Resilience through technology adoption: merging the old and the new in Iraq

Little attention has been given to how citizens use technology to be resilient when their country is at war. We report on an ethnographic interview study of how technology was adopted and used by citizens to be resilient during wartime. We interviewed 45 Iraqi citizens experiencing the current Iraq war. Based on our data we identified properties of resilience: reconfiguring social networks, self-organization, redundancy, proactive practices, and repairing trust in information. Technology supported people in being resilient by enabling them to control identity, to collaborate across religious sects, to create an organizational memory, and to provide alternative sources of news and information. As people adopted and used technology to be resilient we found a merging of old and new cultural practices. We discuss these systemic changes and describe implications for how technology can support people in being resilient when their environment is disrupted. Author Keywords Disrupted environme...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Gloria Mark, Ban Al-Ani, Bryan Semaan
• Keywords: ACM Classification Keywords, CHI 2009, Human Computer Interaction, Keywords Disrupted Environments, Technology Supported People