The Role of Crowdsourcing Technology in Developing a New Model of Youth Empowerment and Community Engagement in the Global Response to HIV/AIDS

This study explores the enabling role of collaborative crowdsourcing technology in facilitating the development of an integrated global youth response to HIV/AIDS. Building on technology affordance and constraints theory and imbrications of human and material agencies, a theoretical framework is derived. The framework is used to examine an initiative deployed by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), which aimed to bring together youth organizations from across the global in a ‘PACT for Social Transformation’ using crowdsourcing technology. The study adopts a two-phased longitudinal research approach to track the PACT’s transition from fractured civil society movements to an integrated framework. The first phase concerned a quantitative analysis of the technology’s material characteristics and affordances during collaborative interactions among PACT members. We followed this with a qualitative analysis of PACT members’ reflections on pre, during, and post formation catalyzed from the technology, and in particular, the impact that the PACT’s formation and supporting infrastructure has had on people on the ground affected by HIV/AIDS. The study reveals how the technology sparked a series of imbrications to form a globally integrated movement on HIV/AIDS and enabled positive impacts on the ground in two high prevalence areas