Toward a Grassroots Culture of Technology Practice

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can support grassroots social movements toward greater outreach and better day-to-day communication. In this paper, we present the results of action research with a large-scale grassroots social movement, the Southern Movement Assembly (SMA), exploring their uses and perceptions of ICTs. We find that the ICTs chosen by the SMA are often at odds with their grassroots culture of inclusion and participation---which results in inequitable sociotechnical realities within the movement. For example, people with technical skills gain more power as they start to control organizational processes. As technical skills are most commonly associated with racial, gender, and socioeconomic privileges, this leads to inequitable participation. We conclude by calling for a grassroots culture of technology practice rooted in analyses of systemic exclusion with a continuous effort to center the marginalized voices and experiences with technology.