Arul Chib
Biographic Data
| ID | 4117742 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Arul Chib |
| GIVEN NAMES | Arul |
| FAMILY NAME | Chib |
| SIGNATURE | CHIB A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Nanyang Technological University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3833-8889 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 80 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Two sides of a coin
This study explores how Chinese migrants in Singapore navigate their overseas lives through social media use. Survey data collected from Chinese migrants reveals that social media use serves as a double-edged sword: while it is positively associated with migrants’ life satisfaction, it also heightens their perception of online discrimination. Furthermore, results also suggest an essential role of self-esteem: elevated self-esteem correlates with …
When experiencing discrimination predicts greater outgroup affiliation
Research has documented how groups cope with perceived discrimination by enhancing their identification with their minority ingroup and reducing their identification with the majority outgroup. However, these patterns have not been consistent across contexts nor examined in relation to discrimination encountered online. Through a survey of PRC Chinese immigrants in Singapore, we examine how online perceived discrimination relates to attitudes tow…
Dispositions of dis/trust
Mobile scholarship has highlighted the embeddedness of mobile media practices within power hierarchies and sociostructural conditions. We enrich the critical approach by examining how trust, as a future-oriented disposition that deals with uncertainty and social vulnerability, conditions mobile practices and vice versa. We interviewed 29 Syrian refugees residing in the Netherlands, examining how different levels of vulnerability and uncertainty i…
Reconsidering the digital divide
Purpose This paper presents a framework to measure the digital divide by considering a more comprehensive index of information and communication technology (ICT) predictors. The authors also address the conceptual and methodological problems in the digital divide field, given that its focus has been shifted from technological access to higher-order divides over the years. The proposed framework is hypothesized and tested in the context of unemplo…
Covert resistance beyond #Metoo
Our study gives voice to socially marginalized women from the Global South whose struggles with sexual harassment are largely invisible in the #Metoo movement. Employing an ethnographic approach, this study examines the digitized resistance of Chinese rural–urban migrant women (n = 41) against sexual harassment faced in their workplaces. We adopt the lens of intersectionality to reveal the nuanced impacts of mobile communication practices negotia…
Subverted agency
A common view is that marginalized groups benefit substantially from strategic use of digital technologies. An intersectionality perspective, however, suggests that these outcomes may vary depending on individuals’ social positionality. We propose the concept of “subverted agency” to emphasize that use of digital technologies may be personally empowering but might reinforce normative regimes contributing to sociostructural marginalization. We inv…
Gender, technology and development
Gender, technology and development: reflections on the past, and provocations for the future
Social media use and anti-immigrant attitudes
Social media has a role to play in shaping the dynamic relations between immigrants and citizens. This study examines the effects of threat perceptions, consumptive and expressive use of social media, and political trust on attitudes against immigrants in Singapore. Study 1, based on a survey analysis (N = 310), suggests that symbolic but not realistic threat perception, is positively associated with anti-immigrant attitudes. The consumptive use …
The state of wearable health technologies
This review evaluated transdisciplinary empirical research on wearable health technologies using the input-mechanism-output model and addressed a major concern relating to the invasiveness of wearables. The dataset consisted of 250 published papers that investigated wearables for health-related purposes. Papers focused on technological inputs and health output factors, de-emphasizing theoretical mechanisms that could effectively translate the for…
Critical Perspectives on the Smart City
Smart city rhetoric stresses both citizens’ well-being and urban efficiency; however, critical perspectives suggest a worsening of existing societal inequalities for less-productive citizens, posing implications for how urban planners should incorporate smart technology. We examine the perceptions of elderly residents regarding Singapore’s Smart Nation implementation in their communities. The elderly find that technological advancements deepen ex…
Mobile Media (Non-)Use as Expression of Agency
The literature on mobile media and marginalized groups has focused on the use of mobile media as an agentic, visible, and varied process related to individual empowerment. Conversely, nonuse is often presupposed to be a passive, invisible condition imposed by sociostructural forces. Our paper challenges this binary, positing that mobile media (non-)use can be an expression of agency motivated in response to structural constraints. We posit that (…
Xenophobia in the Time of a Pandemic
This study examines the relationship between social media use, disease risk perception, social and political trust, and out-group stereotyping and prejudice during a social upheaval. Analyses of primary data collected during the COVID-19 outbreak in Singapore found that disease risk perception is positively related to stereotyping and prejudice against Chinese immigrants. Individuals who used social media for news were more likely to stereotype a…
Mobile phones and patient referral in Thai rural healthcare
This study employs a structuration view to examine how the use of mobile phones by healthcare staff affected, changed, or modified the existing patient referral system in rural Thailand. Findings from the interviews (n = 31) indicate that healthcare staff used their personal mobile phones for patient referral because they could quickly reach specific personal contacts in the hospitals and provide nuanced contextual information that was not possib…
Beyond the gender (dis)empowerment dichotomy
Over the past two decades, increasing attention has been drawn to gender impacts arising from adoption and usage of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the mobile phone especially, by marginalized women in the Global South. Grounded in the theory of structuration, our study challenges techno-determinism and structural functionalism embodied in a prevailing gender (dis)empowerment dichotomy, and instead reveals the contextually situ…
Provocation as Agentic Practice
Fluid performances of gender online by gender-diverse individuals facing discrimination and fetishization raises questions about whether these acts are a source of empowerment or reinforce prevailing prejudice. We combine virtual ethnography and interviews with transwomen sex workers in Singapore (n = 14) to explore the dynamic between sociostructural oppression and agentic resistance. First, heterosexual power relations manifest online via digit…
Distributed digital contexts and learning
The role of digital media and learning has often been synonymous with the use of open education resources in formal institutional settings. Further, open and distance learning has been criticized for focusing narrowly on educational objectives, ignoring socio-political issues of access and participation by marginalized populations. This study examines the lived experiences of female migrant domestic workers (N=20) in Singapore attending Open Univ…
Digital disparities and vulnerability
This paper proposes an ecological view to investigate how disparities in mobile technology use reflect vulnerabilities in communities vis-à-vis disaster preparedness. Data (n=1,603) were collected through a multi-country survey conducted equally in rural and urban areas of Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam, where mobile technology has become a dominant and ubiquitous communication and information medium. The findings show that smartpho…
Silent but Brewing - Reactive Ethnicity and Interculturality among Chinese Students in Singapore
The study takes an indirect approach towards the intercultural experience of migrants and explores how they perceive discrimination from host society and in turn stereotype it. Previous studies have highlighted how interculturality facilitates the adaptation of migrants in the host country. This study explores (i) how face-to-face (FTF) and mediated contact and perceived discrimination predict stereotyping, and (ii) how contact, perceived discrim…
The Influence of Art on Singaporean Tertiary Undergraduates’ Acculturation Attitude towards Migrant Workers
The aim of the study was to find out how visual art could be effectively used in a social integration campaign among youth in Singapore. The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods with the aim of evaluating an art campaign‟s effect on Singaporean tertiary students‟ (N=113) attitude towards migrant workers in their country. Three factors were used to define the host society‟s acculturation orientation towards migrant outgroups: natio…
Investigating Modern-Day Talaria
Revisiting the medical and social models of disability, this study adopted the integrated biopsychosocial approach to examine experiences of 25 mobility-impaired respondents in Singapore with using mobile phones. We found that mobile phones provided respondents a greater degree of mobility, a sense of control, and opportunities to escape the stigma of disability, thus challenging the boundaries between the able-bodied and the disabled. Mobile pho…
The promise and peril of mHealth in developing countries
The mHealth field understandably arose from a base of practice, developed a nascent, yet ever-expanding, body of inter-disciplinary scholarship, and currently hopes for recognition by, and establishment on, national and trans-national policy bodies and agendas respectively. However, to justify public investment, policymakers require a body of theoretically sound, methodologically rigorous, and generalizable, evidence on how mobile technologies ca…
Migrant mothering and mobile phones
Transnational mothers working in foreign countries face the challenges of providing “intensive” mothering to their children from a distance, and risk being subject to the “deviancy” discourse of mothering. This paper investigates the role of mobile phone usage, via voice, text messages, and social networking sites, in dealing with the tensions and ambivalence arising from transnational mothering as a dialectical process. We surveyed 42 Filipina a…
Moving mountains with mobiles
Community healthcare workers (CHW) are an important component of rural healthcare service delivery to remote rural communities in developing countries. The field of mHealth proposes that mobile technologies will have a beneficial impact on rural healthcare development. Current analyses advance the proposition that the utilization of mobile technologies leads to the shifting of space and time (Ling & Campbell, 2009). The current research examined …
Midwives with mobiles
Mobile phones were introduced to rural midwives in tsunami-affected Indonesia, allowing them to contact medical experts and communicate with patients. Ninety-two interviews were conducted with midwives, coordinators, doctors, and village representatives. This study applies a dialectical perspective to supplement the analytical frame of the ICT for healthcare development model (Chib et al., 2008), by addressing the multi-dimensionality of benefits…
The Aceh Besar midwives with mobile phones project
The introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) such as mobile phones to basic health service providers in rural areas can help bridge lacunae in their work environment, resulting from under-capacitated resources, constrained access to information and delayed interventions. The midwife mobile phone project was implemented in 15 health centres in Aceh Besar, Indonesia involving 223 midwives. The study group (121 participants) …
Migrant mothering and mobile phones
Transnational mothers working in foreign countries face the challenges of providing “intensive” mothering to their children from a distance, and risk being subject to the “deviancy” discourse of mothering. This paper investigates the role of mobile phone usage, via voice, text messages, and social networking sites, in dealing with the tensions and ambivalence arising from transnational mothering as a dialectical process. We surveyed 42 Filipina a…
Xenophobia in the Time of a Pandemic
This study examines the relationship between social media use, disease risk perception, social and political trust, and out-group stereotyping and prejudice during a social upheaval. Analyses of primary data collected during the COVID-19 outbreak in Singapore found that disease risk perception is positively related to stereotyping and prejudice against Chinese immigrants. Individuals who used social media for news were more likely to stereotype a…
Midwives with mobiles
Mobile phones were introduced to rural midwives in tsunami-affected Indonesia, allowing them to contact medical experts and communicate with patients. Ninety-two interviews were conducted with midwives, coordinators, doctors, and village representatives. This study applies a dialectical perspective to supplement the analytical frame of the ICT for healthcare development model (Chib et al., 2008), by addressing the multi-dimensionality of benefits…
The Aceh Besar midwives with mobile phones project
The introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) such as mobile phones to basic health service providers in rural areas can help bridge lacunae in their work environment, resulting from under-capacitated resources, constrained access to information and delayed interventions. The midwife mobile phone project was implemented in 15 health centres in Aceh Besar, Indonesia involving 223 midwives. The study group (121 participants) …
Mobile Media (Non-)Use as Expression of Agency
The literature on mobile media and marginalized groups has focused on the use of mobile media as an agentic, visible, and varied process related to individual empowerment. Conversely, nonuse is often presupposed to be a passive, invisible condition imposed by sociostructural forces. Our paper challenges this binary, positing that mobile media (non-)use can be an expression of agency motivated in response to structural constraints. We posit that (…
Beyond the gender (dis)empowerment dichotomy
Over the past two decades, increasing attention has been drawn to gender impacts arising from adoption and usage of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the mobile phone especially, by marginalized women in the Global South. Grounded in the theory of structuration, our study challenges techno-determinism and structural functionalism embodied in a prevailing gender (dis)empowerment dichotomy, and instead reveals the contextually situ…
Provocation as Agentic Practice
Fluid performances of gender online by gender-diverse individuals facing discrimination and fetishization raises questions about whether these acts are a source of empowerment or reinforce prevailing prejudice. We combine virtual ethnography and interviews with transwomen sex workers in Singapore (n = 14) to explore the dynamic between sociostructural oppression and agentic resistance. First, heterosexual power relations manifest online via digit…
[Minus]plastic
Plastics have much to offer as a modern convenience, but lack of responsible plastic waste management habits can lead to potentially harmful environmental effects. Past environmental initiatives revealed a lack of understanding about youth attitudes towards pro‐environmental issues. [minus]plastic, an online public environmental promotional campaign, encouraged Singaporean youth to recognize the importance of, adopt positive attitudes towards and…
Digital disparities and vulnerability
This paper proposes an ecological view to investigate how disparities in mobile technology use reflect vulnerabilities in communities vis-à-vis disaster preparedness. Data (n=1,603) were collected through a multi-country survey conducted equally in rural and urban areas of Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam, where mobile technology has become a dominant and ubiquitous communication and information medium. The findings show that smartpho…
Investigating Modern-Day Talaria
Revisiting the medical and social models of disability, this study adopted the integrated biopsychosocial approach to examine experiences of 25 mobility-impaired respondents in Singapore with using mobile phones. We found that mobile phones provided respondents a greater degree of mobility, a sense of control, and opportunities to escape the stigma of disability, thus challenging the boundaries between the able-bodied and the disabled. Mobile pho…
When experiencing discrimination predicts greater outgroup affiliation
Research has documented how groups cope with perceived discrimination by enhancing their identification with their minority ingroup and reducing their identification with the majority outgroup. However, these patterns have not been consistent across contexts nor examined in relation to discrimination encountered online. Through a survey of PRC Chinese immigrants in Singapore, we examine how online perceived discrimination relates to attitudes tow…
Dispositions of dis/trust
Mobile scholarship has highlighted the embeddedness of mobile media practices within power hierarchies and sociostructural conditions. We enrich the critical approach by examining how trust, as a future-oriented disposition that deals with uncertainty and social vulnerability, conditions mobile practices and vice versa. We interviewed 29 Syrian refugees residing in the Netherlands, examining how different levels of vulnerability and uncertainty i…
Subverted agency
A common view is that marginalized groups benefit substantially from strategic use of digital technologies. An intersectionality perspective, however, suggests that these outcomes may vary depending on individuals’ social positionality. We propose the concept of “subverted agency” to emphasize that use of digital technologies may be personally empowering but might reinforce normative regimes contributing to sociostructural marginalization. We inv…
The promise and peril of mHealth in developing countries
The mHealth field understandably arose from a base of practice, developed a nascent, yet ever-expanding, body of inter-disciplinary scholarship, and currently hopes for recognition by, and establishment on, national and trans-national policy bodies and agendas respectively. However, to justify public investment, policymakers require a body of theoretically sound, methodologically rigorous, and generalizable, evidence on how mobile technologies ca…
[Minus]plastic
Plastics have much to offer as a modern convenience, but lack of responsible plastic waste management habits can lead to potentially harmful environmental effects. Past environmental initiatives revealed a lack of understanding about youth attitudes towards pro‐environmental issues. [minus]plastic, an online public environmental promotional campaign, encouraged Singaporean youth to recognize the importance of, adopt positive attitudes towards and…
The Aceh Besar midwives with mobile phones project
The introduction of information and communication technologies (ICT) such as mobile phones to basic health service providers in rural areas can help bridge lacunae in their work environment, resulting from under-capacitated resources, constrained access to information and delayed interventions. The midwife mobile phone project was implemented in 15 health centres in Aceh Besar, Indonesia involving 223 midwives. The study group (121 participants) …
Midwives with mobiles
Mobile phones were introduced to rural midwives in tsunami-affected Indonesia, allowing them to contact medical experts and communicate with patients. Ninety-two interviews were conducted with midwives, coordinators, doctors, and village representatives. This study applies a dialectical perspective to supplement the analytical frame of the ICT for healthcare development model (Chib et al., 2008), by addressing the multi-dimensionality of benefits…
Moving mountains with mobiles
Community healthcare workers (CHW) are an important component of rural healthcare service delivery to remote rural communities in developing countries. The field of mHealth proposes that mobile technologies will have a beneficial impact on rural healthcare development. Current analyses advance the proposition that the utilization of mobile technologies leads to the shifting of space and time (Ling & Campbell, 2009). The current research examined …
The promise and peril of mHealth in developing countries
The mHealth field understandably arose from a base of practice, developed a nascent, yet ever-expanding, body of inter-disciplinary scholarship, and currently hopes for recognition by, and establishment on, national and trans-national policy bodies and agendas respectively. However, to justify public investment, policymakers require a body of theoretically sound, methodologically rigorous, and generalizable, evidence on how mobile technologies ca…
Migrant mothering and mobile phones
Transnational mothers working in foreign countries face the challenges of providing “intensive” mothering to their children from a distance, and risk being subject to the “deviancy” discourse of mothering. This paper investigates the role of mobile phone usage, via voice, text messages, and social networking sites, in dealing with the tensions and ambivalence arising from transnational mothering as a dialectical process. We surveyed 42 Filipina a…
The Influence of Art on Singaporean Tertiary Undergraduates’ Acculturation Attitude towards Migrant Workers
The aim of the study was to find out how visual art could be effectively used in a social integration campaign among youth in Singapore. The study used both quantitative and qualitative methods with the aim of evaluating an art campaign‟s effect on Singaporean tertiary students‟ (N=113) attitude towards migrant workers in their country. Three factors were used to define the host society‟s acculturation orientation towards migrant outgroups: natio…
Investigating Modern-Day Talaria
Revisiting the medical and social models of disability, this study adopted the integrated biopsychosocial approach to examine experiences of 25 mobility-impaired respondents in Singapore with using mobile phones. We found that mobile phones provided respondents a greater degree of mobility, a sense of control, and opportunities to escape the stigma of disability, thus challenging the boundaries between the able-bodied and the disabled. Mobile pho…
Silent but Brewing - Reactive Ethnicity and Interculturality among Chinese Students in Singapore
The study takes an indirect approach towards the intercultural experience of migrants and explores how they perceive discrimination from host society and in turn stereotype it. Previous studies have highlighted how interculturality facilitates the adaptation of migrants in the host country. This study explores (i) how face-to-face (FTF) and mediated contact and perceived discrimination predict stereotyping, and (ii) how contact, perceived discrim…
Distributed digital contexts and learning
The role of digital media and learning has often been synonymous with the use of open education resources in formal institutional settings. Further, open and distance learning has been criticized for focusing narrowly on educational objectives, ignoring socio-political issues of access and participation by marginalized populations. This study examines the lived experiences of female migrant domestic workers (N=20) in Singapore attending Open Univ…
Digital disparities and vulnerability
This paper proposes an ecological view to investigate how disparities in mobile technology use reflect vulnerabilities in communities vis-à-vis disaster preparedness. Data (n=1,603) were collected through a multi-country survey conducted equally in rural and urban areas of Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam, where mobile technology has become a dominant and ubiquitous communication and information medium. The findings show that smartpho…
Mobile phones and patient referral in Thai rural healthcare
This study employs a structuration view to examine how the use of mobile phones by healthcare staff affected, changed, or modified the existing patient referral system in rural Thailand. Findings from the interviews (n = 31) indicate that healthcare staff used their personal mobile phones for patient referral because they could quickly reach specific personal contacts in the hospitals and provide nuanced contextual information that was not possib…
Beyond the gender (dis)empowerment dichotomy
Over the past two decades, increasing attention has been drawn to gender impacts arising from adoption and usage of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the mobile phone especially, by marginalized women in the Global South. Grounded in the theory of structuration, our study challenges techno-determinism and structural functionalism embodied in a prevailing gender (dis)empowerment dichotomy, and instead reveals the contextually situ…
Provocation as Agentic Practice
Fluid performances of gender online by gender-diverse individuals facing discrimination and fetishization raises questions about whether these acts are a source of empowerment or reinforce prevailing prejudice. We combine virtual ethnography and interviews with transwomen sex workers in Singapore (n = 14) to explore the dynamic between sociostructural oppression and agentic resistance. First, heterosexual power relations manifest online via digit…
Social media use and anti-immigrant attitudes
Social media has a role to play in shaping the dynamic relations between immigrants and citizens. This study examines the effects of threat perceptions, consumptive and expressive use of social media, and political trust on attitudes against immigrants in Singapore. Study 1, based on a survey analysis (N = 310), suggests that symbolic but not realistic threat perception, is positively associated with anti-immigrant attitudes. The consumptive use …
The state of wearable health technologies
This review evaluated transdisciplinary empirical research on wearable health technologies using the input-mechanism-output model and addressed a major concern relating to the invasiveness of wearables. The dataset consisted of 250 published papers that investigated wearables for health-related purposes. Papers focused on technological inputs and health output factors, de-emphasizing theoretical mechanisms that could effectively translate the for…
Critical Perspectives on the Smart City
Smart city rhetoric stresses both citizens’ well-being and urban efficiency; however, critical perspectives suggest a worsening of existing societal inequalities for less-productive citizens, posing implications for how urban planners should incorporate smart technology. We examine the perceptions of elderly residents regarding Singapore’s Smart Nation implementation in their communities. The elderly find that technological advancements deepen ex…
Mobile Media (Non-)Use as Expression of Agency
The literature on mobile media and marginalized groups has focused on the use of mobile media as an agentic, visible, and varied process related to individual empowerment. Conversely, nonuse is often presupposed to be a passive, invisible condition imposed by sociostructural forces. Our paper challenges this binary, positing that mobile media (non-)use can be an expression of agency motivated in response to structural constraints. We posit that (…
Xenophobia in the Time of a Pandemic
This study examines the relationship between social media use, disease risk perception, social and political trust, and out-group stereotyping and prejudice during a social upheaval. Analyses of primary data collected during the COVID-19 outbreak in Singapore found that disease risk perception is positively related to stereotyping and prejudice against Chinese immigrants. Individuals who used social media for news were more likely to stereotype a…
Reconsidering the digital divide
Purpose This paper presents a framework to measure the digital divide by considering a more comprehensive index of information and communication technology (ICT) predictors. The authors also address the conceptual and methodological problems in the digital divide field, given that its focus has been shifted from technological access to higher-order divides over the years. The proposed framework is hypothesized and tested in the context of unemplo…
Covert resistance beyond #Metoo
Our study gives voice to socially marginalized women from the Global South whose struggles with sexual harassment are largely invisible in the #Metoo movement. Employing an ethnographic approach, this study examines the digitized resistance of Chinese rural–urban migrant women (n = 41) against sexual harassment faced in their workplaces. We adopt the lens of intersectionality to reveal the nuanced impacts of mobile communication practices negotia…
Subverted agency
A common view is that marginalized groups benefit substantially from strategic use of digital technologies. An intersectionality perspective, however, suggests that these outcomes may vary depending on individuals’ social positionality. We propose the concept of “subverted agency” to emphasize that use of digital technologies may be personally empowering but might reinforce normative regimes contributing to sociostructural marginalization. We inv…
Gender, technology and development
Gender, technology and development: reflections on the past, and provocations for the future
Dispositions of dis/trust
Mobile scholarship has highlighted the embeddedness of mobile media practices within power hierarchies and sociostructural conditions. We enrich the critical approach by examining how trust, as a future-oriented disposition that deals with uncertainty and social vulnerability, conditions mobile practices and vice versa. We interviewed 29 Syrian refugees residing in the Netherlands, examining how different levels of vulnerability and uncertainty i…
Two sides of a coin
This study explores how Chinese migrants in Singapore navigate their overseas lives through social media use. Survey data collected from Chinese migrants reveals that social media use serves as a double-edged sword: while it is positively associated with migrants’ life satisfaction, it also heightens their perception of online discrimination. Furthermore, results also suggest an essential role of self-esteem: elevated self-esteem correlates with …
Political science (22 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Public relations (9 works) · ICT in Developing Communities (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Business (6 works)