Developing an Indigenous Cultural Values Based Emoji Messaging System: A Socio-Technical Systems Innovation Approach

Digital divide remains a major concern among indigenous people despite the rapid increase in mobile phone penetration. Beyond the appalling participatory gaps, the devaluing of humanity in the digital era is seen as a much bigger threat. This paper addresses the emerging challenges that are putting indigenous communities at a great disadvantage. The use of emoji in social media and its prominence as a visual language for delivering emotional expressions, gestures and action in a speedy manner is fast becoming a way of life. The universality of emoji poses a major problem to the sustainability of the indigenous cultural values as it imposes western cultural and social behaviour hegemony on the indigenous society. Interactions with remote rural communities in Borneo over the past twenty years have revealed the devastating effect that such an outside-in communication medium has on their cultural resilience. Diversifying the emoji design in adopting a local cultural flavour alone, as described in current literature, will not address the issue effectively. Without considering the whole socio-technical system at a macro-level, the dangers relating to the aggravated disconnect to their rich traditional way of life cannot be averted. We posit a holistic socio-technical systems innovation approach with the participatory involvement of the indigenous community. In this paper, we demonstrate the modeling of complex systems that embed the socio-cultural context without compromising cultural values.