Department Of Mass Communication And Media Studies
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Item Finding a home in or through mobile phones: Access and usage patterns among homeless women in shelter-homes of India(SAGE Publications Ltd, 2023-09-21T00:00:00) Chakraborty, Debjani; Garg, ChhaviWith the number of mobile phone subscribers increasing across all sections of society, this paper aims to understand if homeless women in shelter-homes of India have access to mobile phones and, if so, what are their usage patterns. Facilitated by issues ranging from domestic violence to lack of employment to forced migration and even to human trafficking and rape, women residing in the shelter-homes of India have a myriad of stories to tell. Not all of them have been on streets forever and many have the basic literacy to understand how to use a mobile phone. For the purposes of the study, the researchers engaged with women above 18 years of age up to the age of 45 in a series of open-ended interviews to understand their access to mobile phones and contextualize their homelessness within an affordances-based framework for mobile phone access. This paper takes into account the dual barriers of gender and the lack of a home to study the digital divide experienced by homeless women in India, expanding on how both these factors shape their access and usage, eventually bridging the digital divide, and whether mobile phones are required/desired by the women themselves. The study found that the women staying in shelter-homes see a window of hope in their use of mobile phones in the form of an independent financial future or an independent marital life, but the biased perception of using a mobile phone among women hinders women�s access to and use of these devices, which ultimately results in the loss of any kind of opportunity before it has even been explored, perhaps leading to the loss of a chance at a bright future. � The Author(s) 2023.Item Is Mobile Phone Use Invading Multiple Boundaries? A Study of Rural Illiterate Women in India(Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd, 2021-01-20T00:00:00) Garg, ChhaviBlurring various boundaries of age, place of residence (urban/rural) and sociocultural�economic factors, the mobile phone has become an integral part of everyday life of almost everyone in this world. Through the identification of differences in accessibility and use of technology including the mobile phone, a digital divide is seen to be emerging, and what is of great concern is the emergence of a digital gender divide. The article is based on a study of mobile phone use by rural illiterate women in India, exploring whether three different parameters, namely, place of residence (rural or urban), gender and illiteracy, are hindering the use of the mobile phone or not. Nearly 85 per cent of the rural illiterate women studied were found to be using a mobile phone without necessarily owning it. It was their quickest means of communication and receiving information. A further improvement such as a community radio through which interaction with the outside world can be facilitated should be encouraged. � 2021 SAGE Publications.