Improvisation & ICTs in Honduras

Through this research project, I propose that improvisation is a reflexive dialogue in which actors (individuals and collectives) negotiate their circumstances to reconfigure social, cultural, political, and technological resources.

ICTs affordances and environmental conditions like their ownership, decentralization, and the political climate shaped the activists engage in improvisation ICT practices. My research shows how these innovative practices support social movements’ activities by helping them; (1) created new opportunities to participate in the country’s political life; (2) build more robust organizational networks of allies; (3) create a shared intersectional identity and (4) disseminate information.

I have observed this phenomenon in Puerto Rico and Honduras, where activists have improvised infrastructures, organizations, and ICT in the aftermath of political and natural disasters.

This research emphasizes the situated nature of their practices by focusing on their ideological framing and stepping away from the traditional assumption that people pursue modernity and the restoration of pre-existing infrastructure after a disaster.