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n 2013, Elizabeth Belding, professor in the Computer Science Department at the UC Santa Barbara College of Engineering, and UCSB colleagues won a grant through a U. S. State Department project on internet freedom. It was inspired by the Arab Spring and the increasing tendency of authoritarian governments around the world to sever internet connections as a way of controlling their populations by silencing their voices on social media. Members of the team traveled to three nations that have authoritarian regimes — Turkey, Zambia, and Mongolia — meeting with members of marginalized communities, civil rights activists, journalists, and others who are at risk when governments shut down the internet or monitor social media spaces in an effort to identify and punish opposition users. “We talked about what they needed and what they feared, and then developed a solution,” Belding says. “We wanted to develop a way for people to communicate locally and anonymously so that they would be able to organize.” The project included a technical aspect relating to wireless networking, Belding’s area of expertise, and, separately, a smart-phone app that worked with Twitter. It allowed someone to start a group and those with the proper credentials to join it. Members could then push messages to the group. The posters’ identities would be hidden, but group members would know to trust the post because it came from a verified group member.
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IF I’M GOING TO BE ENGAGED IN SOMETHING, I WANT IT TO BE SOMETHING I REALLY CARE ABOUT.
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For Belding, it was the kind of project that has increasingly defined the focus of her research in recent years, which is to provide internet connectivity in ways that empower groups disadvantaged by economics, politics, geography, or even weather. She came to UCSB in 1996 as a PhD student studying wireless networking in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. About a decade into her career, she found herself wanting to align her work with her social consciousness. “I’ve always tried to be active in areas of personal importance,” she says. In her early twenties, she even attended a training workshop to learn to be an activist and led a couple of protests. When she picked up the thread again, she looked “for ways to merge my professional research with those personal passions.” At UCSB, nearly all of her faculty service work has focused on the advancement of women, “particularly in computer science, since there are so few women in the discipline,” she notes. “If I’m going to be engaged in something, I want it to be something I really care about.” In her initial social-impact efforts, she worked on internet connectivity in less-developed areas of the world. “It was a way I could use my wireless-networking background to get people connected, because the benefits of internet connectivity are so vast,” she says. Those projects include one in which she studied the availability of cellular and internet connectivity for Syrian families living in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, and designed solutions to extend cellular connectivity. Today, she says, “I don’t have any projects that I think are not socially beneficial.” Eventually, she became aware of the surprising lack of internet connections that exists in many rural areas, and especially on tribal lands here in the United States. Five years ago, she says, only about fifteen percent of Native Americans living on reservations had internet access in their homes, a fact she describes as “unthinkable,” and one that brought her focus back to “how I could help people in this country.” In 2013, she began working with various university partners and Native American organizations to bring internet connections to underserved rural Indian communities. “We wanted to get people connected in areas where population densities are low and cellular providers aren’t going to install expensive cell towers,” she explains. Living without the internet — which, she observes, “You need for everything from applying for a job to taking online classes to using social media” — affects lives and futures of those who lack access. One way that is seen on reservations is in something called the “homework gap,” which refers to a situation in which children attend schools that have internet connec14