Conceptual and Methodological Problems in the Study of ICT Appropriation Process by Low-Income Urban Youth in Argentina

The work described in this paper was carried out under the Amy Mahan Research Fellowship Program at the University Pompeu Fabra through the support of Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC). It analyses the logic model of a study of the effects of information and communication technology (ICT) access on the economic situations of economically poor urban youth in Argentina. Authors are: Sebastian BenÌtez Larghi, Marina Moguillansky, Carolina Aguerre, Ariel Fontecoba, Jimena Orchuela, Marina Calamari, Jimena Ponce de León, and Miguel Gaztaóaga.

From the Abstract: "In this work we discuss the theoretical framework and the methodology to approach the relationship between public access to ICT, [economically] poor urban youth groups and socio-economic changes in their daily lives. For this purpose we analyze the concepts of appropriation and contribution versus those of impact and attribution, considering the theoretical and methodological implications of this difference. This is followed by an analysis of the selected methodological strategy and the logical model used in this research. Finally, the article analyses the practical implications of these concepts and the selected methodological strategy for the efficiency in the design of public policies."

This work focuses on the framework and methodological aspects of an ICT research project studying the impact of internet access in the following dimensions: education, employability, civic participation, and sociability in three different projects invovling public access venues (PACs) for internet access, which were situated in a densely populated municipality, La Matanza, of Buenos Aires, Argentina: 1) a commercial venue (cyber-café); 2) a non-profit communitarian space sustained by the Unemployed Workers Movement; and 3) a telecentre sustained by the local council.

The document discusses reasons for extending the research beyond its original framework based on ICT attribution and impact to include two further concepts in the construction of the framework: appropriation, which emphasises the capacity of subjects to make ICT significant for their own purposes, and contribution, which suggests that ICTs will be part of strategies where the "broadband services and applications may enhance, enable, and provide options that were not there before, thus embracing the socio-technical interaction between people and technology as a source of innovation, often leading to unexpected outcomes."

The document suggests that the lens of appropriation will lead to qualitative distinctions contributing to comprehending the impact that public access to ICT promotes in the "capabilities and imaginaries of these youth." This lens allows for an examination of intermediate outcomes of web usage: "the constructs of a clear goal, feedback, challenges matching skills, concentration, focus, control, loss of self-consciousness, transformation of time, and the autotelic nature [from Wikipedia: 'having a purpose in and not apart from itself'] of an activity." Further, a qualitative measure of appropriation might be that of accumulation of social capital, considered to be: 1) youth feel trained enough to search for a job; 2) youth value the permanence in an educational system as the driving motor of social promotion; and 3) youth use their social networks as a strategy for social inclusion and where they feel that public participation can be effective use. A chart on page 3 shows an analytical model for assessing the appropriation of ICT in PACs.

The model is intended to support the analysis of the connection of the use of ICT in PACs to young people's construction of their capacities and social ties and increased awareness of the benefits of education and of collective action.