My new post at Altmetric is guided by the concept of digital opportunity. I take a quick look at some research on the uptake of ICTs and social media in Africa and link to and comment on Altmetric details of two articles on Africa we located through the Altmetric Explorer.
As a Latin American I have always been wary of the risk of mis-representation in research on developing nations which is carried out from a developed-nation perspective. On the one hand I believe we always function from specific positions that enable us or disable us, empower us or disempower us; on the other hand I believe it is possible to at least try to recognise all that we can’t possibly know given those positions. In other words this is to say that this is a post that was very difficult to write for me. I attempted to back up any claims with the consulted research and to offer a balanced, yet accessible perspective. It is a blog post, not a research paper, so what I can and cannot do is also determined by it.
I would like to thank Euan Adie at Altmetric for his patient critical feedback, Tomi Oladepo, (Researcher on Digital Public Sphere, University of Warwick) for her kind help locating some bibliography and to Julie Soleil Archambault (Departmental Lecturer in African Anthropology, Oxford University) for answering my questions.
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