Information Communication Technologies as Tools for Socio-economic and Political Development: The National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) Huruma Community Telecenter as a Case Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PecoraWhile Africa is confronted with the urgency to provide its citizens with the basic requirements of life, the rest of the world is heading towards a 'globally-networked' information economy.Many communication scholars believe that without access to information resources and telecommunication services, an understanding of its significance, and the ability to use it for social and economic growth, Africa is facing an unavoidable predicament.This dissertation presents a case study of the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) Huruma Community Telecentre as an arena where governmental, non-governmental and other private organizations are collaborating to test the contribution that a Community Telecentre can make towards providing universal access to telephony and other telecommunications and information services to a disadvantaged community.While the theoretical starting point for this dissertation is grounded within communication and development theories, it employs Bijker, Hughes, and Trevor's (1987) Social Construction of Technology concept of 'interpretive flexibility.'This constructivist approach offers the possibility of looking at the technological process and empowerment as a dynamic process where the ICT users are actively involved in its integration within their existing environment.The study reveals that, while a number of factors have acted as barriers to communication access to information technology, the biggest hindrances are the lack of sound telecommunication regulations and clear government policies as well as the absence of an environment conducive to ICT development due to an inadequate telecommunication infrastructure.This dissertation employs the case study as an overall strategy and also draws upon multiple data sources to develop a triangulation of methods ranging from in-depth interviewing, participant observation, historical and document analysis as well as analysis of telecommunication debates in local newspapers over the last 4 years.The study concludes that, although the telecommunication is beginning to show some impact due to the partial privatization of the sector, it is too early to assess the overall impact of new media technologies on Africa's development.This calls for a more realistic approach that incorporates the need to harness the potential of ICTs for purposes of addressing locally relevant problems in innovative and cost-effective ways.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".