Availability of Intermediaries

Here I discuss availability of intermediaries in two aspects: physical space and emo- tionally. On emotional availability, I discuss how the bond between an intermediary and beneficiary can make them being emotionally available to each other. This creates a sense of social accountability on the side of intermediaries. In the physical space I

discuss how overlapping routines, schedule of intermediaries can determine whether an intermediary is going to be available within proximity of a beneficiary or not.

Emotional Availability

As I have stated above, I had an engaging interview with one pair: Pair-A – Jabulani and Nandipha. Jabulani appeared to be passionate about engaging with a cellphone. Below he describes the intimate relationship he has with his cellphone.

“There is a time I lost my cellphone. It was like the end of the world to me, because I didn’t have anything to play with.”

—Jabulani

This shows that a cellphone could be a source of intrinsic motivation for young users in this context. Jabulani mentioned that he felt happy helping his mother. He also articulated the reason for helping his mother was that he felt it was his duty, since she had taken care of him when he was growing up.

“I feel happy when I am helping her, because she helped me when I was growing up. So it is my turn to help her”

—Jabulani

Nandipha also felt very happy being helped by her son and said that she thinks her son is more brilliant than her with technology, and that she gets to know things because of him.

Being socially accountable to the people close to you can be a motivating factor in an attempt to maintain the cordial relationship that exists as it is in the case of Jabu- lani. Therefore, a prior social relationship may play a key role in making intermediaries becoming social accountable to their beneficiaries. This pattern also emerged in all evaluations reported in the next chapters of this dissertation. An absence of this so- cial relationship, made intermediaries finding excuses for not helping beneficiaries. For instance, Pair-F, of Nkululeko and Noluthando who were distant relatives. Nkululeko claimed to be busy with school as one of the reason why she wouldn’t help Noluthando to use the system. Despite his being busy and other factors related to contextual con- straints discussed later on this chapter, the absence of things like reciprocal benefits and a close social relationship with the beneficiary might have been the reason for his

lack of motivation in engaging. While for Jabulani, he made an effort to access the app using the phone given to his mother. So, the closeness/bond between the two members of each pair could be the base for the intermediary to feel responsible to help, and a collaboration to happen. It also made it easier for the intervention phone to exchange hands between members, as a result, intermediaries in such pairs had freedom to access their beneficiary’s phone. For instance, Nkululeko was trying to use his personal phone to access the web app, meaning that he didn’t have access to the intervention phone controlled by Noluthando. This was different for the case of Jabulani as he could easily access the intervention phone from his mother.

Availability in Physical Spaces

Sambasivan et al. (2010) mentioned “availability of intermediaries” as one of the key aspects in intermediated technology use. In this study, availability of intermediaries was important for collaborative reflection to happen. When intermediaries were unavailable it contributed to either the system not being used at all, or infrequent use. Proximate- enabled intermediated use of the system required both an intermediary and a beneficiary to be present in the same physical space. Several factors determined presence of inter- mediaries in the same physical spaces as their respective beneficiaries.

Firstly, the presence of both an intermediary and beneficiary within proximity of each other depended on their overlapping routines. In cases of non-overlapping routines, the system was not used since the availed mobile phones for the study were all under the custodianship of beneficiaries who couldn’t operate them without help from intermedi- aries. For instance, the three pairs where their members didn’t have a close familial relationship, there were no frequent overlapping routines, as a result, intermediaries were always far away from beneficiaries. An example of a pair where there were non- overlapping routines is that of Pair F – of Nkululeko and Noluthando who did not live close to each other but they saw each other fairly often along the road. System logs showed that they had not been engaging with the application. When I interviewed both of them to find out why that was the case, Nkululeko mentioned a number of things. The first was that he tried to access the application a couple of times but was unable to proceed after login. He was using his personal phone, not the intervention phone that Noluthando had. I checked his personal phone and discovered that his web browser was

the problem. However, the attempt by Nkululeko to use his personal phone suggests that he was not within proximity of his beneficiary user as he could have borrowed the intervention phone. Therefore, having overlapping routines could be one of the impor- tant conditions for a pair to work collaboratively in proximate-enabled intermediated technology use context. In this study, I observed that the chances of having overlapping routines increase in contexts where an intermediary and a beneficiary live within the same household.

Secondly, presence of intermediaries in the same physical spaces as their beneficiaries was also determined by intermediaries’ schedules. The pattern about relationship be- tween intermediaries’ schedule and their availability appeared in the case of Pair-D – of Lindiwe and her aunt Nceba. The pair never interacted with the web application, and when I interviewed Nceba to why was it the case, her response was that she did not know how to operate it on her own, and her intermediary was never around most of the time, and in addition, these two did not live in the same household. The intermediary seemed preoccupied with other activities, as a result, she was less cooperative in the study despite agreeing to help her aunt as she would always not avail herself when the researcher visited the field site. Nceba was curious to access the information in the app but her intermediary was not cooperating, she went on suggesting about bringing someone else who was also a close relative. However, the idea of choosing another in- termediary never materialized. As a result, the evaluation reached to an end without Nceba having a glimpse of information in the app. In the case of Nceba, a busy schedule of her intermediary coupled with intermediary’s lack of both social accountability and motivation, negatively affected proximate-enabled intermediated technology use. A sim- ilar case to this is the one of Pair-E, with Neliswa acting as an intermediary for her aunt Nkosazana. They lived together in the same household. The pair had not interacted with the application at all, and I never had the chance to find out why, as they were not available for an interview. From personal observation during recruitment, Neliswa appeared to be less interested in the intervention even though she had signed the consent form to participate. In addition, Neliswa had a job that requires her to work a night shift, the work alone was an enough distraction.

Busy schedules can also affect people who seemed to be having overlapping routines. For instance, Pair-C – of Zama and her mother Fikile. Since the daughter appeared to be interested in helping her mother, one would think that intermediation would be

possible but the two never used the system at all. Even though they lived in different houses, had several physical encounters as Fikile used to visit her daughter quite often. During these visits there was minimal contact to discuss issues about the system, as Zama was raising a toddler at the time. As a result, the system was less of their concern during these encounters. So in this case the two were present in the same physical space but other duties of an intermediary made them to deprioritize the app to other more pressing activities such taking care of a toddler. Fikile appeared to had some expertise in using technology; she was already on Facebook and was interested in learning how to operate the system on her own, but she failed because of her daughter’s situation and the fact that the system had been set up to allow a Facebook account for Zama only. Therefore, it is clear that cases where intermediaries maintained a busy schedule or were preoccupied with other activities meant that the less likely intermediaries would spend time helping their respective beneficiaries.

But intermediaries having both overlapping routines with their beneficiaries and flexible schedules are not sufficient alone as it requires intermediaries to feel socially responsible to their respective beneficiaries as already discussed above. In addition, intermediaries need to be motivated by motivational incentives available in an app, and this is what I present in the next finding.