"If We Had the Option": Infrastructuring for Access to Online Subscription-Based Services in Bangladesh

Abstract

As online access to entertainment, education, news, and information increasingly becomes mitigated through subscription-based services, it is important to study how inequities in access impact users in low and middle-income countries (LMICS), and what infrastructuring strategies they employ to overcome obstacles. In this paper, we present findings from an interview study with 22 participants from Bangladesh who use and share online subscription-based services. Due to the lack of availability and limitations using formal international payment methods, procedural difficulties, and infrastructural challenges in Bangladesh, we found an emergence of a distinct informal ecosystem of accessing, sharing, and using subscription-based services. We report a detailed analysis of the adoption, sharing practices, and dynamics of sharing online subscription-based services in Bangladesh, that builds on and extends previous HCI literature on informality, informal marketplace, intermediaries, and media sharing in the Global South. Our findings show how a vibrant and growing user base of subscription-based online services is using creative and sometimes risky ways to gain access to media and information through informal intermediaries and administrators. Finally, we discuss potential directions for practice and policy innovations that include facilitating international payments for online services and platforms and reconsidering their policies and service delivery mechanisms to better support users in the Global South context.