Centre for Internet and Society

Tech Anthropology Today: Collaborate, Rather than Fetishize from Afar

Geert Lovink and Ramesh Srinivasan — 2017-05-16T14:51:09Z

"That is why the 'offline' if you will is so critical to understanding the 'online'—because they do not exist in isolation and what we have constructed is an illusory binary between the two." In this interview, Geert Lovink discusses with Ramesh Srinivasan: “how can we embrace the realities of communities too-often relegated to the margins?”

Cross-posted from nettime.org.

“How can we embrace the realities of communities too-often relegated to the margins?”

In Whose Global Village? (NYUPress, 2017) UCLA scholar Ramesh Srinivasan travels the globe in order to find out much techno-autonomy there’s still left. Now that more than half of the world has moved to urban centres, the rural population is literary a minority and is kindly asked to adjust accordingly. This makes Srinivasan’s work even more urgent when he asks “what the internet, mobile phone or social media platforms may look like when considered from the perspectives of diverse cultures.”

The communities Ramesh Srinivasan visits are on the defensive, in a process of fragmentation. “There is a disconnection not just from one another,” he writes, “but also from the common threads of their history and culture. The tribes and villages experience “placelessness, fragmentation of identity, and dissolution of social bonds.” Throughout the study, which took place between 2004-2013, Srinivasan reports from the rising gap between the proposed technologies (such as videos, websites, databases) and the ‘techno-solutionism’ (as described by Morozov) that he wants to prevent. Ramesh is so honest to present this dilemma as an inner struggle of today’s anthropologist with a technology background. Computers and smart phones are an integral part of the everyday life—no matter where we go—and can no longer be presented as liberating tools. This put the ‘ICT for development’ researcher is an awkward position. Post-colonial theories have widely been read and their influence (from Fanon, Said to Spivak) is having an inevitable impact. This in turn leads to a new attitude that I would describe as ‘radical modesty’ (if not ‘vital pessimism’).

While studying the impact of the Tribal Peace system that he and others installed to connect the different Navajo tribes in San Diego County, Srinivasan realises that he has to work with rather than ignore the networks that exist. “It was neither the technology nor institutions that connected the people I had met. Instead, the very few threads of kinship I noted were related to revered individuals, regarded by most with collective respect and as a source of inspiration.” It is with and through the elders that he starts to draw up information architectures (or ‘ontologies’), listing topics, themes, and values across the native reservations. How can ‘lateral networks’ be supported in a a process of what James Carey calls ‘ritual communication’?

Needless to say this approach takes us light years away from Facebook and other social media. This is only in part a question of translating interfaces to local indigenous languages. The proposed systems require the design of its own visual metaphors, reminding us of 1990s multi-media navigation screens, meant to represent digital storytelling. This is dealt with in closed, or semi-open networks, paying respect to the different experiences of time and space. These ideas are put to the test in the last part of the book that describes the encounter with the Zuni tribe (Arizona/New Mexico), where Ramesh Srinivasan worked together with Robin Boast. It is amongst the Zuni peoples that the researchers encounter the distrust against anthropologists. “Our Zuni friends voiced feelings of misrepresentation and anger at their objectification. They explained that social scientists would visit their community, exoticize their traditions and customs, and extract what they could to benefit their own agendas rather than those of the community.”

The gained detachment aims to put the researcher “at the service of our friends and partners.” Important is no longer the one-way transfer of knowledge but the art of listening. Towards the end of his study Ramesh asks: “What would it mean to step away from top-down understandings of the internet and instead ‘splinter’ the way we think about technologies and the communities they may support?” As an activist in Egypt explained: “We do not need another NGO or a new dialogue.com to solve our problems—we just need you to listen, support our voices, an pay attention to what we we do.” Whose Global Village? adequately describes the moral and methodological crisis in the ‘ICT for Development’ field. The wide condemnation of Facebook’s neo-colonial internet.org balloon campaign to bring access (to Facebook) to hundreds of millions of rural poor in India clearly marks a paradigm shift. Access is no longer a benevolent project. It’s clear that ICT for Development as such does not contribute to a redistribution of wealth and makes global inequality only worse. So much for internet charity.

Ramesh admits: “Trained as a designer and engineer, I recognize my innate tendency to valorize my power to come up with a set of solutions for any challenge at hand. Yet every project I have described illustrates the valuable insights gained when I put aside my own agenda and bias as much as possible to open myself to experiences that could not have been predicted from afar.” This modesty sounds like a new starting point. But is it also resulting into new concepts and narratives? This might be too much to ask of a single publication (in fact, the first book publication of this author). The ‘tactical distance’, created out of respect for the communities-in-defence, results into rather sparse information about the places we visit. There are no interview fragments included in the book, and the few local leaders that we encounter do not speak to the reader in a direct manner. The chosen way to report creates a vague cloud of secrecy around the research itself. What happens when we listen but do not acknowledge the Other? Were more detailed research results published elsewhere or only accessible for donors (a common practice in NGO land)? What happens when we listen but do not acknowledge the Other? Is it too risky to give them a voice? Might their opinions and desires be too ordinary, too radical, or simply not what we want to hear? What if they do not fit our Western expectations? The Others are humans, after all, and, like us, tend not to live up to expectations. These, and more, are some of the questions we encounter once we give up on the development rhetoric.

Geert Lovink: You’ve been in a lucky, privileged position to travel so often and witness events and encounter communities in diverse places such as Cairo during the 2011 uprising, with the Zapatistas Chiapas, doing research in the land of your ancestors, South India and on reservations in the South-West of the United States. The offline encounter in-real-life seems to be constitutional for your theory. In the past scholars travelled through the library and many these days do not leave their screens while processing their ‘big data’. Digital ethnography, on the other hand, seems to require direct exchanges with the Other. This assumption pops in all chapters. Is travelling the new luxury? Or should we say that it is rather dedicated time? Once you arrive elsewhere there is suddenly another time regime.

Ramesh Srinivasan: Indeed, I think all of us as researchers and teachers are nothing if not 'lucky' or 'privileged'. And you're certainly on point to recognize that the root of my scholarship and activism locates technologies within an assemblage of other factors - peoples, places, infrastructures, and environments. Yet it is essential that I do not collaborate with (rather than ‘study of’) any community unless I am invited to do so and where our efforts are focused on initiatives that live and are owned by that group itself.

That is why the 'offline' if you will is so critical to understanding the 'online'—because they do not exist in isolation and what we have constructed is an illusory binary between the two. If we want to be of service and understand the complex relationships between technologies, politics, and cultures—as I attempt to do via the multiple case studies discussed in the book, we need to put our bodies and hearts in places rather than our distant gaze. It's critical for me to not step foot anywhere where I am not invited first, and to critically think about my role and power as I enter different environments. Indeed, the book is full of ethnographies of attempting to listen more than make, and how I eschew the 'study of' any community and instead write about what we create and work on together. My goal is to collaborate rather than study, rather than fetishize from afar.

GL: Whose Global Village? has an unusual time span of 10-14 years. First research goes back to 2003-2004. Some case study closed in 2005 while most literature dates from 2012-2013. In between, the 2008 global financial crisis occurred, the smart phone was launched and apps became mainstream. How did you deal with these constant changes? Are you proposing a ‘longue durée’ in media studies and internet criticism’? What are the benefits of this approach? How do you see ‘grassroots storytelling’ dealing with the relentless changes of platforms, interfaces and protocols? Do remote communities have a different approach to the latest fashion and the famous ‘fear of missing out’?

RS: There are some dynamics that don't change no matter what app, gadget or platform has captured the popular imagination. That is—the realities of power over how technologies are designed, owned, and politically or economically appropriated. The book starts with the simple but surprisingly ignored sociotechnical truism - People and societies shape and are shaped by technologies. Yet such a small percentage of Internet users have any power over the design process let alone any sovereignty over what occurs with their data and identities as they are refracted onto digital networks. Those issues are timeless and all the more urgent today. I focus on the political and cultural flashpoints where by users and communities can reign in their blind trust of new digital platforms and instead take power over these in relation to their local concerns and agendas.

GL: As a media activist you have a background in engineering. However, at UCLA you work inside library science (called ‘information studies’). However, you seem to relate most to the role of anthropologist, in that you deeply desire not make past mistakes in encounters with ‘the Other’. In this context you work with Mary Louise Pratt’s theory of the contact zones and apply this to the design of ‘multiple ontologies’. I never hear IT engineers talking about contact zones. How do you want to carry your insights into the tech world? After all, you live in California. Who else is going to do this? What could be a good strategy? How do you look at the Bay Area and the global geek class they still dominate in terms of its global imaginary?

RS: I see myself as a scholar who can contribute to fields that tend to remain mostly distinct in the academy—design, engineering, cultural studies, media studies are but a few. If I was ever an IT ‘geek’ that was decades ago!

To engage in the charge of the book, of locating our understandings of digital networks and systems in relation to diverse cultures and users worldwide, all of these fields are useful to invoke and bring into dialogue with one another. I'm fortunate to be in a department that supports this interdisciplinarity and indeed as you stated, coming from California and trained in engineering here, I believe it is all the more important to question the black boxes not just of Silicon Valley hardware and software platform design but to push these incredibly powerful technologies to open up to an engaged, conversational social contract with diverse publics.

GL: Over the past 10-15 years we’ve seen the closing down of the possibility space of the Web and the rise of the ‘easy to use’ template culture of social media. The technologies that you’ve proposed and built seem to move away from the consumer culture. In South India you’re spread video cameras, elsewhere you’ve developed a dedicated Tribal Peace system interface (as part of a stand-alone website) while for the Zuni communities you’ve utilized the FileMaker Pro Advanced database software. Not Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube (and no wikis either). Can you elaborate on this?

RS: It's important to not assume that naively putting content online is somehow empowering. Indeed, that which we ‘share’ (eg; sharing economy) asymmetrically builds power and value for the platform holder and all those that can monetize it. As a result, we increasingly know that corporate proprietary platforms such as Facebook or Google are hardly designed to directly support a user's sovereignty or agency. The interest, across each of the book's chapters, is to instead think about how the communities with which I collaborate can have their interests served via technologies either that we design together or appropriate/subvert in various ways. Far too often we see examples where such 'participation' actually does little to shape any cultural or political cause from the grassroots. So we think agnostically and critically about the systems, networks and infrastructures we use in relation to our collaborations.

GL: Can you tell us what you’ve been doing over the past few years? Did you continue to work in the same direction? The book indicates that your collaboration with Robin Boast and the work with the Zuni Native American Reservation seems to continue.

RS: My interests lie in that important space between understanding how technologies may aid and support grassroots political movements and diverse user communities. The Zuni collaboration, described in chapter 4, is interested in that cause in relation to the political and cultural sovereignty of a tribe that was not just historically colonized but still faces the objectification and misrepresentation of new forms of coloniality online.

The cases in the book look at both political movements as well as diverse cultures and communities. Currently, I am collaborating with activists and indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec communities in the Oaxaca Mexico region, one of the most biodiverse and culturally/linguistically diverse parts of our world. In this work, I am writing about the Rhizomatica project (invoking Deleuze/Guarttari's rhizome) where these communities are designing their own collectively-owned cell phone networks in cloud forests all around the region. This has massive political and economic effects. What we see here is a rhizome in the making, a set of networks, systems, and infrastructures shaped and produced from the grassroots, by communities and for communities, and not for the major corporations of our world that tend to on the surface exploit and monitor the activities of these people. More on this amazing project, including some videos at www.rhizomatica.org . I believe that as we start to think about this new effort, that Lisa Parks and I describe as 'network sovereignty', we can start to embark on a path I describe in detail in chapter 5 of the book, of getting back the social contract and communitarian potential of technology to serve democratic agendas located in people's politics and cultures.

I am hopeful we can start that conversation now. I attempt to continue it via my soon to be released second book, After the Internet (with Adam Fish, Polity, end 2017) which looks at examples ranging from Iceland’s Pirate Party, hacktivism, the Silk Road, the Arab Spring, and other activist movements that re-imagine new technologies in relation to grassroots power and voice.

Reference

Ramesh Srinivasan, Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Shapes Our World, New York University Press, New York, 2017.

Profiles

Ramesh Srinivasan is Associate Professor of Information Studies with a courtesy appointment in Design|Media Arts. Srinivasan, who holds M.S and Doctoral degrees, from the MIT Media Laboratory and Harvard's Design School respectively, has focused his research globally on the development of information systems within the context of culturally-differentiated communities. He is interested in how an information system can function as a cultural artifact, as a repository of knowledge that is commensurable with the ontologies of a community. As a complement, he is also interested in how an information system can engage and re-question the notion of diaspora and how ethnicity and culture function across distance. This research allows one to uncover mechanisms by which indigenously-articulated forms of development can begin to occur, as relating to his current work in pastoral and tribal communities in Southern India. His research therefore involves engaging communities to serve as the designers, authors, and librarians/archivists of their own information systems. His research has spanned such bounds as Native Americans, Somali refugees, Indian villages, Aboriginal Australia, and Maori New Zealand.

Geert Lovink is a media theorist, internet critic and author of Dark Fiber (2002), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012) and Social Media Abyss (2016). Since 2004 he is researcher in the Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA) where he is the founder of the Institute of Network Cultures. His centre recently organized conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (the politics and aesthetics of online video), Unlike Us (alternatives in social media), Critical Point of View (Wikipedia), Society of the Query (the culture of search), MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts) and a project on the future of art criticism. From 2004-2013 he was also associate prof. at Mediastudies (new media), University of Amsterdam. Since 2009 he is professor at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee/Malta) where he supervises PhD students.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/tech-anthropology-today-collaborate-rather-than-fetishize-from-afar

Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights

Deva Prasad M — 2015-07-22T04:18:37Z

This post by Deva Prasad M is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Deva Prasad is Assistant Professor at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore. In this essay, he analyses key public discussions around Internet related issues from the human rights angle, and explores how this angle may contribute to understanding the features of the Internet discourse in India.

Introduction

The significance of Internet as an important element and tool in day-to-day life of mankind is an established experiential fact. The intrinsic value that Internet brings to our lives has transformed the access to Internet as a necessity. Internet’s intrinsic value acts an enabling tool for information, communication and commerce to be effectively and expeditiously carried forward. It is to due to this enormous intrinsic value attached with Internet that there is an emerging trend of exploring Internet from the perspective of human rights. Moreover, Internet as a medium also helps in furtherance of human rights [1]. Social movements have attained a new lease of life with the digital activism over Internet. Arab spring is an epitome of this phenomenon.

There is an emerging positive trend of linking established norms of human rights with Internet. The Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression has vividly explained the possibility and feasibility of extending and extrapolating the right of freedom of opinion and expression to Internet medium (Article 19 of the UDHR and the ICCPR) [2]. The Special Rapporteur also highlights the need to have access to Internet for effective enjoyment of right to freedom of opinion and expression in the digital sphere. The UN High Commissioner on Human Right’s report on‘The Right To Privacy In The Digital Age’ also explicitly highlights the significance of protecting the right to privacy in the internet medium in light of extensive “surveillance and the interception of digital communications and the collection of personal data” [3]. The extensive interception and blocking of the online communication is also a pertinent reason, which calls for human right protection to be extended to Internet.

The WSIS Declaration for Building of Information Society [4] and the Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet [5] also have played a significant role in furthering the inter-linkage between human rights and Internet.

The Internet and human rights policy developments have gathered significant relevance in international human rights law and Internet policy fora. But it is interesting to note that the Indian government and state institutional mechanisms have not yet pro-actively accepted relevance of applying human rights norm to the Internet medium in India.

As an essay in the Studying Internet series, it is important to highlight how human rights acts as underlying factors in many socio-political issues pertaining to Internet in India. Analysis of these issues helps us to understand that, even though the Indian state turns a blind eye to the human rights element in the various socio-political issues relating to Internet, the digitally conscious Indian’s have realized their rights and even fought their own battle for exercising their rights.

In recent years, the Internet discourse in India has witnessed many socio-political concerns. This essay would be exploring the pertinent socio-political issues in Indian context and the underlying link to human rights thread. Globally, exploring Internet from the perspective of human rights brings out multitude of issues, which requires application of established human rights norms of right to privacy, freedom of expression, access. The story in India is no different. In this regard, three socio-political issues relating to Internet, which gained much attention in India roughly in last one year, are being analyzed. Interestingly, all three issues have an underlying thread of human right perspective connecting them and need pertinent deliberation from human rights perspective.

Section 66A and Freedom of Speech and Expression

The lack of freedom of expression on Internet and Section 66A of Information Technology Act, 2000 is an interesting case study. Indian government used Section 66A as a tool for extensive surveillance and had taken criminal legal action against the Internet and social media users for posting the offensive comments and posts. But Section 66A was badly drafted allowing the government to initiate criminal legal action in an arbitrary and whimsical manner. Thus such a provision could be misused by the state for curbing the freedom of expression in the Internet sphere. The rampant usage of the Indian state machinery of Section 66A had led to sharp reaction amongst the Internet and social media users in India. The vagueness in language and unconstitutionality of Section 66A were criticized by legal experts. The action of state machinery in arresting a cartoonist, a professor and two girls in Maharashtra [6] (and many others) for comments and post on social media against politicians, had made it evident the lack of respect for freedom for speech and expression on Internet by the Indian state machinery (Most of these incidents took place during the year 2012). These incidents led to wide spread protest for violation of human right to freedom of speech and expression by the digital media users. When the Public Interest Litigation [7] filed by Shreya Singhal led to the Supreme Court striking down the Section 66A on 24th March, 2015 for lack of due process being followed, it was a water shed moment for internet discourse in India. The significance of human rights (especially the freedom of speech and expression) in the Internet medium got asserted.

Net Neutrality and Internet Access Issue

The recent net neutrality debate in India has also evoked deliberation about the right of equal access to Internet and the need to maintain Internet as a democratic space. The net neutrality debate on keeping Internet a democratic space that is equally accessible to everyone has got much vogue in India. An important point that needs to be emphasized in the debate regarding net neutrality in India is the equal access question being raised. The equal access question is more a product of the lack of regulatory clarity regarding TRAI’s (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) capacity to regulate the Over-the top (OTT) services; coupled with the lack of well stipulated right to internet access in the Indian context.

The net neutrality rides on the premise that the entire data available on the Internet should be equally accessible to everyone. No discrimination should be allowed regarding access to a particular website or any particular content on the Internet. Tim Wu, a renowned scholar in Internet and communication law has mentioned in his seminal work, Network Neutrality and Broadband Discrimination, that network neutrality signifies “an Internet that does not favor one application” [8].

In this regard, there has been a constructive dialogue between the Federal Communication Commission in United States and the various stakeholders. An interesting development was a proposition, which attempted to classify broadband internet service access as a public utility [9]. There is much relevance for such debates in the Indian context. India also needs public participation (especially strong voices from internet user’s perspective) to highlight these access concerns regarding Internet. Human right’s concerns regarding Internet should be pro-actively brought to the attention of regulatory institutions such as TRAI. There is need to balance the economic and for-profit interest of service providers with the larger public interest based on equal access.

The pressure created by public opinion through online activism upon the TRAI’s proposal to regulate the OTT services helps in understanding the power of public participation in the pertinent human rights issues relating to Internet [10]. The broader design in which the principle of human rights in the context of Internet medium would have to be asserted in India is also vividly seen in the case of protest against OTT regulation.

Right to be Forgotten in EU and Repercussions in India

The repercussions of ‘Right to be Forgotten’ judgment of European Union also had led to debate of similar rights in Indian context. The Google v. AEPD and Mario Cosjeta [11] is an interesting case decided by the Court of Justice of European Union, where the court held that based on the right to privacy and data protection, persons could ask databases (this case was against the search engine Google) on Internet medium to curtail from referring to certain aspects of their personal information [12]. This is basically referred to as ‘right to be forgotten’.

Viktor Mayor Schonberg in his book Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in Digital Age has elaborated the problem of how the digital age coupled with the Internet has led to store, disseminate and track information in a substantially easy way and advocates for the more informational privacy rights [13]. In this judgment, the Court of Justice of European Union has furthered the information privacy rights in the European Union with the ‘right to be forgotten’.

In the Indian context, it is important to note that information privacy rights are yet to evolve to the extent that of European Union with definite privacy and data protection law. But interestingly, there was a request made to a media news website by a person attempting to enforce the right to be forgotten [14]. Even though the application of right to be forgotten is not directly applicable in the Indian context, this event throws light to the fact that Internet users in India are becoming conscious of their rights in the Internet space. The way Indian news media gave relevance to the right to be forgotten ruling also is an example of how there is an implicit recognition of the interlink between human rights and Internet that is slowly seeping into the Indian milieu.

Internet Discourse in India and Human Rights

Discussion of the three issues mentioned above points out to an important fact that human rights are not pro-actively applied to the Internet medium by the Indian state machinery. Even though the international human rights law and various Internet policy organizations are pushing the Internet and human rights agenda, the same is yet to gain momentum in India.

But at the same time, an interesting development that could be witnessed from the above discussion is the manner in which the Internet users are asserting their rights over the Internet and slowly paving the path for an enriching view towards applying the human rights perspective to Internet. In the first instance, the freedom of speech and expression was not pro-actively applied to the digital space and Internet. This has happened when Article 19 of Constitution of India has clearly provided for freedom of speech and expression. The second instance of net neutrality has thrown wide open the lack of clear policy regarding Internet access in Indian context. The public opinion has pointed out to the fact that there is a public interest demand to ensure that there is no discrimination in the case of Internet access. The third instance of looking at ‘right to be forgotten’ in Indian perspective, provides the understanding that the users of Internet are becoming conscious of their individual rights in the digital space in a more affirmative manner.

Further, the operationalization of human rights in these three instances also needs to be critically looked into. The assertion of the freedom of speech and expression in the Internet medium could be made possible effectively due to the fact that Article 19 of the Constitution of India, 1950, protects freedom of speech and expression. The vast amount of precedence existing in the field of freedom of speech and expression relating to constitutional litigation and allied jurisprudence has helped in crafting the extension of the right of freedom of expression to the digital medium of Internet. Further, using the social action tool of Public Interest Litigation, the unconstitutionality of Article 19 of the Constitution of India, 1950 could be brought before the Supreme Court.

But interestingly, the net neutrality issue, which is concerning the access to Internet in a non-discriminatory manner, is yet to be perceived in Indian context from a strong human rights perspective. Internet access as a public utility concept is yet to be evolved and articulated in concrete manner in the Indian context. Further, the Indian network neutrality discourse attempts to operationalize through the free market approach. In the free market approach the entire non-discriminatory access has to be ensured by the market competition with the necessary regulatory bodies. In this sense, the human rights angle of access to Internet will have to be ensured by effective competition in the market along with the proper oversight of regulatory bodies such as TRAI and Competition Commission of India. It is important for the regulatory bodies to have broad goals for furthering public interest by ensuring non-discriminatory access to Internet. Further, with the financial and infrastructure led limitations of government’s capability of ensuring access to Internet for all, the market-led model with sufficient regulation might be the right way forward.

Looking at the issue of the right to be forgotten, it could be easily perceived that the Indian milieu is yet to articulate privacy rights to that high standard. Even though the right to privacy is being understood in the constitutional law context through effective interpretation by the judiciary, the concept of digital privacy has not yet evolved in India. There is no collective understanding, till now, that has emerged regarding right to be forgotten in India. Even though individual attempts to assert the right was witnessed, there is much room for an evolved collective understanding in Indian context. Civil society organizations would have a crucial role to play in this regard.

There is an emerging consciousness amongst a set of Internet users in India, who values and gives importance to the Internet being a democratic space, without unwanted restriction from the government machinery or even the private entities. Hence looking at the Internet discourse of India from the perspective of human rights, there is an implicit way in which the human rights are being applied to the Internet space. The lack of a state’s pro-active approach in asserting human rights to Internet space is highlighted by the assertions being made by the Internet users in India.

Way Forward

For Internet to remain as a democratic space, there is need for pro-active application of these human rights norms and clear understanding in Internet governance. At present, the state of affairs in India regarding application of human rights to Internet is far from satisfactory.

This essay which is part of the ‘Studying Internet in India’ series, has till now done a stock taking analysis of emerging dimension of human rights and Internet in India. Lack of interest from government and state machinery to further the human rights and Internet dimension need to be seriously reconsidered. Attempting to intervene in Internet law and policy in India from the rights based approach should be an important agenda for furthering digital rights in India. For this, civil society organizations have an important role to play. Exploring the public interest could be done effectively with public participation of stakeholders. Here in, platforms such as India Internet Governance Forum could play a crucial role.

Apart from the civil society organizations, it is also pertinent for state and governmental institutional mechanism to also take a pro-active stance. For ensuring that the rights based approach to Internet has to be duly included in the Internet law and policy; and there should be institutional mechanism, which could look into areas pertaining to human rights and Internet. It is a well know fact that India lacks institutional mechanism for looking into communication and privacy issues regulation. Further, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) also needs to look at the relevance of human rights for Internet. Inspiration could be drawn from the pioneering work of Australian Commission of Human Rights on applying human rights norms and standards to Internet medium [15]. This essay has only flagged the need to apply the established human rights norms to Internet space. Much more issues such as access to Internet by disabled, safety of children and Internet medium are also pertinent areas.

Moreover, it is important to have digital rights of Internet users in India to be explicitly enshrined in a legal framework. Presently, a gap in law and policy framework regarding human rights and Internet is evident, as highlighted in this essay. The pertinent questions regarding access, privacy and freedom of expression are to be taken seriously by the government and state machinery for which clear and well-defined rights relating to Internet space have to be framed. For Internet and human rights to be taken seriously, it is high time that legal and institutional framework to explore these issues also are evolved.

Emphasizing the Right to Communication in India

Further, the present understanding of right to communication in India, which is perceived in narrow manner, could be re-worked with the help of a pro-active application of human rights norms to the Internet governance. The intrusion into the freedom of speech and expression especially in the telecommunication context has to be highlighted. Protection of communal harmony has been used as rationale for capping the number of the SMS messages that could be sent per day during the exodus of people of Northeastern states origin from Bangalore, Pune and other major cities in India.

This move has been criticized for being unreasonable and universality of capping the number of SMS messages [16]. Further, the telecommunication and Internet services (especially Facebook and YouTube) were blocked in Kashmir for restricting the protest [17]. The telecommunication and Internet services were blocked on the grounds of protection of national security. The reasonableness of restrictions that could be imposed on right to communication is a major concern in the above-mentioned instances. Making a blanket ban applicable in a universal manner undermines the right to communication of various genuine users of bulk messaging and social media sites.

The right to communication especially in the digital and telecommunication media needs to be emphasized. Applying human rights perspective and norms to Internet governance would help in articulating and evolving the right to communication in India. With adequate institutional oversight, the human rights norms could make the digital right to communication an effective right.

To conclude, the Internet discourse in India has already paved path for human rights norms to be applied to Internet space. The seriousness that could be attributed to those rights is evident by the assertions by the Internet users in India. But the state and government machinery in India also should explore the human rights and Internet agenda seriously.

Endnotes

[1] Frank La Rue, Report Of The Special Rapporteur On The Promotion And Protection Of The Right To Freedom Of Opinion And Expression, Available at http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/17session/A.HRC.17.27_en.pdf (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[2] Ibid, Special Rapporteur in the Report points out that the language of Article 19 of ICCPR is media neutral and is applicable to online media technological developments also. Para 20 and 21 of the Report.

[3] UN High Commissioner on Human Right, Report on ‘The Right To Privacy In The Digital Age’, Available at http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session27/Documents/A.HRC.27.37_en.pdf (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[4] WSIS Declaration for Building of Information Society, Available at http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/dop.html. (Last accessed on 25/05/2015). Article 58, WSIS Declaration reads as follows: “The use of ICTs and content creation should respect human rights and fundamental freedoms of others, including personal privacy, and the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion in conformity with relevant international instruments”.

[5] Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet Available at http://internetrightsandprinciples.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/IRP_booklet_final1.pdf, (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[6] See Section 66A:Six Cases That Sparked Debate, Available at http://www.livemint.com/Politics/xnoW0mizd6RYbuBPY2WDnM/Six-cases-where-the-draconian-Section-66A-was-applied.html, (Last accessed on 25/05/2015). Also see, Facebook Trouble:10 Cases of Arrest Under Section 66A of IT Act, Available at http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/facebook-trouble-people-arrested-under-sec-66a-of-it-act/article1-1329883.aspx (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[7] Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, Available at http://indiankanoon.org/doc/110813550/ (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[8] Tim Wu, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination, Available at https://cdt.org/files/speech/net-neutrality/2005wu.pdf (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[9] F.C.C. Approves Net Neutrality Rules, Classifying Broadband Internet Service as a Utility, Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/technology/net-neutrality-fcc-vote-internet-utility.html (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[10] The online campaign by www.savetheinternet.in and the AIB video have played a crucial role in gathering public support.

[11] Court of Justice of European Union, Case C-131/12.

[12] Rising like a Phoenix: The ‘Right to be Forgotten’ before the ECJ, Available at http://europeanlawblog.eu/?p=2351 (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[13] Viktor Mayor Schonberg, Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in Digital Age, Princeton University Press (2009).

[14] Right to be Forgotten Poses A Legal Dilemma in India, Available at http://www.livemint.com/Industry/5jmbcpuHqO7UwX3IBsiGCM/Right-to-be-forgotten-poses-a-legal-dilemma-in-India.html, (Last accessed on 25/05/2015). Also see We received a Right to be Forgotten request from an Indian user, Available at http://www.medianama.com/2014/06/223-right-to-be-forgotten-india/ (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[15] Human Rights and Internet, Available at https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/projects/human-rights-and-internet (Last accessed on 25/05/2015).

[16] Chinmayi Arun, SMS Block as Threat to Free Speech, Available at http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-the-hindubusinessline-op-ed-sep-1-2012-chinmayi-arun-sms-block-as-threat-to-free-speech (Last accessed on 15/07/2015).

[17] Pamposh Raina and Betwa Sharma, Telecom Services Blocked to Curb Protests in Kashmir, Available at http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/telecom-services-blocked-to-curb-protests-in-kashmir/?_r=0 (Last accessed on 15/07/2015).

Author's Note: All the views expressed are my own and in no way are linked to the opinion of my employers. I thank CIS for this opportunity to explore Internet and Human Rights interface in India as part of the Studying Internet in India essay series.

Note: The post is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, and copyright is retained by the author.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_studying-the-internet-discourse-in-india-through-the-prism-of-human-rights

Studying Internet in India: Selected Abstracts

sumandro — 2015-08-28T06:53:33Z

We received thirty five engaging abstracts in response to the call for essays on 'Studying Internet in India.' Here are the ten selected abstracts. The final essays will be published from June onwards.

Deva Prasad M - 'Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights'

Exploring Internet from the perspective of human rights gives rise to the multitude of issues such as right to privacy, freedom of expression, accessibility. Pertinent socio-political and legal issues related to Internet which was widely debated upon in the past one year in India includes lack of freedom of expression on Internet and Section 66A of Information Technology Act, 2000. The recent net neutrality debate in India has also evoked deliberation about the right of equal accessibility to Internet and to maintain Internet as a democratic space. The repercussions of ‘Right to be Forgotten’ law of European Union also had led to debate of similar rights in Indian context. Interestingly all these issues have an underlying thread of human right perspective connecting them and need pertinent deliberation from human rights perspective.

This paper is an attempt to understand and analyze theses issues from the human rights angle and also how they have contributed in evolving an understanding and perspective amongst the digitally conscious Indian’s to ensure the democratic nature of “Internet” is perceived. Moreover, analysis of these three issues would also help in emphasizing upon the need for a right-based approach in studying Internet in India.

Dibyajyoti Ghosh - 'Indic Scripts and the Internet'

Whereas the status of the internet in India is similar to the status of the internet in similar economies with low-penetration and a primarily mobile-based future, an alphabetically diverse nation such as India has its added worries. Whereas the 1990s saw an overdomination of English given the linguistic communities which were developing the world of computers and the world of the internet, by 2015, some of the disparity with offline linguistic patterns has been reduced. However, for Indic scripts, much less development has taken place. If one is studying the internet in India, chances are one is studying it in English.

What does this hold for the future of these Indic scripts? Given the multilingual skills of Indian school-goers and the increasing amount of daily reading time of those connected to the internet (which is somewhere between 12% and 20% of the population) being devoted to reading on the internet, chances are reading is increasingly in English. In this essay, I shall attempt to study the effects this has on the internet population of India, some of which are as follows.

The kind of mimetic desire it causes
The degneration in spelling skills caused due to transliteration
The effacement of non-digitised Indic verbal texts

Divij Joshi - 'The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination'

The first mention of the 'Internet' in the vocabulary of Indian judicial system was a fleeting reference to its radical capability to allow access to knowledge. In one of its most recent references, it expounded upon and upheld the idea of the Internet as a radical tool for free expression, announcing its constitutional significance for free speech.

The judicial imagination of the Internet – the understanding of its capabilities and limitations, its actors and constituents, as reflected in the judgements of Indian courts – plays a major role in shaping the Internet in India, both reflecting and defining conceptions of the Internet and its relationship with society, law, and public policy.

This essay is an attempt to use legal and literary theory to study the archives of judicial decisions, tracing the history of the Internet in India through the lens of judicial trends, and also to look at how the judiciary has defined its own role in relation to the Internet. It attempts a vital study of how courts in India have conceptualized and understood the Internet, and how these conceptions have, in turn, impacted the influence of the Internet on Indian society.

Ipsita Sengupta

The proposed essay will make observations of a specific kind of conversation that takes place on the social media platform of YouTube. The conclusive argument is imagined along questions of high versus low culture, as described below.

Under study are two objects- one, particular YouTube videos which play Rabindra-Sangeet, i.e. songs penned and composed in the late 19- early 20th centuries by the Bengali writer and artist Rabindranath Tagore, the body of work which today has become a genre of Indian music; and the second, comments that these videos receive from users of the site.

Visuals of YouTube song videos of Rabindra-Sangeet are of many kinds. So are renditions, with solitary or duet or band performances, and with varying pace and instrumental accompaniment.

The videos which have visuals from contemporary cinema, like images of urban youth, and the remixed renditions have often been found to receive comments which reflect/ reveal hurt sentiments of people trying to preserve some kind of sanctity of Rabindra-Sangeet, comments which state how the ethics of presenting the genre have been violated, via their notation and design, by either makers of the film in the song’s incorporation, or by the way young pop stars have been placed in particular montages.

Some examples:

In such a scenario, YouTube as medium of user-generated expression becomes interesting to analyse individual and group dynamics- given the space for commenting (below the video), and statistical data such as “Likes”, “Dislikes”, and “Views”. The debate here is that in Tagore’s “Nationalism”, when he himself is seen to have an imagination of the human race beyond patriotic groupings and consequent othering, does this apparent need to avoid “insulting” his compositions by preserving an intangible art form in a particular way, become then a type of jingoism of region or identity? And what is this Benjaminian “aura” of the “original” that listeners look for in their experience of these videos?

Laird Brown - 'Dharamsala Networked'

Three hours after regulations governing public access to WiFi in India were changed in 2005 the first router went up in Dharamsala. It was homemade, open source, and eventually, “monkey proof.” Something unimaginable had happened: high-speed Internet access in one of India’s most difficult physical geographies. Dharamsala has also become one of India's interesting information networks and has a burgeoning, unlikely 'tech scene’. But is it so unlikely?

Since 1959 Dharamsala has been home to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan people and, government in exile. This single, significant incident possibly set in motion a number of factors that made it possible for the mountain-town to become a political, global, communications. However, much like the rest of India, the region struggles for human and environmental rights against fractured ideas of 'development'. This essay will draw on archives and interviews to unpack this microcosmic tale of Internet access, its histories and economics and the factors at play in shaping it - mundane and maverick, familiar and outlier.

Maitrayee Deka - 'WhatsApp Economy'

Everyone around us is connected to the Internet through some or other electronic devices, phones, laptops, and tablets. However, not everyone use Internet for the same purpose. Through an ethnographic account of the usage of WhatsApp messages by the traders in three electronic bazaars in Delhi, Palika Bazaar, Nehru Place and Lajpat Rai Market, we see how Internet on the phone is used predominantly for business purpose. The paper seeks to examine how Whatsapp messages, which are for most of the users a medium for social communication, for the traders in Delhi, become a mode to establish business contact with their counterparts in China. From sharing of pictures of new tools to quoting prices of different products, Whatsapp messages become the lifeline of what many has termed as ‘globalization from below’. This paper argues what has started as economic exchanges through Whatsapp messages may start a new political alliance of similar mass markets in Asia. With the electronic bazaars in Delhi facing stiff competition from formal business actors both online and offline, the WhatsApp messages that is a space of new innovations and trade alliances could sustain the mass markets in India.

Purbasha Auddy - 'Citizens and their Internet'

Suddenly it seems internet data package on mobile phones is the reply to the problems in India. As mobile phones remain with us most of the time, it is as if we are ready to face the world if our mobile phones have a data package. Yes, several television commercials in India are gleefully harping on the notes of knowledge, empowerment and freedom. Moreover, internet is being identified as a virtual institution.

The essay proposes to look into those advertisements which talk about the internet to promote data packages, mobile phones or apps. Through this, the essay firstly, would like to construct the idea of the internet using the Indian citizen who is depicted as smart and almost infallible. Secondly, on the other hand, the essay would analyse how an affirmative and constructive view of using the internet in the minds of citizens has been generated by these advertisements, like the virtual world of the internet can save you from any drastic situation.

Advertisements are creative constructs, which have a strong aptitude to entice target consumers. While studying the internet in India, studying the ‘texts’ of Indian advertisements which refer to the act of ‘consuming’ the internet could result in an interesting study.

Sailen Routray - 'The Many Lives and Sites of Internet in Bhubaneswar'

Those of us who have jumped or meandered across to the wrong (or perhaps the right) side of thirty by now, first came to consume internet in what were called, and are still called, cyber cafes or internet cafes. Their numbers in big Indian cities is dwindling because of the increasing ubiquity of smartphone, and netbooks and data cards. The cyber café seems to be inexorably headed the way of the STD booth in the geography of large Indian cities. The present paper is a preliminary step towards capturing some of the experience of running and using internet cafes. With ethnographic fieldwork with cyber café owners and internet users in these cafes in the Chandrasekharpur area of Bhubaneswar (where the largest section of the computer industry in the state of Odisha is located), this paper tries to capture experiences that lie at the interstices of ‘objects’ and spaces - experiences that are at the same time a history of the internet as well as a personal history of the city.

Sarah McKeever - 'Quantity over Quality: Social Media and the New Class System in India'

From the humblest mobile phones to the most sophisticated computers, the Internet is everywhere and nowhere in India. The boundaries, the contours of the space remain nebulous and opaque. When engaging with social media in urban India in particular, we are bound to the conventions of corporations which demand quantity over quality creating a new class system of the Internet: those who are “active” – and therefore a “better” user – and those who have seemingly failed to keep up with the demands of the medium, buried in the ever‐growing noise and chaos. The creation of a new class system on the Internet, based on Western corporate desire for data, has shaped who is seen and heard on the Internet in India.

Based on fieldwork in New Delhi which examines the impact of the Internet on offline social movements – including the anti corruption movement in 2011 and the Delhi Rape Case in 2012 – I will argue that the study of the Internet in India can reinforce Western corporate conceptions of how to use the Internet properly among various users involved in the movements. By challenging these preconceptions, this essay will engage with issues of Western corporate notions of Internet use and how we engage with and find participants, how we evaluate what is “good” use of the Internet, and the creation of a new class system on the Internet in India.

Smarika Kumar - 'Governing Speech on the Internet: Transforming the Public Sphere through Policymaking'

In the privatised spaces of the World Wide Web and the internet, how does one make sense of speech? Should speech in such a space be understood as the product of a marketplace of ideas? Or should its role in democratic participation be recognised by contextualising the internet as part of the Habermasian public sphere? These questions have interesting implications for the regulation of speech on the internet, as they employ different principles in understanding speech. Recent scholarship has argued for the benefits of employing the public sphere approach to the internet and thus recognising its democratic potential. But taking into account that all speech is inherently made in private spaces on the internet, the application of this approach is far from simple.

This creates a tension between the marketplace of ideas and the public sphere approaches to speech on the internet in policymaking. I propose to explore how legal and regulatory mechanisms manage these tensions by creating governance frameworks for the internet: I argue that through the use of policy and regulation, the private marketplace of the internet is sought to be reined in and reconciled to the public sphere, which is mostly represented through legislations governing the internet. I propose that this less-than-perfect reconciliation then manages to modify the very idea of the public sphere itself in the Indian context, by infusing participation of the "other" on the internet through indirect means.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/studying-internet-in-india-selected-abstracts

Studying Internet in India (2016): Selected Abstracts

sumandro — 2016-07-06T06:24:42Z

We received some great submissions and decided to select twelve abstracts, and not only ten as we planned earlier. Here are the abstracts.

Abhimanyu Roy

The Curious Incidents on Matrimonial Websites in India

What is love? Philosophers have argued over it, biologists have researched it and in the age of the internet, innovators have disrupted it. In the west, dating websites such as OKCupid and eHarmony use all manner of algorithms to find its users their optimal match. In India’s conservative society though, dating is fast-tracked or skipped altogether in favor of marriage. This gives rise to a plethora of matrimonial sites such as Jeevansathi.com and Shaadi.com. This is where things get tricky.

Matrimonial websites are different from other internet-enabled services. The gravity of the decision and the major impact that it has on the lives of users brings in pressure and a range of emotions that are not there on casual transactions such as an Uber ride or a foodpanda order. From outright fraud to online harassment newspaper back pages are filled with nightmare stories that begin on a matrimonial website. So much so, that in November of last year, the Indian government decided to set up a panel to regulate matrimonial sites in order to curb abuse. The essay will analyze India’s social stand on marriage, the role of matrimonial websites in modern day India, the problems this awkward amalgamation of the internet and love gives rise to and the steps authorities and matrimonial companies are taking to prevent these issues from occurring.

Anita Gurumurthy, Nandini Chami, and Deepti Bharthur

Internet as Sutradhar: The Aesthetics and Politics of Digital Age Counter-power

The open Internet is now a feeble, wannabe, digital age meme. The despots have grabbed it and capitalism has colonised it. But the network that engulfs its users is also a multi-headed organism; the predictables have to make peace with the unpredictables, both arising as they do with the unruly affordances of the network. The much celebrated public domain of open government data, usually meant for geeks and software gurus dedicated to the brave new 'codeful' future, has meant little for marginal subjects of India's development project. Data on government websites have been critiqued worldwide for often being too clunky to catalyse civic use or too obscure to pin down government efficacy. However, as an instrument of accountable governance, data in the public domain can help hold the line, fuelling vanguard action to foster democracy. Activists engaged in the right to food movement in India had reason to rejoice recently when the Supreme Court of India pulled up the central government for delay in release of funds under the MGNREGA scheme and violating the food security law. The series of actions leading to this victory enjoins deeper examination of the MGNREGS website, the design principles of the MIS that generates reports based on the data, and the truth claims that arose in the contingent context marking this struggle. What were the ingredients of this happy irony; the deployment of the master's tools to disband the master's house? What aesthetics and principles made for a public data structure that allowed citizens to hack into state impunity? And what do such practices around the digital tell us about the performativity of the Internet - not as a grand, open, phenomenon for the network to access the multitude, but as the inane, local, Sutradhar (alchemist who produces the narrative), who allows truths to be told?

Aishwarya Panicker

How Green is the Internet? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Groceries at your doorstep, data on your fingertips, an Uber at the tap of a button and information overload- human negotiations with the internet have definitely changed drastically in the past few decades. Research in the area, too, has transformed to not just the supply of internet to the masses, but has evolved to include innovative and revolutionary ideas in terms of internet infrastructure and governance. With over 3.2 Billion internet users in the world, and over 400 million of these from India, this is no surprise.

However, while environmental sustainability remains at the forefront of many-a-government, there is little data / debate / analysis / examination of the environmental impact of the internet. This is true especially for India. In 2011, Joel Gombiner wrote an academic paper on the problem of the Internets carbon footprint, with a premise based on the lesser known fact that the ICT industry has been ‘responsible for two to four percent of the global greenhouse gas emissions’- an area that the Climate Group’s Smart 2020 report had focused on back in 2008 as well. Clearly this is a war on the environment that is yet to receive large-scale attention.

How can we move beyond particular fascinations with the internet and engage holistically with the internet? By moving towards a dimension of internet infrastructure studies, that has large policy and implementation benefits. This paper, then, will seek to elucidate four central issue areas: first, as the third highest country in terms of internet use, what is the current environmental impact of internet usage in India? Second, are there any regulatory provisions that give prescriptive measures to data centres and providers? Third, do any global standards exist in this regard and finally, what future steps can be taken (by the government, civil society and individuals) to address this?

Deepak Prince

One of the most important effects of increasing internet connectivity coupled with universal electronic display screens, multimedia digital objects and supple graphic interfaces, is the proliferation of systems of enunciation. The business letter, typewriter, electric telegraph and radio, each in its own time, transformed how humans make sense in different forms of writing. Some of these survive to this day (forms of address from letters, the abbreviations and ‘cablese’ from telegraph operators etc). Now, we find new spaces of networked sociality emerging at rapid speeds, and everyday, we forget many others that are now outdated, no longer ‘supported’ or desired. How does one study this supple flow of discourse? Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of tracing collective assemblages of enunciation (the structuring structures of discourse) and Gilbert Simondon’s Law of relaxation (where technical elements created by complex ensembles are released into a path of technological evolution where they may or may not crystallize the formation of new ensembles) are two philosophical notions that seek to address this problem. The anthropologist Ilana Gershon suggests that new social media platforms like Facebook have a detrimental effect on sociality because they impose a neo-liberal notion of personhood on its users, through the interface. I take this as my point of departure, and based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a new media marketing agency, I attempt to draw out how ‘posting’ is modulated on facebook, about how subjectivity is configured within the complex matrix comprising a constant flow of posts, the economy of ‘liking’, algorithmic sorting and affects that do not cross the threshold of the screen.

Maitrayee Mukerji

By some latest estimates, around 35% of the population access the Internet in India using multiple devices. As Indians browse, search, transact and interact online, one can observe the increasing intertwining of the Internet in their everyday lives. But, how much do we know about the influence and impact of the Internet on Indian and in India? Advances in big data technologies provide an exciting opportunity for social science researchers to study the Internet. So, trends can be detected, opinions and sentiments can be calibrated, social networks can be discovered by using technologies for collecting and mining data on people online. But are social science researchers in India equipped enough to do a rigorous and detailed study of the India? Leaving aside debates on epistemology, ontology and methodology of researching Internet using big data analytics, the very first challenge is limited access to data. A cursory scan of the available research would indicate that the data – tweets, trends, comments, memes etc. have generally been collected manually. The bulk of the data is collected by private companies and available either at a price or by writing programs to access them through APIs. The latter allows only limited extraction of data and more often than not has a learning curve. Access to raw data, through institutional repositories or special permission, if available is only to select few. Legal and ethical issues arise if one considers scrapping websites for data. The essay is an attempt to articulate the challenges in accessing data while making attempts to study the Internet using big data analytics.

Muhammed Afzal P

Internet Memes as Effective Means of Social and Political Criticism

By looking at the user-generated memes posted from the Malayalam Facebook pages “Troll Malayalam” and “International Chalu Union”, this essay argues that political memes function as effective means of social and political criticism in Kerala. In a society where conversations often tend to feature examples from popular films, memes from these pages use images from popular culture including television to respond to current affairs as well as contemporary social and political questions. Often described mistakenly as 'trolls' by the practitioners themselves, a major portion of the memes have a progressive content in terms of discussing questions related to religion, sexuality, nationalism, etc. It won’t be an exaggeration to state that many Malayalis see these memes as instant 'news analysis' of current affairs. The argument of this essay will be advanced through an analysis of the memes that were produced in relation to contemporary socio-political and cultural questions such as beef ban, the rise of right-wing politics in Kerala, the question of religious conservatism, etc. Through this the essay seeks to investigate how internet memes creatively contribute to social movements and also to see how critical questions in cultural criticism are translated into "the popular.'

Dr. Ravikant Kisana

Archetyping the 'Launda' Humor on the Desi Internet

Humor on the internet has proven a massive social unifying force for young, upper class Indian millennials. The humor is not just consumed via Western (mainly US) humor collectives such as 9GAG, Cracked, etc - the proliferation of 'Indian' humor pages on the Facebook and the countless YouTube comedy channels is testament to the localisation of this content. However, the humor which is seen as a unifying force is largely 'launda' aka. 'heteronormative-upper caste-male' in its sensibilities. Comedy collectives like TVF, with its popular channel 'Q-tiyapa' had to create a separate handle 'Girliyapa' to cater to feminist themes. The idea is that humor by default is male, and 'feminist humor' needs a separate space.

This essay seeks to study the 'launda'-cultural attributes of online Indian humor. It will seek to document and wean archetypes of comedy tropes which fit this mode. The area of the documentation will be YouTube comedy channels and Facebook humor pages—however, the same can be extended to Twitter handles and the suchlike.

Siddharth Rao and Kiran Kumar

Chota Recharge and the Chota Internet

Uniform and affordable Internet is emerging as one of the fundamental civil rights in developing countries. However in India, the connectivity is far from uniform across the regions, where the disparity is evident in the infrastructure, the cost of access and telecommunication services to provide Internet facilities among different economic classes. In spite of having a large mobile user base, the mobile Internet are still remarkably slower in some of the developing countries. Especially in India, it falls below 50% even in comparison with the performance of its developing counterparts!

This essay presents a study of connectivity and performance trends based on an exploratory analysis of mobile Internet measurement data from India. In order to assess the state of mobile networks and its readiness in adopting the different mobile standards (2G, 3G, and 4G) for commercial use, we discuss the spread, penetration, interoperability and the congestion trends.

Based on our analysis, we argue that the network operators have taken negligible measures to scale the mobile Internet. Affordable Internet is definitely for everyone. But, the affordability of the Internet in terms of cost does not necessarily imply the rightful access to Internet services. Chota recharge is possibly leading us to chota (shrunken) Internet!

Smarika Kumar

Why Mythologies are Crucial to Understand Governance on the Internet: The Case of Online Maps

How does one study internet in India? This essay proposes to provide one possible answer to this question through its central argument that internet, like other technologies, is very much a part of a “mythological” or “fictional” narrative of the history of this country, and without an understanding of these mythologies, the development of internet governance in the country cannot be hoped to be understood. This central argument is traced in the essay through the debates and discussions on law and policymaking around online maps. The essay, in its first part, explores what a “mythological” account of the history of India might mean, and what role technological developments play in it. It does so by tracing the narrative of mapmaking in medieval India and its deep ties with magic, secrecy and mythical stories. It then surveys how modern mapping surveys in the colonial period interacted with the idea of the “native”, and argues that such interactions created a dichotomy between “native” sciences, folklore on the one hand, and colonial achievements, national security on the other. It argues that it is this latter strand of a certain “national security” vision of technology which found dominant voice in the regulation of maps in India post-independence, yet the sense of the unknown, mystical, or “mythological” in such technological deployment as mapmaking requires, survived. The essay finally uses such evidence to trace how even in online interactions, and internet governance design in India- this aspect of the mystical and the fear of it often sustains, driven by a (repressed?) memory of mythology, through the use of analogies. And it is within this twilight zone, within this frontier between “mythology” and nation-building, that a governance design for online maps is being presently constructed in India. The essay then argues that it becomes crucial to understand such mythologies around technology generally and internet specifically and the manner they interact with law and policymaking in order to really get a sense of a 21st century India’s experience of the internet.

Sujeet George

Understanding Reddit: The Indian Context

Even as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter seek to carve a niche within the Indian social media landscape, the presence and impact of news aggregator website reddit seems relatively unnoticed. Known for its excessive self-referentiality and inability to emerge from a restricted pool of informational flow, reddit nevertheless has come to be a major focal point of convergence of news and public opinion, especially in the United States. The web interface, which allows for users with overlapping interests to converge under a common platform namely the “subreddit,” allows the possibility of understanding questions of user taste and the directions in which information and user attention flow.

This paper seeks to offer a preliminary gesture towards understanding reddit’s usage and breadth in the Indian context. Through an analysis of the “India” subreddit and examining the manner and context in which information and ideas are shared, proposed, and debunked, the paper aspires to formulate a methodology for interrogating sites like reddit that offer the possibilities of social mediation, even as users maintain a limited amount of privacy. At the same time, to what extent can such news aggregator sites direct the ways in which opinions and news flows change course as a true marker of information generation responding to user inputs.

Supratim Pal

India, being a multilingual country, owes a lot to the Internet for adding words to the vocabulary of everyday use in different languages.

This paper would critically examine how Net words like "selfie", "wall", "profile" and others have changed the way Indians write or talk. For example, a word like "nijaswi" was not there in Bengali language five years back but is used across several platforms as a translation of "selfie".

On one hand, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has helped us to express in short messages and on the other, we all have picked up use of punctuation marks like colon or a semicolon to express our emotion - which have got another name, "emoticons".

The paper would be more practical in approach than theoretical. For example, it would feature chat (another example of CMC) conversations 10 years ago when hardly an emoticon was used, and that of today's when we cannot think of a chat without a "smiley" or a "sticker". Even the linguist, David Crystal, probably could not have thought that in 15 years, the language (not just lingua franca, English) would change worldwide since he first tried to theorize Internet language in 2001.

Today, a linguist need not to have a proper publication to introduce a word in any language but Netizens can re-invent words like "troll" or "roast" to criticize one or "superlike" to celebrate an achievement or even "unfriend" someone to just relax.

Surfatial

Surfatial is a trans-local collective that operates through the internet. We use conversations to aid learning outside established structures. We are concerned with enabling disinhibition through the internet, for expressing what may not be feasible in physical reality. What role does partial or complete anonymity play in this process of seeking “safe” zones of expression? Fake profiles on social media offer such zones, while perhaps also operating to propagate, mislead or troll.

Our essay would argue:

That there is a desire to participate in speculative fora in the Indian cultural context and the internet has created space for philosophical questioning among contemporary Indian participants which can develop further, despite common assertions that online spaces are largely uncivil and abusive.
That anonymous and pseudonymous content production offers a method for exploring and expressing with a certain degree of freedom.
Spam-like methods used in sub-cultural outreach efforts on social media have proved effective in puncturing filter bubbles.

Our essay would be drawn from experiments via Surfatial’s online engagement platforms (Surfatial’s Study groups and post_writer project) to examine:

Extent of participation.
Disinhibition facilitation and dialoguing.
Reach.
Emergence and development of ideas.
Creating an archive of internet activity and re-processing it into new forms of presentation.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/studying-internet-in-india-2016-selected-abstracts

Not a Goodbye; More a ‘Come Again’: Thoughts on being Research Director at a moment of transition

nishant — 2014-06-15T02:17:06Z

As I slowly make the news of my transition from being the Research Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, to taking up a professorship at the Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Germany, there is a question that I am often asked: “Are you going to start a new research centre?” And the answer, for the most part, is “No.”

Not because I don’t see the value of creating institutional spaces like these or that starting and running CIS has been anything short of a dream, but because I don’t how to. When I tell people I don’t know how CIS came into being, they suspect that I am being either facetious or dismissive. But I am not. If somebody asked me to write an Origin Story for CIS, I would be baffled – or probably sum it up by saying that it happened. There was the germ of an idea, a whole lot of people who responded to it, and like the great Tolkienian epic, it was a story that grew in its telling.

I was 27, when Sunil Abraham, the now Executive Director and I met together in New Delhi, to talk about what a research organisation that represents the public interest at the intersections of Internet & Society would look like. We spent three days in the Delhi heat, coming up with the most fantastic ideas about methods, structures and core areas of interest. It was one of those divine exercises where you build the template for your dream work and then, like a fairy-tale, we had incredible people who came and supported us to make that dream a reality. In six months of that first conversation – I had just turned 28 and was completing the last drafts of my Ph.D. dissertation – CIS got officially registered and with some of the most incredible people, who have been with us, both in their generous affective investment as well as in their intellectual and professional support, we kicked-off a research centre, that has become not only hard to ignore but also significantly important in bringing about scholarly and practice based research around the different facets of how the emergence and widespread reach of the Internet is changing the ways in which we become human, social and political in emerging information societies of the Global South.

In the 7 years since that first conversation started, I have learned so much from CIS and the networks that built around it, that it would be impossible to write an exhaustive account of it. However, as I now take up a new position at the CIS as a member of its board, and continue to collaborate with the on-the-ground teams intellectually, from my new position as a Professor, there are five things I want to dwell upon, more to remind myself of important lessons learned, but also as approaches that the new director and team might want to reference:

Research cannot be individually focused
One of the things that academic training does is that it promotes the idea of an individual researcher. We write, publish, seek grants and present our work, taking individual credit and building a body of work that is centred on us. True, we collaborate and we participate and we are opening up more distributed modes of learning and research, but at the end of the day, there is still an imagination of a research community that is built of individual scholars who work in a happy symbiosis and synthesis.

The biggest lesson I learned with the CIS was that research requires collectives – peers, supporters, and critics – that can help materialise a vision. Instead of trying to do ‘my’ research, it was the first time that I was enabling others’ research. I had a say in building the research vision, and establishing protocols of rigour and review, but to have a dream, and then to share it with others, so that it becomes a collective dream was an incredible experience. It was the beginning of a method that I hope informs all my work, where research methods are constantly going to accommodate for and be shaped by collective visions and approaches rather than just the individual as a lone warrior. More than anything else, it reassures us that we are not alone, either in our triumphs or our road-blocks, and it builds a community of thinkers that is more important than just the single authored outputs that we bring out.
Research requires infrastructure
Institutions are infrastructure. However, our jobs are so segregated, that we don’t always realise the incredible effort that goes into building such institutions and then making them work as efficient infrastructure to support research. It is very rare, in research publications that we thank our everyday office staff, the accounts team that processes the complicated bureaucracies of research funding, the programme managers who create networks and evaluation formats, or the numerous people who perform ‘non-research’ jobs so that we can do the research.

I had worked in project and programme manager positions before CIS. I had also worked as an independent researcher and consultant before that. But this was the first time I actually took the dual responsibility of not only initiating research but also providing the infrastructure for it. And I know that I am a wiser person for it. The intricate world of fund-raising, managing and developing networks, of implementing and monitoring research projects and contracts, and the need to constantly find sustainable options for the research programmes is something that requires an incredible amount of effort and resources. The researchers often are kept away from this world, or we often just ignore the intense quotidian activities that give us the privilege of doing our work, and my time with CIS taught me not only to appreciate this, but also to recognise these tasks as research.
All research must try and answer the ‘So What?’ question
Within academic circles, research has inherent value. We do have the freedom to develop new frameworks and ideas that might not have any immediate relevance and might in fact even fail without seeing the light of day. Academia is privileged because as long as we perform our pedagogic tasks, we have the space to experiment and often work on areas that might not benefit anybody outside the disciplines that we are located in.

At CIS, working at such close quarters with colleagues who are experts in policy and regulation, research became critical for me. It wasn’t research for research’s sake. It was research with a cause. At the same time, making the research relevant was not an exercise in dumbing it down so that it can be reduced to easy implementation. The effort required at making academic and intellectual research accessible, while still retaining its complexity has been a heady experience for me. Since CIS, I have tried to make sure that all research is able to answer the ‘So What?’ question, and every time, it has made the research more robust, more rigorous and having a greater audience and impact than it would otherwise have.
To be a research organisation is to be unafraid
One of the most fantastic things about being a young research organisations was that we were not afraid to voice our opinions and voice them loud. In the last 6 years, CIS has evolved into a strong voice that is not unanimous, but is still clear. We have had disagreements with established research and policy actors. We have critiqued decisions taken by policy and development institutions when we felt that they were flawed. We have provided a critical commentary to different instruments of law and regulation when necessary. We have challenged academic researchers in their methodology as well as in their disconnect from the ‘real world’. And we did it, because early on, the people who guided us, taught us, that research organisations have to be unafraid.

Unafraid, not just to ask tough questions of those outside, but also of asking tough questions internally. The team, as it has grown, has been a smorgasbord of disciplinary and stakeholder locations. We don’t necessarily speak the same language. We don’t also, agree on many critical points. But we never tried to be a consensus generation institute. Instead, we learned to coexist and even collaborate in our differences – it was something that external partners often had problems with. How can one set of people work towards critically opposing a phenomenon when others might actually write in favour of some of the aspects of that same phenomenon? How is it possible that some in the institute have great collaborations with a network that the others critique persistently in their work? These tensions, for me, have been generative and I hope that they continue, both in the institution but also in my future work.
Researchers are people too
This is one of the strangest things to realise, but it is a good lesson to remember. Academia and research work through abstractions. At some point, the researchers become names. They become only a body of work, a certain number of words. But dealing with researchers is to deal with human beings. We have to remember that researchers, while they are often driven and passionate and unable to extricate their lives from their work, do have lives and bodies and socialities that need to be managed. Institutions often get driven by matrices of measurement and politics of promotion and evaluation, at the neglect of the people who actually build it. The constant push at CIS was to recognise that we are all too human in our everyday lives. And to build work environments, relationships and spaces that nurture the people we work with is the primary responsibility of all research.

These points are probably too vague, but this blog post is already too long. I just wanted to take this opportunity to write some ‘Notes to the self’ about things that have been the most important to me in being the co-founder and Research Director at the Centre for Internet and Society. And now, it is time for me to move on. I want to place myself in an academic setting where I learn, I get some headspace to think and write, and do the one thing that I enjoy the most – teach. Starting 1st October 2014[*] I am stepping down as the Research Director and taking up a professorship in a new and exciting university, designing courses and research agendas at the intersections of internet studies, media studies, culture studies and aesthetic studies, bringing together some of my most passionate areas of interest. However, I continue to be interested and invested in CIS’ institutional growth. I shall be a part of the search committee as we invite a new Research Director in the Bangalore office, I shall be a part of the Board that governs the CIS, and I shall always think of CIS as my home, continuing mentoring and implementing existing collaborations but also building more, especially towards the pedagogic and knowledge production side of things.

When the final decisions about this transition were made last week, I had thought I would be emotional and heart broken. Instead, I only feel excited. I have a wonderful set of colleagues in Bangalore, and they, in turn, are at the centre of networks of support, love, empathy and trust. CIS will benefit from having a new Research Director who will bring new visions, new methods, new processes and infrastructure to the table, and I hope that as my own academic career grows, I shall find myself returning to CIS in different capacities and roles, both for what I could contribute to it, but also for what I continue to learn from the rich range and variety of activities that it anchors.

[*].For me, this is not a goodbye, but just a change in roles at the CIS. I will continue to use my CIS credentials and email address, and will be found on the existing contact details there for any queries or interactions with and on behalf of the CIS. So no need to change your address books, just yet.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/not-a-goodbye-more-a-come-again

Mrutyunjay Mishra - India Online: Measuring, Understanding, and Making Decisions about Internet in India (Delhi, September 01, 6 pm)

sumandro — 2017-08-29T10:18:51Z

With great pleasure we announce that Mrutyunjay Mishra, co-founder of Juxt-SmartMandate and India Open Data Association, will be the speaker for the September #FirstFriday event at the CIS office in Delhi. Mrutyunjay is a recognised expert in data-driven decision-making and a leading commentator on Indian consumer behaviour. His talk will focus on the evolution of measurement of users and activities in the Indian telecommunication and online market sectors, and will highlight the critical challenges and opportunities faced by public and private entities in reliably and timely measuring, understanding, and making commercial and policy decisions about 'India Online'. If you are joining us, please RSVP at the soonest as we have only limited space in our office.

Mrutyunjay Mishra

Co-founder, Juxt-SmartMandate, and co-founder, India Open Data Association

Mrutyunjay is a recognised expert in data-driven decision-making and a leading commentator on Indian consumer behaviour. At Juxt Smart Mandate he oversees key account management, custom solution development, new product development, alliances, and ready-to-go market initiatives.

In his career spanning more than 20+ years, Mrutyunjay co-founded JuxtConsult and successfully merged it with Smart Mandate. Prior to that, he worked in a number of leading organisations including IMRB International (Kantar, WPP), IDC India (IDG Group), Convergys India Services, Annik Systems (Quatrro) and ASHA (a rural development NGO).

At various points in his career, he headed large volume data analytics, consumer research, strategic business research, quality projects, usability studies and change management projects. He has had considerable exposure to projects in a diversity of domains – ICT, media, Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), pharma, healthcare, consultancy services, government, social development and public administration. He boasts functional consulting experience in implementing dashboards and reporting solutions in enterprise resource planning (ERP) environments.

He is involved in other compelling initiatives around analytics-driven health solutions, learning over education, digital marketing, and sustainable livelihood. He is the founding member of Centre for Marketing in Emerging Economies (CMEE) at IIM, Lucknow, an academic initiative to produce original research and attract collaboration for marketing theory creation. He is also the founding member of two other open sandbox projects, India Open Data Association (IODA) a non-profit company ‘to create, incubate, support and promote sustainable open data projects’ and Janwaar Castle Community Organisation (JCCO), a unique ‘initiative around learning over education and sustainable livelihood’.

He spent his formative years in Sambalpur (a small town in Odisha) University Campus, where his father was a professor. He is a graduate in commerce and a postgraduate in advertising and marketing. He loves dogs, likes reading, is a movie buff, collects stamps and matchboxes, enjoys being a weekend cook and likes travelling.

Twiter: @M2Od

RSVP

Location

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/firstfridayatcis-mrutyunjay-mishra-india-online-measuring-understanding-and-making-decisions-about-internet-in-india-delhi-sep-01

Mobilizing Online Consensus: Net Neutrality and the India Subreddit

Sujeet George — 2016-09-27T04:52:35Z

This essay by Sujeet George is part of the 'Studying Internet in India' series. The author offers a preliminary gesture towards understanding reddit’s usage and breadth in the Indian context. Through an analysis of the “India” subreddit and examining the manner and context in which information and ideas are shared, proposed, and debunked, the paper aspires to formulate a methodology for interrogating sites like reddit that offer the possibilities of social mediation, even as users maintain a limited amount of privacy. At the same time, to what extent can such news aggregator sites direct the ways in which opinions and news flows change course as a true marker of information generation responding to user inputs.

Introduction

It is almost an Internet truism that the comments section on any website is the cesspool that festers the basest of human instincts. Insults and abuses abound, users ‘call out’ each other’s opinions, their choice of words and, on a ~~bad~~ regular day, even each other’s parentage. The spectre of online anonymity, it has been suggested, affords the possibility of channelling opinion without being accountable for it. This is the more cynical outlook on how online opinion forums function; a viewpoint which although credible is limited as it sidelines the more engaging aspects of these forums. Such an interface dynamic has historically offered two modes of checks and balances: the original content to which users commented on was determined (and often written) by the administrators of the website, and in many cases the comments were moderated by those who ran the website.

Social news websites in the age of Web 2.0 have radically altered the means of production of content. By handing over to web-users the keys to the content generation storehouse, news aggregator websites like 4chan and Reddit have supposedly democratized the volume and direction of news flow. Users create (and recycle) content on which other users comment and add more content through memes, sharing of links, pictures and videos. Somewhere along the line, the original post (op) may trigger more specific discussions.

The content generated on a news aggregating website like Reddit can thus, theoretically, range across a broad spectrum. From discussions on current technology and sharing of world news to more specific conversations on gardening or anime, the website brings together diverse interests under a singular platform. Topic-based posts and discussions are categorised into subreddits, subcommunities which converge around similar interests. Thus, a subreddit like /r/cricket may serve as a platform for cricket enthusiasts to share news and views on the game. These subreddits together constitute Reddit as a whole. Only registered users can post submissions or comment on other posts, although unregistered users can access the submissions without being able to comment on them. Registered users can upvote and downvote both the posts submitted and the comments posted by other users.

Any registered Reddit user can create a subreddit to initiate submissions and discussions on a particular area of interest. Reddit has a series of default subreddits, including /r/AskReddit, /r/books, /r/history among others. When an unregistered user accesses the website they are likely to see the current top-voted posts from a combination of the default subreddits. The voting system is inextricably linked to visibility: the more the upvotes a post receives, the more likely it is to be top of the list on the self-proclaimed front page of the internet. The posts are thus sorted as a combination of top-voted submissions from an assortment of default subreddits. Comments on specific posts also follow a similar voting logic whereby users can upvote/downvote a specific comment based on how useful or relevant they find it to the original post. Registered users can curate their own page by subscribing to subreddits of their own interest, and unsubscribing from the default ones.

Being a registered user entails choosing a username under which a user’s submissions and comments are collated. Every user comment receives an aggregate score which is the sum of the upvotes and downvotes the comment has received. The cumulative comment scores for every user, called karma, is visible to every other user, and is often an indicator of the level of (in)activity of a specific user. Karma scores are the veritable fiat currency of the reddit space, with prolific users being visible on multiple popular threads attempting to scale their karma aggregate through comments that employ a combination of wit, hyperbole, cliché and outrage.

Reddit with its two-way dynamism—the users are the creators of content and the very people who comment on it—seemingly throws open the spectrum for content to be self-generated and moderated. Every subreddit has a set of moderators who attempt to maintain a modicum of direction amidst the chaos. Moderators are often users who are active on that particular subreddit, or have volunteered (or have been chosen by the subreddit community) to take up the task of maintaining the decorum and coherence of the subreddit. Reddit’s voting system, where users upvote and downvote submitted content, purports to ensure that the cream can constantly float above the morass. The infrastructural logic of Reddit—an algorithm that ensures that posts do not stagnate on the front page and get regularly refreshed by newer content—seeks to instill a participatory ethos where content created/submitted by users gains traction based on the extent of discussion that it generates among other users [1].

A characteristic of the reddit platform is the Ask Me Anything feature where notable individuals set a pre-determined time slot to answer questions raised by users of a subreddit community. The AMA format offers an interesting take on the possibilities of public engagement and publicity in the virtual domain. A unique feature of reddit, the popular AMAs are held on the default /r/IAMA subreddit. The earliest AMAs were coordinated by the founders as well as employees of the website; to an extent this is true even today although in recent times the public relations team of various celebrities have coordinated AMAs for their clients. It remains one of the most popular modes of user engagement, ironically functioning through external, mediated mechanisms. Most AMAs serve a dual purpose: celebrities offer to answer questions when they are ‘in the news’ or when they wish to publicize a new venture, which also serves as an endorsement of the popularity of the reddit platform in reaching out to a wide, primarily North American, audience. An early instance of an acknowledgement of the reach of the reddit platform was an AMA conducted by/for Barack Obama as he sought to be re-elected during the 2012 U.S. Presidential elections. Other notable ‘celebrity’ AMA sessions include those by Bill Gates, Madonna, and Edward Snowden. While celebrity AMAs remain a popular feature, the AMA format itself is utilised even by relatively less established personalities who have their own unique story to share. While /r/IAMA remains the default subreddit used to reach out to the reddit community, specific subreddits often conduct their own AMAs with personalities relevant to the group.

The India subreddit /r/India, the forum for content “directly about India and Indians,” has been a part of Reddit since 2008. At the time of writing this essay there are over 55000 registered Reddit users (including this writer) who subscribe to submissions posted on /r/India. Of course, there may be many more who ‘lurk’ around, a term for those who may not have subscribed but view submissions posted on the subreddit by visiting the subreddit page. /r/India typically draws in over 2 million page views every month. Over time the community has developed a vocabulary of its own, which is often self-referential and draws on submissions and comments that have been made at an earlier time. Many prolific users with characteristic usernames are recognized by fellow users, the sociality perhaps further strengthened through the annual city-based meet-ups that are planned as part of a larger Reddit tradition.

This essay looks at the mobilization of community opinion on /r/India on the issue of net neutrality, the efforts made by some of the users to raise awareness about it, and the ways in which the community responded and reacted to a wider online movement that sought to maintain a more egalitarian approach to Internet access and availability. Drawing on an analysis of a few posts submitted during a period that witnessed a flurry of activity in connection with the debates around net neutrality in India, the essay attempts to sketch out the contours of the debate around the axis of online activity and participation. It seeks to ponder on the extent to which a forum like the India subreddit offers the possibilities of a civic participation, of mobilizing public opinion and contributing to the decisions undertaken by policy makers. How do purportedly diverse online communities interact, draw consensus and stake a claim to the decision-making processes that involve multiple stakeholders often with conflicting interests?

The Social in the Virtual Rear-view Mirror

The form of any subreddit, with its defined purpose and rules of submission, ensures a certain coherence even amidst the cornucopia of memes, images and other web links that may be shared and commented upon. The governing logic of a particular subreddit accords it a certain hue, which most users attempt to conform to or occasionally subvert. The specificity of any subreddit, thus, is a mutually constitutive process where the original tech-interface guidelines are negotiated by the content submitted by users of the subreddit.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4s5bpn/tragedy_of_india/.

User behaviour on new media platforms can be understood as a virtual manifestation of traits that are exhibited in the domain of the social in real life. Consider the discussion sparked off by a post that was submitted about 4 weeks back, and which has catapulted to the top of the all time top voted submissions on the subreddit [2]. It contrasts the shoddy construction by the Maharashtra government in 2013 of a section of a fort staircase, with the more stable lasting section built by Shivaji in the 17th century. The user who posted the image commented on the dubious nature of infrastructural work in the present day, blaming corruption for the disparity in the quality of work. Juxtaposing historical nostalgia with an apathy about the present state-of-affairs, the comments and discussions around the post veered from questions of the feasibility of implementing older construction methods, to the widespread nepotism and corruption prevalent in public work contracts in the present day. One user remarked, “I'm guessing Shivaji didn't hand out the contracts for building his forts to the lowest bidder.” Another chimed in that “[no] tender is clean. It's often created, mapped, prepared and executed by the company and middleman willing to shell out the most to the bureaucrats and politicians.”

A popular motif on many submissions on /r/India is a lamentation on the tangled mess between the bureaucracy and legislature. It extends the generic urban middle class antipathy towards governance and its deep suspicion of the probity of the administrative processes of the Indian State. One user-comment tried to explain the popularity of the submitted post—a common indicator of content popularity on Reddit is the number of upvotes it receives and the extent of user participation through comments—to the highly ‘relatable’ nature of the submission.

The character of an online forum, while being shaped by diverse user behaviour, is invariably crystallized by the more dominant modes of representation. The anonymity afforded by the online medium and the potential infinitude of the range of submissions should theoretically stretch the spectrum of representations. Yet user behaviour often conforms in a bid to confirm its own shared identity within the group. What is then understood as relatable is not necessarily a universal, but merely an accommodation of difference through consensus. In the following sections I attempt to make sense of the processes through which such a consensus is drawn by considering the trajectory of discussions on posts pertaining to debates on net neutrality [3].

The Anatomy of an Online Mobilization

The discussions around questions of net neutrality, Facebook’s Free Basics, differential data pricing, and restricted access to OTT services have captured the Indian public imagination in the last 18-odd months. Multiple consultation papers shared by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) have served as a rallying point for domain experts, media policy analysts and the general public. The series of consultation papers and the questions that have arisen over specific practices of telecom companies are imagined through the essay as a single event punctuated by temporal fissures. It has its own prehistory, a call to arms, and the eventual (fleeting) redemption. The differing discourse around the issue is contextually singular even if separated by chronology.

On February 8 this year, an /r/India user shared a news report about TRAI declaring zero-rated products as illegal [4]. Months of collaboration among faceless internet users had managed a key victory in what was repeatedly termed a battle to save the Internet. User comments highlighted the scale of the task accomplished as “a bunch of folks on the Internet [stopped] a $300 billion market cap corporation [Facebook] and a bunch of telecoms with strong lobbying capabilities.” Some users could not see past the irony of the Internet itself serving as a means for the public to halt rapacious tech companies in their stride. The David v/s Goliath analogy seemed apt. The task, though, had just begun, as one user presciently noted: “Mobilizing people is hard. Mobilizing people against a better funded lobby, and on a dry technical topic ? really hard. We are probably going to need a dedicated NGO, mailing lists, donations and members for this and similar issues.”

The debates surrounding net neutrality have sparked a diverse range of questions related to Internet access, differential pricing, restraints on technology, impediments to freedom of expression and questions of consumer choice. The range of issues and stakeholders encompassed within the policy regulation has simultaneously atomised and collectivised the problematic of Internet. As an increasingly everyday technology for many urban Indians, Internet usage has carried the possibility of innovative and easy access to a range of services and information while circumventing hitherto static structures of the administrative machinery. Internet usage in the Indian context can be regarded as both a symbol of egalitarianism and privilege; a conflation of the larger ideal of enterprise espoused by the technological boom and a reluctantly understated reflection of the very technology being of limited wider accessibility. The debates on Internet usage through the very medium thus contains some of the tensions that were echoed in the responses to the questions on net neutrality that were raised on the Indian subreddit.

These debates, circulating across news mediums both print and digital, found their way into the /r/India cosmos through efforts to raise awareness about the issue and to bring about a greater collective bargaining momentum to the efforts in the digital space. A post on December 25, 2014 announced the efforts being undertaken by various media practitioners through the creation of the website http://netneutrality.in/ which later became http://www.savetheinternet.in/ [5]. As a submission in the early life of the net neutrality event the post garnered enough attention to find its way into the vocabulary of the subreddit.

It was, however, not until three months later that perhaps the most comprehensive early exhortation came through a post titled Let's fight for Net Neutrality before it becomes necessary. E-Mail the TRAI now [6]. submitted on March 28, 2015 by one of the subreddit moderators. The post called for users to mail the TRAI and join in the efforts to influence upon policy makers on the need for a neutral Internet. User comments ranged from a creating email templates to a brief primer on the meaning and scope of net neutrality. That the public counter fight was still in the planning stage is evident in the numerous user comments volunteering to craft an email template to be sent.

The possibilities of a collaborative enterprise were much more evident in another mod-post, submitted on April 8, 2015 titled Fight for Net Neutrality: The way forward [7]. The post assembled the increasing momentum that the net neutrality movement had garnered in the Indian virtual space. Varying email templates to be shared among peer groups were presented, enterprising users created memes and infographics, while more sinister minds listed out companies that openly flouted net neutrality rules. The aim was not just to organise, but to also synchronize the efforts of a purportedly disparate group of users.

Even as user efforts were directed towards raising awareness about net neutrality among a wider audience, the sheer scale of the task and improbable hurdles on the road where highlighted by some. One post speculated on the connection between the timing of TRAI’s consultation paper and the fact that the Director of TRAI was due to retire in May 2015 [8]. The user feared that “the decision on TRAI proposal has already been made. The public is asked to comment on the OTT proposal because it is required by norm (not sure about law). They are waiting for Mr Khullar to retire, so they can blame him for the colossal backlash that will happen when the proposal is ratified.”

In the next few months the momentum of the movement ebbed and flowed, with diligent users posting regular updates on the progress. Even as the Internet rights discourse on the forum sought to be balanced with the logic of the market, there emerged a series of reactionary submissions that seemed to combine a distrust of large telecoms with the emancipatory spirit of a virtual civil disobedience.

Zero Rating the Zero-Rated Apps

Concurrent with the efforts at the level of governance, /r/India users employed creative means to show their displeasure towards companies who seemed to oppose the tenets of net neutrality. One such instance was when a user galvanised forum opinion to down-rate the Flipkart and Airtel apps on their phones. Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal’s justification for zero-rated apps as sound business practice was turned inside-out as users gave a zero rating to the Flipkart app on their phones. The impact was ostensibly evident as the daily average ratings for the app saw a sharp fall [9].

Diatribes against telecom companies and their profit-driven enterprise have now become a regular feature on the forum. The mobile network Airtel, which has been at the forefront of the anti-net neutrality lobby, has faced its share of the community ire. Branded Chortel—an (un)imaginative coinage characterizing the supposed thieving policies of the company—the company along with Flipkart has been subject to a series of memes that invoke ridicule and hint at the sense of disconnect between consumers and the products on offer. The image shown above contrasts a popular biscuit brand Parle-G with the recently launched Airtel 4G Internet [10]. It employs Parle’s long unblemished reputation as a brand of reliability; its iconicity a signifier of a purported business of ethics that feels anachronistic in comparison to the business practices of the telecom companies.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/3r25gr/chortel_four_g/.

The movement to generate awareness about Internet policy also sought to initiate dialogues with administrators who are in a position to ensure that the community’s voices are heard. Thus Independent Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar did an AMA at the height of the net neutrality discussions [11]. Since the person doing the AMA can choose to answer or ignore from the range of questions posed by the community, the supposed mutuality of participation is often minimal. Nevertheless, Chandrasekhar’s AMA not just points to the interactive (propagandist) possibilities of reddit or any other social media platform but it also asserts the relevance of the medium as a significant domain where policy regulation impacts people whose voices need to be acknowledged. As an entrepreneur who has previously worked in the technology sector, Chandrasekhar symbolizes /r/India’s imagined ideal scenario of a ‘rule of experts’ in matters of governance. That a sitting MP would seek a dialogue with an online forum also hints at the relevance of such mobilizations, where enterprising tech-savvy politicians understand the potential to stir public action through the domain of the virtual.

Consensus in/and New Media

At one level, it could be suggested that the discussions which emerged on the India subreddit around the debates on net neutrality hint at the potentials of virtual mobilization of the public. Social media, the Internet and social networking forums like Reddit could potentially widen the level of information access and dissemination where the early groundwork has been laid by the RTI Act. But at stake in the whole discussion is not merely the extent to which an online community can modify the direction of a policy discourse. Even as the development of a ‘networked public sphere’ has transformed the means of consensus building, the elements of its discontent are difficult to ignore. The formation of a public sphere in a virtual environment presents the possibilities of conformity as much as of consensus.

The discourse around net neutrality on /r/India forum is notable for the wide-ranging consensus that it managed to appropriate from the community. Such a consensus could be interpreted in at least two ways. The form of any subreddit as a forum for all things related to a specific context—be it a common activity, nationality, gender identity—contains within itself the language of adequate acceptance and rebuttal. At the same time, the algorithmic technique of determining the visibility of a post through upvotes and downvotes renders real the possibility of consensus through conformity.

It is more interesting to look beyond the veneer of consensus and question the supposed diversity of the group and its implications, rather than infer collective action as a signifier of the rightness of the action. One could suggest that the terms of the debate, of limiting the control that mega-telecos wield over internet policy in India, offered an easy medium to galvanise opinion on the subreddit. Any nuanced stance will however need to read collective action in relation to the (im)possibility of individual opinion-making in a structured environment of an online forum.

An online platform with a voting system linked to visibility offers a peculiar type of consensus. A majority of the top-voted submissions and comments pertaining to the net neutrality debate on /r/India fall within a broad overlap of consensus linked to a participatory, egalitarian technological ethos which is characteristic of the post-liberalization Indian milieu. The possibility of dissent, or even voicing differing viewpoints, is structured in a limited spectrum since what will be shared/read is inextricably linked to what users understand as acceptable within the forum. Such an understanding can inadvertently suggest a consensus, or worse offer a monochromatic presentation of an issue. This is not to discount the possibility of informed discussion, or exaggerate the ‘hive mind’ of reddit. But the link between visibility and popularity of content often ensures that the nuances of a debate get sidelined and unidimensional. Thus, even though aspects of differential pricing may be understood as a means to wider access, or as a way to open Internet services to the vagaries of the market rather than State whims, such viewpoints find less credibility when articulated within a forum like /r/India [12]. While discussions may emerge which consider the issue beyond the limited rhetoric of free speech and consumer choice, they often get presented in the ‘anti net neutrality’ garb or as afterthoughts to a debate the terms of which have ostensibly been settled [13].

Communicative technologies, as Lisa Gitelman notes, often converge around an overlapping mental landscape that seeks to make sense of an act/event through synchronized ontologies of representation. Consensus in such an instance is not to be seen as a final validation of the community’s stance on an issue. It should prompt us to be wary of the pitfalls of online mobilization that could be travelling in an echo chamber. The task then would not be to debunk actions drawn on consensus, but to be aware of the limits of inclusivity of such online forums [14]. Further research has to consider ways in which individual users negotiate the possibility of presenting an individual stance to the community within interface-induced limitations to the possibility of such an enunciation. This would involve interviews with a pool of /r/India users, examine the types of news outlets and viewpoints that gain credence within the community, look at voting patterns, and perhaps undertake a more thorough examination of a wider range of concerns relevant to the community. This essay has attempted a preliminary gesture towards such an endeavour by picking a particular event and the community’s response to it. Reddit, in contrast to Facebook for instance, offers the possibility of peering into an online space where anonymity commingles with community enterprise and the meaning of accountability is extended beyond individual motive of mere sociality or recognition. As such, it could potentially offer an understanding of online behaviour beyond the limits of the individual-liberal paradigm of action orientation and widen the debate on the functioning of social news websites by being acutely aware of the thin line between the individual and the social.

Disclaimer

The writer has been a frequent lurker on Reddit, and the India subreddit since 2011. Beyond voraciously consuming the submissions on /r/India he does not claim to have contributed in any meaningful manner to the online discussions referred to in the essay.

Endnotes

[1] The literature on reddit is a fast growing domain, with innovative research looking at Reddit’s voting patterns, user behaviour, and news outlets linked to glean an understanding of the news aggregating website. For an examination of questions of identity and anonymity on Reddit see, Shelton, M., Lo, K., Nardi, B. (2015). Online Media Forums as Separate Social Lives: A Qualitative Study of Disclosure Within and Beyond Reddit. In iConference 2015 Proceedings. For an engagement with questions on what motivates Reddit user to contribute see, Bogers, T., & Nordenhoff Wernersen, R. (2014). How 'Social' are Social News Sites? Exploring the Motivations for Using Reddit.com. In Proceedings of the iConference 2014. (pp. 329-344). IDEALS: iSchools.

[2] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/4s5bpn/tragedy_of_india/. Last accessed on August 2, 2016. Unless stated otherwise, all links posted hereafter have also been accessed on the same day.

[3] My understanding of social media and the social dimension of new media has been shaped from my reading of Dijck, José Van. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. For an examination of social media practices see, Ellison, N. B. & boyd, d. (2013). Sociality through Social Network Sites. In Dutton, W. H. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 151–172.

[4] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/44qddb/trai_to_make_zero_rated_products_illegal/.

[5] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/2qcvhp/i_created_a_site_to_educate_people_about_airtel/.

[6] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/30lz1p/lets_fight_for_net_neutrality_before_it_becomes/.

[7] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31vvf2/fight_for_net_neutrality_the_way_forward/.

[8] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/322iv8/trai_asking_for_feedback_on_their_proposal_is_a/. For Kullar’s own views on the issue, see: http://thewire.in/1624/lets-be-practical-about-net-neutrality/.

[9] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31ykxj/flipkart_and_airtel_are_fucking_with_your/.

[10] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/3r25gr/chortel_four_g/.

[11] See: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/387req/hi_rindia_i_am_rajeev_chandrasekhar_member_of/.

[12] CIS’s note on its position on net neutrality points to the multilayered nature of the policy: http://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/net-neutrality-war-is-not-just-facebook-versus-internet-mullahs/story-s9eZpZnomaaiz4De8fYfaK.html. Last accessed on September 9, 2016.

[13] Consider the discussions that emerged in two separate posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31peb4/lets_respond_to_this_anti_net_neutrality_piece/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/336u8f/woke_up_to_this_pro_internetorg_article_in/.

[14] Gitelman, Lisa. Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Especially chapter 3.

Author Profile

Sujeet George has an M.Phil from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. His research interests are in histories of science and commodities, and new media and digital humanities. He has previously worked with the Mumbai City Museum and The Southasia Trust.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_mobilizing-online-consensus-net-neutrality-and-the-india-subreddit

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #WaitingForFood

Admin — 2022-04-25T13:11:04Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Presentation and Discussion of Papers

Session Plan

“Don’t come to Burger King, let the King come to you! Order safe deliveries from our kitchen to your doorstep on Swiggy or Zomato. Stay home, stay safe”.

The above caption is from an advertisement by the popular fast food joint Burger King, during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, one would have come across many such advertisements, centering the safety of the customer, from restaurants and food delivery platforms during the pandemic. Delivery platforms also reinforced this idea of ‘safe access to food from home’ through measures such as temperature checks and vaccination status of the delivery workers, option of no-contact delivery etc. Within such a context, the idea of ‘home’ acquired a certain valence, imbued with a sense of comfort that allowed for multiplicity of food options to be delivered within a short span of time, without compromising one’s safety. In this session, we propose to explore aspects of time, space, and home in the context of food delivery in the pandemic. While we explore time through the concept of ‘waiting’, we look at space through processes of simultaneous compression and rarefaction.

A cursory glance at any food delivery app provides the customer with a certain distribution of time- order placed, preparing order, order picked up, order delivered- all of which are significantly tied to how the process of waiting at home is approached and experienced by the customer. Additionally, the tracking option on the app with an icon of the driver mediates the waiting experience. Similarly, such processes of waiting are experienced by the delivery worker in different ways albeit through multiple delivery cycles outside of home. In any given delivery cycle, a delivery worker waits for the order to be assigned and waits for the restaurant to prepare the order. In addition to this, incentives and long distance delivery produce other forms of waiting for the delivery worker. This waiting operates simultaneously with rapid movement often required to ensure that the order is delivered to the customer who is waiting at home. These forms of waiting are integral to the order-delivery chain and they take place on multiple registers- shaped by the space of home and outside home.

Various food delivery apps also communicate to the customer the promise of delivering different cuisines from across restaurants at the tip of their fingers. Such technologies entail a collapse of space that the customer experiences which varies drastically from the spatial organization of these said options. Many aspects of the app interface are directed towards this compression- the manner in which multiple cuisines and restaurants are organized on the app, the tracking interface that signals an apparent proximity mediated by time frame. Real time experience of delivery often punctures this idea of a seemingly seamless process- glitches in the map showing faulty directions and specifically in the context of Mumbai, the space itself is characterized by traffic jams, climate events etc- reconfiguring space in specific ways.

Drawing on the above discussions, the proposed session will include two papers exploring dimensions of space, time and home. Both papers will be presented In the first paper, (presenter's name) will discuss time in the context of waiting by asking how different modalities of waiting, experienced in the food-delivery process, are linked to the space of home and outside home. In the second paper, (presenter's name) will focus on space as a concept to understand how the perception of the compression of space in the app itself is animated in the order delivery process. Through both these papers, we attempt to explore how the idea of home itself gets restructured through the discourse of ‘staying at home to be safe’. Both papers draw on an ethnographic study conducted by the discussants in Central Mumbai.

Outline of the Session

The discussants will share a recording of their respective presentations of 15 minutes each (as stated in the call for papers). The session will begin with a short discussion between presenters for 20 minutes. This will be followed by an open floor discussion on the papers with the audience present for the subsequent 30 minutes.

Session Team

Nisha Subramanian is pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at Ashoka University. Their work explores rights of forest dwelling communities and temporalities of justice and injustice within the space of the forest

Rhea Bose is pursuing her PhD in The School of Development Studies (SDS), TISS Mumbai. Her work looks at the intersections of cyberspace and queer theory.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-waitingforfood

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #TransActandWhatFollowed - Access to care for transgender persons during the COVID-19 pandemic

Admin — 2022-05-19T15:12:46Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Individual Presentation

Session Plan

This session will be an individual presentation by Brindaalakshmi.K. Transgender persons were among the most severely affected during COVID-19 pandemic. The government of India made no special efforts to address the concerns of the transgender community during the lockdowns. Further hampering the access to their rights, the Government of India issued the rules for the new law, Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 while the world was under a global lockdown. Transgender persons have had to go back to living in severely transphobic and abusive environments with their natal families. Access to healthcare and COVID-19 vaccination has also been a challenge for many transgender persons due to the lack of valid identification documents. Digitisation of the process to change the name and gender on identification documents has made the situation worse for a historically silenced population group. The digital process has widened the gap in accessing healthcare and other support systems during the pandemic.

Under the theme of violence and care, this paper will explore the systemic violence faced by the transgender community during the COVID-19 pandemic and their struggles and challenges in accessing healthcare and other relief. The intent is to explore the role of technology in both enabling better access and also widening the access gap for transgender persons and also the data gap further perpetuating the erasure of transgender persons. The widening access gap will be understood by focusing on the digital process to change ID documents while the positive aspects of the use of technology will be explored by looking at some of the community driven online campaigns to raise funds and other support for transgender persons during the lockdowns.

This session will be based on the initial findings from the qualitative research study, Gendering of Development Data in India: Post-Trans Act 2019 by Brindaalakshmi.K for the Centre for Internet & Society as part of the Our Voices, Our Future project supported by Association for Progressive Communications. For the purpose of this study, qualitative interviews were conducted with NGOs, activists and lawyers to cover the rights related challenges faced by transgender persons. Apart from gender, different intersections of their identity such as caste, religion, urban/rural and disability were also covered in these interviews. Some of the findings will be shared during this presentation.

Presenter

Brindaalakshmi. K is Co-Lead, Queer & Digital at Point of View. They are authoring the study, Gendering of Development Data in India: Post-Trans Act 2019 for the Centre for Internet & Society, India as part of the Our Voices Our Future project supported by Association for Progressive Communications. They previously authored the study, Gendering of Development Data in India: Beyond the Binary for the Centre for Internet & Society, India as part of the Big Data for Development Network (2020). They are a queer rights activist and peer supporter working with the LGBTIQA+ community in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-transactandwhatfollowed

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #SocialMediaActivism

Admin — 2022-04-25T13:01:47Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Individual Presentation/Demonstration of Research Outputs and Methods

Session Plan

The said session is based upon the author’s original study on social media as a means of protest in the new digital age. Based on the study “Social Media and Protest: A Case Study on Anti CAA Protest in India” and updating it to “Social Media and Protest: A Case Study of Protest in India during COVID-19” through this session the aim is to bring in light the new ways how dissent or movements of resistance are being navigated. “Home” as being the theme of the conference becomes central point of view in this study and to understand how resistance movement can be participated from home and the impact it makes. This study can be beneficial to understand the socio-political movements in India and usage of digital technologies in mass participation in these movements – these range from amplification of resources, organizing gatherings etc.

The theme social media and modern activism has recently taken the limelight in study of liberal arts. Researchers and universities are now taking social media as a tool to understand modern activism. The proposed study was originally presented in the International Conference on Advanced Research in Social Sciences, Oxford, United Kingdom. The session aims to discuss the findings of the said paper vis-à-vis Anti CAA protest in India as the case study. However, in regards to new developments around global and national politics, the author would also like to bring in perspective new case studies. And highlight the role of social media for dissent in India since 2019, followed in the Farmer’s Protest and much more.

Abstract

Social Media and Protest: A Case Study of Protest in India during COVID-19

The study aims to understand the role of social media in the current chain of events of various activist protests that have happened in the 21st Century or are going around the world. It specifically focuses on the role of social media in mitigating the protest in India. Role of social media thus was recognized as one of the major influences in organizing and facilitating these protests across the country. A special emphasis has been levied upon how the role of social media and how it was changed during the COVID-19 timeline. Understanding how physical interaction was limited how did people still participate in the resistance movement and helped in amplifying the cause. For instance, the Farmers Protest of 2020 is an example of Pandemic, resistance and social media – using this as an example an attempt is being made to understand how the pandemic has severely use of social media among young audience.

In this study we unfold the active role of Social Media Apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram into creating awareness about the issue, advocating for one’s rights and organizing protests. Thus, looking at a new narrative of activism through online means or to say emergence of “Online Activism" and shift in resistance movements to digital spaces.

Keywords: social media, Activist Protest, COVID-19, Farmers Protest 2020, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Resistance, Digital Spaces, Online Activism

Presenter

Ms. Anushka Bhilwar (pronouns: they/she) are a student of MPP (Masters in Public Policy) at the University of Stirling, Scotland and an alumnus of Ambedkar University, New Delhi. Their research expands to AI and tech-policies to contemporary political thought and conflict studies. Currently, she works as a freelance writer and storyteller for Glasgow Women’s Library, Glasgow, United Kingdom and a contributing writer at People’s History of South Asia. In their previous endeavours they have worked within the capacity of a Research Associate and Technical Writer with United Nations Development Programme, New Delhi and Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-socialmediaactivism

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #IdentitiesVulnerabilitiesOpportunitiesDissent

Admin — 2022-05-24T14:42:54Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Demonstration of Research Outputs and Methods

Session Plan

The penetration of the internet, mobile phones, social media and multimedia has ushered in the digital revolution. The Digital society promised to be open, fluid and accessible cutting across the barriers of class, caste, gender and rigidities of social structures. It has tremendous scope and potential to contribute effectively to economic growth, social mobility and political participation, creating the possibilities of a more inclusive society across the globe. However, despite its inclusive potential, the existing gender disparities, discrimination, patriarchial structures and inequalities, faced by women has had a considerable impact on the digital gender divide, leading to the digital exclusion of women. This exclusion had further implications during the lockdowns as families were confined to their homes with access to the internet as their only window outside the home.

Global statistics betray considerable discrimination in women’s access to internet. Internet penetration in the Americas is 77.6% for men and 76.8% for women, while in Africa it is 33.8% for men and 22.6% for women. The gender gap in developing countries is 22.8 % while it is 2.3 per cent in the developed world. For the world as a whole it is 17%, as per 2020 data. In India only 85% of women have access to the internet and 58% have access to mobile internet. Access however is not the only impediment in exploiting the internet’s equalizing potential. Low levels of literacy, lack of awareness and structures of patriarchy inhibits women’s participation and mobility on the digital platform as well. The internet operates largely within the parameters of a male-dominated society favouring male access and usage. The digital space at the same time has added to the existing challenges and vulnerabilities of women. In this context the present panel proposes to deliberate on four critical themes/questions.

The papers are based on survey findings, field notes, case studies and literature survey from an ongoing Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, sponsored Major Research Project on “Women as ‘Digital Subjects; Participating, Vulnerabilities and Building Empowerment”. The study was conducted in two urban and peri-urban areas of Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Kolkata and Howrah. The respondents included 540 women drawn from various socio-economic backgrounds, educational status, age and religious groups. The work status of the demographics in the sample includes- students 41 per cent, salaried workers (formal and informal/ full-time and part-time) 31 per cent, homemakers 20 per cent and businesswomen or entrepreneurs 8 per cent. 46 per cent of these women reported a total family or household income of two to five lakhs per annum. The survey was conducted in the lockdown months of January to May 2021, which gave a new meaning to home- as a workplace and as a social space - through a questionnaire, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with targeted groups especially home-based women entrepreneurs in Kolkata and Mumbai.

The data analysis from the survey will be posted prior to the session for the audiences. The themes of the panel aim to answer the following questions:

Who are the women who inhabit the social media driven digital space? Is it possible to speak of ‘women’ on the Net or are there ‘many voices of many women’? How do women perceive the internet and how do they seek to employ it? This question becomes critical in view of the unequal access to internet and internet enabled devices, not only on account of lack of digital literacy but also on account of existing social structures that deny women the agency. Moreover, lockdowns restricted people to their homes, leaving the digital spaces as the only means for social as well as economic interactions. In this situation, how did the digital spaces play out for providing opportunities to women?
What is the process and modalities of identity construction? What are the frames of reference for women in the process of new identity construction? Are these identities different from that of the ones in the real world? Are women re imagining their identities on the internet or constructing new ones? How are women creating new opportunities for themselves through the use of social media and the internet, given the flexibility of ‘working from home’ or ‘home-based’ ventures? Are these opportunities or are they compromises? In the process how are they using the internet to negotiate with the existing social structures that restrict their mobility and confine them to their homes?
What is the nature of women’s identities and expression in the virtual world? Can marginalized women use digital spaces to voice dissent? The flexibility of the digital media helps the marginalized create a space and alternative languages of dissent. How does this medium help Dalit women’s voices be transmitted in various forms?
Are women’s vulnerabilities in the digital world different from that of the real world? How do women negotiate these vulnerabilities? What does women’s vulnerability mean in the context of the internet? Do these vulnerabilities limit women’s access and participation?

The panel includes four papers relating to the four themes:

I. Urban Woman and the Digital Media: Access, Preferences and Challenges

This paper will present the main findings about Indian urban women’s access, participation and the purpose of their usage of the digital media. It is based on a survey that was conducted under the ICSSR’s major research project “Women as ‘Digital Subjects; Participating, Vulnerabilities and Building Empowerment” at the Department of Political Science, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. The survey was conducted among 540 women respondents from Mumbai and Kolkata and their peri-urban areas.

The survey data will showcase their demographic profiling and socio-economic status in the form of age groups, education levels, social groupings such as caste and religion, occupations and household level incomes, asset ownership and living spaces.

The access to devices, internet costs and preferences in usage of social media platforms and apps will also be shown. Women’s perceived advantages and limitations to uses of digital media in their personal and/or professional lives will be revealed.

Further, the data will show their perceptions about their digital identities, realisation of gendered vulnerabilities in digital spaces and assessment of potential economic opportunities in world outside their physical world -the digital world.

The paper will conclude by pointing out the gendered nature of digital media-driven opportunities, with a focus on home-based entrepreneurship, and the need for intervention at the social level and policy frameworks to enhance the negotiating power of these aspiring women in three broad sections.

II. Women, Identity and the Digital Media: Re-imagination or Re- negotiation?

The impact of the internet has been exponential. On a very fundamental level, the internet has changed the way society interacts and connects with each other. This became more apparent and conspicuous during the pandemic as the social world moved to the internet and offline communities were formed by families, neighbourhoods, communities and societies. One of the particularly engaging aspects of this new modality of communication through the internet is its ability to support user-generated content in an interactive and ubiquitous manner. Within the digital world, this leads to the creation of new contacts which lead to assertion of 'new identities’.

Based on a survey of 540 women in Mumbai and Kolkata and in-depth interviews of the lived experiences of home-based entrepreneurs on the use of social media for Entrepreneurship, this sub-theme will throw light on the access to the internet and online platforms and the opportunities that it has created for entrepreneurship among homemakers during the pandemic.

In the light of these, the paper seeks to examine the women’s perception about the gendered nature of the internet, its potential in reconfiguring their identities, the possibilities of multiple identities on the internet and the intersectionality and divergence of such identities. The paper explores the dynamics of the process of identity creation by women in the digital space through the use of social media platforms namely Facebook and Whatsapp by examining and situating the life experiences of women. The paper argues that the digital spaces are geared towards reconfiguring existing identities vis-a-vis the digital platforms that women use or are part of.

III. Gendering the Digital Dalit Dissent: Reading Thenmozhi Soundararajan’s Transmedia Art

The digital medium with its unique forms of engagement and the possibility of inhabiting several mediational spaces allows the marginalized Dalit women to voice the dissent in multiple tongues. This paper argues that the language of dissent of Dalit women in the digital medium can be distinguished distinctly from their peers in the textual medium. These voices are marked by not only an insistence of dismantling the hierarchies of textual production and its complementary codes of participation but inventing multiplicities of form of expression that traverses various languages and forms. In doing so it invents a language of dissent that critically engages with but significantly departs from a range of Dalit feminist discourses that has essentially framed an alternative Dalit ‘canon’.The paper further argues that the digital Dalit feminist discourse changes the optics of engagement by re-inventing the understanding of ‘difference’ as an essentially polymorphous category. Thus is further accentuated in terms of how the Dalit Diaspora re-inscribes 'home' as a site of negotiations of caste invisibility.

The paper will particularly focus on the transmedia art of Thenmozhi Soundararajan as an incentive to place this understanding of dissent firmly within the overlapping categories of ‘engaged art’ and ‘engaged activism’.

IV. Gendered Vulnerabilities in the Digital Spaces: Some Insights

Vulnerability is a concept that is often used in the literature on victimization. Vulnerability can be seen as the intersection between two axes: risk and harm and any given individual may be plotted in respect of his or her level of risk of being victimized and the amount of harm the victimization experience may cause.

The dimensions of vulnerabilities that women are subject to in digital spaces include go beyond inequity of access to the internet or devices, lack of digital literacy, cyber bullying / harassment, cyber crime and financial frauds. Based on survey findings of 540 women respondents in Mumbai and Kolkata, and their peri-urban areas, this paper argues that the internet is innately male-oriented, elitist and to a large extent undemocratic. These create inbuilt obstacles for women digital users and therefore require their tremendous effort. The greater problem however lies in normalizing such vulnerabilities creating the possibilities of transforming the digital space into mirror images.

Keywords: Internet, Digital Media, Women on Digital Media, Women

Session Team

Manisha Madhava PhD (Jadavpur University) is an Associate Professor and Head of, Department of Political Science, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. Her areas of research interest include Parliamentary Democracy in India with special reference to Lok Sabha, state parties in India, and social media and politics. She is the author of State Parties in India: Parliamentary Presence & Performance (Gyan, 2020) and co-editor of Indian Democracy: Problems and Prospects (Anthem, 2009). She is currently working on an ICSSR Sponsored Major Research Project on Women as ‘Subjects’ in Digital Media; Participating, Vulnerabilities and Empowerment.

Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. She has been trained in literary studies at Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Ruprecht Karls Universitat, Heidelberg. Post-colonial studies, culture studies, Digital humanities and emerging literatures are her areas of interest.

Aparna Bose is an independent researcher and visiting faculty at the Department of Political Science, SNDT Women’s University with an interest in International Politics, Foreign Policy Analysis, Area studies (mainly Africa), and Human Rights. Based in Mumbai, India, she has taught Political Science and International Relations courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at different institutions in Mumbai. She holds a PhD in African Studies from Mumbai University.

Saumya Tewari (PhD in Development Studies, TISS, Mumbai) is an independent researcher with an interest in comparative politics, reforms, transparency & accountability and gender. Currently based in Lucknow, India, she has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Public Policy and Political Science at different institutions in Mumbai and at Kumaun University in Nainital. She has worked as a policy writer with IndiaSpend, tracking public policy concerns in health, education, governance, election data and gender. She also holds a PG Diploma in Public Policy from ISS, The Hague and is an honorary fellow at the Centre for Multilevel Federalism, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identitiesvulnerabilitiesopportunitiesdissentir

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #DigitisingCrisesRemakingHome

Admin — 2022-04-25T12:23:42Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022- #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Panel Discussion

Session Plan

The session is planned as a panel discussion between three scholars on three distinct, interconnected notions of home – specifically the home as a dwelling unit, an administrative unit (such as a municipality, a city, or a state), and a country (or a nation state) in the context of India. We intend to parse these ideas within the context of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic to discuss notions of ‘safety’, ‘trust’, ‘support’, and ‘access’ by examining the digital turn in all three kinds of ‘home’. The session will open with the scholars speaking to each other, and laying out the central ideas. The conversation between the three scholars will act as provocations to enable a larger discussion with other attendees.

In 2020, when the first Covid-19 lockdowns began, the internet was discussed as a space of solidarity, of meeting, entertainment, work, and of support. But soon it became evident that access to such spaces of solidarity or support was not necessarily equal. While for some it was almost non-existent, for many others it was limited or regulated. In the Indian context these differences only stood out further due to unequal access to infrastructure, healthcare, and even basic necessities such as food that was starkly apparent in the long march of several thousand migrant workers from cities back to their ‘homes’ in rural areas at the height of the Indian summer.

At the national level, the digital response to the pandemic was most palpable. The use of contact tracing through apps such as Aarogya Setu, the CoWin portal for vaccinations, and the often arbitrary use of drones, facial recognition, and artificial intelligence have raised questions about surveillance, inclusion, and how useful technology can be in assisting a public health crisis. Often such responses reflected a law and order response to what has been a public health crisis. On the other hand, the establishment of Vande Bharat missions to bring stranded Indians from around the world ‘back home to India’ presented a very different idea of home.

Administrative units at the state and local levels had differing procedures and interventions. Many attempted to follow the guidelines and interventions laid out by the central government, others introduced their own digital solutions but soon found that these were not enough to actually deliver governance during the pandemic.

This session will explore the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the digital becoming the default mode of managing the pandemic–or any sort of threat. We ask if the idea of ‘home’ as a ‘safe space’ had ever really been so and whether the pandemic exacerbated existing exploitative mechanisms within a ‘home’ – be it the dwelling, the city, or even one’s country. We also intend to discuss issues of access, surveillance, privacy, vulnerability, the burdens of care-work, the exploitative extraction of data, and divergent understandings of consent frameworks within these three axes of the idea of the ‘home’.

Session Team

Vidya Subramanian is Raghunathan Family Fellow, South Asia Institute, Harvard University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests lie at the intersection of technologies and societies. Her current research investigates the changing nature of citizenship in the technological society we now inhabit. Focusing on India, her research is loosely framed by two large issues: the first is the colonisation of the everyday so-called real world by the digital; and the second is how power permeates and is implicated in such technologies.

Kalindi Kokal is Post Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Policy Studies, IIT Bombay. She has a doctorate in law from the Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Her doctoral work centred on understanding how non-state actors in dispute processing engage with state law. Her dissertation is an ethnographic study of dispute-processing mechanisms in two rural communities in the states of Maharashtra and Uttarakhand in India. She works on understanding how the manner in which people actually experience state law coupled with their perceptions of dispute resolution and state courts underscore the need to explore broader understandings of law and dispute resolution.

Uttara Purandare is PhD Researcher, IITB-Monash Research Academy. She is pursuing her PhD in Public Policy under a joint programme offered by IIT Bombay and Monash University. Her area of research is smart cities. Looking specifically at the intersection of technology, gender, and governance, Uttara’s research focuses on how safety and surveillance are constructed by the smart city rhetoric and the role of private sector firms in governing the smart city. The COVID-19 pandemic and the technologies that have been introduced by national governments and smart cities purportedly to curb the spread of the virus have raised interesting questions about privacy and citizens’ rights during a crisis. Uttara is presently exploring some of these questions within the Indian context.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-digitisingcrisesremakinghome

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #CovidConfessions: An internet art project

Admin — 2022-04-25T13:16:53Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Online Interactive Exhibit/Individual Presentation/Demonstration of research outputs and methods

Session Plan

Featuring anonymous stories of resilience, wisdom, and joy, in Kannada, Hindi, & English

Background: Over the past 2 years, digital infrastructures have played an intensified role in the meaning making of the home. As the internet offers up access to work, play, and social contact it also mediates our relationships with our own identities, our successes, and failures. In the anonymity of the online community (for those who are privileged enough to have access to the internet and personal hardware like a smartphone or laptop), physical markers of belonging, material signifiers of social status can become irrelevant. For many who don’t have stable home environments, online communities can become a home that their own physical dwellings cannot.
Questions: How can anonymity construct a stable and safe space? How can sharing anonymously via digital technologies help overcome mental health stresses caused by prolonged isolation? Can one find refuge and comfort in the stories and experiences of others? How can online safe spaces be curated as a tool for healing?
#CovidConfessions: This session is an internet art experiment. The goal is to create an archive of anonymous covid confessions to share in the form of illustrations, voice overs, and animation, with the world. Here is a reference to the art style. This is a long-form story, but I’m looking to create long-form, as well as single-slide bitesized multi-media pieces for social media. I know that there are similar confession style online spaces like this one but I’m looking to take these words one step further and create art that can be a healing.
Accessibility: In order to be accessible to non-English speakers, I’d like to gather and include stories in Hindi and Kannada: #कोविडकहानी #CovidKahani #ಕನ್ನಡಕಥೆ #CovidKatha
Gathering Stories: Stories will be collected through digital platforms like LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram and personal networks like WhatsApp/Signal/Telegram, via a google sheet like this one. I will need this translated into Hindi and Kannada. I will reach Kannada speakers through Telegram and WhatsApp, English speakers through instagram, and Hindi speakers through Instagram and WhatsApp. Would love inputs on how to do this better.

Marginalised Voices: The internet is inherently a privileged space, and given that online confessions are given anonymously and without physical intervention, I don't see how I can reach out to non-internet users for stories at this point without compromising their anonymity — including them is out of the scope of this project. I acknowledge that it's very difficult to centre marginalised voices in this project — would love inputs on how to tackle that.

Session Type

An asynchronous online interactive exhibit, running from April 27 to May 27.
The internet is asynchronous, so we should make space for exhibit style projects which are not tied down to particular live “session.” This is an ongoing project that everyone can participate in. This project will be hosted on a microsite, linked to the IRC website, and shared on the instagram handle: @covid.confessions.project.
However, if I were hard pressed to choose one of the four formats, I would pick format 3 “Demonstration of research outputs and methods.” I can speak about what has been successful and what hasn’t worked with the project, what the reach and impact has been, and whether it answered any of the questions I began with.

Presenter

Indumathi Manohar came to a career in design via theatre, dance, and scuba diving. Currently Communications Designer at CIS, she works on making research publications, annual reports, podcasts, events, and op-eds, more accessible to a larger audience through visual design— whether it be through layout design, infographics, social media creatives or web banners. You can find her work here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covidconfessions

IRC22 - Proposed Session - #“Going Home”: Constructions of a Digital-Urban Platform Interface in Delhi-NCR

Admin — 2022-04-25T13:04:02Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Individual Paper Presentation

Abstract

My ongoing fieldwork with taxi drivers in Delhi-NCR suggests that the “go-home” feature and its equivalent in platform apps such as Uber and Ola have generated a lot of interest. This feature matches drivers with rides to their preferred destinations – usually allowing drivers to choose one or two destinations of their choice in a working day (Uber India Help nd). In an environment of algorithmic governance where drivers feel a considerable loss of control and autonomy, this feature offers a semblance of control over their conditions of survival and mobility. Departing from the enthusiasm generated among platform taxi drivers, this paper explores what “home” signifies for platform cultures with specific attention to the social and material infrastructures that enable and contest “going home.” The “home,” as in other instances, conveys familiarity, comfort and (intimate) knowledges. How and why (if so) do platforms as an urban-digital-labour-capital interface rely on or negate these constructions? Does this arrangement offer an incremental step of negotiating interlocking conflicts and if so, how? In summary, this paper provisionally suggests that “home,” as a feature and as an idea, may have been introduced by platform companies but its possibilities are not circumscribed by their designs.

Cited

Uber India (nd): “Set a Driver Destination,” Uber India Help, viewed on 9 March 2022, https://help.uber.com/driving-and-delivering/article/set-a-driver-destination?nodeId=f3df375b-5bd4-4460-a5e9-afd84ba439b9

Presenter

Anurag Mazumdar is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Geography & GIS, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-goinghomeconstructionofadigitalurbanplatforminterfaceindelhincr

IRC19 - Proposed Session - #StoriesRecordsLegendsRituals

sumandro — 2018-11-28T15:55:24Z

Details of a session proposed by Priyanka, Aditya, Bhanu Prakash GS, Aishwarya, and Dinesh for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List - Call for Sessions

Session Plan

All our tangible history can be attributed to our records-making going back to when the records were literally set in stone, so to say, archived using human digits (digital heritage!). Oral traditions such as songs, stories and recitals, performative traditions, arts and other cultural expressions that reaffirm of our collective experiences remain intangible. Stories create Legends, Rituals physically embody the legends through performances, Records attempt to freeze time at a moment. Thereby characterizing culture and memories of a community. Our effort here is to visit and discuss who creates the records, discuss the affordance of lists as an information artefact for exchange, facilitating dialogue and collective meaning-making. We peek at the traditional community of Helavaru as map and genealogy tellers, their legends, rituals / performances and the cultural economy involved in making and circulating the archives of cultural memories in contrast with the technology driven formulation of lists that are founding the Internet culture. Allegorically, if the memory of stone as a medium of a message is still alive in us, how are people included and who all are excluded from our “memories”.

Our session would be a performative through experimental list artefacts that intend to make visible the interplay between the form of the information artefact and the content. How do we perceive information when the form of the list changes. The implicit structure of lists is suggestive of a certain order, priority and disconnected connections. We intend to play with those structures, breaking them and making new ones in the process. What do we call a list? and what does it do?

Priyanka and Aditya will bring "poetic" list artefacts that juxtapose traditional aspects of list making and lists as a dynamic phenomenon on the internet (ex. #Metoo).
Bhanu will introduce the traditional storytelling community of Helavaru as list performers.
Aishwarya will bring in the current context of social auditing and the stories from the ground today, from a rural context.
Dinesh will illustrate 3 ways list are formulated today mathematically, socially and technologically.

Session Team

Priyanka is a new media artist-researcher, currently engaged with Microsoft as an interaction designer. While at Microsoft she solves design problems for the browser, her personal inquiries run deep into understanding people’s lives on the internet, nature of the digital-materiality and its affordances for expression and exchange in networked societies.

Aditya is a designer and an entrepreneur always thinking of ways to display information beautifully. Lately he has been working on interfaces for lists to provide a clear stream of reason to anyone through simple model(s) of visualisation of information and, therefore attempt to make knowledge more accessible.

Priyanka and Aditya intends to play with the form of lists to investigate its effect on narrative construction. They will bring in “poetic-lists” - experimental list artefacts that probe into the implicit order and biases that lists bring to the act of meaning making, especially in the context of a collective audience.

Bhanu Prakash GS - As Web application developer at Servelots(.com), he contributes to the open and free software, and has been working on developing tools for delivering visual stories from archives. He has worked with the NCBS@25 project titled “13 Ways” where stories from the history of National Centre for Biological Sciences, Democracy Archives for University of Gottingen, and also on methods to render the folk stories of Vijayadashami rituals into visual stories on the Web.

Bhanu introduces the ways the Helavaru community, in the pre-internet era, created, “circulated” and mutated Lists of names, facts and events forming the information networks of communities, castes, jaatis, clans, tribes. The Helavas are a nomadic community visible around Karnataka and Andhra who deck up their bullocks and carts, set out to the villages of their patrons to sing praises of great deeds of their forefathers and the genealogy of the families with great detail, and end their performance with a ritual Harike - a wish for the well being of their patrons. In return they are paid for their services with grains, clothes, goat, sheep, cow, bullocks and money as much as one can afford.

Their story is an indicator of the cultural economy, of interweaving a web of communities, their systems of socio-political-cultural organisation by developing competence in data indexing, backups and restores, dealing with identity and authentication, conflicts and negotiations and more from generation to generation. The Helavaru claim that each family recorded genealogy of at least 3 lakh families, and passing it on, and also losing in some cases is fascinating.

Aishwarya is a Communication Strategist at the Society for Social Audit, Accountability and Transparency (SSAAT) - Andhra Pradesh, Department of Rural Development, Government of Telangana. SSAAT has been set-up with a vision to uphold the concept of eternal vigilance by the people, facilitated by social activists and Government acting in conjunction.

A social audit is a standardised way of facilitating people to critique the implementation of a welfare scheme, and demand accountability from the government. It is a powerful tool which enables people to come forward, demand information, question officials, and fight for their rightful deliverables of a government scheme. This mechanism ensures transparency in the way a government functions, and has helped recover a lot of money lost to corruption.

In India, a Supreme Court mandate made the social audits of MGNREGS compulsory in all states. However, Social Audit units have been successful in empowering the people only in a few states. While the SAU facilitates an audit, it is conducted by people from the families of the beneficiaries. One social audit is a 15-day process of record verifications, door-to-door verifications, awareness rallies, a Gram Sabha and a Public Hearing. While a social audit ensures accountability, it lacks the guarantee of enforcement. The different layers of bureaucracy often swallows the essence of public participation and grievance redressal does not have follow-ups.

All grievances are recorded in the form of paras in the social audit database. While our on-ground social auditors may be socially and politically aware enough to observe and call out patterns in caste and gender discrimination, the results remain, but in a list on the MIS.

Dinesh is part of Janastu team - a non-profit group. The team is eager to help address Web content accessibility for the low-literate using social semantic web concepts and are also looking at 3D methods for spatial navigation, location interpretation and storytelling. Janastu engages with software commons by developing and supporting open source social platforms.

Dinesh, with a Computer Science background, will bring list comprehension to this platform using map/reduce, monads, and blockchain as the technical formalisms that make the Internet work and how people are made to toe these invisible lines. Then initiate discussions on Machine Learning within the history of page ranking and how the who, where, what of lists manifest. This will be contextualized with the traditional, the social and the new media social networks and processes that nurture community memory by tuning the semantic distance needed for privacy and by making room for forgetting in ways that communities heal from trauma.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc19-proposed-session-storiesrecordslegendsrituals