Cargando…
‘We have the internet in our hands’: Bangladeshi college students’ use of ICTs for health information
BACKGROUND: Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) which enable people to access, use and promote health information through digital technology, promise important health systems innovations which can challenge gatekeepers’ control of information, through processes of disintermediation. C...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859416/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29554929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-018-0349-6 |
_version_ | 1783307816084176896 |
---|---|
author | Waldman, Linda Ahmed, Tanvir Scott, Nigel Akter, Shahinoor Standing, Hilary Rasheed, Sabrina |
author_facet | Waldman, Linda Ahmed, Tanvir Scott, Nigel Akter, Shahinoor Standing, Hilary Rasheed, Sabrina |
author_sort | Waldman, Linda |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) which enable people to access, use and promote health information through digital technology, promise important health systems innovations which can challenge gatekeepers’ control of information, through processes of disintermediation. College students, in pursuit of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information, are particularly affected by gatekeeping as strong social and cultural norms restrict their access to information and services. This paper examines mobile phone usage for obtaining health information in Mirzapur, Bangladesh. It contrasts college students’ usage with that of the general population, asks whether students are using digital technologies for health information in innovative ways, and examines how gender affects this. METHODS: This study relies on two surveys: a 2013–2014 General Survey that randomly sampled 854 households drawn from the general population and a 2015 Student Survey that randomly sampled 436 students from two Mirzapur colleges. Select focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were undertaken with students. Icddr,b’s Ethical Review Board granted ethical clearance. RESULTS: The data show that Mirzapur’s college students are economically relatively well positioned, more likely to own mobile and smart phones, and more aware of the internet than the general population. They are interested in health information and use phones and computers to access information. Moreover, they use digital technology to share previously-discreet information, adding value to that information and bypassing former gatekeepers. But access to health information is not entirely unfettered, affecting male and female students differently, and powerful gatekeepers, both old and new, can still control sources of information. CONCLUSION: Personal searches for SRH and the resultant online information shared through discrete, personal face-to-face discussions has some potential to challenge social norms. This is particularly so for women students, as sharing information may enable them to bypass gatekeepers and make decisions about reproduction. This suggests that digital health information seeking may be exercising a disruptive effect within the health sector. However, the extent of this disruption may depend, not on students’ mobile phone usage, but on the degree to which powerful new gatekeepers are able to retain control over and market SRH information through students’ peer-to-peer sharing. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5859416 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-58594162018-03-20 ‘We have the internet in our hands’: Bangladeshi college students’ use of ICTs for health information Waldman, Linda Ahmed, Tanvir Scott, Nigel Akter, Shahinoor Standing, Hilary Rasheed, Sabrina Global Health Research BACKGROUND: Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) which enable people to access, use and promote health information through digital technology, promise important health systems innovations which can challenge gatekeepers’ control of information, through processes of disintermediation. College students, in pursuit of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information, are particularly affected by gatekeeping as strong social and cultural norms restrict their access to information and services. This paper examines mobile phone usage for obtaining health information in Mirzapur, Bangladesh. It contrasts college students’ usage with that of the general population, asks whether students are using digital technologies for health information in innovative ways, and examines how gender affects this. METHODS: This study relies on two surveys: a 2013–2014 General Survey that randomly sampled 854 households drawn from the general population and a 2015 Student Survey that randomly sampled 436 students from two Mirzapur colleges. Select focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were undertaken with students. Icddr,b’s Ethical Review Board granted ethical clearance. RESULTS: The data show that Mirzapur’s college students are economically relatively well positioned, more likely to own mobile and smart phones, and more aware of the internet than the general population. They are interested in health information and use phones and computers to access information. Moreover, they use digital technology to share previously-discreet information, adding value to that information and bypassing former gatekeepers. But access to health information is not entirely unfettered, affecting male and female students differently, and powerful gatekeepers, both old and new, can still control sources of information. CONCLUSION: Personal searches for SRH and the resultant online information shared through discrete, personal face-to-face discussions has some potential to challenge social norms. This is particularly so for women students, as sharing information may enable them to bypass gatekeepers and make decisions about reproduction. This suggests that digital health information seeking may be exercising a disruptive effect within the health sector. However, the extent of this disruption may depend, not on students’ mobile phone usage, but on the degree to which powerful new gatekeepers are able to retain control over and market SRH information through students’ peer-to-peer sharing. BioMed Central 2018-03-20 /pmc/articles/PMC5859416/ /pubmed/29554929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-018-0349-6 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Waldman, Linda Ahmed, Tanvir Scott, Nigel Akter, Shahinoor Standing, Hilary Rasheed, Sabrina ‘We have the internet in our hands’: Bangladeshi college students’ use of ICTs for health information |
title | ‘We have the internet in our hands’: Bangladeshi college students’ use of ICTs for health information |
title_full | ‘We have the internet in our hands’: Bangladeshi college students’ use of ICTs for health information |
title_fullStr | ‘We have the internet in our hands’: Bangladeshi college students’ use of ICTs for health information |
title_full_unstemmed | ‘We have the internet in our hands’: Bangladeshi college students’ use of ICTs for health information |
title_short | ‘We have the internet in our hands’: Bangladeshi college students’ use of ICTs for health information |
title_sort | ‘we have the internet in our hands’: bangladeshi college students’ use of icts for health information |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5859416/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29554929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12992-018-0349-6 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT waldmanlinda wehavetheinternetinourhandsbangladeshicollegestudentsuseofictsforhealthinformation AT ahmedtanvir wehavetheinternetinourhandsbangladeshicollegestudentsuseofictsforhealthinformation AT scottnigel wehavetheinternetinourhandsbangladeshicollegestudentsuseofictsforhealthinformation AT aktershahinoor wehavetheinternetinourhandsbangladeshicollegestudentsuseofictsforhealthinformation AT standinghilary wehavetheinternetinourhandsbangladeshicollegestudentsuseofictsforhealthinformation AT rasheedsabrina wehavetheinternetinourhandsbangladeshicollegestudentsuseofictsforhealthinformation |