Many humanitarian organizations in the U.S. experienced multiple digital divides that disrupted routine operations and compromised their services to vulnerable refugee populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges not only elevated refugees' health risks, they also jeopardized the nonprofit sector's organizational resilience, researchers say in a new study.
Communication professor Minkyung Kim of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Marya Doerfel, professor and chair of communication at Rutgers University, said the sudden shift to technology-mediated work and service delivery during the pandemic escalated the challenges associated with limited internet access, connectivity and digital literacy among the nonprofit workforce and the populations these organizations served.
The researchers said their findings, published in the International Journal of Communication, indicated that these inequities at the individual and organizational levels were interdependent and exacerbated each other. Despite efforts to mitigate them, there were drawbacks that negatively affected these organizations' resilience, defined in the study as their ability to sustain routine operations and respond to the unfolding pandemic.
"Theoretically, digital divides usually have been concerned with individual-level disparities and not considered these to be organizational concerns," Kim said. "As we all remember from the start of the pandemic, we had to make a sudden shift from an offline to an online work environment nearly overnight, and this didn't give organizations the time to prepare, unless they were large conglomerates with the resources, financial capacity and information technology staff to help workers make the transition."
"Many nonprofits did not have that luxury, and they had to be self-sufficient and navigate those challenges," she said. "That digital transition was one of the biggest reasons why many of these groups failed or could not continue their operations, especially if they were providing direct services to underprivileged communities."
The team interviewed 36 executives, directors and members of other nonprofit groups or government agencies about the types of technologies they used to provide direct services to refugees and communicate with other organizations, and how they managed the transition to remote work and service delivery after COVID-19 outbreak was declared a global pandemic and states began implementing shutdowns in March 2020.
Although online conferencing and networking platforms were crucial in orchestrating the transition to remote operations, resources such as web conferencing software and in-house IT support staff varied considerably among the organizations in the study, participants said.
However, the technologies that facilitated remote operations also presented barriers through digital inequalities at the individual level among employees - especially older workers, study participants said - and refugees who lacked the capacity, knowledge or skills to adapt to unfamiliar tools such as videoconferencing or instant messaging. These disparities hampered communication and collaboration within the agencies and their ability to communicate critical health information to refugee clients and provide educational programs such as English language lessons and services such as food deliveries.
Refugees are particularly vulnerable to digital divides, in part because some lack computers or smartphones, the researchers said. During the pandemic, some clients struggled with the instructions to use new technologies and lost access to in-person support and assistance when facilities such as public libraries closed during lockdowns, according to those interviewed in the study.
Within many organizations, but particularly those that had fewer IT staff to troubleshoot problems or support workers in making the transition, individuals who were more proficient often were called upon to help colleagues who were struggling to learn new platforms or apps or connect with their office networks, Kim said.
"These people became crucial during the pandemic crisis because their workplaces lacked the organizational-level capacity to mitigate the cleavages that come from digital inequality," Kim said.
A drawback, though, was that these go-to individuals' workflow and output were compromised by the time they spent assisting their struggling co-workers. "What these digitally proficient people were doing to help the organization also ended up hurting the organization at another level," Kim said. "Ironically, while these individuals were assisting others to help the group thrive and succeed, they ended up compromising their own work, which negatively impacted the organization's resilience."
However, not all of the humanitarian organizations in the study were dramatically hindered by these challenges, the researchers found. In addition to those that were better resourced, some organizations were located in states that invested in technologies that promoted digital literacy, expanded online access by increasing broadband infrastructure or distributed digital devices to at-risk populations, Kim said.
The researchers said that their findings underscore the need for community-based technology infrastructure that supports the resilience of nonprofits and promotes the continuity of critical services to marginalized populations.
"The pandemic is what really revealed that organizations also face digital inequality when they lack the infrastructure, the in-house IT staff, the right platforms or the digital literacy to handle many different technologies that help them function throughout the day," Kim said. "Digital inequality really stymied some organizations' operations, thus hurting their resilience. Having individuals available who navigated these organizational-level challenges was what helped those in our study survive the disruptions of the pandemic.
"Digital inequality is not something that should be on the shoulders of an individual or an organization, but rather something that's systemically treated long term. Public policy needs to look after struggling organizations like nonprofits so they have digital systems to prepare them to be ready and proficient when another crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic comes around," Kim said.
