The Next Billion Users: Digital Life beyond the West

In 2018, Google set up their ‘Next Billion Users’ Lab to target the new generation of digital users, many of whom are outside the West. Professor Arora has been studying these users and their online behaviors for more than a decade. After immersing herself in factory towns, slums, townships, and favelas, she assesses real patterns of internet usage in India, China, South Africa, Brazil, and the Middle East. For example, why do Brazilians eschew geotagging on social media? What drives young Indians to friend “foreign” strangers on Facebook and give “missed calls” to people? She pushes us to look beyond the framing of users as data producers and markets and instead as new global publics shaping the future of the internet.