The world has become more interconnected which has changed the way we communicate (Steinfeldt et al., 2010). As technology has continually developed allowing instant online publication, an increasing abundance of opinionated discourse has appeared on the worldwide web (Chelaru, Altingovde, Siersdorfer & Nejdl, 2012). From blogs that disseminate political ideologies, to hair and makeup tutorials, the internet has become a medium that facilitates unfiltered instantaneous communication to a potentially global audience. While most users of internet services utilise the technology to engage in civilised dialogue, it does not require much effort to locate capricious behaviour in the anonymised online environment.
Little academic attention has been focused on the experiences of communities situated at the margins in receiving nonprofit services. In this essay, we draw on the culture-centered approach to critically interrogate the concept of engagement among a range of nonprofit organizations. We analyze ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a low income suburban area in Aotearoa New Zealand, in which narrative accounts of 60 residents formed the basis of our deliberations with an advisory board. Our findings indicate that many nonprofit organizations are constructed as spaces of othering that do not attend to the cultural norms or needs of those situated at the margins. Alternatively, the Head Hunters outlaw motorcycle gang and Destiny’s Church, both vilified in mainstream media outlets, were sites of significant community engagement. Our study illuminates the impact of dialogic group engagement and of initiatives being developed and driven by the community.
The dominant approach to digital inclusion positions technology as a ‘fix’ to the challenges experienced by marginalized communities. Largely erased are the broader structures of marginalization, the role of technology in relationship to structures and the cultural contexts within which technologies are negotiated. In this essay, we culturally centre digital inclusion to offer insights into the ways in which technologies play out within the margins, drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, including 60 initial interviews, group meetings and 25 interviews carried out amidst the lockdown in response to COVID-19 in Aotearoa New Zealand. We argue that the pandemic offers a window into the relationship between inequalities and technologies, rendering structural contexts of these inequalities visible. We highlight how technology adoption produces marginality in service delivery, situating technology amidst the ecologies of everyday life and the interplays of culture, structure and agency.
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