Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2012, Communication Studies

Microlending through online venues has introduced a new model of lending through web 2.0 communication technologies. I examined micro lending through online venues – such as kiva.org, MicroPlace.com, and ACCION.org. The theoretical framework is based in Critical Cyberculture Studies and Critical Development Communication using visual analysis (Brummet, 2010; 2011; Mirzoeff, 2009; Nakamura, 2008; Olsen, 2007; Sosale, 2007) as my method, which is supplemented with interviews. I draw in part from visual rhetoric to inform my critique of the interplay of visual images, symbols, texts, and other elements in the microfinance web sites. On the home pages of Kiva.org, ACCION.org and MicroPlace.com, I analyzed the layout, including visuals and texts on their respective homepages. I examined the communication processes in these web 2.0 portals, because while some sites may indeed empower the poor, other sites may be disempowering to the poor. Kiva, ACCION, and MicroPlace thus reproduce issues of race, identity, and representation online, becoming discursive and rhetorical spaces where race and identity are produced and reproduced in various forms (Nakamura, 2002). Understanding the representations of third-world identities/bodies on micro lending sites is important. Also, global development initiatives such as kiva.org, MicroPlace.com, and ACCION.org have wide reaching ramifications; thus, the notion of empowerment of the poor, as reflected on the web portals of kiva.org, MicroPlace.com, and ACCION.org, bears scrutiny.

Committee: Radhika Gajjala PhD (Committee Chair); Lynda Dixon PhD (Committee Member); Ellen Gorsevski PhD (Committee Member); Shannon Orr PhD (Other) Subjects: African Studies; Banking; Black Studies; Business Education; Communication; Economics; Entrepreneurship; Ethnic Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Health; Labor Economics; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Sub Saharan Africa Studies