Swiping to end hunger
The problematic politics of humanitarian donation apps
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9895293 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daniel Møller Ølgaard (0000-0002-4390-3387, Royal Danish Defence College, corresponding author), Lisa Ann Richey (0000-0003-3116-2531, Copenhagen Business School) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 100 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1451-1470 |
| Publication date | 2024-07-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-5850 • E-ISSN: 1468-2346 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/ia/iiae136 |
| OpenAlex | W4400493117 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The emergence of humanitarian donation apps promises to revolutionize aid by making it easier for people to give to humanitarian causes with just a few swipes on the smartphone in the palm of their hands. Yet, little is known about the implications of this for the politics and ethics of contemporary aid. This article explores the politics of humanitarian donation apps through an in-depth study of the World Food Programme's donation app ShareTheMeal. By analysing data from a detailed app walkthrough and documentation in a user journal of the experiences of a sample of app users, the article shows how ShareTheMeal is designed to afford specific forms of everyday humanitarianism, and how users adopt, appropriate or resist these affordances. Doing so we find that, while ShareTheMeal affords a convenient and gratifying donation experience, it also reinvigorates racial and paternalistic divisions between donors as benevolent saviours and recipients as voiceless victims, and integrates users into an extractivist data economy. Hence, rather than revolutionizing aid, ShareTheMeal instead sediments unequal relationships of agency and dependency in and through everyday acts of helping. Yet, because of apps' openness to user resistance and change, another politics of humanitarianism is nevertheless possible
Donation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Blood donation and transfusion practices · Law · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Medicine · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |