“Wait and See”: Uses and Gratifications of ICTs in an Indigenous Community

Introduction

Since the late 1990s at the global level, there have been great expectations for the potentials of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as primary drivers of socio-economic development. ICTs and the internet have been promoted as the new means to unlock the potentials and advance the process of development. Scholars (such that Wellenius, (1977)) suggest that efficient telecommunication facilities promote economic development, especially in rural areas. Therefore, the research field of information communications and technology for development (ICT4D) emerged and ICTs have been promoted as a new tool for social transformation and economic development. This is particularly so as the world moves into the information age where wealth creation and accumulation are increasingly dependent on high technology for the exchanges of data, information, and knowledge (Pareek & Gangrade, 2016). Nonetheless, in tandem with this optimism vested in the promises of ICTs as a new social and economic force in the world economy, there is also a worldwide concern over the increasing information gaps. Known as the Digital Gap or Information Gap, this discrepancy of access exists not only between the rich and the poor, between developed and developing nations but also between urban and rural populations and in the rural between indigenous and non-indigenous population. Indigenous communities generally suffer high levels of poverty due to greater economic instability than non-indigenous counterparts (Gigler, 2015). Most of the indigenous population engaged in low productivity farming activities, and due to the geographical conditions, they have a low-level of infrastructural development and access to essential services such as health, education, and communication. Remoteness is one of the big challenges for them and until the advent of the ICTs, maintaining close relationships with migrated family and friends has posed challenges. However, in the recent past it is well noted that ICTs have played a more promising role than any other development tool in terms of enabling choice and capabilities of individuals; a multitude of different outcomes that cannot be pre-determined (Kleine, 2009). With access to the internet, indigenous community members can stay connected with each other across distances via video calls, instant text messages, and other means facilitated by broadband. Indigenous community members can in many instances also stay in their home communities while receiving health and wellness treatments, engaging in educational opportunities, and getting the opportunity to participate in the larger societies and economies around them. Ultimately, embracing the ICTs and internet as a way to improve, rather than hinder, self-sufficiency, preservation of culture, real sovereignty, and general economic conditions.

In this study, we aim to investigate an indigenous community’s experience of embracing ICTs in their daily life, usage, access, and preferences of information resources available on the World Wide Web. Furthermore, the role of ICTs in gratifying the personal as well as community’s developmental needs has been also investigated. Specifically, the present study addresses the following research questions (RQs):

• RQ1. How are community members using ICTs in their daily lives?

• RQ2. How are they using ICTs to fulfill their developmental needs?

Literature Review

According to the latest ITU estimates, there are 4.1 billion people online by the end of 2019, but 46.7% of the world’s population (some 3.6 billion people), the majority living in Asia, is still offline, and unable to connect regularly (ITU, 2019). Key characteristics of the world offline population are existing inequalities in terms of gender, age, income, remoteness, rurality, and education. Indigenous communities share all the characteristics of the offline world. There are more than 370 million indigenous peoples in the world in which 260 million (70%) of the population lives in Asia (UN-DESA, 2009). Indigenous peoples make up 15 percent of the world’s poor and one-third of the people living in extreme poverty (Hall & Gandolfo, 2016). Nevertheless, wherever indigenous people have access to ICTs, it became an essential part of their lives and rapidly transforms the lives of the local communities (Rice et al. 2016). The information highway, broadband brings faster and more efficient communication tools to remote communities. Thus, the researchers continuously emphasized and highlighted the need of investigating the role of ICTs in the development of remote and indigenous communities (Whiteduck, 2010). In the below section, we will discuss some of the related researches that investigated similar questions in other parts of the world.