User Agency in the Middle: Rumors and Reinvention of the Internet in Accra, Ghana

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, this paper argues that through rumors about successful Internet scammers, the Internet is “collaboratively produced by Internet users in Accra as a tool for making ‘big gains’” (p.1). These rumors enable Internet users to justify their continued expenditure of time and limited resources on pursuing social and/or economic relationships online, despite the absence of any success on their part.

(by Araba Sey)