Elisa Oreglia :: Research & Publications

Articles and Conference Proceedings
(AD = Author’s Draft)

Oreglia, E., Srinivasan, J. (2019) Human and Non-Human Intermediation in Rural Agricultural Markets, Journal of Cultural Economy, DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2018.1544918 [AD]

Oreglia, E., Ling, R. 2018) Popular Digital Imagination: Grass-Root Conceptualization of the Mobile Phone in the Global South, Journal of Communication, Volume 68, Issue 3, June 2018, pp 570-589 [AD]

Finn, M., Oreglia, E. (2016) “A Fundamentally Confused Document: Situation Reports and the Work of Producing Humanitarian Information.” Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, San Francisco, CA, 29 Feb-2 Mar. [AD] Best Paper Award.

Ling, R., Oreglia, E. Aricat, R., Panchapakesan, C., Lwin, M. 2015. The Use of Mobile Phones Among Trishaw Operators in Myanmar. International Journal of Communication Vol. 9.

Oreglia, E., Srinivasan, J. (2015) ICT, Intermediaries, and the Transformation of Gendered Power Structures. Forthcoming in MISQ. [AD]
Burrell, J., Oreglia, E. (2015) The Myth of Market Price Information: Mobile Phones and the Application of Economic Knowledge in ICTD. Forthcoming in Economy and Society. [AD]

Oreglia, E. (2014) ICT and (Personal) Development in Rural China. Information Technologies & International Development. Vol.10 Issue 3, pp. 19-30.

Oreglia, E. (2013) When Technology Doesn’t Fit: Information Sharing Practices among Farmers in Rural China. Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development.

Oreglia, E., Kitner, K. (2013) The “Consumption Junction” of ICT in Emerging Markets: An Ethnography of Middlemen. Proceedings of the 2013 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference.

Oreglia, E., Kaye, J. (2012) A Gift from the City: Mobile Phones in Rural China. Proceedings of the 2012 Computer Supported Cooperative Work Conference.

Oreglia, E., Liu, Y. (2011) Cloud Computing and ICTD: A Platform to Leverage Human and ICT Resources in China. Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Intelligent User Interfaces for Developing Regions.

Oreglia, E., Liu, Y., Zhao, W. (2011) Designing for Emerging Rural Users: Experiences from China. Proceedings of the 2011 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Special Issue Editor
“The Sent-Down Internet,” Chinese Journal of Communication, Vol.8, Issue 1, 2015,
featuring the following articles:
Oreglia, E. The Sent-Down Internet: Using Information and Communication Technologies in Rural China. [AD]
Oreglia, E., Qiu, J., Bu, W., Schulte, B., Wang, J., Wallis, C., Zhou, B. Studying the Sent-Down Internet: Roundtable on Research Methods. [AD]
Wang, J. NGO2.0 and Social Media Praxis: Activist as Researcher.
Wallis, C. Micro-entrepreneurship, New Media Technologies, and the Reproduction and Reconfiguration of Gender in Rural China.
Schulte, B. (Dis)Empowering Technologies: ICT for Education (ICT4E) in China, Past and Present.
Schlæge, J, and Wang, Qian. The Limits of Planning in China: Equalizing Basic Education through the Internet.

Book Reviews

Review of Katrin Voltmer, The Media in Transitional Democracies. Polity, 2013. New Media and Society. Vol.16 Issue 8.

Work in Review

Finn, M., Oreglia, E., A Fundamentally Confused Document: Situation Reports and Information Labor in Humanitarian Emergencies.

Other Publications

Oreglia, E. (2014) 互联网潮流:互联网在中国农村的应用概况. Chinese Translation of the Conference Paper “The Sent-Down Internet: Going Online in Rural China” in 当代海外中国研究 (Journal of Chinese Studies Abroad).

Oreglia, E. (2012) Africa’s Many Chinas. Report on the Chinese presence in Africa for Intel.

Oreglia, E. (2010) Creating Community, Rejecting Community: Migrant Women in Beijing. Community Informatics Journal, Special Issue on Gender.

Finn, M., Oreglia, E., Rabinowitz, N., Ward, J. Situation Reports at OCHA, Part I (2008), Annex and Part 2 (2009). Report for the UN Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Oreglia, E. (2008) Here Be Dragons: China in Western Eyes from the Jesuits to the Internet. Pacific Rim Report No. 50.


	My research interest centers on how people in the Global South ‘invent’ themselves as users of new media and on the development of localized socio-technical systems that grow up around such use. I am intrigued by local implementations of the abstract idea of the “information society” and by the practices that emerge around new media use among communities at the periphery of globalization: how do native knowledge and orality-based information sharing practices constitute local information orders? How are these reflected (or not) in the way new media are conceived in abstract, and then utilized in practice? I employ qualitative research methods, especially ethnography, to understand such processes of negotiation and adaptation among unlikely users—older farmers, illiterate and semi-literate grandmothers, young children in rural villages—and to ultimately contribute to developing more comprehensive theories of new media adoption and use that consider the circumstances of such people.