The Next Billion Users

A digital anthropologist examines the online lives of millions of people in China, India, Brazil, and across the Middle East—home to most of the world’s internet users—and discovers that what they are doing is not what we imagine.

New-media pundits obsess over online privacy and security, cyberbullying, and revenge porn, but do these things really matter in most of the world? The Next Billion Users reveals that many assumptions about internet use in developing countries are wrong.

After immersing herself in factory towns, slums, townships, and favelas, Payal Arora assesses real patterns of internet usage in India, China, South Africa, Brazil, and the Middle East. She finds Himalayan teens growing closer by sharing a single computer with common passwords and profiles. In China’s gaming factories, the line between work and leisure disappears. In Riyadh, a group of young women organizes a YouTube fashion show.

Why do citizens of states with strict surveillance policies appear to care so little about their digital privacy? Why do Brazilians eschew geo-tagging on social media? What drives young Indians to friend “foreign” strangers on Facebook and give “missed calls” to people? The Next Billion Users answers these questions and many more. Through extensive fieldwork, Arora demonstrates that the global poor are far from virtuous utilitarians who mainly go online to study, find jobs, and obtain health information. She reveals habits of use bound to intrigue everyone from casual internet users to developers of global digital platforms to organizations seeking to reach the next billion internet users.

Endorsements/

Evan Malmgren, The Nation “Arora shows that many of the world’s poor don’t seek out the Internet as a tool to become more productive, but as a welcome outlet for economically ‘unproductive’ play…That the Internet fails as a magical cure-all for historical circumstance may be unwelcome news to techno-utopians and overzealous development practitioners, but there is hope in its capacity to augment and expand human leisure beyond the realm of material advancement.”

Justin van Fleet, Director of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity “A must-read for any individual seeking to promote economic growth and development in the digital age. Arora’s deeply rooted research exposes digital stereotypes as well as the perils and opportunities that exist at the interplay of culture, technology, regulation, commerce, and the next generation of digital users.”

Shaun Wiggins, President and CEO of Soteryx “Whether you are a government agency seeking to bring public goods and services to underprivileged citizens, a multinational corporation entering emerging markets, or an NGO implementing aid, The Next Billion Users is essential, data-driven reading that will guide your digital and real-world strategies.”

Ronaldo Lemos, Director of the Institute for Technology & Society of Rio de Janeiro “The Next Billion Users is mandatory reading for anyone interested in understanding the future of technology or designing applications that are truly valuable for the majority of the people on the planet.”

Marwan Kraidy, author of The Naked Blogger of Cairo “This book is a feat—insightful, poignant, riveting. Through detailed case studies and interviews, Payal Arora rewrites the story of our relationship to digital technology from a truly global perspective. Her conclusions are as surprising as they are revealing about the future of social media, gaming, mobile phones, and online commerce and education.”

Times Higher Education “This powerful book explores actual online lives in China, India and Brazil and asks why many of us in the West are surprised and sometimes offended by the fact that the impoverished are just as committed as we are to the search for ‘moments of pleasure and joy.”

Nick Smith, Engineering and Technology “Superb…Uncomfortable, myth-busting, and compelling, The Next Billion Users challenges our collective superiority complexes and questions the way we see technology in the connected world.”

Irenaeus Regnauld, Digital Society Forum “A ‘must-read’ for anyone interested in digital uses around the world…A priceless study, tremendously documented.”

Theodore Kinni, Strategy + Business “The conventional storyline around the transformative effect of technology on people’s lives often doesn’t ring true…Any leader whose company sees the global poor as a key market will find its reality-based view of the intended customers bracing and useful.”

Hans Dembowski, D+C “Convincingly points out that the promises of technology itself bridging educational divides have not come true…Arora’s core message is that the youth in developing countries are like their peers everywhere…Their basic motivations, however, do not differ from those of other people. The limitations they face in daily life reappear in the digital sphere.”

News/

Podcasts/

Talks/

  • Oct 2022/ Keynote on ‘Next billion users and the future of design’, Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Community (EPIC), Amsterdam
  • June 2022/ Keynote for ABUDigital alongside speakers from Alibaba, MediaHaus, Tencent, BBC, DW, and other international media orgs on the ‘next billion journalists?’
  • June 2022/ Keynote for RNW Media on ‘Aligning tech with humanity’
  • May 2022/ Keynote on ‘Breaking the bubble: Deep digital engagements beyond the West.’ WeContent Content Marketing across borders. Bucharest.
  • March 2022/ Keynote ‘ON a Lighter internet’ The Hmm event. Amsterdam
  • Feb 2022/ Keynote on ‘Decolonising Approaches to Users and Audiences in the Global South: Context, Theory and Method,’ University of Westminister
  • Nov 2021/ Keynote on future of digital and global well-being, NGO “Südwind” Austria/Salzburg
  • Nov 2021/ Keynote on ‘Rise of the next billion and climate change’ COP26 Scotland
  • Oct 2021/ Keynote on ‘The Next Billion Users’ for CIOs/CTOs in digital marketing, The Pocket, Ghent
  • May 2021/ Keynote on ‘‘Next billion users, next billion journalists?’ Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action Innovative Training Network #JOLT Harnessing digital and data technology for journalism
  • April 2021/ Keynote on ‘Aligning technology with Humanity,’ And&Festival Leuven
  • March 2021/ Keynote on ‘AI for the next billion,’ HCI4SouthAsia
  • March 2021/ Panel speaker on ‘Development and its futures,’ Istanbul Innovation Days 2021, UNDP.
  • March 2021/ Keynote on ‘From capture to cultivation: Emerging market growth and transformational tech,’ CityWire Sustainability Forum
  • Feb 2021/ Panel speaker on ‘The Virtual Has Become More Real Than The Physical’ with Marcus Du Sautoy, Tarun Khanna, Meredith Broussard, Sanjoy Roy, Jaipur Literature Festival
  • Feb 2021/ Speaker on ‘Pathways for an inclusive internet,’ Dept Festival
  • Feb 202/ Keynote on ‘Digital Transformation, Data Justice, and Tech-companies’ Responsibility: A Perspective from the Global South,’ Competence Center for African Research (CCAR) at the Institute for Business Ethics, University of St.Gallen
  • Nov 2020/ Keynote on “Global Digital Well-being’ at Mashing UP Summit. Japan
  • Nov 2020/ Keynote on ‘Tech design for the NBU,’ The Swedish Internet Foundation. Stockholm, Sweden
  • Nov 23, 2020/ Why are Western people wrong about how the ‘global poor’ use the internet? Online lecture for e-learning platform Universiteit van Nederland
  • Oct 2020/ Panel with members of the Norwegian Refugee Council on ‘Connecting the unconnected: collective action and a sustainable future’ Net Hope Global Summit
  • Oct 2020/ Keynote on Digital Civic Power at the Partos Innovation Festival 2020. The Hague
  • Oct 2020/ Keynote on ‘Next Billion market: From Risk to opportunity’ for CIO Crown Summit with 200+ top CIOs and business leaders. Mumbai
  • Sept 2020/ Keynote on ‘‘Reimagining the Global Supply Chain with the Next Billion,’ NGI Policy Summit 2020
  • Sept 2020/ Talk on Design for the Next Billion, Product Camp Pittsburg, Carnegie Mellon
  • Sept 2020/ Keynote on “Global Knowledge, Global Platforms and the making of Global Citizens” for the International Digital Conference, University of South Asia. Lahore, Pakistan
  • Sept 2020/ Speaker on ‘Democratizing technology,’ De Dépendance Rotterdam
  • June 2020/ Panel Speaker on ‘Data, power, and the pandemic’ webinar with Nick Couldry and Ory Okolloh, Omidyar Network
  • June 2020/ Speaker on ‘Re-designing the global value chain,’ NEXT Hamburg
  • June 2020/ Speaker on ‘Designing for the Next Billion,’ IxDA: Interaction Design Association Berlin
  • June 2020/ l Keynote on ‘Design thinking for the next billion,’ Product Leadership Festival
  • March 2020/ Keynote on ‘Privacy by design for the Next Billion’ at The 11th International Development Informatics Association conference (IDIA2020), Computing and Society, United Nations University Macau.
  • Feb 2020/ Keynote on IT Strategie, one of the most successful C-Level IT-Events in Germany, with more than 500 IT decision-makers annual attendance. Hamburg
  • Jan 2020/ Keynote on “Tech Design for the Next Billion,” The Software Product Management Summit, IIM-B. Bangalore
  • Jan 2020/ Keynote on ‘The Next Billion Users: Science to include everyone?’ Sponsored by the India Science Fest (11-12). Pune
  • Dec 2019/ Speaker on the Next Billion Users and Empathetic Design for the Youtube Channel and Dutch TV ‘Universiteit van Nederland‘. Amsterdam
  • Dec 2019/ Keynote on ‘Decolonizing privacy studies’ at the Privacy & Identity Lab Symposium, Sponsored by PiLAB. The Hague
  • Nov 2019/ Keynote on “The next billion users” Sponsored by Design Up. Bangalore
  • Nov 2019/ Keynote at the Rethinking media development: New actors, new technologies and new strategies FoME Symposium 2019. Sponsored by Deutsche Welle. Bonn
  • Nov 2019/ Speaker on ‘Impact of the Next Billion on Spotify Lite,’ Sponsored by Spotify. Stockholm
  • Oct 2019/ Keynote at the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, Digital Fortress Europe, Organized by Vrije Universiteit Brussel and ECREA Diaspora, Migration & Media network. Brussels
  • Sept 2019/ Keynote on “NBU markets and the future of the mobile internet” for Liberty Latin American Telecom. Panama
  • Sept 2019/ Keynote on ‘The next billion users,’ for NEXT19, Hamburg.
  • Sept 2019/ Keynote at the annual public Techfestival with Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) and Chris Messina (founder of the hashtag) (Sept 5-7), Sponsored by Copenhagen Municipality. Copenhagen
  • Aug 2019/ “Ten novel ways to understand the next billion user market.” KPMG launch event. Mumbai, India
  • June 2019/ Keynote on ‘The Next Billion Users,’ EMERCE Next, Future of Digital & Tech, Beurs van Berlage. Amsterdam
  • June, 2019/ Keynote on diversity and inclusion, Organized by ECHO and hosted by the Municipality of Amsterdam.
  • June 2019/ Keynote, Sponsored by Digital Inclusion Policy and Research Conference 2019, University of Liverpool. London, UK
  • May 2019/ Speaker on ‘The next billion users,’ School of disobedience, Sponsored by the Volksbühne Foundation and the Ethical Tech Society. Berlin