The Politics of Media Infrastructure: Mobile Phones and Emergent Forms of Public Communication in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Recent work in anthropology proposes that the ethnographic study of infrastructure offers a productive way to think about how states and corporations, citizens and consumers, all define their relations and obligations to each other. This article considers the politics of media infrastructure in Papua New Guinea (PNG) by tracing the moral economy of mobile phones. It focuses on (1) how mobile phone users have taken to social media to express dissatisfaction with the dominant mobile network operator, Digicel, a privately owned foreign company; and (2) how the PNG state has attempted to regulate the use of mobile phones and social media through cybercrime legislation and registration of Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM cards). Consideration of these two issues – matters of concern that gather publics around them – enables an assessment of the promise of improved telecommunications and social media, in particular, to make government in PNG more accountable and transparent.

Digicel! Topap long ples ia! An international telecommunications company making itself at home in the urban landscapes of Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga

“…Foster and Horst (2018) bring together a collection of perspectives on what they refer to as ‘the moral economy of mobile phones’ in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Fiji, with chapters covering the practices of phone sharing (Lipset, 2018), shifts in the formation and maintenance of phone‐based social relationships (Kraemer, 2018; Wardlow, 2018), user perceptions of the advent of mobile phone technology (Jorgensen, 2018), and phone providers' strategies both to project a vision of moral order via their marketing (Horst, 2018) and to influence consumer behaviour via their promotions (Foster, 2018). Foster (2020) expands on the same concept of the moral economy of mobile phones, focusing on the relationships between consumers, mobile phone providers and state regulators. A number of other recent articles also explore the influence of mobile phone usage in the Pacific on social relationships (Andersen, 2013; Kraemer, 2015; Lipset, 2013; Singh & Nadarajah, 2011; Taylor, 2015; Telban & Vávrová, 2014; Watson, 2013; Watson & Duffield, 2016); on language usage (Handman, 2013; Temple, 2011; Vandeputte‐Tavo, 2013); and on the reshaping of approaches to political campaigning and advocacy (Tarai et al, 2015; Titifanue et al, 2016, 2017).…”