Articles
You Can’t Share What You Don’t Have
Rebecca Kahn, iCommons reporter (South Africa) · 24/4/2008 16:37 · 22 votes
A Closer Look at South Africa’s Social Media Construction Capacity
South Africans have been watching a lot of YouTube lately. And for all the wrong reasons. In February of this year, a story broke about a group of white male students at the University of the Free State, (a traditionally conservative Afrikaans campus in the town of Bloemfontein, the judicial capital of the country) who had filmed themselves abusing older black cleaning staff in their hall of residence. The video was loaded up onto YouTube at the end of February and viewed by over 34 000 people, sparking arguments and debates on blogs and websites around the world.
That the video is offensive is without doubt. But, as a South African, what I found so upsetting, and interesting, is the fact that, when you do a tag search for “South Africa” on YouTube, this video comes out near the top. On the South African video sharing site Zoopy, a search for the tag South Africa brings up the video of a recent advert for a local chain of coffee shops. And the most popular videos on Zoopy have been viewed 5000 times.
On other media sharing and social networking sites, South Africans are a small, but visible group. On Flickr, the South African group has 1444 members (not an entirely accurate figure, it’s true, but a good starting point). 21 of us use BookMooch. On FaceBook, we’re a veritable army – we’re the 10th largest group of FaceBook users, and that’s just the people who have listed themselves as being part of the South African network.
Which begs the question: Why aren’t South Africans building their own social platforms?
South Africans have always been happy consumers of international media in the form of television, music, films and publishing. Local quota systems have gone some way to encouraging growth in local industries, but the overwhelming majority of media consumed is still American and British, and the same can be said for our consumption of social media online. If it comes from overseas, and somebody tells us it’s cool, we’ll use it. And, as the middle class in South Africa grows, as a result of our improving economy, the number of active consumers of social media, and users of social networking grows too.
If You Build It, Will They Come?
So why aren’t South Africans creating and using their own social networking platforms? I asked Simon Dingle, a South African tech journalist what he thought might be a contributing factor to this lack of local development. Risk, he says, is one reason why South Africans tend to follow international trends, and use international sites, rather than creating our own platforms that may not be as popular: “Building a competent social networking application is a huge job. And might not work out. Our users seem more inclined to let the rest of the world do the work, watch the chips fall and then use whichever network turns out to be the flavour of the month. A social network is also only as good as its user-base. A service can be the best thing since ever, but if your friends and countrymen aren't using it, then there isn't much point.”
If we leave social networking aside for a moment, and just look at the way South Africans use the Internet, we see that there are not enough applicable tools for people to use on a day-to-day basis. For example, South Africa has 11 official languages, however, most people who use email and the Internet are forced to use English, even if it isn’t their first language. Help files, FAQs and tutorials are in English, which limits users.
Translate.org, a South African non-profit focused on the localisation, or translation, of Open Source software into South Africa's 11 official languages has gone some way to addressing this issue. According to their website: “Translate intervenes wherever computers fail their users, thus we have created fonts for Venda and a South African keyboard on top of our localisations of GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird.” It’s a start, but there is still a long way to go.
Ain’t Got The Skillz…
Another possible reason is that we simply don’t have enough people in South Africa who have the skills to build these projects. According to research conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (the main research body in South Africa) on behalf of the South African Government’s Department of Science and Technology, in 2006, South Africa only spent about R14 billion (about U$1.7 billion) or 0.92% of the GDP on research and development. Of this amount, the lion’s share went to the natural sciences, followed by engineering sciences, and finally, the medical and health sciences. This should be compared with other developing nations like China, who spend 1.34% of GDP on R&D and the Russian Federation, who spend 1.07%.
The funding of this research is also worth considering: 58% of it is financed and conducted by the corporate and commercial sector, which means that the results of this research belong to the corporate entities who commissioned it.
This lack of development is not something that the South African government is unaware of. In a National Strategy Document published in 2002, the government acknowledged that:
“…it is clear that the vast majority of ICT investment is in imported technologies (to the level of some 98%). South Africa does not have a strong R&D capacity in ICT and where there is significant innovation potential results have been patchy. It is therefore necessary to invest in a number of ICT domains that have unique characteristics that would favour local development and globalisation…”
While access to the Internet is improving, however, we have yet to see the fruits of this investment by government in the actual development of platforms, software and applications in the governmental sector at least.
And We Care Because…?
Of course, there is the question of why this matters at all. In a global Internet, why do we need to encourage and develop local platforms? After all, isn’t the World Wide Web the new, global nation, where everyone can participate equally?
The answer to that question is just that – that on the internet countries that are consumers of content and passive users of platforms and software run the risk of becoming homogenous, uniform and unilateral; losing sight of individual culture and national identity. Already the North outdoes the global South in terms of the amount of material it produces on the Internet, and the much-touted democracy of the Internet is undermined by this imbalance.
The solution to this imbalance, at least in the South African context, would be increased investment by government in areas that enhance our ability to build and use technology that is appropriate to the average internet-using South African.
South Africans have been watching a lot of YouTube lately. And for all the wrong reasons. In February of this year, a story broke about a group of white male students at the University of the Free State, (a traditionally conservative Afrikaans campus in the town of Bloemfontein, the judicial capital of the country) who had filmed themselves abusing older black cleaning staff in their hall of residence. The video was loaded up onto YouTube at the end of February and viewed by over 34 000 people, sparking arguments and debates on blogs and websites around the world.
That the video is offensive is without doubt. But, as a South African, what I found so upsetting, and interesting, is the fact that, when you do a tag search for “South Africa” on YouTube, this video comes out near the top. On the South African video sharing site Zoopy, a search for the tag South Africa brings up the video of a recent advert for a local chain of coffee shops. And the most popular videos on Zoopy have been viewed 5000 times.
On other media sharing and social networking sites, South Africans are a small, but visible group. On Flickr, the South African group has 1444 members (not an entirely accurate figure, it’s true, but a good starting point). 21 of us use BookMooch. On FaceBook, we’re a veritable army – we’re the 10th largest group of FaceBook users, and that’s just the people who have listed themselves as being part of the South African network.
Which begs the question: Why aren’t South Africans building their own social platforms?
South Africans have always been happy consumers of international media in the form of television, music, films and publishing. Local quota systems have gone some way to encouraging growth in local industries, but the overwhelming majority of media consumed is still American and British, and the same can be said for our consumption of social media online. If it comes from overseas, and somebody tells us it’s cool, we’ll use it. And, as the middle class in South Africa grows, as a result of our improving economy, the number of active consumers of social media, and users of social networking grows too.
If You Build It, Will They Come?
So why aren’t South Africans creating and using their own social networking platforms? I asked Simon Dingle, a South African tech journalist what he thought might be a contributing factor to this lack of local development. Risk, he says, is one reason why South Africans tend to follow international trends, and use international sites, rather than creating our own platforms that may not be as popular: “Building a competent social networking application is a huge job. And might not work out. Our users seem more inclined to let the rest of the world do the work, watch the chips fall and then use whichever network turns out to be the flavour of the month. A social network is also only as good as its user-base. A service can be the best thing since ever, but if your friends and countrymen aren't using it, then there isn't much point.”
If we leave social networking aside for a moment, and just look at the way South Africans use the Internet, we see that there are not enough applicable tools for people to use on a day-to-day basis. For example, South Africa has 11 official languages, however, most people who use email and the Internet are forced to use English, even if it isn’t their first language. Help files, FAQs and tutorials are in English, which limits users.
Translate.org, a South African non-profit focused on the localisation, or translation, of Open Source software into South Africa's 11 official languages has gone some way to addressing this issue. According to their website: “Translate intervenes wherever computers fail their users, thus we have created fonts for Venda and a South African keyboard on top of our localisations of GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird.” It’s a start, but there is still a long way to go.
Ain’t Got The Skillz…
Another possible reason is that we simply don’t have enough people in South Africa who have the skills to build these projects. According to research conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (the main research body in South Africa) on behalf of the South African Government’s Department of Science and Technology, in 2006, South Africa only spent about R14 billion (about U$1.7 billion) or 0.92% of the GDP on research and development. Of this amount, the lion’s share went to the natural sciences, followed by engineering sciences, and finally, the medical and health sciences. This should be compared with other developing nations like China, who spend 1.34% of GDP on R&D and the Russian Federation, who spend 1.07%.
The funding of this research is also worth considering: 58% of it is financed and conducted by the corporate and commercial sector, which means that the results of this research belong to the corporate entities who commissioned it.
This lack of development is not something that the South African government is unaware of. In a National Strategy Document published in 2002, the government acknowledged that:
“…it is clear that the vast majority of ICT investment is in imported technologies (to the level of some 98%). South Africa does not have a strong R&D capacity in ICT and where there is significant innovation potential results have been patchy. It is therefore necessary to invest in a number of ICT domains that have unique characteristics that would favour local development and globalisation…”
While access to the Internet is improving, however, we have yet to see the fruits of this investment by government in the actual development of platforms, software and applications in the governmental sector at least.
And We Care Because…?
Of course, there is the question of why this matters at all. In a global Internet, why do we need to encourage and develop local platforms? After all, isn’t the World Wide Web the new, global nation, where everyone can participate equally?
The answer to that question is just that – that on the internet countries that are consumers of content and passive users of platforms and software run the risk of becoming homogenous, uniform and unilateral; losing sight of individual culture and national identity. Already the North outdoes the global South in terms of the amount of material it produces on the Internet, and the much-touted democracy of the Internet is undermined by this imbalance.
The solution to this imbalance, at least in the South African context, would be increased investment by government in areas that enhance our ability to build and use technology that is appropriate to the average internet-using South African.
tags: Johannesburg South Africa science-research local-context-global-commons social-media rd government development creativity sharing
extracted from:Creative Commons
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