After access
Subtitle: inclusion, development, and a more mobile Internet
By: Jonathan Donner
Series: The information society series; Information society series
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 295
ISBN-13: 9780262029926
Subjects: Mobile computing; Communication and culture; Digital divide; Wireless Internet
Description: Almost anyone with a $40 mobile phone and a nearby cell tower can get online with an ease unimaginable just twenty years ago. An optimistic narrative has proclaimed the mobile phone as the device that will finally close the digital divide. Yet access and effective use are not the same thing, and the digital world does not run on mobile handsets alone. In After Access, Jonathan Donner examines the implications of the shift to a more mobile, more available Internet for the global South, particularly as it relates to efforts to promote socioeconomic development and broad-based inclusion in the global information society. Drawing on his own research in South Africa and India, as well as the burgeoning literature from the ICT4D (Internet and Communication Technologies for Development) and mobile communication communities, Donner introduces the "After Access Lens," a conceptual framework for understanding effective use of the Internet by those whose "digital repertoires" contain exclusively mobile devices. Donner argues that both the potentialities and constraints of the shift to a more mobile Internet are important considerations for scholars and practitioners interested in Internet use in the global South. -- Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-288) and index.
Table of contents: title: The Boom; title: New Mobilities; title: New Constraints; title: Implications for practice and theory; title: Conculsion.