Centre for Internet and Society

IRC16 - Proposed Session - #ExperienceMapIntentMap

sumandro — 2016-01-03T07:14:39Z

This is a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 by Anand Jha and Ashima Mittal.

Session

The session is intended to present a toolkit to deconstruct websites through navigation, experience them analogous to lived space through an information architecture. Every deconstructed component is read through content, imagery and affordance to unpack it's Intent/ subtext. A reclustering of the website is done around major intent/ subtext buckets thus revealing a completely different structure than the one experienced.

Plan

Explanation of toolkit is done through examples. Two exercise sessions follow where participants use the toolkit to carry out the activities discussed above.

Readings

None.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-experiencemapintentmap

IRC16 - Proposed Sessions

sumandro — 2015-11-23T06:44:05Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-sessions

IRC16 - Proposed Session - #DigitaIndiaUnpacked

sumandro — 2016-01-03T07:17:41Z

This is a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 by Deniz Duru Aydin and Amrita Sengupta.

Session

According to International Telecommunication Union (ITU), four billion people from developing countries remain offline, which represents 2/3 of the total population of developing countries. As policymakers around the world are increasingly becoming aware of the impacts of connectivity for socio-economic development, bridging the digital divide and bringing access to the unconnected are seen as one of the most critical policy issues of our time. Most recently, the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set an ambitious goal of "significantly increasing access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020.”

As a country with the third largest Internet user population - despite a low penetration rate of 24% - India has recently put its connectivity agenda to the forefront of national policy making with its Digital India campaign. At the same time, new business models put forward by global tech giants (with the partnership of local telecom providers) are also changing the ICT landscape (Facebook – Free basics, Google – internet Saathi). At the intersection of these two trends lies an increased focus on mobile broadband, which is today the most widely used substitute for computer-based internet access, not only in India but also elsewhere.

In this Workshop Session, we want to critically analyze the objectives of these policy proposals. We suggest the following themes, as starting points for discussion:

While mobile phones bridge certain kinds of social divide, it also a perpetrates a second level of digital divide where the user experience through a cheap mobile phone and a limited data package is different and more restricted than a PC / an advanced smart phone / tablet with high speed internet access.
The need for an effective database/measurement system which not only tracks the access but also the kind of access provided, its penetration into marginalized backward communities and how it is really impacting development as one sees it.

Plan

We will divide the participants into smaller groups and each group will be asked to engage in a series of topics and come back with 3 key recommendations in their proposed topic.

Series of questions / challenges / (subject to review as we work on the workshop materials):

How does the current digital India campaign perpetrate divides by not looking into the question of user experience?
Is it enough to look at the rural/Urban divide? Is there a need to look specifically at the Government defined backward classes / communities while one speaks of internet connectivity?
What is an effective measure of success for these programmes? How can we critically set up measures for this programme such that it looks not only at the user penetration but also look at things like user experience / digital literacy / specific penetration into backward communities, as well as opportunities for self-expression?

Readings

None.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-digitaindiaunpacked

IRC16 - Proposed Session - #UnconfiedArchivesUnboundHistories

sumandro — 2016-01-03T07:16:34Z

This is a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 by Kausik Bandopadhyay and Sugata Nandi.

Session

The archive as we know it today was an official invention of the nineteenth century. It was taken to be a repository of information which aided and validated the creation of a new specialized scientific knowledge called History. With the archive was born was official histories. Being constituted of official documents the archive served official objectives. The professional historian born with the archive was a practitioner of a new science of the state, who produced knowledge verifiable at the archive. In the nineteenth century the archive served imperialist objectives, from the mid twentieth century it catered to states which emerged from erstwhile colonies and continued to serve official interests while producing histories which often rendered the earlier histories into mere cultural artifacts of a bygone age devoid of scholarly value. Through this period historians remained bound to archives which granted them access and they were compelled to narrowly demarcate territories. i.e. states, provinces within them or even smaller areas like a city or a village, which were to become their subjects. With the coming of the Internet the archive is now taking on a new meaning altogether as it no longer confined spatially. With the easy availability of technology for creation and preservation of documents and their public accessibility , the archive is being constituted and re-constituted continuously. As it is no longer bound down by statist objectives alone the questions come up: a) are we in the threshold of the demise of official histories? And, b) has time come for de-territorialization of histories altogether?

Plan

Abstracts of three hundred words are invited which critically assess the archive today from this perspective and its implications for history writing taking into consideration three works on archives.