A commonly used definition of social media derived from the business and management literature refers to a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Today there is an extensive literature on the broad social media topic that crosses several disciplines. The literature on business and management has focused on how practitioners may embrace social media technology for knowledge management, forming close bonds with customers and for marketing purposes (e.g. Culnan, McHugh, & Zubillaga, 2010). Focused special issues of journals in information systems have improved our understanding of the relationship between social media networks and business transformation (Aral, Dellarocas, & Godes, 2013; Kane, Alavi, Labianca, & Borgatti, 2014). There are also several journals with ongoing discourses on the cultural and political dimensions of social media (see e.g. Information Society, Media Culture and Society and Information Communication and Society). However, to date there has been limited attention specifically to the theoretical and empirical linkage between social media and development. We intend to contribute to the emerging field of social media for development not only by identifying the knowledge gap in this area, but also by offering new avenues which may lead to new conceptual frameworks on social media for development through empirical cases. We also have practical ambitions, that is, addressing business, policy-makers and NGOs, as well as raising the interest of academic colleagues in the field of ICT for development.

2. Social media and the development discourse

Debate on the meaning of development in the ICT for development literature has centered around three main discourses, namely: modernization, dependency and human development (Sein & Harindranath, 2004). The underlying assumption in modernization is that development is linked to the insertion in a market economy, and the underlying value is that this insertion provides people more than mere survival (e.g. just enough to eat and live in a slum). Development, understood from this perspective, inscribes people in an accumulation process. The dependency discourse posits that economic growth in developed countries results in the underdevelopment of poorer countries, mostly former colonies that may be subject to negative terms of trade and technology and industrial dependency. The human development discourse is focused on building capabilities and realizing individual potential with people at the center of the development process economically, environmentally, socially and even politically. This means that people may progressively improve the quality of their environment, invest in a better livelihood, acquire more sophisticated equipment and have easier access to means of working, as well as benefit from wider participation in politics and decision-making processes.

We are interested here in the latter discourse focusing on the conditions under which social media can be transformative in human development; the ways in which social media may be used in order to raise the capabilities of people to better and more effectively improve their livelihoods (i.e. development purpose) as well as to exercise their civil and political rights (i.e. advocacy purpose). However, development discourse has been rather conservative focusing on impacts that can be quantified, measured and generalizable. Much of the extant research in ICT for development is driven by development agendas with a historical bias toward project-based and economic outcomes. As emerging economies globalize and urbanize, their populations become critical consumers and creative contributors of digital content including social media. Aligned with discourses on development 2.0 (Heeks, 2010), we posit that social media for development requires a new understanding of development beneficiaries. To be specific, social media for development approaches social media by twinning them as objects of development and as social artifacts deeply entrenched in multiple aspects of everyday usage.

Social media for development complicates the linear understanding of socioeconomic progress, development benefits and beneficiaries and moves away from normative understandings of “users” in emerging economies as unique and utilitarian beings and more as typical participants in this digital age (Bruns, 2008; Rangaswamy & Arora, 2014). This fluidity enables social media for development scholars to contribute to contemporary and critical preoccupations within social media studies more broadly. Beneficiaries of social media for development are a range of users in resource-constrained environments generating rich organic usages that are not overtly developmental from a conventional sense of the term.

3. Reorienting development toward social media

How should social media for development be theorized? Our initial proposal is for critical, human development and institutional conceptual lenses. An example of the critical alternative may be found in the writings of Ivan Illich specifically in Tools for Conviviality (1973), where he outlines the characteristics that define convivial tools. These are guidelines to the continuous process by which a society’s members defend their liberty. The four criteria are as follows:

• Users, rather than the designers of the technology, must have the power to shape it according to their tastes, desires and needs.

• Convivial tools must promote communities and encourage and maximize communication among the members of the society.

• Convivial tools must make the most of the energy of individuals, and maximize and encourage creativity and imagination of users.

• Users of convivial tools must not only be mere consumers, but also producers and contributors to the technology.

An example of the application of these guidelines is provided in Ameripour, Nicholson, and Newman’s (2010) analysis of Iranian online activism demonstrating how conviviality offers a viable critical stream of theorization. A second potential stream draws on Sen’s (1999) human-centered perspective on development and focuses attention on building capacities and creating societies where individual potential can be realized. An example is presented by David Nemer in this issue outlined below. A third potential stream is shown in Bass, Nicholson, and Subramanian’s (2013) combination of the complementary lenses of institutions and capabilities shown in Figure 1. An institutional lens acknowledges the importance of the context stressed by Walsham, Robey, and Sahay (2007), among others.

Figure 1. Institutional theory, the capabilities approach and ICT (Bass et al., 2013).

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