Track Co-Chairs:

• Silvia Masiero, Loughborough University, s.masiero@lboro.ac.uk
• Brian Nicholson, University of Manchester, brian.nicholson@manchester.ac.uk
• Petter Nielsen, University of Oslo, pnielsen@ifi.uio.no
• Johan Ivar Sæbø, University of Oslo, johansa@ifi.uio.no

Koskinen et al. (2019) draw on Gawer (2014) and Evans & Gawer (2016) in classifying platforms based on their purpose, distinguishing transaction (multi-sided markets facilitating transactions among counterparts) from innovation platforms (technological building blocks for developing services and products). They also suggest a four-point research agenda for researchers on digital platforms in the Global South, inviting research on (1) how to release the developmental potential of innovation platforms, (2) systematic differences among digital platforms in the Global North and the Global South, (3) the extent to which and ways how transaction platforms may exacerbate inequalities, and (4) alternatives to private platforms, such as in the public and non-profit sector. Over the last two years the platforms-for-development debate has evolved into these four directions and new ones, which papers submitted to this track are invited to explore.

New directions for debate are characterised by an interdisciplinary orientation, as well as an increasing pervasiveness of critical accounts of the platforms-for-development discourse. For example, innovation platforms have been framed as an instantiation of global public goods characterised, in principle, by features of non-rivalry and non-exclusivity (Nicholson et al., 2019b), which invites attention from economic and redistributional theoretical lenses. Platforms and digital entrepreneurship present some optimistic themes for development of small and micro businesses such as Amazon marketplace and freelancing platforms such as Upwork. At the same time, critical accounts that problematise the ability of platforms to pursue traditional “development” objectives (for example, empowering marginalised communities) have emerged, for instance around the precarity and vulnerability induced in workers of digital labour platforms (Anwar & Graham, 2020; Graham et al., 2020). Highlighting the persistence of structural power asymmetry in such platforms, these accounts question the view that promptly lumps platforms diffusion with the ability to promote development goals. Dominance of the major global platforms continues to threaten the growth of indigenous platforms and presents threats to privacy and surveillance (Scholtz, 2016; Srnicek, 2017; Taplin, 2017; Zuboff, 2019).

Topics include (but are not limited to):

1. Conceptual contributions on digital platforms and their theoretical links with (different understandings of) socio-economic development,
2. Innovation platforms as global public goods and their potential for generating development, as well as the challenges encountered in generating this potential,
3. Livelihood-generating platforms (e-commerce, digital labour), their affordances and constraints in empowering subjects and resulting into sustained development outcomes,
4. Digital entrepreneurship and the role of platforms in opening up small and micro business opportunity in freelancing, app development,
5. Development implications of the role of digital platforms in transforming traditional sectors (e.g. fintech for development, consequences for the Global South),
6. Digital cooperation as enabled, transformed, or otherwise influenced by different types of platforms,
7. Critical accounts centred on the “dark side” of platforms, asymmetries, data injustices, or any other forms of perverse effects problematising the view of platforms as enablers of positive development outcomes.

Track Co-Chairs:

• Dr Atta Addo, Surrey Business School, UK, a.addo@surrey.ac.uk
• Dr Silvia Masiero, Loughborough University, UK, s.masiero@lboro.ac.uk
• Dr PK Senyo, University of Southampton, UK, p.k.senyo@soton.ac.uk
• Dr Tenace Setor, University of Nebraska, Omaha, USA, tsetor@unomaha.edu

Defined commonly as the abuse of public office for private gain (Rose-Ackerman, 1999), various forms of corruption have been identified through reviews of the relevant literature (Addo, 2019). These include grand versus petty/street-level corruption depending on the rank of actors and amounts involved (Lambsdorff, 2007; Rose-Ackerman, 1999); systematic versus venal depending on whether corruption furthers political or private economic interests (Toyama, 2015; Wallis, 2006); base versus permeated, related to location of corruption in national institutions or stakeholder service systems (Srivastava, Teo, & Devaraj, 2016); and practices related to individual or collection of actors (Muno, 2013; United Nations Development Program, 2008).

Through various mechanisms, corruption is understood to curtail both the capacity and willingness of developing country governments to adequately serve their citizens in accordance with the basic social contract and with broader socioeconomic development objectives (Argandoña, 2007; World Bank Group, 1998). In particular, bureaucratic or petty corruption—the most widespread corruption encountered by citizens and businesses—plagues everyday transactions in developing countries with serious costs for the poor and socially vulnerable who are worst affected because they have the greatest need and the least power to negotiate self-serving demands of government officers (Carr & Jago, 2014; Riley, 1999; Seyf, 2001). Studies have pointed to the role of corruption in undermining administration of basic services such as water and sanitation (Davis, 2004; Plummer & Cross, 2007), or welfare entitlements to protect the poor. For example, in India’s Public Distribution System that provides rations to the vulnerable poor, Masiero documents the leakage and diversion that occurs along the supply chain as a result of corruption (Masiero & Prakash, 2015).

Paradoxically, reforms and ICT implementations intended to enable the fight against corruption are often undermined by corruption, with the effect that the status quo largely remains (Addo & Avgerou, n.d.; Heeks, 1999). While there is growing research on ICT and government corruption in leading information systems academic journals (Addo & Avgerou, n.d.; Srivastava et al., 2016), a number of gaps remain. First, there is inconclusive evidence on the effectiveness of ICTs implementation as anti-corruption mechanisms. Second, there is limited theorization on the persistence of corruption in developing countries and its implications for ICTs. There is also limited understanding of the role of context, culture and social perceptions of corruption and anti-corruption initiatives. Lastly, it remains to be clarified how ICT-based anti-corruption programmes might enhance inclusiveness and the attainment of the broader sustainable development goals of the UN.

Topics include (but are not limited to):

1. Effects of government corruption on COVID-19 and general crises response in developing countries
2. ICTs affordances for transparency and inclusion
3. Anti-corruption program formulation and the strategic role of ICTs
4. ICT-enabled public sector reforms addressing corruption in developing countries
5. Mechanisms and modalities for curtailment government corruption through ICTs
6. ICT-enabled collective action against corruption in government and society
7. Social and cultural perceptions of government corruption and the role of ICTs
8. Theorization of the interplay of ICTs and government corruption over time

Track Co-Chairs:

• Jose Abdelnour-Nocera, University of West London and ITI/Larsys, UK; jose.abdelnour-nocera@uwl.ac.uk
• David Lamas, Tallinn University, Estonia; drl@tlu.ee
• Rehema Baguma, Makerere University, Uganda; rbaguma@cis.mak.ac.ug

Participatory and inclusive co-design approaches naturally lead to a grappling with issues of ethics and values (Holeman & Barrett, 2017; Winschiers-Theophilus, Chivuno-Kuria, Kapuire, Bidwell, & Blake, 2010) . At the same time, the topic pervades all of ICT for Development (ICT4D) research and practice. By what standards do we measure our activities and actions? Sterling and Rangaswamy (2010) point out the difficulties in gaining true informed consent. Others critique the discourse of interventionist and “white savior” do-gooders saving the poor (Dearden, 2012; Pal, 2017). Anokwa et al (2009) highlight power dynamics, false promises and conflicting agendas entailed in ICT4D fieldwork. Frequently encountered are communities experiencing “research fatigue”, frustration with the constant stream of researchers promising to fix everything but failing to deliver, or worse, misrepresenting or exploiting them. The reality is that stakeholders, including the researchers themselves, have often differing objectives, which can lead to unworkable or inadequate solutions (Ho, Smyth, Kam, & Dearden, 2009; Luk, Zaharia, Ho, Levine, & Aoki, 2009). In response, the South African San Institute has developed a code of ethics for research with San communities, exhorting that researchers must show care, respect, honesty, and fairness in the research they do (2017). Gertjan van Stam considers the ethics of community-based research, especially with respect to decolonialism, and deliberately seeks permission from the community leaders where he worked to defend and publish his dissertation, presenting it first as a letter to them (van Stam, 2017). Questions around intellectual property ownership, especially in community-centred cultures, are still unanswered, and should always be discussed from the beginning with the community. We emphasize the need to plan for mutual benefit and reciprocity, beyond immediate honorariums for participation in research studies, and to consider and strive for equality in partnerships, whether between Western and Southern researchers, or between the researcher and the community. Finally, as researchers in the 4D space, it is important to be willing to “fail” your technology if it becomes apparent that another approach is more suitable to the partners (Densmore, 2012).

A good example of socially inclusive and ethical HCI research is that of Zaman and Winschiers-Theophilus (2015) where co-design was applied to work with a remote community in Malaysian Borneo to help preserve the Oroo’ visual language through its integration into a mobile digital messaging system. But in projects of this type, the question still remains whether western methods can be fully removed as initial drivers of intrinsically motivated, bottom-up initiatives.

The value and impact of HCI research initiatives in the south have typically been branded for the ‘social good’ but the value and effectiveness of this is increasingly questioned as a problem of misaligned and misconceived expectations by Pal (2017). He highlights that the value of designing for diversity lie as as much in what designers learn from those initiatives as in what communities take away from them.

Despite presenting some examples of local and indigenous perspectives relevant for HCI for Development (HCI4D), the final analysis of HCI in an international development context is still far from complete. A number of questions are raised:

What are the ethical issues in engaging in HCI4D activities? What are the power relations and scripts embedded in this process? While HCI as a discipline carries values of participation and the ultimate beneficiary is the user, there are more complex ethical issues of value co-creation and informed consent in projects where there are clear intercultural and interdisciplinary dimensions shaping inclusion.

Topics include (but are not limited to):

1. Ethically Driven Development or Refinement of Interface Artifacts or Techniques
2. Understanding Users from a socially inclusive and ethical perspective
3. Ethically Driven HCI Systems, Tools, Architectures, and Infrastructure
4. Socially inclusive HCI Methodologies
5. Ethically Driven HCI Theories and Models
6. HCI Innovation, Creativity and Vision from the Global South
7. Argument/Provocative Essays about Socially Inclusive and Ethically Driven HCI
8. Validation and Refutation of work done for the Global South
9. Developing local and indigenous capacity in HCI and HCI4D
10. Cases-studies on HCI education and training in the Global South

Track Co-Chairs:

• Endrit Kromidha, University of Birmingham, UK , e.kromidha@bham.ac.uk       
• Vigneswara Ilavarasan, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India, vignes@iitd.ac.in           

Digital entrepreneurship is characterised by less bounded entrepreneurial processes and less predefined locus of agency (Nambisan, 2017). The potential of digital entrepreneurship as an emancipatory mechanism can be realized if the enabling conditions for successful digital enterprise activity are understood and strengthened (Martinez Dy, Martin, & Marlow, 2018). New digital alternatives to traditional finance related to microfinance, crowdfunding, and peer‐to‐peer Innovations are transforming the entrepreneurship landscape (Bruton, Khavul, Siegel, & Wright, 2015). Such transformation can lead to development (United Nations, 2017). A redefinition of social identities in digital spaces like in the case of crowdfunding is required in the new sharing economy (Kromidha & Robson, 2016), but research is often limited to developed or high income countries. Digital platforms with social entrepreneurship goals are emerging also in the developing countries, such as the case of Rang De India (Masiero & Ravishankar, 2018). However, digital access and empowerment for the poor and marginalised remain as constrains (Chew, Ilavarasan, & Levy, 2015) for ICTs to reach their full potential in helping microenterprises in developing countries (Ilavarasan, 2019). Inclusive innovation by means of which new goods and services are developed by and for the poor can benefit from ICTs (Foster & Heeks, 2013), but the role of entrepreneurship should not be ignored. This track welcomes papers and discussions around any intersection of ICTs and entrepreneurship for development or digital entrepreneurship and development (DED) to bridge the gap between the two domains.

Topics include (but are not limited to):

1. New forms of digital social business enterprises
2. Digital platforms for development
3. Global market expansion for social enterprises through digital platforms
4. Crowdfunding and new forms of access to finance in the low income countries
5. Inclusive innovation and business opportunities
6. Cryptocurrency and blockchain adoption and regulatory challenges in the developing countries
7. Sharing economy opportunities and barriers
8. Establishing entrepreneurial trust within the digital ecosystem in the developing countries
9. The empowering role of the digital social enterprises
10. ICT opportunities for women and marginalised groups in business
11. Digital entrepreneurship networks between developed and developing countries

Track Co-Chairs:

• Kutoma Wakunuma, De Montfort University, kutoma@dmu.ac.uk
• Caroline Khene, De Montfort University, caroline.khene@dmu.ac.uk            
• Adebowale Owoseni, De Montfort University, adebowale.owoseni@dmu.ac.uk         
• Mamello Thinyane, United Nations University - Computing and Society, mamello@unu.edu

The current situation that the world finds itself in has shed a spotlight on the role of digital technology in everyday life, and the innovative ways in which it can be used to ensure that life carries on and does not come to a standstill. The challenge of digital access, literacy, and capacity continue to hamper the possibilities of the effective uptake, and correct use of technology in the Global South. Nonetheless, individuals and collectives in the Global South have continued to use digital technologies in more innovative ways, when circumstances at local or global level prevail and present a crisis.  The track intends to shed light on such innovative ways in order to demonstrate the resilience of the Global South in times of adversity. While acknowledging the issues around accessibility, infrastructure, know-how and many more well tabulated challenges that beset the Global South, this track aims to showcase its resilience in times of adversity as a way of learning lessons from the present, and carrying them into the future for diverse contexts.

The general notion of resilience has extensively been studied from several disciplines. From psychology, resilience is considered in terms of the individual’s ability to adapt well in the situation of trauma and tragedy and as framed by Masten et al, is defined as “positive adaptation in the context of significant adversity or risk” (Masten & Marie-Gabrielle, 2002). The adversity could be induced by issues of health, family, work, or relationship triggered events. From the perspective of social studies focused on communities, resilience has been considered in terms of the ability of communities to respond, withstand and recover from adverse events by leveraging available community resources - this has typically been studied and considered for cases of natural and environmental risk events. For ecological systems, resilience is defined as the ability and capacity of systems to “absorb and accommodate future events in whatever unexpected form they may take” (Holling, 1973). Within the domain of social ecological systems, three concepts of resilience, adaptability and transformability are tightly related and work together to determine the future trajectories of systems (Holling, Carpenter, & Resilience, 2007). Adaptability is the ability of the various actors within the system to influence systemic resilience; and lastly transformability is the ability of a system to synthesize a completely new system in response to untenable conditions and situations. Common across the various domains and the various perspectives is the notion of resilience as an ability to maintain system persistence and for positive adaptation.

Several notions of digital resilience have been advanced in literature including the ability of information and communication infrastructures to withstand adverse events (i.e., which is sometimes referred to as e-resilience )(UNESCAP, n.d.). Conceptualising resilience based on ICT4D interventions has also been studied previously in the field (Marais, 2015; Heeks & Ospina, 2019; Baduza & Pade-Khene, 2019; Dlamini & Turpin, 2020). This track session will focus on two key notions of digital resilience that are of interest, i) the ability to harness and repurpose digital resources to sustain wellbeing (UKCIS, 2019) and ii) the “capacity for positive adaptation to achieve desired functioning in the context of significant adverse cyber and digital events”.

In contrast to the resilience engineering perspective that considers resilience in terms of top-down governance, planning, and coordination for resilience, this session recognizes resilience as an attribute and a process that ensues in complex adaptive social systems, which are characterized by non-linear causality, emergent systemic behaviour, limited predictability, as well as evolutionary dynamics within the system. Further, the session recognizes several contestations and tensions that arise in resilience practice. These include political contestations on the framing and definition of resilience i.e., the goal of resilience, the boundaries of the system under consideration, and participation in resilience. They also include temporal tension between short-term and long-term resilience goals, as well as a tension between individual versus collective resilience goals.

Overall, the session frames the focus of digital resilience on individuals, communities, and societies towards the achievement of “good life”. This session is interested in exploring dynamics at the intersection of digital technologies and resilience, as well as the following issues:

1. The interplays between information and communication technologies and societal resilience. In what ways do ICTs impact (both positively and negatively) on resilience
2. Theoretical reflections and formulations of digital resilience
3. Multidisciplinary perspectives on digital resilience – lessons from psychology, ecological studies, and disasters studies.
4. From individual digital resilience to collective resilience.
5. Digital resilience in complex adaptive social systems
6. Case studies of digital resilience in times of adversity (e.g., during COVID19 pandemic, the Ebola pandemic,)
7. Digital resilience and the ability to scale digital interventions
8. Digital resilience in withstanding adverse cyber and digital events
9. Contextual perspectives on digital resilience and digital inclusion - how adversity is influencing (increasing) uptake of ICTs
10. Digital resilience and the role of Artificial Intelligence and other emerging technologies in times of Adversity
11. Digital resilience and Ethics consideration in times of adversity and whether or not such considerations matter

 References

Baduza, G. & Pade-Khene, C. (2019). A Holistic View of ICTD and Up-scaling of Community Development Projects. (2019). Proceedings of the 12th Annual Pre-ICIS SIG GlobDev Workshop, Munich, Germany, Sunday December 15, 2019.

Dlamini, S. & Turpin, M. (2020). Towards a resilience framework for integrating and using mobile technologies in South African public rural schools: theoretical considerations. Proceedings of the International Development Informatics Association (IDIA) Conference. Macau, 25-27 March 2020.

Heeks, R. & Ospina, A. V. (2019). Conceptualising the link between information systems and resilience: A developing country field study. Information Systems Journal, Vol 29, 1: pp 70-96.

Holling, C. S. (1973). Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 4(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.es.04.110173.000245

Holling, C. S., Carpenter, S. R., & Resilience, A. K. (2007). Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social–. Ecology And Society, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.258101

Masten, A. S., & Marie-Gabrielle, R. J. (2002). Resilience in development. In Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 74–88).

Marais, M.A. (2015). ICT4D and Sustainability. The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, 1-9

United Kingdom Council for Internet Safety (2019), "Digital Resilience Framework", Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digital-resilience-framework

United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (n.d.), "E-resilience", Available: https://www.unescap.org/our-work/ict-disaster-risk-reduction/e-resilience

You can submit your manuscript at https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/home/Digital_Resilience

Track Co-Chairs:

• Matthew Smith, International Development Research Centre, Canada msmith@idrc.ca;
• John Shawe-Taylor, UNESCO Chair in AI, University College London, J.Shawe-Taylor@cs.ucl.ac.uk
  
  Artificial intelligence (AI) is a "machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. AI systems are designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy" (OECD 2019). AI as a general-purpose technology can be both an instrument that advances human development as well as throttles and even reverses advances that have been made. A chief risk that the introduction of AI in developing country contexts is its potential to exacerbate inequalities (Smith and Neupane, 2018). The argument made by the authors, and seen commonly throughout the literature with increasing examples, is that there are several mechanisms through which AI can contribute to inequalities, including biases in algorithms and datasets; poor representativeness and inclusiveness in the design and development processes, especially for women and marginalized groups; relatively weak institutions of governance to adequately regulate new AI technologies, and safeguard citizens’ rights, and unequal access to data and technological infrastructure.

  Alongside exacerbating inequality, AI can threaten basic human rights and democratic freedoms. For Feldstein (2019), AI and big data analytics can severely compromise democratic freedoms and participatory processes through its power to quell protests, delegitimize opposing views, and target activists and political opponents. One of the clearest mechanisms through which political control is gained is by governments imposing regulations on technology companies to share data in exchange for doing business in their jurisdictions. Furthermore, the collection and commodification of user data by tech companies have also proliferated into a highly profitable venture such that over time there have been a convergence of interest between “Big Brother,” representing governments, and “Big Data,” representing the tech service industry (Flyverborn et. al. 2019). Thus, despite the theoretical potential of AI to promote participatory democracy (Fung 2015), the ethical concerns in terms of violation of freedoms and privacy can lead to centralization of power and squashing of democracy in the Global South, making AI a dangerous enabler of authoritarianism.

  However, while there is mounting evidence and cases from the Europe, the US, or China, there is less evidence to how these dynamics are playing out in the Global South. With few exceptions, much of the work here remains theoretical, often discussing the ethical and moral implications of AI applications in terms worsening inequality and reversing democratic advances in developing countries. Given this paucity in empirical studies, this track proposal seeks papers that bring evidence to bear to unravel the connection between the introduction of AI innovations in different sectors and the mechanisms through which their introduction and use affects inequalities and/or human rights in the global south. Ideally cases will speak to who is benefiting or not, how, and why, and will connect back to broader theory on ICTs, inequalities, and human rights as well as similar cases in developing countries.

  The aim of this track discussion is to better ground theory in evidence and understand the way AI applications is shaping power dynamics and power relations in society. It is hoped that through these discussions we can steer the adoption of AI applications in the right direction such that it advances public interests and contributes to collective goods.

  1. Feldstein, S. (2019). The Road to Digital Unfreedom: How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Repression. Journal of Democracy 30, no. 1. John Hopkins University Press.
  2. Flyverborn, M., R. Diebert, and D. Matten. (2019). “The Governance of Digital Technology, Big Data, and the Internet: New Roles and Responsibilities for Business.” Business and Society 58, no. 1.
  3. Fung, A. (2015). "Putting the public back into governance: The challenges of citizen participation and its future." Public Administration Review 75, no. 4.
  4. OECD. (2019). Artificial Intelligence in Society. OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/eedfee77-en.
  5. Smith, Matthew L., and Sujaya Neupane. 2018. Artificial Intelligence and Human Development: Toward a Research Agenda. Ottawa, Canada: International Development Research Centre.
  6. World Development Report (WDR). (2019). The Changing Nature of Work. World Bank. http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/816281518818814423/2019-WDR-Report.pdf

  
  The track welcomes submission related to, but not limited to, the following topics:

  1. Ethical, legal and social implications of AI applications;
  2. Automation of work and its implications for socio-economic development;
  3. The implementation of AI in decision making and its consequences;
  4. The implications of AI for the infringement of human rights;
  5. AI, trust, and privacy
  6. Review or synthesis of social impact of AI research in terms of human rights and/or equality;
  7. Studies on how infrastructure and/or existing capacities(including existence of relevant machine learning data) affect the potential of AI applications to be inclusive or human rights respecting;
  8. Studies on policies (from international to municipal) to regulate the use of AI;
  9. Ethical design of AI;
  10. Methodologies for the development and implementation of responsible AI4D applications in developing country contexts (see: https://www.montrealdeclaration-responsibleai.com/ for one definition);
  11. Case studies of responsible use and positive impact of AI for development;

Track Co-Chairs:

• Richard Heeks, University of Manchester, UK; richard.heeks@manchester.ac.uk
• Devinder Thapa, University of Agder, Norway; devinder.thapa@uia.no
• P.J. Wall, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; wallp2@tcd.ie   

There have been many changes in the way research is conducted in the field of ICT4D over the past few years.  Some of these changes have been forced on researchers by the recent COVID-19 global pandemic, but they have also arisen as a result of the changing nature of the field, e.g. the increasing use of AI and advanced technologies in developing countries and the growing importance of ethical considerations in this work.  It has also been argued that we are witnessing the emergence of a new ICT4D 3.0 “digital for development” paradigm (Heeks 2020).  All of this has accelerated both the appetite and need for new, alternative and innovative research paradigms, methods, theories and philosophy in ICT4D.

ICT4D is both growing and maturing as a research field (Gomez 2013, Sahay et al 2017) yet its work has tended to be dominated by a relatively narrow range of approaches, such as interpretive and positivist philosophies (Heeks & Wall 2018).  Recently we have seen alternative approaches starting to gain traction: use of critical realism as a philosophy (Heeks & Wall 2018); more explicit engagement with pragmatism as a philosophy (Heeks et al 2019); greater use of critical theory (Poveda & Roberts 2018); new integrations of theory such as affordances and capabilities (Hatakka et al 2019); and growing use of Southern theory and other indigenous and regional research paradigms and theories (Jimenez & Roberts 2019, Kreps & Bass 2019).  We welcome this, and propose that we now need to push these new boundaries even further to address the needs of the rapidly changing field of ICT4D.

Our proposed track follows on from our previous track at IFIP 9.4 2019 “Pushing the boundaries - New research methods, theory and philosophy in ICT4D”.  The 2021 conference theme of “Freedom and Social Inclusion in a Connected World” aligns with the proposed track in a number of ways. Firstly, we suggest it is vital that new research methods, theory and philosophy emerge if the ICT4D field is to continue to grow and flourish.  Such new methods, theory and philosophy are also required during this period of lockdown and severely restricted world travel.  New approaches are needed when researchers cannot physically get into the field to collect data because of a global pandemic such as COVID-19 but also because of more localised pandemics (e.g. Ebola, cholera), Government restrictions, civil war, or even lack of resources. We argue that a unique and unprecedented opportunity to push existing methodological, theoretical and philosophical boundaries thus presents itself.

Secondly, many of these new research approaches are being driven by researchers in the Global South. Our track will endeavour to include papers that arise from Southern researchers who are using and extending methods, theories and philosophies developed in, and particularly appropriate to, the social, ethical, political and cultural conditions existing in the Global South.

The types of contribution we invite include, but are not limited to:

1. Specific discussion of research approaches and methodologies appropriate to conducting research in the locked down world arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Specific discussion of research paradigms used in ICT4D research (including interpretivism, positivism and critical realism).
3. New research methods, theories and philosophies in ICT4D, especially those emerging from researchers based in the Global South.
4. Reviews of ontological, epistemological, and methodological issues in ICT4D research.
5. Conceptual discussions on new and emerging theories in the ICT4D domain.
6. Evaluations and critiques of trends in ICT4D research, from an ontological, methodological or theoretical perspective.
7. Theoretical perspectives that build on existing theoretical paradigms and extend them into new theoretical arguments.

The criteria for evaluating papers within this track are as follows:

1. Does the paper push the boundaries of the ICT4D field in terms of research paradigms, research methods, theory and philosophy?
2. Is there a significant theoretical extension to the literature in the paper, and does it advance a set of theoretical and philosophical arguments?
3. Is there a clear methodological contribution? 
4. Is the paper novel, in the sense that there are no exemplars of similar work within recent ICT4D published research?
5. The paper makes a valid contribution to the field of ICT4D and tells us something useful about the relationship between ICTs and development. 

References

Gomez, R. (2013). The changing field of ICTD: Growth and maturation of the field, 2000–2010. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 58(1), 1-21.

Hatakka, M., Sæbø, Ø., & Thapa, D. (2019). A Framework to Explain the Relation Between ICT and Development: Combining Affordances and the Capability Approach. In International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries (pp. 60-71). Springer, Cham.

Heeks, R. (2020). ICT4D 3.0? Part 1 - The components of an emerging “digital‐for‐development” paradigm. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, e12124.

Heeks, R., Ospina, A. V., & Wall, P. J. (2019). Combining Pragmatism and Critical Realism in ICT4D Research: An e-Resilience Case Example. In International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries (pp. 14-25). Springer, Cham.

Heeks, R., & Wall, P.J. (2018). Critical realism and ICT4D research. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 84(6), e12051.

Jimenez, A., & Roberts, T. (2019). Decolonising Neo-Liberal Innovation: Using the Andean Philosophy of ‘Buen Vivir’to Reimagine Innovation Hubs. In International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries (pp. 180-191). Springer, Cham.

Kreps, D., & Bass, J. M. (2019). Southern theories in ICT4D. In International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries (pp. 3-13). Springer, Cham.

Poveda, S., & Roberts, T. (2018). Critical agency and development: applying Freire and Sen to ICT4D in Zambia and Brazil. Information Technology for Development, 24(1), 119-137.

Sahay, S., Sein, M. K., & Urquhart, C. (2017). Flipping the context: ICT4D, the next grand challenge for IS research and practice. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 18(12), 5.

You can submit your manuscript at https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/home/Pushing_Boundaries

Track Co-Chairs:

• Michaelanne Thomas, University of Michigan, USA; mmtd@umich.edu
• Andrea Jimenez Cisneros, University of Sheffield, UK; a.jimenez@sheffield.ac.uk
• Sara Vannini, University of Sheffield, UK; s.vannini@sheffield.ac.uk
• Marisol Wong-Villacres, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA; lvillacr@gatech.edu

Amid the current global health and financial crisis, scholars and activists around the world are reflecting on the impact of the current health crisis on dominant structures that define desirable ways of living. The Covid-19 pandemic unearthed how societies worldwide still heavily rely on the historic inequalities generated by the legacy of colonial, racist, classist and sexist societal structures. As the 2019 Chilean protests clearly stated, “no podemos volver a la normalidad, porque la normalidad era el problema (we cannot go back to normal, because normal was the problem)” (Comité de Redacción Periódico El Pueblo, 2019).

While the literature does recognize the relevance of impacting existing structures of power, so far they have tended to address issues of  gender mostly as a binary category to be incorporated into pre-existing systems designed by and for mainly patriarchal societies (Hentschel et al., 2016; Sultana et al., 2018).  In the current crisis, we have evidence regarding how gender and other categories of societal oppressions are a discriminant for the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19. For example, women are the most likely to carry the burden of unpaid care work; gender-based violence is increasing, and systemic inequities in the health system have produced a disproportionate death rate on racial minorities in high-income countries (IOM, 2020; Malcom and Sawani, 2020). At the same time, initiatives to help alleviate some of the challenges communities are facing during these times are likely to be led by women and care workers, operating in a care ethics framework. As feminist theories have been essential in advocating for the end of all oppressions and shaping current ideas of equity and social justice (Davis, 2016; hooks, 1984), we envision a post-covid-19 era as the possibility to address inequalities at a structural level, informed by experiences of care.

There is therefore a pressing need to expand research within the field that adopts a critical and feminist approach to gender and ethics of care lenses (Sultana et al., 2018; Wong-Villacres, 2018; Kumar et al., 2019). We aim to enrich this body of work through a perspective on inclusion that dismantles, and does not adapt, existing structures of oppression, and that supports vulnerable groups into autonomously designing new, more meaningful ICTs/IS. Traditionally, inclusion efforts have focused on opportunities to incorporate minorities into the pre-existing, dominant systems, often articulated in terms of quotas, and not regarding structural inequalities (Jimenez, 2019). Yet, ICTs and IS have mostly ended up amplifying existing inequalities (Toyama, 2011), and perpetuating patriarchal structures, thereby largely disregarding women, non-binary people, issues of race, and other forms of oppressions (Dombrowski et al., 2016; Spiel et al., 2019). Empowerment of women thus entails transformative feminist work that questions existing structures, “ideologically constituted as normal” (Davis, p. 100) and that “involve[s] a consciousness of capitalism [...], and racism, and colonialism, and postcolonialities, and ability” (Davis, p. 104).

Instead of reinforcing the dominant, oppressive structures, we argue that this is a key moment to reimagine a new society and to bring forward the frameworks by which it should be informed. Framing development in terms of freedom, social inclusion, and resistance to inequality amplification requires a more critical approach beyond the assumption that ICTs can be tools for social inclusion per se. In agreement with feminist and critical theory scholars, we see in feminism the theoretical and methodological umbrella needed for reimagining a more equitable and just world. We understand feminism as the analysis of the inequalities generated by gender and other societal forms of oppression (hooks, 1984). We see in feminist pluralistic approaches, gender equality, and the ethics of care a rich scholarship for illuminating the care and repair that our reimagined societies need (Barnes et al. 2015; de La Bellacasa, 2011). We invite papers that explore critical self reflections on a more equitable and inclusive use, appropriation and design of ICTs and IS informed by ethics of care, intersectional feminist theories, and queer thinking. We also invite papers that consider ICTs and IS gender inclusion in the Global South or with underserved populations and their intersections with a feminist perspective.

Exemplar topics and types of contributions looked-for

1. Papers with a theoretical lens on feminism and ethics of care and ICTs/IS;
2. Papers considering different gender expressions and ICTs/IS in the Global South or with underserved/vulnerable populations and their intersections, informed by feminism and ethics of care;
3. ICTs-based innovation in the Global South or with underserved/vulnerable populations and their intersections, informed by feminism and ethics of care;
4. Information literacy practices in the Global South or with underserved/vulnerable populations and their intersections informed by feminism and ethics of care;
5. ICTs and human rights responses/practices informed by feminism and ethics of care;
6. Data privacy and security issues in the Global South or with underserved/vulnerable populations and their intersections informed by feminism and ethics of care;
7. Local creation and maintenance of local socio-technical systems in the Global South or with underserved/vulnerable populations and their intersections informed by feminism and ethics of care;
8. Reflections and comparisons on different geographical conceptions of feminism (for example, specific to Latin America or other parts of the Global South) applied to ICTs/IS;
9. Academic practices in ICTs-related fields informed by feminist theories;
10. Experiences and ideas of feminist care and repair in the Global South or with underserved/vulnerable populations and their intersections;
11. Other papers on feminism and ethics of care applied to Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries.

References

Barnes, M., Brannelly, T.; Ward, L.; Ward, N. (2015). Ethics of Care: critical advances in international perspective. Policy Press, University of Bristol.

Davis, A. Y. (2016). Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (F. Barat, Ed.). Haymarket Books.

Dombrowski, L., Harmon, E., & Fox, S. (2016, June). Social justice-oriented interaction design: Outlining key design strategies and commitments. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (pp. 656-671).

de La Bellacasa, M. P. (2011). Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Social studies of science, 41(1), 85-106.

hooks,  bell. (1984). Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. South End Press.

Hentschel, J., Ahmed, S. I., Hussain, F., Ahmed, N., & Kumar, N. (2017, November). Working with Women in ICTD. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (pp. 1-5).

IOM, International Organization for Migration. (2020). COVID-19 Analytical Snapshot: Gender dimensions (No. 25; Understanding the Migration & Mobility Implications of COVID-19). UN Migration. https://www.iom.int/covid19

Jiménez, A. (2018): Inclusive innovation from the lenses of situated agency: insights from innovation hubs in the UK and Zambia, Innovation and Development, 9,1, 41-64 

Kumar, N., Karusala, N., Ismail, A., Wong-Villacres, M., & Vishwanath, A. (2019). Engaging Feminist Solidarity for Comparative Research, Design, and Practice. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW), 1-24.

Malcom, K., Sawani, J. (2020). Racial Disparities in the Time of COVID-19. Michigan University Health Lab. https://labblog.uofmhealth.org/rounds/racial-disparities-time-of-covid-19

Sultana, S., Guimbretière, F., Sengers, P., & Dell, N. (2018, April). Design within a patriarchal society: Opportunities and challenges in designing for rural women in bangladesh. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13).

Spiel, K., Keyes, O., & Barlas, P. (2019, May). Patching gender: non-binary utopias in HCI. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-11).

Toyama, K. (2011). Technology as Amplifier in International Development. iConference 2011, February 8-11, 2011, Seattle, WA, US

Comité de Redacción Periódico El Pueblo. (2019). “Ya no podemos volver a la normalidad, porque la ‘normalidad’ era el problema”, El Pueblo

https://elpueblo.cl/2019/11/16/ya-no-podemos-volver-a-la-normalidad-porque-la-normalidad-era-el-problema/

Wong-Villacres, M., Kumar, A., Vishwanath, A., Karusala, N., DiSalvo, B., & Kumar, N. (2018, June). Designing for intersections. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 45-58).

You can submit your manuscript at https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/home/Reimagining_Digital

Track Co-Chairs:

• Tony Roberts, Institute of Development Studies, UK; t.roberts@ids.ac.uk   
• Evronia Azer, University of Coventry, UK; evronia.azer@coventry.ac.uk
• Tanja Bosch, University of Cape Town, South Africa; tanja.bosch@uct.ac.za
• Anita Gurumurthy, ITforChange, India; anita@itforchange.net                                                     

The United Nations and World Bank argue that an open and vibrant civil society is essential to inclusive governance and sustainable development (UN, 2015). To reflect this Sustainable Development Goal 16 (SDG16) includes commitments to achieve “inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making at every level”, and SDG 17 commits all governments to build a partnership for development between civil society, governments, and the private sector. The High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness and the High-Level Panel on the 2030 Sustainable Development agenda both underscored the central role of civil society as partners in delivering the SDGs (ACT Alliance and CIDSE 2014; ICNL 2016).

Online civic space has been particularly valuable for oppressed gender and LGBTQ groups to voice opinion, form new counter-narratives, and offer policy alternatives (Tufeki 2017; Gurumurthy et al 2017). In recent years repressive governments have begun deploying their own digital methods to close online civic space  (CIVICUS 2019). Mechanisms to close online civic space have included internet shutdowns (Taye 2018), online surveillance and digital disinformation (Zuboff 2019), deregistration of NGOs, funding restrictions, harassment, violence and arbitrary arrest (Dupuy et al 2016; Hossain et al 2017). Governments have hired private companies like Cambridge Analytica to deploy psychological profiling and micro-targeting of voters with fake news, DDOS attacks, and computational propaganda via troll farms, cyborg networks, bot armies, and other ‘coordinated inauthentic behaviour’ (Bradshaw and Howard 2017; 2019).

Activists have responded to closing civic space offline by opening civic space online (Ojebode 2018; Bosch 2019; Oosterom 2019; Karekwaivanane 2019; Roberts 2019), characterised by hashtag campaigns, viral memes, and civic tech as mechanisms for exercising, defending and expanding digital rights. Digital rights are existing human rights in digital spaces like the internet. They include the right to freedom of expression, association, privacy, gender rights and the right to freedom from violence (APC 2006; UNHRC 2018). Despite the centrality of digital rights to development as freedom and the centrality of digital activism in exercising, defending and expanding digital rights this is an area under-represented in the digital development literature. The oppression of social movements in the MENA region raises the question of how surveillance makes digital technology work against collective action, and threatens activists’ lives (Hier & Greenberg, 2009; della Porta, 2013; Hosein & Nyst, 2013). ICTs created even more ways for authoritarian regimes to watch over activists, who rely largely on ICTs to organise their work and communicate (Azer et al., 2018, 2019).

The digital rights and digital activism track speaks directly to theme of Freedom and Social Inclusion in a Connected World. Digital activists are using mobile and internet technologies to exercise freedom of opinion and expression in contexts where mainstream media is not free or willing to discuss the suppression of citizen rights. Social media has on occasion proved an effective channel to advocate for social inclusion of marginalised and oppressed groups. The use of digital technologies can however also be a form of exclusion and unfreedoms for those living in an unconnected world. Those living outside the cellular footprint, without sufficient disposable income or digital literacy are unable to use digital activism to claim digital rights and digital development. And inclusion is not a binary issue. The track welcomes papers that examine digital exclusions and that take an intersectional approach to Freedom and Social Inclusion in a Connected World.

Exemplar topics and types of contributions include, but are not limited to:

1. Conceptual contributions on digital activism and digital rights and their theoretical links with (different understandings of) digital development
2. What role did digital activism play in wider change processes to claims specific freedoms or rights in particular countries?
3. Analysis of the underlying theory of change, assumptions and risks in digital activism for development
4. Digital rights as enabled or afforded by the use of specific technologies and practices of digital activism in particular development processes.
5. How have feminist activists responded to online gender-based violence and with what practical and strategic outcomes?
6. Can the master’s house ever be dismantled with the master’s tools?
7. How has digital activism Livelihood-generating platforms (e-commerce, digital labour), their affordances and constraints in empowering subjects and resulting into sustained development outcomes,
8. Consideration of the relative merits of digital rights, data rights or digital citizenship framings for analysis of digital development.
9. Critical accounts of digital unfreedoms and exclusions in activist processes that rely on digital technologies.

References

ACT Alliance and CIDSE (2014) Space for Civil Society: How to Protect and Expand an Enabling Environment.

APC (2006) Internet Rights Charter, South Africa, Association for Progressive

Azer, E., Harindranath, G. and Zheng, Y. (2019), Revisiting leadership in information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled activism: A study of Egypt’s grassroots human rights groups, New Media & Society, Vol. 21 No. 5, pp. 1141–1169.

Azer, E., Zheng, Y. and Harindranath, G. (2018), Paradoxes of Visibility in Activism, The 12th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems, MCIS Proceedings, p.36

Bosch, T. (2019) Social Media and Protest Movements in South Africa: #FeesMustFall and #ZumaMustFall, in Social Media and Politics in Africa. Molony T. and Dwyer M. (eds) Zed Books.

Bradshaw, S. and Howard, P. (2017) Troops, Trolls and Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation. Working Paper 12. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda.

Bradshaw, S. and Howard, P. (2019) The Global Disinformation Order 2019 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation, Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda.

CIVICUS (2019) State of Civil Society Report 2019. State of Civil Society Reports. CIVICUS.

della Porta, D. (2013). Can Democracy Be Saved? Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements. Chichester: Polity Press.

Dupuy, K., Ron, J. and Prakash, A. (2016) Hands Off My Regime! Governments’ Restrictions on Foreign Aid to Non-Governmental Organizations in Poor and Middle-Income Countries. World Development 84 (August): 299–311.

Gurumurthy, A., Bharthur, D. and Chami, N. (2017) Voice or Chatter? Making ICTs Work for Transformative Citizen Engagement. Making All Voices Count Research Report. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/123456789/13206

Hier, S.P. and Greenberg, J. (2009). Surveillance: power, problems, and politics. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Hosein, G. and Nyst, C. (2013). Aiding surveillance: An exploration of how development and humanitarian aid initiatives are enabling surveillance in developing countries. Privacy International. Available at: https://www.privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/Aiding%20Surveillance.pdf

Hossain, N., Khurana, N. Oosterom, M., Roberts, T, Santos, R. and Shankland, A. (2017) The Implications of Closing Civic Space for Development, unpublished report for DFID, Institute of Development Studies.

ICNL (2016) Survey of Trends Affecting Civic Space: 2015-16. Global Trends in NGO Law: A Quarterly Review of NGO Legal Trends around the World 7 (4):1–21.

Karekwaivanane, G. (2019) ‘Tapanduka Zvamuchese’: Facebook, ‘unruly publics’, and Zimbabwean politics, Journal of East African Studies Vol 13 (1).

Ojebode, A. (2018) Using Social Media for Long-haul Activism: Lessons from the BBOG Movement in Nigeria, Partnership for African Social Governance Research.

Oosterom, M. (2019) The Implications of Closing Civic Space for Sustainable Development in Zimbabwe. Brighton, Institute of Development Studies.

Taye, B. (2018) The State of Internet Shutdowns Around the World 2018 #KeepItOn, Access Now. https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets/uploads/2019/07/KeepItOn-2018-Report.pdf

Tufekci, Z. (2017) Twitter and Tear Gas, Yale University Press.

UN (2015) Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A/RES/70/1. New York, N.Y.: United Nations.

UNHRC (2018) 38th Session Declaration on the Promotion, Protection and Enjoyment of Human Rights on the Internet, Geneva, United Nations Human Rights Commission https://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/HRC/38/L.10

Zuboff, S (2019) The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. London: Profile Books.         

You can submit your manuscript at https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/home/Digital_Rights

Track Chairs:

• Suzana Brown, SUNY Korea, South Korea
• Faheem Hussain, Arizona State University, USA

Track Proposal:

The primary objective of this track is to explore and highlight the innovations and challenges of using ICTs for supporting the displaced population around the world, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.  As many of the key drivers of displacement – violent conflict, persecution, famine, natural disaster, climate change – continue to rage across the world, a record-high number of 79.5 million people (United Nations, 2020) remain forcibly displaced.  Many of such displacements are forced, due to social, political, and economic conflicts, or to environmental disasters. Nevertheless, the displaced population has become a major humanitarian challenge, transcending local and regional boundaries. Despite popular beliefs and presentations in the media, 85% of refugees are hosted by countries in the Global South with less than 1 in 5 refugees hosted in Europe (UNHCR, 2019).  For example, Uganda alone currently hosts almost 1.4 million refugees and asylum seekers (United Nations, 2020), while Malawi has taken over 37,000 refugees (UNHCR, 2018) many of whom have fled from the unstable situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The track is a continuation of chairs’ work presented at the previous IFIP conferences held in Manchester (2020) and Dar es Salaam (2019) and Track 8 “Displacements, ICTs, and #NewNormal” at the IFIP 9.4 Annual Conference 2021. We collaborate with researchers interested in using technology to help alleviate displacement issues (Brown, Hussain, & Masoumifar, 2019) (Brown, Desire, 2020) (Brown & Hussain, 2021) (Hussain et al., 2020).

In this track, we plan to display the research works intersecting displacements, ICTs and access. Researchers focusing on information access, inclusion, justice, new research methods, grassroots innovations, and priorities are welcome to share their works, ideas, and lessons learned in this session.

This track invites papers which discuss displacement and refugee issues in the Global South. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):

• Research papers intersecting displacements, ICTs and access
• Studies on information access, inclusion, and justice
• Innovative methodological and theoretical approaches for the study of displacements in the Global South
• Applications of technology in the refugee camps
• ICTs for alleviating displacement issues
• Studies of refugee assimilation in host countries
• Refugee specific uses of technology
• Dark side of ICTs for displaced population
• Use of ICTs in conflict zones

References:

Brown, S., Hussain, F., & Masoumifar, A. M. (2019, May). Refugees and ICTs: Identifying the Key Trends and Gaps in Peer-Reviewed Scholarship. In International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries (pp. 687-697). Springer, Cham.

Brown S., Desire P. (2020) Entrepreneurs and ICT Technology in the Dzaleka Refugee Camp. In: Bandi R.K., C. R. R., Klein S., Madon S., Monteiro E. (eds) The Future of Digital Work: The Challenge of Inequality. IFIPJWC 2020. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol. 601. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64697-4_5

Hussain F., Safir A.H., Sabie D., Jahangir Z., & Ahmed S. I. (2020). Infrastructuring Hope: Solidarity, Leadership, Negotiation, and ICT among the Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh. In Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2020). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 12, 1–12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3392561.339464

Brown, S., Hussain, F., (2021) “Key Lessons Learned from working during Covid-19 on a project in the World's Biggest Refugee Camp”, IFIP 9.4 Annual Conference 2021 held online, May 2021.

UNHCR, (2018). Data on Malawi. https://www.unhcr.org/malawi.html

UNHCR, (2019). Fact sheet. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/74288  

UN, (2020). 1.4 million refugees set to need urgent resettlement in 2020. United Nations.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/07/1041632   

You can submit your manuscript at https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/home/ICT_Displacement

Track Co-Chairs:

• Guillermo Rodriguez-Abitia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Mexico, grdrz@unam.mx
• Aurora Sánchez, Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile, asanchez@ucn.cl

El track de investigación en Español promueve los trabajos de investigación en sistemas y tecnologías de información en y para Latinoamérica.  Este track abre el espacio para la investigación rigurosa y de alta calidad que se desarrolla en Latinoamérica y se escribe en Español.

El objetivo es recolectar, intercambiar y diseminar las experiencias de los países de la región y cómo las tecnologías y sistemas de información ayudan a su desarrollo. Se busca desarrollar conciencia entre los profesionales, quienes desarrollan políticas y el público en general respecto a las implicancias que tienen las computadoras en los países en desarrollo de la región.

También se espera desarrollar criterios, métodos y guías para diseñar e implementar sistemas de información que se adapten culturalmente a la región latinoamericana así como crear un mayor interés entre los profesionales de los países industrializados para enfocarse en temas de especial relevancia para los países emergentes a través de actividades conjuntas con otros Comités Técnicos.

Ejemplos de tópicos y tipos de contribución incluyen, pero no se limitan a: 

1. Políticas de computarización nacionales;
2. Tecnologías de computación y sistemas de información culturalmente adaptados;
3. El rol de corporaciones transnacionales, de la cooperación regional e internacional así como la autosuficiencia en informática;
4. Conciencia social respecto a las computadoras y a la alfabetización informática
5. En general, investigación de cómo las computadoras, los sistemas y otras tecnologías de información dan soporte al desarrollo de los países y organizaciones en la región latinoamericana.

References 

International Federation of Information Processing, Technical Committee 9, Working Group 9.4 http://ifiptc9.org/wg94/home/ 

You can submit your manuscript at https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/home/Research_in_Spanish

Track Co-Chairs:

• Alexandre R. Graeml, Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Brazil

Track Co-Chairs:

• Angsana Techatassanasoontorn, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand – angsana.techatassanasoontorn@aut.ac.nz