Creating connections: Exploring the intermediary use of ICTs by Congolese refugees at tertiary educational institutions in Cape Town

Abstract

The development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has been seen as a boon for groups that occupy a marginal position in the mainstream commercial media or that have limited access to such media. ICTs such as the Internet have optimistically been seen as potentially providing a communicative space where community movements, activists and social interest groups might share information more freely and with fewer of the space limitations and distribution problems than in traditional media. In the South African context, one such marginalised community is the refugees from other African countries who have made South Africa their home. Several opinion surveys and research projects into the representation of refugees in South African media have raised concerns about how refugees are treated in the mainstream media. Against the background of such problems, one could ask the question of whether the benefits that new media technologies have proven to hold for other marginal groups will also apply to refugees. If this is the case, how do refugees use new media technologies to their benefit, and how should this usage be theorised? This article seeks to explore these questions through a study of a specific South African refugee community, namely the Congolese refugee community in Cape Town. The article presents both preliminary indications of the uses of ICTs by this community and initial theoretical reflections on these findings. The research was conducted in a qualitative fashion, based on interviews and participant observation within the community. This exploratory research project seems to indicate that new media technologies like the Internet, email and cellphones serve an important function in the community life of refugees. Not only do such technologies enable people to stay in touch with events in their country of origin, but they also impact on the refugee community in their adopted country by creating a social structure for information to be relayed. This preliminary exploration raises certain focus points for further research. Such focus points could be to elaborate further on the range of uses and gratifications derived from new media technologies, as well as to explore further the power relations within the social group using these media.This study does not claim any “scientific” or quantifiable generalisability – on the contrary, it wishes to suggest that an ethnographic approach, used here only exploratively, could yield valuable insight into the impact of new media technologies on communities.