled, digital media has, for example, created new forms of citizen journalism, which give space to a diversity of voices. In this way, ICTs enhance freedom of expression and the right to information and increases the possibilities for citizens' participation in decision-making processes. ICTs are used by citizens and civil society for networking and to enhance advocacy and mobilization, locally and globally. Social network media, online communities, and mobile phones create new modes of social interaction, for example through the use of mobile phones for documentation of human rights violations, of election processes and the use of SMS for networking and mobilization The rapid and wide spread of affordable mobile telephony points thus to the role of
The ambition of this article is twofold and consists of an attempt to outline a problematic bias of research attention and interpretation, discernible in the field of studies that address the appropriation and usage of new media and networked communication technologies, as unfolding in Africa. Thus, I voice my concerns in respect to scholarly attempts, quantitative and qualitative in nature, to define those who are 'left behind' at the 'bottom of the digital/media pyramid', in narrow deterministic terms. Based on qualitative interviews from field work in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya I suggest a methodological-analytical approach to overcome this blind spot of attention and understanding, by show-casing a different strategy of data generation and interpretative reading. The article draws attention on the media practices and routines that are contextually embedded in the lifeworld concerns and pragmatic decisions of individuals located at the 'excluded' end of the continuum of communication ecologies in Kenya. My in-depth presentation and discussion of two protagonists from rural Ziwa ward, seeks to challenge commonplace characterisations of the causes and consequences of restricted digital/media repertoires. This includes a rejection of techno-centric, normative claims that define digital inclusion in narrow terms and the excluded as human impediments to democratic transition and development. Instead, I put forward a situated understanding of digital/media repertoires that while realised under constrained conditions, nonetheless allow people to address their lifeworld concerns. Concerns, here understood "as activities that matter to people" (Helle-Valle, 2019, 147), in consequence affecting digital/media practices and vice versa.
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