Provoking or Undergoing Change?: Digital Transformation and the Rise of the Social Media Internet

• In Event: Reorienting Digital Media Studies: Global and Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

Smartphones are fast becoming the primary devices through which the internet is accessed globally. As a result of zero-rated or subsidized data packages, the mobile internet is increasingly transforming into a ‘social media internet’, raising questions about net neutrality, datafication and privacy. Despite extensive critiques of techno-utopian accounts of digital media in the context of the Arab Spring, scholarly accounts of digital media in the Global South continue to be preoccupied with the potential role of technology in processes of social, economic or political change, as frequently witnessed in the subfield of ICT4D. However, these accounts have neglected the way in which technology itself is undergoing change. Drawing on research in Zambia in the context of the 2016 elections, this paper examines the rapidly transforming nature of the internet and explores what this can tell us about other processes of change.

Author

• Wendy Willems, London School of Economics and Political Science