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The Psychosocial Impact of Digitalization on Ecological Balance.
Panel P37 at conference DSA2023: Crisis in the Anthropocene: rethinking connection and agency for development.
Digitalization through its impact on human beliefs and behaviors leads to unequal socio-economic and political outcomes. Therefore, it tends to disrupt the ecological balance which may cause a crisis in the Anthropocene.
Long Abstract:
Digital proliferation is the most extensive, rapid, and organic in the known technological history, more pronounced in the Global South. Its ability to solve problems of structural inequalities in access and connectivity steers the development impact of these immersive technologies. Increased social digitalization has disrupted conventional systems of human interactions with other humans as well as nature.
However, social digitalization's impact on beliefs and behaviors - socio-economic and political - is debatable. The sense of connection or disconnection with the environment shapes how humans engage with it. Digital immersion is, therefore, consequential for the Anthropocene as it determines how the humans perceive the intersection between world ecologies i.e., human, nonhuman, natural and nonnatural.
Social digitalization can serve as a primary driver of development and change. However, lack of digital maturity may have repercussions for the intended beneficiaries of digitally driven development. Those ill-prepared to comprehend and negotiate the psychosocial costs of digital immersion, particularly in Global South, may be the worst affected by the disrupted ecological balance.
This panel invites works exploring the effects of digital immersion on the world's ecological balance by affecting the cobweb of interactions at individual, household, community, and eventually societal levels through an impact on human beliefs and behaviors. Qualitative and quantitative research from both developing and the developed world that studies the various questions on the societal, economic, and environmental externalities of digital immersion mediated by human and nature (dis)connect will be accommodated.
Access to digital technology has the tendency to mould the rigid and rather sticky normative and cultural beliefs commonly prevalent in patriarchal social structure embedding violence justifying attitudes of men towards women, by empowering women to report victimization.
Paper long abstract:
The cobweb of interaction among social beliefs of battering and victimizing women in a male dominant society, victim’s access to digital technology and reporting of violence by victims to law-enforcement reflect that technology has the ability to alter the normative beliefs underpinning the less or inelastic and unequal social-power structures ensuing justified violence against women by men.
Evidence from Punjab Pakistan has been collected using MICS through employing logistics model of regression on a sample of 873 victimized-women.
Results further reveal that access to technology turns out as a source of empowerment for victimized-women and yields positive psychology among affected women who live and experience powerlessness and learned-helplessness through repeated trauma and victimization by enabling them reverse the inner state and disregard prevalent VAW justifying socio-cultural norms and thus decide about their life safety and honor through reporting the incident.
This psycho-social impact of technology is angled not only as a transgression from patriarchal induction of violence against women but is also transformative in terms of women’s own ideology of accepting violence against her self, which then reflects in her ability to report violence to police. In male-centric societies, coupled with prevalence of discriminatory practices, not only patriarchy perpetuates violence but induces helplessness among women at various individual, household and community levels. Results show that digitalization enables a woman to turn away the sticky social odds from violence inducement as a subset of existent belief structure toward taking the very decision to safeguard her life, hence increased likelihood to abjure victimization through reporting to law-enforcement.
By shedding light on the psychosocial effects of digital health interventions on the ecological balance, the study will provide valuable insights for healthcare organizations and policymakers, helping to ensure the sustainable integration of digital technologies in the healthcare sector.
Paper long abstract:
Digitalization has been a driving force in the healthcare sector, offering innovative solutions to improve the quality, efficiency, and accessibility of health services. The implementation of Hospital Information Management Systems (HIMS) has been a popular intervention aimed at enhancing service delivery in healthcare organizations. However, the impact of digitalization on the ecological balance is often overlooked. The purpose of this study is to examine the psychosocial impact of HIMS intervention on the ecological balance in the province of Punjab.
The study will use a mixed-methods approach, including in-depth interviews and user experience and satisfaction level surveys, to gather data from healthcare providers, and policymakers. The study will focus on the psychosocial impact of HIMS intervention on the ecological balance, taking into consideration the potential positive and negative impacts.
The significance of this study lies in its contribution to the body of knowledge on the psychosocial impact of digitalization on the ecological balance in the healthcare sector. By addressing the psychosocial impacts of HIMS intervention on the ecological balance, this study will help ensure a sustainable future for the health sector and the environment. The findings of this study will contribute towards the development of policies and practices that promote a more responsible approach to digitalization in the healthcare sector and contribute to the preservation of the ecological balance.
This paper explores the reality of remote learning in small developing countries during the COVID-triggered school lockdown and discusses how digital learning has both amplified inequalities in education but opened the door to new opportunities using online platforms..
Paper long abstract:
COVID-19 has shrunk the world emotionally as people everywhere share similar struggles adjusting to new realities. Geographical distance from the economic core no longer isolates remote islands who can Zoom in from an equally isolated emotional place regardless of location. Remote learning has become a global norm and teachers throughout the world face similar challenges in readjusting themselves to the new teaching modality. However, the lack of personal ICT devices, the lack of constant access to internet connectivity, and the lack of readiness are the key constraints of transition to remote learning in small island developing states. This paper discusses the reality of remote learning in the small Pacific Island state of Samoa, drawing on the experience of a university lecturer during the first COVID-triggered school lockdown in 2020. It highlights both how the COVID-19 pandemic amplified learning inequalities in education but also provided new opportunities using online platforms. The paper then examines how these digital opportunities including Zoom lectures, virtual conferences, open resources, can possibly reduce the inequality gaps in academic knowledge production processes currently dominated by scholars and publishers located in the Global North.
We introduce the notion of coordinative artefacts in the study of digital transformation for development. We do so with a study of community health in Malawi, where scannable barcodes act as coordinative artefacts that facilitate exchanges between health staff and electronic patient records (EPRs).
Paper long abstract:
Digital transformation is being leveraged in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to address issues of data quality and accessibility in the health sector. In community health clinics in Malawi, the first point of contact with the patient is the Health Surveillance Assistant (HSA), a worker who documents health data and updates patient records. With the digitisation of patients’ records, HSAs need to also update the Electronic Patient Record (EPR), which requires training and reliance on sporadic connectivity whose lack impairs data retrieval operations. If a patient’s EPR is not found, this commonly results in the HSA creating a new patient record, generating incomplete patient histories and duplications that affect the production of aggregate health data.
Drawing on an action case study in four health facilities in rural Malawi, we present a digital solution centred on low-cost printers that provide scannable codes for identifying patients, as an alternative to typing in names. HSAs report that typing names can lead to several issues, including misspellings leading to time consuming searching in the database and accessing the wrong record for patients with similar names. Attributing a unique barcode to each patient, the battery-powered printers seek to reduce data duplication. Tested and developed during three research visits, scannable codes operate as coordinative artefacts that facilitate exchanges of information between HSAs and the patient database. Our paper introduces the notion of coordinative artefacts in the study of digital transformation for development, also offering a usable alternative to tackle the constraints of the present EPR system.
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