Centre for Internet and Society

Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Paper

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T12:22:29Z

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".

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/position-paper

Digital Natives with a Cause? Report

praskrishna — 2015-04-17T11:04:51Z

Youth are often seen as potential agents of change for reshaping their own societies. By 2010, the global youth population is expected reach almost 1.2 billion of which 85% reside in developing countries. Unleashing the potential of even a part of this group in developing countries promises a substantially impact on societies. Especially now when youths thriving on digital technologies flood universities, work forces, and governments and could facilitate radical restructuring of the world we live in. So, it’s time we start listening to them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/publications/dn-report

Digital Natives with a Cause?

nishant — 2015-05-15T11:31:14Z

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.

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and Hivos have assessed the state of knowledge on the potential impact of youth for social transformation and political engagement in the South. This report ‘Digital Natives with a Cause?’ charts the scholarship and practice of youth and technology and informs further research and intervention within diverse contexts and cultures.

The report displays that digital natives have a potential impact as agents of change. It concludes that multidisciplinary theoretical approaches venturing beyond the cause-and-effect model and providing the necessary vocabulary and sensitivity are crucial to understanding Digital Natives. The lament that youths are apolitical is a result of insufficient attention to activities that do not conform to existing notions of political and civil society formation. Digital Natives are sensitive and thoughtful. It is time to listen to them and their ideas, and to focus on their development as responsible and active citizens rather than on their digital exploits or technologised interests.

The report specifically focuses on youth as e-agents of change within emerging information societies to explore questions of technology mediated identities, embedded conditions of social transformation and political participation, as well as potentials for sustained livelihood and education. It identifies the knowledge gaps and networks and further areas of intervention in the field of Digital Natives.

As a first step in working towards enabling Digital Natives for social transformation and political engagement, Hivos and CIS will organize a Multistakeholder Conference Fall 2010.

A summary of the report, as well as the detailed narrative are now available for discussion, debate, suggestions and ideas.

Digital Natives with a Cause? - Report Download Pdf document Here

Digital Natives with a Cause? - Report Summary Download Pdf document Here

The report is also available at http://http://www.hivos.net/Hivos-Knowledge-Programme/Themes/Digital-Natives-with-a-Cause/News/New-Publication-on-Digital-Natives

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnrep

Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?

nishant — 2015-04-10T09:22:29Z

Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society have consolidated their three year knowledge inquiry into the field of youth, technology and change in a four book collective “Digital AlterNatives with a cause?”. This collaboratively produced collective, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen, asks critical and pertinent questions about theory and practice around 'digital revolutions' in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world. It works with multiple vocabularies and frameworks and produces dialogues and conversations between digital natives, academic and research scholars, practitioners, development agencies and corporate structures to examine the nature and practice of digital natives in emerging contexts from the Global South.

Introduction

In the 21^st Century, we have witnessed the simultaneous growth of internet and digital technologies on the one hand, and political protests and mobilisation on the other. Processes of interpersonal relationships, social communication, economic expansion, political protocols and governmental mediation are undergoing a significant transition, across in the world, in developed and emerging Information and Knowledge societies.

The young are often seen as forerunners of these changes because of the pervasive and persistent presence of digital and online technologies in their lives. The “ Digital Natives with a Cause?” is a research inquiry that uncovers the ways in which young people in emerging ICT contexts make strategic use of technologies to bring about change in their immediate environments. Ranging from personal stories of transformation to efforts at collective change, it aims to identify knowledge gaps that existing scholarship, practice and popular discourse around an increasing usage, adoption and integration of digital technologies in processes of social and political change.

Methodology

In 2010-11, three workshops in Taiwan, South Africa and Chile, brought together around 80 people who identified themselves as Digital Natives from Asia, Africa and Latin America, to explore certain key questions that could provide new insight into Digital Natives research, policy and practice. The workshops were accompanied by a ‘Thinkathon’ – a multi-stakeholder summit that initiated conversations between Digital Natives, academic researchers, scholars, practitioners, educators, policy makers and corporate representatives to share learnings on new questions: Is one born digital or does one become a Digital Native? How do we understand our relationship with the idea of a Digital Native? How do Digital Natives redefine ‘change’ and how do they see themselves implementing it? What is the role that technologies play in defining civic action and social movements? What are the relationships that these technology based identities and practices have with existing social movements and political legacies? How do we build new frameworks of sustainable citizen action outside of institutionalisation?

Rationale

One of the knowledge gaps that this book tries to address is the lack of digital natives’ voices in the discourse around them. In the occasions that they are a part of the discourse, they are generally represented by other actors who define the frameworks and decide the issues which are important. Hence, more often than not, most books around digital natives concentrate on similar sounding areas and topics, which might not always resonate with the concerns that digital natives and other stake-holders might be engaged with in their material and discursive practice. The methodology of the workshops was designed keeping this in mind. Instead of asking the digital natives to give their opinion or recount a story about what we felt was important, we began by listening to their articulations about what was at stake for them as e-agents of change. As a result, the usual topics like piracy, privacy, cyber-bullying, sexting etc. which automatically map digital natives discourse, are conspicuously absent from this book. Their absence is not deliberate, but more symptomatic of how these themes that we presumed as important were not of immediate concerns to most of the participants in the workshop who are contributing to the book.

Structure

The conversations, research inquiries, reflections, discussions, interviews, and art practices are consolidated in this four part book which deviates from the mainstream imagination of the young people involved in processes of change. The alternative positions, defined by geo-politics, gender, sexuality, class, education, language, etc. find articulations from people who have been engaged in the practice and discourse of technology mediated change. Each part concentrates on one particular theme that helps bring coherence to a wide spectrum of style and content.

Book 1: To Be: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download here

The first part, To Be, looks at the questions of digital native identities. Are digital natives the same everywhere? What does it mean to call a certain population ‘Digital Natives”? Can we also look at people who are on the fringes – Digital Outcasts, for example? Is it possible to imagine technology-change relationships not only through questions of access and usage but also through personal investments and transformations? The contributions help chart the history, explain the contemporary and give ideas about what the future of technology mediated identities is going to be.

Book 2: To Think: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download here

In the second section, To Think, the contributors engage with new frameworks of understanding the processes, logistics, politics and mechanics of digital natives and causes. Giving fresh perspectives which draw from digital aesthetics, digital natives’ everyday practices, and their own research into the design and mechanics of technology mediated change, the contributors help us re-think the concepts, processes and structures that we have taken for granted. They also nuance the ways in which new frameworks to think about youth, technology and change can be evolved and how they provide new ways of sustaining digital natives and their causes.

Book 3: To Act: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download here

To Act is the third part that concentrates on stories from the ground. While it is important to conceptually engage with digital natives, it is also, necessary to connect it with the real life practices that are reshaping the world. Case-studies, reflections and experiences of people engaged in processes of change, provide a rich empirical data set which is further analysed to look at what it means to be a digital native in emerging information and technology contexts.

Book 4: To Connect : Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download here

The last section, To Connect, recognises the fact that digital natives do not operate in vacuum. It might be valuable to maintain the distinction between digital natives and immigrants, but this distinction does not mean that there are no relationships between them as actors of change. The section focuses on the digital native ecosystem to look at the complex assemblage of relationships that support and are amplified by these new processes of technologised change.

We see this book as entering into a dialogue with the growing discourse and practice in the field of youth, technology and change. The ambition is to look at the digital (alter)natives as located in the Global South and the potentials for social change and political participation that is embedded in their interactions through and with digital and internet technologies. We hope that the book furthers the idea of a context-based digital native identity and practice, which challenges the otherwise universalist understanding that seems to be the popular operative right now. We see this as the beginning of a knowledge inquiry, rather than an end, and hope that the contributions in the book will incite new discussions, invoke cross-sectorial and disciplinary debates, and consolidate knowledges about digital (alter)natives and how they work in the present to change our futures.

Click here to order your copy. We invite readers to contribute reviews of an essay they found particularly interesting. Contact us: nishant@cis-india.org and fjansen@hivos.nl if you want more information, resources, or dialogues

Nishant Shah

Fieke Jansen

For media coverage and book reviews, read here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook

Book 1: To Be, Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?

nishant — 2015-05-15T12:08:32Z

In this first book of the Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Collection, we concentrate on what it means to be a Digital Native. Within popular scholarship and discourse, it is presumed that digital natives are born digital. Ranging from Mark Prensky’s original conception of the identity which marked all people born after 1980 as Digital Natives to John Palfrey and Urs Gasser’s more nuanced understanding of specific young people in certain parts of the world as ‘Born Digital’, there remains a presumption that the young peoples’ relationship with technology is automatic and natural. In particular, the idea of being ‘born digital’ signifies that there are people who, at a visceral, unlearned level, respond to digital technologies. This idea of being born digital hides the complex mechanics of infrastructure, access, affordability, learning, education, language, gender, etc. that play a significant role in determining who gets to become a digital native and how s/he achieves it. In this book, we explore what it means to be a digital native in emerging information societies. The different contributions in this book posit what it means to be a digital native in different parts of the world. However, none of the contribution accepts the name ‘Digital Native’ as a given. Instead, the different authors demonstrate how there can be no one singular definition of a Digital Native. In fact, they show how, contextualised, historical, socially embedded, politically nuanced understanding of people’s interaction with technology provide a better insight into how one becomes a digital native.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook1

Atmanirbhar Bharat Meets Digital India: An Evaluation of COVID-19 Relief for Migrants

ankan — 2021-06-03T12:53:57Z

With the onset of the national lockdown on 24th March 2020 in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, the fate of millions of migrant workers was left uncertain. In addition, lack of enumeration and registration of migrant workers became a major obstacle for all State Governments and the Central Government to channelize relief and welfare measures.

A majority of workers were dependent on relief provided by NGOs, Civil Society Organizations and individuals or credit via kinship networks. With mounting domestic and international pressures, various relief and welfare schemes were rolled out but they were too little, too late and more often than not characterised by poor implementation.

The aim of this report is to qualitatively assess health conditions of migrant workers and access to welfare during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The primary focus is on the host states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Haryana. 20 in-depth interviews were conducted remotely with migrant workers working in various sectors. Their access to welfare schemes of the Central Government as well as of their host states was ascertained. Emphasis was also laid on their access to healthcare facilities in relation to COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 ailments.

The findings of the report showcase a dismal state of affairs. No one in our sample group received any kind of dry ration or cooked food in a sustained manner and, in the rare occasions when they did, it was woefully inadequate. Of the three states considered, we found that relief distribution was the best in Tamil Nadu followed by Maharashtra and then Haryana. Even the Direct Cash Transfer Scheme of the Central Government under ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ did not reach the migrant workers. Moreover, the migrant workers were apprehensive to report any COVID-19 related symptom due to the draconian treatment that followed therein and the crumbling healthcare sector made it impossible to avail facilities in non-COVID-19 related issues. Lastly, a case has been made for the creation of bottom-level infrastructures to further dialogue between various stakeholders, including associations of migrant workers, for the implementation of schemes and policies which can consolidate migrant workers as a relevant political subject. As migrant workers reel from the impact of the second wave, pushing for on-ground infrastructure and supporting community-based organisations becomes even more urgent.

Click here to read the report authored by Ankan Barman and edited by Ayush Rathi. [PDF, 882 kb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/migrant-workers-solidarity-network-and-cis-ankan-barman-atmanirbhar-bharat-meets-digital-india-an-evaluation-of-covid-19-relief-for-migrants

Atmanirbhar Bharat Meets Digital India

ankan — 2021-06-03T12:32:47Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/files/atmanirbhar-bharat-meets-digital-india.pdf

Archives and Access

praskrishna — 2015-04-17T11:06:20Z

The monograph by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, is a material history of the Internet archives. It examines the role of the archivist and the changing relationship between the state and private archives for looking at the politics of subversion, preservation and value of archiving. By examining the Tamil Nadu and Goa state archives, along with the larger public and state archives in the country, the monograph looks at the materiality of archiving, the ambitions and aspirations of an archive, and why it is necessary to preserve archives, not as historical artefacts but as living interactive spaces of memory and remembrance. The findings have direct implications on various government and market impulses to digitise archives and show a clear link between opening up archives and other knowledge sources for breathing life into local and alternative histories.

Download the Monograph

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/archives-and-access/archives-and-access

AI for Healthcare: Understanding Data Supply Chain and Auditability in India

2024-11-30T08:17:48Z

This report aims to understand the prevalence and use of AI auditing practices in the healthcare sector. By mapping the data supply chain underlying AI technologies, the study aims to unpack i) how AI systems are developed and deployed to achieve healthcare outcomes and, ii) how AI audits are perceived and implemented by key stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem.

Read our full report here.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies constitutes a significant development in the Indian healthcare sector, with industry and government actors showing keen interest in designing and deploying these technologies. Even as key stakeholders explore ways to incorporate AI systems into their products and workflows, a growing debate on the accessibility, success, and potential harms of these technologies continues, along with several concerns over their large-scale adoption. A recurring question in India and the world over is whether these technologies serve a wider interest in public health. For example, the discourse on ethical and responsible AI in the context of emerging technologies and their impact on marginalised populations, climate change, and labour practices has been especially contentious.

For the purposes of this study, we define AI in healthcare as the use of artificial intelligence and related technologies to support healthcare research and delivery. The use cases include assisted imaging and diagnosis, disease prediction, robotic surgery, automated patient monitoring, medical chatbots, hospital management, drug discovery, and epidemiology. The emergence of AI auditing mechanisms is an essential development in this context, with several stakeholders ranging from big-tech to smaller startups adopting various checks and balances while developing and deploying their products. While auditing as a practice is neither uniform nor widespread within healthcare or other sectors in India, it is one of the few available mechanisms that can act as guardrails in using AI systems.

Our primary research questions are as follows:

What is the current data supply chain infrastructure for organisations operating in the healthcare ecosystem in India?
What auditing practices, if any, are being followed by technology companies and healthcare institutions?
What best practices can organisations based in India adopt to improve AI auditability?

This was a mixed methods study, comprising a review of available literature in the field, followed by quantitative and qualitative data collection through surveys and in-depth interviews. The findings from the study offer essential insights into the current use of AI in the healthcare sector, the operationalisation of the data supply chain, and policies and practices related to health data sourcing, collection, management, and use. It also discusses ethical and practical challenges related to privacy, data protection and informed consent, and the emerging role of auditing and other related practices in the field. Some of the key learnings related to the data supply chain and auditing include:

Technology companies, medical institutions, and medical practitioners rely on an equal mix of proprietary and open sources of health data and there is significant reliance on datasets from the Global North.
Data quality checks are extant, but they are seen as an additional burden; with the removal of personally identifiable information being a priority during processing.
Collaboration between medical practitioners and AI developers remains limited, and feedback between users and developers of these technologies is limited.
There is a heavy reliance on external vendors to develop AI models, with many models replicated from existing systems in the Global North.
Healthcare professionals are hesitant to integrate AI systems into their workflows, with a significant gap stemming from a lack of training and infrastructure to integrate these systems successfully.
The understanding and application of audits are not uniform across the sector, with many stakeholders prioritising more mainstream and intersectional concepts such as data privacy and security in their scope.

Based on these findings, this report offers a set of recommendations addressed to different stakeholders such as healthcare professionals and institutions, AI developers, technology companies, startups, academia, and civil society groups working in health and social welfare. These include:

Improve data management across the AI data supply chain

Adopt standardised data-sharing policies. This would entail building a standardised policy that adopts an intersectional approach to include all stakeholders and areas where data is collected to ensure their participation in the process. This would also require robust feedback loops and better collaboration between the users, developers, and implementers of the policy (medical professionals and institutions), and technologists working in AI and healthcare.

Emphasise not just data quantity but also data quality. Given that the limited quantity and quality of Indian healthcare datasets present significant challenges, institutions engaged in data collection must consider their interoperability to make them available to diverse stakeholders and ensure their security. This would include recruiting additional support staff for digitisation to ensure accuracy and safety and maintain data quality.

Streamline AI auditing as a form of governance

Standardise the practice of AI auditing. A certain level of standardisation in AI auditing would contribute to the growth and contextualisation of these practices in the Indian healthcare sector. Similarly, it would also aid in decision-making among implementing institutions.

Build organisational knowledge and inter-stakeholder collaboration. It is imperative to build knowledge and capacity among technical experts, healthcare professionals, and auditors on the technical details of the underlying architecture and socioeconomic realities of public health. Hence, collaboration and feedback are essential to enhance model development and AI auditing.

Prioritise transparency and public accountability in auditing standards. Given that most healthcare institutions procure externally developed AI systems, some form of internal or external AI audit would contribute to better public accountability and transparency of these technologies.

Centre public good in India’s AI industrial policy

Adopt focused and transparent approaches to investing in and financing AI projects. An equitable distribution of AI spending and associated benefits is essential to guarantee that these investments and their applications extend beyond private healthcare, and that implementation approaches prioritise the public good. This would involve investing in entire AI life cycles instead of merely focusing on development and promoting transparent public–private partnerships.

Strengthen regulatory checks and balances for AI governance.
While an overarching law to regulate AI technologies may still be under debate, existing regulations may be amended to bring AI within their ambit. Furthermore, all regulations must be informed by stakeholder consultations to guarantee that the process is transparent, addresses the rights and concerns of all the parties involved, and prioritises the public good.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/ai-for-healthcare-understanding-data-supply-chain-and-auditability-in-india