Social support for digital inclusion of women in South African townships

Abstract

Despite strong evidence of its critical role in facilitating digital inclusion, social support – the emotional, instrumental and informational aid received from support networks to assist an individual’s use of digital technologies – remains an unexplored area of research in low-resourced South African communities. By drawing on the ‘Typology of digital social support’ framework, this paper presents rich insights into the intricacies of the underlying motivations, behaviour and help-seeking processes in the digital engagement of women in South African townships. The findings show that the women had the strong social embeddedness necessary for digital support and relied on a range of nuanced and cross-cutting support-seeking strategies, including formal and particularly informal support channels and, to a lesser extent, self-learning. This qualitative phenomenological study relies on in-depth individual interviews with a small sample of women in three South African townships. In revealing potential disparities between social support in developed and developing regions, the study affirms the need to prioritise further South African research and the development of theoretical frameworks grounded in local realities.