Centre for Internet and Society

Vote for the Everyday Digital Native Video Contest!

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T12:32:00Z

The Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos are super excited to present the final videos in the Everyday Digital Native Video Contest. We invite readers to vote for the TOP 5 Videos. The finalists will each win EUR500! Voting closes March 31, 2012

Who’s the Everyday Digital Native? This global video contest has the answer

They effect social change through social media, place their communities on the global map, and share a spiritual connection with the digital world - Meet the Everyday Digital Native

The Everyday Digital Native video contest has got its pulse on what makes youths from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds connect with one another in the global community – it’s an affinity for digital technologies and Web 2.0-mediated platforms coupled with a drive to spearhead social change. The contest invited people from around the world to make a video that would answer the question, ‘Who is the Everyday Digital Native?’. Following a jury-based selection process, the final videos are now online and open for public voting.

Run by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) with the support of Dutch NGO HIVOS, the contest will see the top five videos with the most votes declared winners on April 1, 2012. The 12 finalists in the video, who come from different parts of the globe, are each vying for the top prize of USD 500 and a chance to have their shorts screened in a film screening and panel discussion hosted by CIS.

Referring to the theme of the contest, Dr Nishant Shah, Director of Research and Co-founder of the Centre, says that the contest aims at highlighting the alternative users of digital technologies. These are people who are often not accounted for either in mainstream discourses of changemakers or in academic biopics on digital natives. “The 12 video proposals show that the everyday digital native does not wake up in the morning and think, ‘hmmm today I will change the world’. And yet, in their everyday lives, when they see the possibility of producing a change in their immediate environments, they turn to the digital to find networks that can start a change”, says Shah.

Apart from the top five public selections, the jury members will be instrumental in picking their two favorites among the finalists. Talking about the range of ideas that participants sent in jury member Leon Tan, a media-art historian, cultural theorist and psychoanalyst based in Gothenburg, Sweden, says, “The contest is an exciting project as it has the potential to portray the lives of digital natives from different corners of the world. The generosity of the contestants in creating video proposals is commendable as is the range of ideas suggested. The ideas address both the opportunities and risks of what we might call digital life.”

Adds Shashwati Talukdar, a filmmaker and jury member from India, “It was really interesting to see how different all the proposals were. Some of them were taking the notion of digital native as a personal one and some were very clearly political and sought an intervention in the real world. Dutch digital media artist and jury member Jeroen van Loon refers to a proposal from the USA where the participant wanted to explore the possibility of unplugging from his digital life. “It’s very interesting how digital natives question their own world. The proposals are good examples of how technology and culture constantly change each other. We can learn a lot from the global digital natives.”

Profiles of the finalists and their videos can be viewed here.

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

Pinning the Badge

nishant — 2015-05-08T12:34:23Z

In a world of competition, badging provides a holistic way of grading and learning, where individual talents are realised and the knowledge of the group is used.

The article by Nishant Shah was published in the Indian Express on March 18, 2012.

I write this column fresh out of being a judge at the Digital Media and Learning contest on “Badging for Life-long Learning” in San Francisco. While the contest focused largely on the American education system and its future, the idea of badging that each person brings a set of skills to a study or workplace is useful to think about, in connection with India. We have now spent some time, in India, hearing about how education in the country has been ruined. There is a constant narrative of the university in shambles, where we seem to lack competent teachers, engaged students, and the resources to build efficient infrastructure for learning. This argument also positions employment as the only aim of education, reducing our humanist and social sciences legacies to skill-based information transmission.

Digital technologies emerge as a cure for the problems that contemporary education seems to be facing. The availability of resources at affordable costs for anybody online, has been one of the biggest promises of the internet, and it hopes to build a better learning environment and better learners. The condition of being connected to a much larger network of educators and learners, also offers us the possibilities of producing better and innovative knowledge structures. There is also an inherent ambition that the introduction of new digital competencies and skills will encourage both students and teachers to integrate their learning and pedagogy with their lived reality, producing responsible people and citizens. However, in all these expectations around the role of the digital technology in transforming learning, the idea of grading and evaluation remains unquestioned.

Even in the most radical restructuring of education systems, grades remain an absolute form of quantifying and measuring skills that the student is supposed to demonstrate. Grading might take up different forms — numbers, letters, percentile, etc — or it might take up different methods — continuous grading, take-home exams — but it eventually becomes the only badge that the student takes into the “real world”.

The idea of a badge as an alternative to this particular kind of quantification oriented learning that sees the grade as a final evaluation and in some ways, a termination of the learning process, opens up huge possibilities for how we understand learning. The badge is not imagined as yet another kind of grading, but instead it is recognition of certain skills and competences that we bring to and build in classrooms with our peers. A badge allows the students to recognise their own investment in the learning process, enabling them to realise their particular skills on the way to learning. In any learning environment, students play many roles. Some are good as connectors, some serve as conduits of information, some are good in specific areas and need help with others, some are mentors, some are translators of knowledge, some help in creating new forms of knowledge. Unfortunately, most of our grading patterns refuse to acknowledge and credit these skills which are crucial for surviving the academic world. The ability of the students to badge themselves, and others in their peer groups, acknowledging their contributions to their collective learning, might be the motivation and encouragement that we are looking for.

A peer-2-peer system of badging, which enables learners to be critically aware not only of their own interaction with knowledge, but also recognises the ways in which larger communities of knowledge — including the peers and teachers — opens up an extraordinary way of thinking about education. It disrupts the competitive modes of cut-throat modes of education systems we are building and allows us to re-think the function of education and the role of learners in educational environments. The digital systems of social networking and reputation management, already perform some of these tasks, which is why, a student who might not do well in class might be a YouTube sensation, finding thousands of followers worldwide. Or a student who might not show research aptitude in class might be editing complex Wikipedia entries on subjects that high-level researchers are engaging with. All these digital systems acknowledge the roles that people play in learning and knowledge production, and in that reward of recognition, provide incentives for learners to re-examine their role within knowledge systems.

Such a system of badging, that exceeds the static classroom, allows for students to become stakeholders in their own education, building connected communities of learning. It hints at what the future of education is going to look like. More importantly, it offers a new way of thinking about technology and its role in redesigning education, which is not merely about introducing technologies into classrooms and continuing with the traditional modes of learning through new technology skills. Instead, we have a model for what learning means, how we interact with conditions of knowledge consumption and production, and how, we can form global communities of learning which might find an anchor in the classrooms but also transcend the brick-and-mortar institutions of learning as we understand them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/pinning-the-badge

Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action

praskrishna — 2012-04-03T07:15:23Z

At UC Santa Cruz, on Monday, March 5, 2012, Nishant Shah gave a lecture on "Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action". The lecture focused more on the India Against Corruption case-study rather than the theoretical framework to understanding revolutions.

This talk is a thought-in-progress inquiry into the radical claims and potentials of citizen action which has emerged in the last few years in several parts of the world. It seeks to show how citizen action is not necessarily a radical form of politics and that we need to make a distinction between Resistances and Revolutions. It locates Resistance as an endemic condition of governmentality within a State-Citizen-Market relationship and shows how it often strengthens the status-quo rather than radically undermining it. Looking at one particular instance of a campaign against corruption in India, Nishant is seeking to build a framework that can be deployed to understand the dissonance between the claims of the future and the practices of the present that gets produced in such instances of citizen action.

Follow the original on the UC Santa Cruz website
Also see this

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/questioning-the-radical-potential-of-citizen-action

An Experiment in Social Engineering: The Cultural Context of an Avatar

praskrishna — 2012-03-06T06:03:19Z

Pramod K. Nayar reviews Nilofar Shamim Ansher’s essay ‘Engineering a Cyber Twin’ (Digital Alternatives with a Cause? Book One: To Be).

‘Engineering a Cyber Twin’ is an attempt to inventory the ontological features of an avatar. Beginning with the assumption that representation of the self – which implies, at once, recognition of one’s self but also the publicly available narrative of the self – is controlled and controllable, Ansher moves on to representation online. What are the cues that enable viewers of avatars to recognize Ansher’s avatar? What are the parameters of evaluating avatar behaviour, as opposed to, say offline behaviour? Ansher here intervenes with a significant question: why do we always have to ‘read’ the avatar as divided from or compared with the self? Is it an ‘either/or’ equation between self and online avatar?

Examining her cybertwin on MyCybertwin.com, Ansher describes how she designed her avatar. The process included filling out a detailed questionnaire from which the avatar takes its shape, attitudes, values and determines its responses. Essentially, as Ansher discovers, the ‘cyber twin runs on scripts running in my head [sic]’. The personality type to which the twin belongs to must be chosen from a set of six types – which, as Ansher correctly points out, leaves little room for fluidity beyond what the programmer has designed. This also implies that Ansher’s self and the cyber twin function within severe constraints of personality and responses to the personality of the other. When Ansher communicates with the cyber twin the twin picks up keywords from Ansher’s script and conveys them back as its (her?) ‘response’, all suggesting a packaged response. This ensures that there are not too many permutations and combinations or ‘layers’ (Ansher’s term) to the cyber twin’s personality.

Ansher wonders what it would take for the twin to discover motivation, or human ‘sentiments’ such as love or care. Does the avatar really constitute a separate entity, or is it a severely limited extension of what Ansher has chosen from the questionnaire. Ansher has deeper metaphysical questions that connect archives (of information, including the questionnaire) with larger issues of an ethical nature. For example, Ansher notes that she can’t teach her twin ‘good’ and bad’ behaviour from just a questionnaire. Ansher concludes that the twin has not ‘earned the right’ to represent her as her online version.

This is a pithy essay that explores the exhilarations, excitements and tensions of online lives (such avatar lives quietly avoid the domain of messy body functions and fluids). Ansher is spot on in her evaluation of the cyber twin as a limited ‘identity’ where the code – the DNA, or the questionnaire – is itself based on a very short list of normative values and personality ‘types’. She is also correct to argue that the self in real life is not a set of stock responses even if these responses are what have been socialized into us. The self evolves, alters, shifts and these are not always programmable or predictable. Ansher rightly does not go so far as to explore sentience in computers and programming (the stuff of sci-fi), but is concerned with the dynamics of interaction between a sentient creature (her real self) and the avatar.

The ‘engineering’ in Ansher’s title must take on an ironic tone: the avatar is an experiment in social engineering as well where the norms of self-making and meaning-making are cultural and engineering an avatar with stock responses (to which then Ansher responds in the chat) with predilections, preferences and prejudices constitutes a kind of cultural work. When for instance Ansher writes: ‘she [the avatar] doesn’t add layers to her identity so much as reinforce the various traits that go into defining it’ she has isolated the key issue here: the cultural work that produces avatars and online iconography with specific traits are trapped within and limited by the contexts in which real selves grow. Both partake of each other: the cultural work produces the Ansher-self and this Ansher-self produces her avatar. The difference of course is that the Ansher-self is not fixed, is complicated and defiantly unpredictable.

This is an important essay that sidesteps the risks of both hagiography (of digital worlds) and the panic Luddite reactions (not responses, but reactions) to the ‘other’ world. I would have liked a bit more – to be fair, this might be entirely due to the space constraints in the volume – on the eversion of the digital world that we now see: where the digital, the cyber- or the ‘other’ world is not just out there but around us, in us, since we occupy, almost simultaneously, the offline and online today. So, to answer the question raised in the first paragraph, one does not see the cybertwin in terms of an ‘either/or’ with the self. It is simultaneously the radically different other and the extension of the self. The self itself is a series of posturings, role-playings and performances. The online avatar is also one more of these. The presentation of the self in everyday life, to adapt the title of Goffman’s pioneering work, now includes status messages, scraps, posts, tweets and avatars. The narrative of the self is now inclusive of the sometimes fictional narratives put online by the self. Profile and impression management is also about how one dresses online.

It would also be interesting to examine the various clusters of avatars in such services as MyCybertwin.com or Second Life, to develop a taxonomy of avatars. If, as suggested above, it is cultural work that carries over into designing avatars then such a taxonomy might say something about the societies and structures from which such avatars emerge.

Ansher’s essay draws attention to the complicated ontology of the avatar but also reflects, with considerable intensity, on the dynamic relation of online and offline selves. Thus she eschews a simplistic binary of offline/online, preferring to focus on the domain of interaction between the two ‘personae’ of the same self.

Pramod K. Nayar

Pramod K. Nayar teaches at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India. His recent publications include Writing Wrongs: The Cultural Construction of Human Rights in India (Routledge 2012), States of Sentiment: Exploring the Cultures of Emotion (Orient BlackSwan 2011), An Introduction to New Media and Cybercultures (Wiley-Blackwell 2010), Postcolonialism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum 2010), Packaging Life: Cultures of the Everyday (Sage 2009), Seeing Stars: Spectacle, Society and Celebrity Culture (Sage 2009) among others. His forthcoming books include Digital Cool: Life in the Age of New Media (Orient BlackSwan) and Colonial Voices: The Discourses of Empire (Wiley-Blackwell).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/media-coverage/an-experiment-in-social-engineering

How to Put Up a Facebook Resistance

Oliver Leistert — 2012-02-21T08:47:15Z

Review of Marc Stumpel’s essay, "Mapping the Politics of Web 2.0: Facebook Resistance", in Digital Alternatives with a Cause Book 2: To Think, pp.24-31 by Oliver Leistert.

Facebook is right now in a peculiar situation: the planned IPO bears a lot of risks and puts pressure on the Western market leader of Social Networking Sites. The current discussion about Facebook's timeline is only the tip of the iceberg, a symptom of a larger conflict that lurks behind it: how much direct marketing are Facebook users willing to take? How many drastic top-down changes of the user's Facebook experience are possible unless they understand that their presence on this site and what they do there is in tension with the company's goals that provides this digital environment?

Stumpel addresses Facebook as a communication instance that is subordinated by power lines. He refers to Manuel Castell's notion of power in the network society. This characterization then is expanded to the concept of protocological control as outlined by Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker. While Castell's power concept still very much resonates within conventional power theories of the political sciences, which proclaim that someone holds power while someone else doesn't, Galloway and Thacker open this notion towards the micro-elements within power relations of a networked society. Considering software and protocol as agents of power that proscribe the way how communication flows are possible, they open the black box of technology and understand it, like many other Science and Technology Studies Scholars, as enmeshed into societal relations, as products of societal relations and as production sites of societal relations. Code is law, code is an executable materiality, and code is flawed. The point of design is one possible point of resistance: “the possibilities afforded by Facebook to its users are infinite only as long as they subscribe to the normative operating logic of its design” and thus Stumpel's project, Fbresistance.com, plays with new designs to provoke new use.

Since many debates about Facebook either concentrate on how to use it the right way (i.e. more privacy aware) or ways to leave Facebook completely, Stumpel's proposal is original as it discusses how to empower users within Facebook, which at first glance looks counterintuitive and not so promising. And of course, the effects are limited because the remaining part of a systemic logic reduces the means of resistance to the degree that the key components of Facebook use need to remain operational. This is not a proposal for the n-th new, decentralized and non-commercial geek-affine network. In a sense, Stumpel reconsiders within the realm of an undemocratic regime the kind of bottom-up approaches that both, put pressure on Facebook and make it at least look more like an instance of software that the user has produced. As he writes “control is exercised through predefined options, preferences and possible actions which are imposed onto the user” (28) therefore a line of resistance, and thus empowerment, is to eliminate such predefined options and invent new ones beyond Facebook's regime.

These means are limited technically as the point of interrogation is on the client side. Most effectively, Facebook Resistance as Stumpel envisions it, is a tool [1] to change the User Interface beyond the default lines defined by either browser setting or the user's Facebook options page. The client-sided site of action has a surprising effect that goes clearly beyond what the company wants: because JavaScript is a powerful instance in the machinic process that affects not only how one sees the screen, but can change functionality and processes.

But there is a downside here: as much as Facebook interacts with single users and single users are replicating their subjectivity on Facebook in an opportunistic fashion, to use Greasemonkey [2] as tool of resistance keeps the effects of change limited to the individual user's page and screen. Friends that check a Facebook page that has been changed with Greasemonkey tools will not see these changes. They remain excluded from this resistance. This is because a client-side resistance designed with Greasemonkey cannot be shared and cannot become a common experience. Here, I think, the proposal to challenge Facebook within Facebook's realm reaches its limits and it becomes clear that the protocological regime is stable as long as its servers are not affected. The “exploit” that Galloway and Thacker seek as the contemporary form of resistance within digital environments need to be placed within the network and needs to have a bi-directional communication capacity to reach out. Stumpel argues that applying client-sided Javascript already is a way to exploit the protocological regime [3].

At the core of the rhetorics of Web 2.0 prosumerism is the blurring of production and consumption and the proclamation of the user as a productive entity. Stumpel's argument lies somewhat in between two worlds: rightly claiming that code is the key to digital autonomy and client side code cannot deliver this autonomy, like an alternative Social Networking Site that offers open protocols so that any other code base can connect. Scripting away one's Facebook page is a good start to understand the materiality of one's online presence.

A way out of this systemic dilemma is to publish screenshots of how one sees the page changed with self made scripts. This method has already proven to be a great aid in circumventing censorship [4], which is just another regime of what-you-see-is-what-we-want-you-to-see (WYSIWWWYTS). This as well shows the limits of power of code: image files can transport human centric layers that machines are (still) not capable to decode. Thus, by and large images remain a non-object in the code regime. This is a cheap and useful exploit.

As a lot of people don't feel the agency to leave Facebook altogether because they have invested too much of their social life into the machine, already one can consider this as Facebook's real power: the social lock-in. Thus all considerations to challenge Facebook from within its own domain and regime are ways to irritate Facebook's basic layer: their economy which is based on selling ads and data through standardized forms and sites. If a critical number of Facebook sites would be DIY styled, many clients of Facebook and the huge armada of third-parties behind it would fast be worried about their assumption that with Facebook, communal communications have been successfully commodified in a stable way that allows investments of billions of dollars.

Oliver Leistert
Oliver Leistert is a media researcher focusing on mobile, online, and protest media. Currently a research fellow at the Center for Media and Communication Studies at the Central European University, Budapest, he recently co-edited, together with Theo Röhle, the first critical volume about Facebook in German: Generation Facebook. Über das Leben im Social Net. He runs a little blog: http://nomedia.noblogs.org

[1].http://fbresistance.com/

[2].https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey

[3].For a larger list of scripts that are affecting one's view on Facebook, see https://userscripts.org/tags/facebook

[4].The art work of Christoph Wachter and Matthias Jud called Picidae takes screenshots of a site from one node of the internet and sends the view to a user somewhere else: http://net.picidae.net/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/media-coverage/facebook-resistance

Digital Natives Video Contest

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T12:35:27Z

The Everyday Digital Native Video Contest has its top five winners through public voting.

A Day in the Life of a Digital Native: Story scripted, shot and edited by Leandra (Cole) Flor. The video is an extension of Cole's photo essay "Mirror Exercises" conceptualized for 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause' Book 1 To Be. Download the book.

Top 5 winners of the Digital Native video contest selected through public votes. From left to right: Marie Jude Bendiola, T.J. KM, Thomas Burks, John Musila and MJ.

The Jury Prize for Two Best Videos goes to John Musila (Kenya) and Marie Jude Bendiola (Singapore)! Congratulations to all winners. The Top 5 winners win the grand prize of EUR 500 each!

Our Top 10 contestants: Click on their profile to watch their videos

	Marie Jude Bendiola I come from a third world country where technology seemed to be hard to reach back in the 90s; especially by the not-so-privileged. As we progressed, technology has not only become ubiquitous (in malls, various institutions and technological hubs) but also, it has come to be used by the common man. My video will answer how technology bridges the gap between dreams and reality. It will be a fusion of documentary and re-enactment of real life events and dramas. Read More
	Cijo Abraham Mani The power of digital media will be presented to audience with the help of showing tweet-a-thon panel discussions, blood aid tweets getting spread, etc. Read More
	TJ K.M. My video explores the spiritual aspect of digital technology and how rather than getting in the way of our spiritual expression, it is actually bringing us face to face with it, if only we choose to look. The video will be a mixture of live action and stop motion animation/puppetry where digital devices take on a transcendent character similar to nature spirits in various cultures. I plan to investigate the tendency to exclude digital devices and technology from being categorized alongside nature as if it is somehow exempt from or superior to this category. Using symbolism and motifs from various cultures such as the Native American Hopi, Balinese Hinduism and Japanese Shintoism, my video will create a world where the technology we use daily is viewed not just as a means for socio-cultural exchange and communication but is available for the nurturing of our souls if we so choose. Read More
	Thomas Burks We have a small production company in Birmingham, Alabama. I was hired on a year ago to do film and commercials for them as they expand into advertising and video coverage of events. We only have about 3 employees including myself, working out of our homes. We recently acquired a space to open a studio and retail location downtown where we live. We use Facebook, blogs, and viral marketing all the time to get our name out there. Our account executive is constantly monitoring our Facebook for client orders and bookings. We are beginning to use twitter to provide information more fluidly to people. We believe this might be a year of growth for our small company, as we are becoming able to provide much higher quality content. We're fully digital; constantly updating our websites and blogs, and I believe we would be able to tell a great digital story. We submit numerous small films and skits; we cover awesome concerts, and rely so heavily on the digital world to show our content. That will be the gist of our video. Read More
	John Musila Map Kibera Trust is an organization based in Kenya’s Kibera slums. Using digital gadgets and technology, they have transformed the community by placing it on the map as it was only seen as forest when viewed on a map. They also film stories around the community and share them with the world on their YouTube channel and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Through this they have been able to highlight and raise awareness about the challenges the community faces. Our video would show Kibera’s role in bringing about change. Read More
	Andrés Felipe Arias Palma I think many people are digital natives unknowingly. Being a digital native is a relationship with activism and society, not as they initially thought. It was a condition of being born in specific times and external factors. In the video, I will interview people about who and what is a digital native? How to use the Internet? What are the advantages and disadvantages for society where everything is run with the power of the Internet? Read More
	Martin Potter Over a period of nearly four years, moving across small towns in Australia and South East Asia, I have seen the most extraordinary innovations at a local community level. My video will focus on these local stories with global impact. I am pursuing a PhD in participatory media and this will lend a uniquely academic perspective on the concept of collaboration, community life and innovation. Read More
	E. James Rajasekaran I live in the temple town of Madurai in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. I am a social worker and the plight of people living in slims is something that my NGO is closely associated with. My video will bring out the efforts of the people who live in the slums of Madurai. Read More
	Anand Jha Bangalore is home to a lot of technology start-ups. A lot of geeks, who find it limiting to work for corporations, are driving a very open source-oriented, frugally-built and extremely demanding culture. While their products are standing at the bleeding edge of technology, their personal lives too are constantly driven on the edge, every launch being a make or break day for them. The project would aim at capturing their stories, their frustration and motivation, looking at the possibilities of Indian software scene moving beyond the services and back-end office culture into a more risk prone but more passionate business of technology. Read More
	MJ As a digital native living in a developing country, I have carried out a series of both online and offline projects, which have always striven to benefit Zimbabweans in a number of ways since 2000. These projects have greatly increased my interactions with computers. I might say, I got married to a computer in 2000 when I bought my first PC; in a way, my relationship with my computer is intimate. Even though this computer I bought is an old 386 machine made obsolete by the faster Pentium III models, this did not change my love for the computer. My video will focus on a dream-like moment of my digital life. Read more

Jury Members

Shashwati Talukdar Shashwati Talukdar grew up in India where her engagement with theatre and sculpture led to filmmaking, and a Masters degree from the AJ Kidwai Mass Communication Research Center in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She developed an interest in American Avant-Garde film and eventually got an MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, Philadelphia (1999). Her work covers a wide range of forms, including documentary, narrative and experimental. Her work has shown at venues including the Margaret Mead Festival, Berlin, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kiasma Museum of Art and the Whitney Biennial. She has been supported by entities including the Asian Cine Fund in Busan, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts among others.
Leon Tan Leon Tan, PhD, is a media-art historian, cultural theorist and psychoanalyst based in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has written on art, media, globalization and copyright in journals such as CTheory and Ephemera, and curated media-art projects and art symposia in international sites such as KHOJ International Artists’ Association (New Delhi, 2011), ISEA (Singapore, 2008) and Digital Arts Week (Zurich, 2007). He is currently researching media-art practices in India, and networked museums as an expanded field of cultural memory making.
Jeroen van Loon Jeroen, digital media artist, investigates the (non-) impact of digital technology on our lives. For two months he went analogue, refrained from connecting to the World Wide Web, and communicated through his Analogue Blog. He is currently working on Life Needs Internet in which he travels around the world and collects people's personal handwritten internet stories.
Becky Band Jain Becky Band Jain is a non-profit communications specialist and blogs on everything from technology to psychology and culture. She spent the last five years living in India and she’s now based in New York. She’s a dedicated yoga and meditation practitioner and is passionate about ICTD and new media.
Namita A. Malhotra Namita A. Malhotra is a legal researcher and media practitioner and a core member of Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore, India. Her areas of interest are image, technology, media and law, and her work takes the form of interdisciplinary research, video and film making and exploring possibilities of recombining material, practice and discipline. She is also a founder member of Pad.ma (Public Access Digital Media Archive) which is a densely annotated online video archive.

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

Who is a Digital Native?

anfearpa — 2012-04-04T10:54:22Z

Name(s): Andrés Felipe Arias Palma
Location: Barranquilla, Colombia
Age: 22
Profession: Journalist and Communications Analyst

I think many people are digital natives unknowingly. Being a digital native is a relationship with activism and society, not as they initially thought. It was a condition of being born in specific times and external factors. In the video, I will interview people about who and what is a digital native? How to use the Internet? What is internet advantages and disadvantages for society where everything is interconnected to the Web.

Video Genre: Interview footage on video

Interview

On being a Digital Native
I think that a Digital Native is somebody who has made technology a basic tool to cover all of her or his own needs. Anyway, there aren’t any specific features that can define a digital native because it’s a condition you define for yourself. I don’t know if I’m a digital native, but technology has been very useful for my work and social initiatives.

You agree with a perception that the digital native is typically a “White, American, Young, Male” who’s always connected to his gadgets and apathetic to social issues?
I think it’s just a stereotype, but there are people who don’t have any social life and are stuck at home, online, all day long; and there is the person that works with social projects and makes use of technology as an instrument to optimize the labor as well. I think that the digital natives can be many, starting from being a web developer to responding to a simple tweet - you choose on what side or what kind of person you want to be.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
It is very important to know which one of the tools we employ is functional for what we want and what we need. For example, I am not going to use twitter to target a community that doesn’t have any idea of what Web 2.0 is; in this case, perhaps it is more useful to use some other kind of technology or service. At present, I support the “Asociación Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica” on virtual workshops and with social media. Thus, I work with popular audiovisual education.

How effective are digital activism campaigns in raising awareness about an issue in comparison to traditional activism such as protest march or hunger strikes?
The traditional protest will never fade out. What’s happening is that the network and the new technologies are making facts more visible, therefore issues are more transparent today and people are more aware. It depends on how each activist strategizes for his / her campaign. The real problem is when people mobilize support only through one platform and neglect the other. Both, digital and traditional (activism) go hand in hand.

The ‘Get Kony’ campaign created by US-based NGO Invisible Children has created controversy. What are your thoughts on the campaign?
Although I haven’t seen it, the news and comments on the video brings to my mind the image of the typical ‘Young, White, American, Male’ stereotype that we just spoke about. However, it’s worth mentioning that the “Get Kony” campaign has captured the attention of people, maybe because it uses a lot of audiovisual material and has received support from mainstream media, so perhaps something good might come out of it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/who-is-a-digital-native

Deployed

jha.anand — 2012-04-04T10:56:39Z

Name(s): Anand Jha
Location: Bangalore, India
Age: 30
Profession: Information Architect, Artist

Bangalore (India) is home to a lot of technology start-ups. A lot of geeks, who find it limiting to work for corporations, are driving a very open source-oriented, frugally-built and extremely demanding culture. While their products are standing at the bleeding edge of technology, their personal lives, too, are constantly driven on the edge; every launch being a make or break day for them. The project would aim at capturing their story, their frustration and motivation, looking at the possibilities of Indian software scene moving beyond the services and back-end office culture into a more risk-prone but more passionate business of technology.

Video Genre

Documentary

Interview

What do you understand by the term Digital Native? Do you consider yourself one? Are there factors that contribute to identifying oneself with the term?
Digital Natives are those who are comfortable with a part of their social and professional lives being spent over digital ecosystems. I consider myself one. Considering that this digital ecosystem is still out of reach for many people belonging to the other side of the digital divide, I feel there are clear socio-economic and geographic fault lines differentiating those who are digital natives and those who aren’t.

There is a perception that the digital native is typically a Young, White, Male, American – a geek hooked to his gadgets and apathetic about social issues. Comment.
Stereotypes exist for a reason. The developed countries of Europe and the Americas are the early adopters of digital technology and there will be a trickledown effect on the rest of the world. But the point about digital natives NOT being concerned with social causes is the part I do not agree with. The Internet has been the springboard for several people’s movements across the globe. I remember stumbling upon riseup.net and Pirate Bay in 2005, and most of what the Web is made of today has been politico-social in nature, including the FOSS frameworks that empower it. These are the very same youngsters who initiated these movements.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
Yes they can help attract attention to issues but this has to be matched with onsite campaign. With most of the television and print media being controlled by mega-corporations or funded by them, I see a lot of people consuming information from the P2P information channels. I rely mostly on mailing lists, news forums and video channels run by popular activist networks. I was once involved in managing and running such a mailing list, now I am just a consumer.

How effective is digital activism in comparison to traditional forms of campaigning?
Digital campaigns definitely have an impact as a lot of the traditional media outlets are now reflecting information from popular internet broadcasters-aggregators. But I still remain skeptical about the kind of issues that receive focus and how effectively these campaigns contribute to non-urban bases.

What would you say to critics who label digital native campaigns as ‘slacktivism’?
There is a certain audience on Facebook, and most of them are consumerists: they consume godmen and grocery with the same active passive behavior, with little time and patience to get into details and interdependencies. Their responses are also pretty moralistic and shaped up by the same assembly line thought processes that induces them to make the most important decisions of their lives through a template. I am a bit scared about the enthusiasm of “doing something”. People have spent entire lives understanding a lot of these issues that come from public spaces before they make even the slightest intervention. That degree of sensitivity and integrity is required for any solution to evolve. I don’t see that happening with online activism.

Are we seeing a trend where digital natives are more involved with local (neighborhood) causes than with global issues such as environment, poverty, corruption?
I wish there was a trend like that. From where I see it (and I am limited by what I can see). I guess people are broadcasting less and less about local issues. Social Web has still not been able to translate the neighborhood camaraderie into a digital forum buzzing with activity. And since the broadcasts are about generic topics concerning the globe, most of the momentum fizzles out. Often local issues also inspire a more physical behavior….I don’t know if the web is a space for contemplation or for action, especially when we talk about local issues.

Comment on the role of ICTs in fostering citizen action.
Access and agency are two important words that come to my mind. More people should be able to use ICT and in ways that suit them. Localization is still underserved in India. Accessibility in terms of most of the online media being inaccessible to senior-citizens, more demanding of high bandwidth, less on anonymity, English being the dominant language online, etc., are some of the problems that we face. I feel the real potential of such an ecosystem has still not been realized; there is a lot of space for people to start working on. Also, the question of what informs people and how, who is curating information and creating viewpoints and manufacturing opinions, how can information be true to its context and yet not sound like propaganda are frameworks that need rethinking and resolution.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/deployed

From The Wild Into The Digital World

kiberanewsnetwork — 2012-04-04T10:53:52Z

Jury Prize Winner and Top 5 Finalist


Name(s): John Musila
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Age: 24
Profession: Volunteer in Map Kibera Trust

Video Genre: Documentary

Interview

What do you understand by the term Digital Native? Do you consider yourself one? Do digital natives belong to a particular socio-economic-cultural demographic?
Digital Native is a person who uses digital technology in their day to day life; it can be a phone, computer, cameras, or any other form of digital technology. I am a digital native since I have grown up surrounded by and using digital technology. You do not have to be from any particular socio-economic background to be considered a digital native as long as you are using digital technology in your life then you are a digital native.

Do you agree with the perception that the digital native belongs to a certain socio-economic background from a developed nation?
I disagree because a digital native can be anyone from any part of the world. The world today is a ‘global village’ and whatever gadgets a young American guy uses, there is another Young Asian/ African / European/Latin person who is using similar gadgets for a different purpose. It can be for their own amusement or it can be for bringing about social change, for example an American can be using his gadget to entertain him/herself and another person on another part of the world (like where the Arab Spring took place), could be using a similar gadget to share information on what’s happening with the rest of the world.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
Yes, digital natives can make an impact by using social media, mobile phones and other digital technology to create awareness by sharing information, mobilizing people and encouraging them to take necessary action required. I am part of the Avaaz campaigning community that brings people- powered politics to decision making worldwide.

How does digital activism differ from traditional forms of ground campaigning?

Digital activism is a very effective way of raising awareness since a lot of people are spending most of their time online and it is easy to get them to join your cause as long as they believe in it. This can be done through signing online petitions, getting people to pressure decision makers using social media through their Facebook pages and twitter account, and encourage people to join the campaign by just a click of a button.

Are digital natives taking the easy way out by setting up Facebook pages to ‘Save the Planet’, clicktivism as it’s called?
No, they are not taking the easy way out because information is power and one of the ways to share the information is creating the Facebook pages by which people can be made aware of issues. I believe the likes, clicks and shares are the first steps that need to be taken before going out there and doing something.

A recent example of digital activism is the Get Kony video campaign. What is your response to the criticism it has received?
I have seen the video and it is a great campaign. The use of social media was very effective, clearly showing how clicking, liking and sharing can have such a great impact. The response is great and I believe the campaign will succeed since more people are joining the initiative from different parts of the world. Although it has been done by a White, male, American, there should be more of us digital native, in places like Africa, rising and joining in to do such campaigns.

Citizen action and ICT
We live in a global community connected by digital technology and it is very rare to find a part of the world where technology is not being applied. The power is shifting back to the people and the only way we are going to succeed is through encouraging fellow citizens to take action through use of ICT tools.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/from-the-wild-into-the-digital-world

Our Love, Digital

ansher.m — 2012-02-18T15:16:59Z

Name(s): Ansher Mohamed
Location: Hyderabad, India
Age: 31
Profession: Software Programmer

Video Genre: Animation

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/our-love-digital

With No Distinction

ottebya — 2012-04-04T10:52:06Z

My video explores the spiritual aspect of digital technology and how rather than getting in the way of our spiritual expression, it is actually bringing us face to face with it, if only we choose to look.

Name(s): TJ K.M
Location: New York NY, United States
Age: 33
Profession: Performance Artist

Our perceptions create our reality and technology is an extension of our perception. "With No Distinction" explores the spiritual aspect of digital technology and how rather than getting in the way of our spiritual potential it is bringing us face to face with it.

.Video Genre

Stopmation and live footage

Interview

What do you understand by the term Digital Native? Do you consider yourself one?
A “native” is somebody who has a love for a place and whose heart & soul are connected to that place. To me a “digital native” is anyone who has a place inside of them where technology grows and nurtures their soul.

There is a perception that digital natives occupy certain demography, namely, the Young, White, Male, American who are often apathetic to social causes. Do you agree?
I think often digital technology is used superficially to augment and support the ego. Anyone belonging to any demographic can fall victim to this shallow use of technology, just as anyone can become a true digital native using technology to transcend the limitations of their ego.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
Absolutely, digital technology has a very unique ability to be utilized by anyone in the world with a creative ability to apply it to achieve their goals. I personally use digital technology to discover and support causes that I would not ordinarily be informed about from other media. This allows me to direct my energies where I choose and not have those choices made for me by media companies and governments.

Ground activism has changed in the last decade. How effective are digital campaigns in raising awareness about an issue?
I believe digital technology is most effective when it is partnered with real world street activism and gatherings of people face to face. On its own digital technology is profoundly effective at creating awareness about issues but that alone is not enough to effect lasting changes.

Critics refer to digital natives with the pejorative term ‘slacktivist’. You agree?
The first and most important step to any campaign for any cause is in the minds of the people. “Likes, Clicks and Shares” are a valuable step towards reaching people who gather their opinions and determine their actions through digital technology.

A recent example of online activism is the ‘Get Kony 2012’ video campaign. Have you watched it?
Yes, it’s an incredibly powerful and imaginative work for a very worthwhile cause.

Are we seeing a trend where digital natives are more involved with local (neighborhood) causes than with global issues?
Everything is connected. One person making a personal choice on an issue in their daily life has as much importance as the largest global campaign. The small personal gestures lead to local gestures which in turn lead to global gestures, there is NO DISTINCTION.

Share your thoughts on ICT-led Citizen Action. Where do you see it headed?
The more we creatively embrace the “new” of any kind, technological or otherwise, and apply our imagination with our deepest Love, the more our world will resemble that Love.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/with-no-distinction

Get Busy Living

mesdes2006 — 2012-02-18T15:14:25Z

Name(s): Mesfin Gebeyhu
Location: Mekelle, Ethiopia
Age: 31
Profession: I am a lecturer at the department of Journalism and communication in Mekelle University-Ethiopia. Broadcast Journalism is my major field of study and i have been teaching television program production for the last 4 years.

Video Genre: Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/get-busy-living

Good Karma Online

frankoweaver — 2012-02-18T15:12:35Z

I create online content to promote good karma, such as Guarani Indian culture (natives of Paraguay) and environmental conservation. I then use social media to raise awareness about those causes.

Video Genre: Documentary

Frank Weaver

Location

Orlando, USA

Age

Profession: Manager at a retail store

I use filmmaking and social media to advocate causes close to my heart, such as indigenous rights in the South American rain forests where I was born and raised, and environmental conservation in my new homeland of Central Florida.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/good-karma-online

Digital Coverage in a Digital World

tjburks90 — 2012-04-04T10:53:19Z

Name(s): Thomas Burks
Location: Birmingham, AL USA
Age: 26
Profession: Cinematographer

Video Genre: Film

Interview

What do you understand by the term Digital Native? Do you consider yourself one?
The term digital native, I understand, is any person living a lifestyle dominated by technology. It is a facet in their day to day lives and a staple in
their structure and organization. I do consider myself a digital native; I spend more time a day dealing with technology than not. I don't think your background could have anything to do with someone's status as a digital native, unless their location and situation would keep them from accessing it. But the beauty of the internet and our way of life is that the world is much smaller today. Our window to the world is becoming a doorway.

There is a perception that a digital native is typical of a young, American geek who’s plugged in to his devices 24x7 and apathetic to social causes. You agree?
I agree that this perception exists. Most people's first thought about my country (U.S.) when you think of a techie or a social media addict is a hipster in a coffee shop with an indie band and a hemp beanie. But this is only in my country; I see people of all cultures and creeds flourishing with technology all the time, involved with causes and doing their bit for society, whether they come from America or other countries.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
Absolutely! Take the Kony 2012 campaign. Although it ended badly for the director, it caused a major buzz in less than a week. It's only a matter of time before pop culture takes a hold of it and we see it in major media like sitcoms and cartoons. I try to stay involved with film making endeavors going on around my town through Facebook and Twitter. I did a digital ad for "Operation Warm", a charity that provides coats to children in need.

Activism has changed in the last decade. How effective are online campaigns in raising awareness about an issue vis-à-vis onsite deployment?
I think it's much more effective than it was five years ago, and seems to still be growing, especially where the younger generation is involved. The only drawback to the effectiveness of digital activism is that it discourages educating yourself about an issue in its entirety. Once again, take Kony2012, so many people took it at face value. But it raised ire with many due to the Foundation's shaky background and vague details. It's easy to get your message to the masses, but it's also easy to not see the whole picture.

Are digital natives taking the easy way out by what critics say is ‘slacktivism’: tweeting, linking and liking about grave social issues?
Unfortunately, yes I think so. Some get so wrapped up in "getting their message out" that they don't remember to ACT. You'll affect more lives out there on the street, than you ever will behind a computer. You have to find balance in the two.

A recent example of digital native activism is the Get Kony video campaign. What are your thoughts on the criticism it received?
I honestly thought the video was well edited and shot, and delivered a message strongly. But further digging led to details that were not so noble about the Invisible Children’s organization; the possibility that Joseph Kony has not been heard from in years and may be dead. It's just important to step back and say, "Okay, they seem to have a strong argument here, but what if..."

Are we seeing a trend where digital natives are more involved with local causes than with global issues?
It's just easier for most people to tackle things close to home, and that's okay. Imagine if EVERYONE focused on their own community and well being, everyone would be better off. That's no reason to try and help someone who's far away, but you can do more good in person than you can do over the internet. It's good to incorporate it into your strategy, but remember it's you actions that count.

Your thoughts on Citizen Action and the use of ICT
I think we're going through a transition, people are learning more and more through the internet, and have access to such powerful tools. It's going to be a renaissance of knowledge and creativity. I have learned more technical details for my trade off the internet in a year, than I have during my time in school. It's an exciting time to be alive.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-coverage-in-a-digital-world

Alternate Visions: Accessing Leisure Through Interfaces

noopur — 2012-02-18T15:18:34Z

Name(s): Noopur Raval
Location: Delhi, India
Age: 23
Profession: Student, researcher

Video Genre: Animation

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/alternate-visions-accessing-leisure-through-interfaces

Centre for Internet and Society

Vote for the Everyday Digital Native Video Contest!

Who’s the Everyday Digital Native? This global video contest has the answer

Pinning the Badge

Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action

An Experiment in Social Engineering: The Cultural Context of an Avatar

How to Put Up a Facebook Resistance

Digital Natives Video Contest

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Who is a Digital Native?

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Deployed

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Interview

From The Wild Into The Digital World

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Interview

Our Love, Digital

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With No Distinction

Video Proposal

Interview

Get Busy Living

Video Proposal

Good Karma Online

Frank Weaver

Digital Coverage in a Digital World

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Interview

Alternate Visions: Accessing Leisure Through Interfaces

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