Facebook, "Facebook Free Basics Website Screenshot", contributed by Lucy Pei, Center for Ethnography, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 3 December 2019, accessed 19 December 2024. http://centerforethnography.org/content/facebook-free-basics-website-screenshot
Critical Commentary
This image, on the home page of the Free Basics/ Internet.org project by Facebook, is typical of the visual tropes that are expressed by the technologists involved in Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) and related technology-for-social-good projects. The image is centered on a digital artifact, in this case a mobile phone, held by brown hands. The smiling face is blurry and mostly out of the frame. It would seem that the hands being brown and the background being a blurry beige are enough to signal that this is a context where free internet is needed.