Web Politics
In the recent years, the Indian cyberspace has experienced a rising volume of political content, communication, and interactions. This cluster focuses on questions arising from the various forms that social, cultural, economic, and technological power takes in its online articulations, such as web-based political practices of social activists, policy advocates, change-makers, marginalised groups, and mainstream political parties in India. We are especially interested in the political expressions and activities of 'digital natives' and young users of the Internet; and the conceptualisations, articulations, and actualisations of 'change,' and the related emerging visions of political forms and social transformation, in the online discourse in India.
Projects
- Digital Natives (2009-2012)
- Making Change (2014)
Publications
- Digital Natives without a Cause?, a book series edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen
- Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers edited by Nishant Shah, Josine Stremmelaar and Fieke Jansen
- Digital Natives with a Cause? A Report by Nishant Shah and Sunil Abraham
- Between the Stirrup and the Ground: Relocating Digital Activism by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen
- Digital Activism in Asia Reader (ongoing)
Recent Posts
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On Fooling Around: Digital Natives and Politics in Asia
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by
Nishant Shah
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last modified
May 14, 2015 12:11 PM
- Youths are not only actively participating in the politics of its times but also changing the way in which we understand the political processes of mobilisation, participation and transformation, writes Nishant Shah. The paper was presented at the Digital Cultures in Asia, 2009, at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
- Digital (Alter)Natives with a Cause? — Book Review by Maarten van den Berg — by Prasad Krishna — last modified May 15, 2015 11:30 AM
- ‘Digital (Alter)Natives with a cause?’ is a collection of four books with essays published by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, and the Dutch NGO Hivos. The books come in a beautifully designed cassette and are accompanied by a funky yellow package in the shape of a floppy disk containing the booklet ‘D:coding Digital Natives’, a corresponding DVD, and a pack of postcards portraying the evolution of writing - in the sentence ‘I love you’, written with a goose feather in 1734, to the character set ‘i<3u’ entered on a mobile device in 2011.
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Between the Stirrup and the Ground: Relocating Digital Activism
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by
Nishant Shah
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last modified
May 14, 2015 12:14 PM
- In this peer reviewed research paper, Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen draws on a research project that focuses on understanding new technology, mediated identities, and their relationship with processes of change in their immediate and extended environments in emerging information societies in the global south. It suggests that endemic to understanding digital activism is the need to look at the recalibrated relationships between the state and the citizens through the prism of technology and agency. The paper was published in Democracy & Society, a publication of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society, Volume 8, Issue 2, Summer 2011.
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What scares a Digital Native? Blogathon
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by
Samuel Tettner
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last modified
May 14, 2015 12:16 PM
- What Scares technologized young people around the world? In an effort to present a view often not heard in traditional discourses, on Monday the 18th of April 2011, young people from across the world blogged about their fears in relation to the digitalisation of society.
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Who the Hack?
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by
Prasad Krishna
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last modified
May 14, 2015 12:16 PM
- A hacker is not an evil spirit, instead he can outwit digital systems to bring about social change, writes Nishant Shah in this column published in the Indian Express on April 24, 2011.
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I Believe that .......... should be a Right in the Digital Age
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by
Samuel Tettner
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last modified
May 14, 2015 12:20 PM
- On Monday March 21, 2011, people from three continents blogged about what they believe will/should/are rights in the digital age, as part of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" project. From "free music" to "many identities", people have a varied and rich set of beliefs of what should constitute a right.
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The 'Beyond the Digital' Directory
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by
Maesy Angelina
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last modified
May 15, 2015 11:33 AM
- For the past few months, Maesy Angelina has been sharing the insights gained from her research with Blank Noise on the activism of digital natives. The ‘Beyond the Digital’ directory offers a list of the posts on the research based on the order of its publication.
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Digital Natives with a Cause?
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by
Nishant Shah
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last modified
May 15, 2015 11:31 AM
- Digital Natives With A Cause? - a product of the Hivos-CIS collaboration charts the scholarship and practice of youth and technology with a specific attention for developing countries to create a framework that consolidates existing paradigms and informs further research and intervention within diverse contexts and cultures.
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Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Paper
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by
Prasad Krishna
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last modified
May 08, 2015 12:22 PM
- The Digital Natives with a Cause? research inquiry seeks to look at the potentials of social change and political participation through technology practices of people in emerging ICT contexts. In particular it aims to address knowledge gaps that exist in the scholarship, practice and popular discourse around an increasing usage, adoption and integration of digital and Internet technologies in social transformation processes. A conference called Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon was jointly organised by CIS and Hivos in the Hague in December 2010. The Thinkathon aimed to reflect on these innovations in social transformation processes and its effects on development, and in particular to understand how new processes of social transformation can be supported and sustained, how they can inform our existing practices, and provide avenues of collaboration between Digital Natives and "Analogue Activists".
