Minding the gaps

Abstract

The proliferation of text-based applications in the Mobiles for Development (M4D) domain tends to privilege the conventional wisdom that texting is a ubiquitous skill among mobile phone users. This view obscures many real and present barriers to using SMS and mobile features, most critically where low literate and/or oral language-dependent communities cannot rely on text as a viable communications system. This paper investigates mobile "utility gaps"-the spaces between high rates of mobile phone ownership and low use of productive features on mobile phones. These gaps preclude the adoption of many text-based development initiatives, which in turn affects the potential impact of such initiatives. Working with low-literate Berber-Muslim women in a predominantly oral-language community in rural southwest Morocco, we have found that an overall lack of functional literacy and numeracy is a major contributor to a mobile utility gap in that community. Non-standard mobile phone interfaces, a complex language environment with both Arabic and Berber dialects and multiple alphabets and gender-specific cultural norms also present significant impediments to using mobile phones as a development strategy in the Berber communities studied. Furthermore, we explore the paradox of social networks where a reliance on others to assist with phone use is often coupled with surveillance and a loss of privacy. These results are potentially relevant to projects involving other indigenous communities in North Africa.

Examining Security and Privacy Research in Developing Regions

“…A recent GSMA report estimates that over 1.7 billion women in low-and middle-income countries do not even own mobile phones [76]. For women who have access to a phone, their access is often mediated or monitored by family members, friends, and other community actors who discount women's need of security, privacy, and personal identity [63,128]. For example, although Grameen Telecom's Village Phone program [21] attempts to improve phone access of low-income women, often these women have to sacrifice their privacy by using the phone in presence of a Village Phone operator [40].…”

“…Low-income, low-literate women have expressed the need to use their phones independently to protect their privacy [63], but expressing or fulfilling such privacy needs at times result in untoward consequences or missed opportunities due to the sociocultural fabric of their community. For example, Sambasivan et al found that women in urban India are hesitant to provide their phone number to receive a one-time-password required to access public Wi-Fi out of the fear of its misuse and the risk of harassment [125].…”

“…The rapid adoption of mobile phones in developing regions could be deceptively seen as an indicator that marginalized people are becoming technologically literate. In reality, many people learn only a limited set of functions on the phone [63] (e.g., they can only make and receive phone calls [97]).…”

“…Even when these populations are aware of security and privacy risks, they lack the knowledge to take any effective action to mitigate these threats. For example, Dodson et al reported how low-income women with limited technological skills had to reluctantly accept the invasion of their privacy when they requested help from shopkeepers and local retailers to install mobile credits [63]. Dodson et al found utility gaps-"the spaces between high rates of mobile phone ownership and low use of productive features on mobile phone"-as the key privacy barrier for low-income Berber-Muslim women in southwest Morocco [63].…”

“…Factors such as gender discrimination (culture), knowledge gaps, and intermediated use (unintended technology use) leads to a more asymmetric sharing: one person gets access to the other person's content, but not the other way around. For example, husband checks his wife's phone, but wife is not allowed to check her husband's phone [63]; women do not get their own phones, but men do; a tech-literate youngster in a family controls access and content on the family phone; and a youngster who helps his neighbor use a messaging application gets access to his neighbor's content [27].…”