@inproceedings{e715fe5bce194c77b64996b398a420e5,
title = "Money, god, and SMS: Explorations in supporting social action through a Bangladeshi mosque",
abstract = "Religious institutions hold a significant place in daily life for the vast majority of people in the world, especially in developing countries. Yet despite their social prominence, and despite HCI's emphasis on the social context of technology, organized religion is neglected in both the HCI and ICTD literature. This paper explores the relationship that mosques in Bangladesh have with their constituencies and with technology, with an eye toward the integration of technology with existing religious institutions as a way to achieve positive social ends. We first describe a qualitative exploration of several mosque communities in Bangladesh, where we find that skepticism and pragmatism about modern technology interact in a complex way that nevertheless leaves room for technical interventions. We then describe a randomized controlled trial to study the relative value of SMS messages infused with overtly religious or secularly altruistic frames for the purpose of mosque fundraising. We find that SMS messages increase donations overall, but that their framing is significant. Messages with secular altruistic framing increased donations by 9.5%, while those with religious sentiment increased donations by 57.3%. Our findings demonstrate how technologies like SMS amplify underlying religious forces and suggest the possibility of working with religious institutions in applying positive ICT interventions. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.",
keywords = "Donation, ICT4D, Religion, SMS, Techno-spirituality",
author = "Rifat, {Md Rashidujjaman} and Jay Chen and Kentaro Toyama",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 ACM.; 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2017 ; Conference date: 06-05-2017 Through 11-05-2017",
year = "2017",
month = may,
day = "2",
doi = "10.1145/3025453.3025960",
language = "English (US)",
series = "Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings",
publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
pages = "5941--5953",
booktitle = "CHI 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
}