"In over 30 years of history, the field of Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) has asserted itself both within Information Systems (IS) and across disciplines. However, the core assumptions on which the field was built have been questioned over time, resulting in a situa
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tion in which such assumptions—on development, the role of ICTs towards it, and the meaningfulness of the term “developing countries”—have been problematized. As a result, this paper poses the question on whether it still makes sense to do ICT4D research: starting from older ICT4D landscape papers, it fleshes out three main assumptions made at the origins of the field. It then problematizes such assumptions through more recent works, noting that the old theoretical grounds of the field do not apply anymore today. Having said that, it states three reasons for renewed ICT4D research efforts: the reframing of “development” in terms of justice, the potential of multi-theoretical research approaches, and the turn to indigenous understandings of ICTs. For all these reasons, it concludes that doing ICT4D research is especially important today, in virtue of a juncture of history that problematizes its older assumptions." (Abstract)
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"The production of knowledge in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) research has been characterized by an ongoing shift from dominantly Western-based to Indigenous theory formulations. This editorial puts forward core concepts in the decolonization of ICT4D, arguing that
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these are fundamental to the creation, reading, and interpretation of ICT4D know ledge. Drawing on a decolonial read of the articles published in Vol. 28.3, we advance the argument that decolonizing ICT4D, rather than simply a means to read and analyze data, is an emancipatory practice to be adopted in an open challenge to Western-centric modes of doing ICT4D research." (Abstract)
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"In the first pandemic of the datafied society, the disempowered were denied a voice in the heavily quantified mainstream narrative. Featuring stories of invisibility, injustice, hope and resistance, this book gives voice to communities at the margins in the Global South and beyond. The multilingual
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, polycentric and pluriversal narration invites the reader to enact and experience “Big Data from the South(s)” as a decolonial lens to read the pandemic." (Back cover)
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