The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
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Whose Change is it Anyway?
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway
<b>This thought piece is an attempt to reflect critically on existing practices of “making change” and its implications for the future of citizen action in information and network societies. It observes that change is constantly and explicitly invoked at different stages in research, practice, and policy in relation to digital technologies, citizen action, and network societies. </b>
<p>The White Paper by Nishant Shah was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.hivos.net/Hivos-Knowledge-Programme/Themes/Civic-Explorations/Publications/Whose-Change-is-it-anyway">published by Hivos recently</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, we do not have adequate frameworks to address the idea of change. What constitutes change? What are the intentions that make change possible? Who are the actors involved? Whose change is it, anyway?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Drawing on the Hivos Knowledge Programme and on knowledge frameworks around youth, technology, and change from the last four years, this thought piece introduces new ways of defining, locating, and figuring change. In the process, it also helps understand the role that digital technologies play in shaping and amplifying our processes and practices of change, and to understand actors of change who are not necessarily confined to the category of “citizen”, which seems to be understood as the de facto agent of change in contemporary social upheavals, political uprisings, and cultural innovations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Methodologically, this thought piece attempts to make three discursive interventions: It locates digital activism in historical trajectories, positing that digital activism has deep ties to traditional activism, when it comes to the core political cause. Simultaneously, it recognises that new modes of political engagement are demanding and producing novel practices and introducing new actors and stakeholders. It looks at contemporary digital and network theories, but also draws on older philosophical lineages to discuss the crises that we seek to address. It tries to interject these abstractions and theoretical frameworks back into the field by producing two case studies that show how engagement with these questions might help us reflect critically on our past practices and knowledge as well as on visions for and speculations about the future, and how these shape contemporary network societies. It builds a theoretical framework based on knowledge gleaned from conversations, interviews, and on-the-ground action with different groups and communities in emerging information societies, and integrates with new critical theory to build an interdisciplinary and accessible framework that seeks to inform research, development-based interventions, and policy structures at the intersection of digital technologies, citizen action, and change by introducing questions around change into existing discourse.</p>
<hr />
<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/whose-change-is-it-anyway.pdf" class="internal-link">Click to download the full White Paper here</a> (PDF, 321 Kb)</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway</a>
</p>
No publishernishantDigital ActivismRAW PublicationsDigital NativesYouthFeaturedPublicationsHomepage2015-04-17T10:56:47ZBlog EntryReport from DigiActive’s Bangalore Meet-up
https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/report-from-digiactive2019s-bangalore-meet-up
<b>A blog entry by Mary Joyce on the meet-up hosted at CIS, Bangalore</b>
<p>We had a great meet-up yesterday at the offices of the <a href="http://cis-india.org/">Centre for Internet and Society</a>
in Bangalore (thanks so much to Sunil, Pranesh, Sanchia, and Deepika
for making it possible!) It was a very diverse group, with
participants from Indian and international NGOs, techies from Yahoo!,
and even a radio producer and film-maker.</p>
<p>
We started out by dissecting this <a href="http://www.thepinkchaddicampaign.blogspot.com/">Pink Chaddis campaign</a>, a very popular women’s rights campaign <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49641698651&ref=mf">organized through Facebook</a> that had just organized a big action on Valentines’ Day. (I’ll be posting on the campaign a little later - it’s a great one.)</p>
<p>
However, when we went about creating a definition for digital activism,
the discussion became more theoretical. Although DigiActive is
optimistic about the possibility of digital tools to empower those
fighting injustice, this meet-up group decided that digital activism
was value neutral and that it simply mapped onto the existing goals and
motives within a society. It is a technique that can be used for
constructive or destructive ends.</p>
<p> At the end of the event, some
participants came up to me to make sure my feelings weren’t hurt by the
disagreement, but I assured them I was really happy with the result.
Only if digital activism is debated and dissected will we be able to
understand and use it well.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/report-from-digiactive2019s-bangalore-meet-up'>https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/report-from-digiactive2019s-bangalore-meet-up</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaDigital ActivismDiscussion2011-08-20T22:28:34ZBlog EntryUsing Social Media for Mobilisation: Discussion with Dina Mehta and Peter Griffin
https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/using-social-media-for-mobilisation-discussion-with-dina-mehta-and-peter-griffin
<b>Zainab Bawa reports on the discussion with Peter Griffin and Dina Mehta, hosted at CIS on 19 June 2009, on 'Using Social Media for Mobilisation'. </b>
<p></p>
<p>Iran
Elections and the Twitter Revolution …</p>
<p>Memes
– how and why do some memes become popular on Twitter?</p>
<p>FaceBook
– privacy, community, locality, socializing?</p>
<p>Blogs
– once, we thought they would revolutionize the world, but how are blogs now placed
vis-à-vis twitter and facebook?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Many
questions abound concerning the phenomenon called 'social media', particularly
in the wake of the protests taking place in Iran and the ways in which information has
reached out to the world about what is going on in the country. The panel
discussion on social media, organised by the Centre for Internet and Society
(CIS) on 19 June 2009, aimed to understand how mobilisations take
place through social media and how memes are engineered and spread across
communities. We invited Dina Mehta and Peter Griffin to join us as panellists at the event and share
their experiences.</p>
<p>Dina
and Peter set up the tsunami help blog in December 2004 (<a href="http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/">http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com</a>)
which for the first time demonstrated the importance of social media tools in
coordinating local efforts and disseminating information in the region. What
caused them to become involved through this medium? Both Dina and Peter used
discussion forums and email during the formative years of the internet in
India. 'The sheer miracle of chat', as Peter puts it, also allowed them to
connect with people. When the tsunami struck, they became nodes through which
action was mobilised and information was spread. It still remains to be
explored how nodes develop in different circumstances, how spaces of
conversations develop and what causes some individuals to enter the space of
social media and inhabit them in significant ways, to the extent of becoming
nodes for coordination and mobilisation.</p>
<p>So,
what is social media? Dina says she does not like the term. But, since it is
used so commonly, she follows the tide. For Dina and Peter, social media is a
set of tools which can be mobilised for various purposes – for a call to action,
response to a crisis, and persuading people to support a cause, among many other
things. What is curious however is that the use of social media becomes more marked
and prominent during moments of crisis. This observation led one audience member to ask
whether social media is mirroring some of the behaviours of mainstream media.
Dina pointed out that social media does not exist in opposition to mainstream
media – both complement each other. Social media becomes more powerful
during moments of crisis due to some of the following factors:</p>
<ol><li>Powerful search functions;</li><li>Tools for aggregating content which helps in picking
up the noise;</li><li>Hash (#) tags which make it easy to search and to
connect and contribute to ongoing conversations and mobilizations.
</li></ol>
<p>These
help to amplify what is going on. Dina also referred to the simplicity of
social media tools which enables diverse individuals to participate in their
own ways. She cited the recent example of showing solidarity with the Iranian
revolutionaries by adding the colour green to one’s Twitter image. 'I only had
to click to indicate whether I wanted to show support in this way and a program
automatically applied the green colour to my twitter image without my having to
do anything. I don’t have to write code to participate in this medium. I can be
anyone,' she added.</p>
<p>What
is also unique is that unlike newspapers and early television, interactions via
social media tend to be two-way. For instance, blogs have made it possible for
individuals to become publishers of their own materials whether it is diary-like entries or filter blogging. Moreover, in the case of the protests
following the Iran elections, people used their mobile phones to capture
images, make videos and post these on the internet for others to see.</p>
<p>Individuals
from the audience raised questions about how they and their organisations could
use social media tools effectively to raise funds and to communicate their
causes/issues to other people. To this, both Dina and Peter suggested that it
is important to find the spaces where conversations about issues are already
taking place and to participate in them. They also stated that credibility is
built over time through acts of giving to different communities that develop
around various issues. Dina also emphasised the need to recognise target
audiences, identify the mediums they use regularly and accordingly develop
strategies concerning the use of social media. If the outreach group is more
tuned into radio, it is more effective to reach out to them in this way. Dina
mentioned that the mobile phone is a powerful medium that is
often neglected because of the publicity that the internet tends to receive.
She said that in South East Asian countries, people have better mobile phone
connectivity, and often, political activism has taken place by spreading
messages through mobile phones. One of the participants questioned the feasibility of moving from an existing yahoogroup to start a new discussion group; to
which another audience member responded that it is preferable to stay with
existing mediums used rather than to switch. Discussion forums require
more participation and if the goal is only to send out announcements, a
yahoogroup serves the purpose.</p>
<p>The
issue of arm-chair activism was also raised – whether social media is in fact
leading people to participate in issues only through clicking ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Peter stated that this is true, but the ease of transmitting information to
others enhances the possibility of moving beyond arm-chair activism. 'For
instance, I am concerned about eve teasing and harassment of women in public
spaces, but I may not have the time to participate in an intervention or gathering
on a particular day. However, I forward the email/invitation to my friends who are
concerned similarly and they may choose to participate on-site,' he explained.</p>
<p>The
lack of connectivity to the internet and therefore to social media was referred
to in the discussions. An audience member pointed out that according to a
recent study, only 10% of the people in India are connected to the internet.
Peter immediately remarked that the figure of 10% translated into 10 million
people which is still a large number that can be reached out to. Similarly, it
was pointed out that English is still the predominant language of the web and
therefore social media can be exclusive. In this respect, the issues are
developing technologies for facilitating the use of scripts, the extent to
which the masses use languages other than English on the internet and also
whether people in fact use the internet and other communication technologies as
a means to learn English. In this context, a participant drew our attention to a
twitter community of approximately 800 people who tweet regularly in Malayalam.</p>
<p>The
discussion brought up some interesting nuanced perspectives on social media that users and
novices may not have thought about. Questions still remain about the efficacy
of social media, the nature and characteristics of communities that are formed
around use of social media, distinctions between networks and communities, etc. Over time, these questions will be answered as usage increases
and trends are studied in all their complex aspects.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/using-social-media-for-mobilisation-discussion-with-dina-mehta-and-peter-griffin'>https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/using-social-media-for-mobilisation-discussion-with-dina-mehta-and-peter-griffin</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaSocial mediaDigital ActivismDiscussion2011-08-20T22:28:42ZBlog EntryRound Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Public Initiatives: A Report
https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy
<b>Zainab Bawa reports on the Round Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies for Public Initiatives, hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, on 17 June 2009, in collaboration with the Liberty Institute, New Delhi. </b>
<p></p>
<p>
In
recent times, there has been an upsurge in the use of ICTs to provide
information to people and to elicit participation. Individuals, corporate
organisations, NGOs, civil society organisations, collectives, municipalities,
political parties and politicians have been using the internet and other
mediums to communicate with people. The round table was organised primarily to
discuss two issues:</p>
<ol><li>What is the
effectiveness of the initiatives introduced in recent times?</li><li>How do we
move forward in terms of partnerships/collaborations in the areas of data
gathering, sharing, dissemination and architecture of information? </li></ol>
<p>Given
the constraints of time, however, we were only able to discuss a few issues with
respect to efficacy of initiatives, rather than come up with a concrete action
plan on how to measure effectiveness of many of the existing initiatives. This
remains an agenda for subsequent meetings.</p>
<p>This round table was the first meeting of its kind. It
brought together participants from diverse backgrounds to discuss key issues
involved in leveraging ICTs towards various ends, and to collaborate with each
other on ongoing initiatives. Participants included researchers,
persons who have developed information platforms and databases, individuals
working in the area of leveraging technology for streamlining processes in
society and people who have been studying usage patterns of social media tools.
Most of the participants were using ICTs to improve information access
related to health issues, education, budgets, development of rural areas and
recently, elections and governance. In the subsequent sections, I will briefly
elaborate on some of the key themes around which discussions took place
during the round table.</p>
<p><strong>Building on Ideas:</strong> In the morning
and pre-lunch sessions, one issue that featured prominently was the importance of developing ideas rather than trying to work out a perfect model that
we believe will solve what we perceive to be people’s problems. Two of the
participants explained that they started implementing ideas as they came to
them, rather than trying to come up with a framework that they thought would
work for the masses. They worked towards evolving their ideas, exploring what
works and what does not. One of them further pointed out that such evolution
cannot be observed as it happens; it only becomes apparent in hindsight. Hence,
discussions such as the current round table are useful.</p>
<p>It is
also important to note that we are still in a nascent stage of understanding
how ICTs can impact people’s lives and deploying them accordingly. As a result, many efforts are likely to be in the stage of trial and error.</p>
<p><strong>Key areas of interest and concern:</strong> Based
on the input from participants in the morning session, we
arrived at a list of areas that require more understanding and discussion.</p>
<ol><li><u>Information gathering, dissemination, access –
including information architecture, technology design</u>:
Here, three issues were discussed:</li>
<ul><li>Who are we talking about when we refer to information
access? It was pointed out that information is crucial particularly for people
who do not have computers and for whom internet is not a priority. The intensity
with which they seek information is remarkable. One of the participants argued
that we undervalue the potential of information to make a difference to
people’s lives.</li><li>How do we deliver information? Providing information
is not enough.</li><li>Representativeness of the information for those who it
is provided for.
</li></ul>
</ol>
<p>Another issue that was referred to
was whether language is a problem, i.e., most information is available only in
English. One of the participants suggested that this is not the case because Google has found that a very small percentage of the population actually refers
to material on the web in languages other than English.</p>
<ol type="1" start="2"><li><u>Community mobilization</u>:
During the deliberations, we referred to the problem of replication of initiatives. Two observers of social media pointed
out that replication happens because people are trying to create their own
unique communities around their initiatives. This is an important insight
for future efforts and also indicates the need to share databases and
information that individuals and organisations have compiled. They also
suggested that it is important to discover existing communities and spaces
where conversations around issues of governance, education, health and
development are taking place. This helps to plug into existing resource
pools and to extend outreach. <br /></li></ol>
<ol type="1" start="3"><li><u>Citizens’ participation</u>:
Initiatives that work and why they
succeed - We briefly discussed the Jaagore campaign and India Vote Report,
which were launched before the 2009 national elections in India to enable
people to register on the electoral rolls and to report irregularities during
elections respectively. Some people found it difficult to register
themselves on the Jaagore website and some had difficulties in finding the
local offices where they needed to follow-up with the process. It was also
pointed out that Vote Report did not connect with the end user because it
would have been easier to report irregularities and anomalies via SMS
rather than trying to report them by logging on to the site. If one looks
at the case of the Online Complaint Management System (OCMS) developed by
Praja, the availability of the telephone hotline service through which
citizens could register their complaints helped in widening usage. Thus,
it appears that two issues are pertinent:</li>
<ul><li>Whether the initiative connects with the people who
are likely to use it;</li><li>Simplicity of design/system that enables more users. <br />
</li></ul>
</ol>
<p><strong>Target
Audience:</strong> One of
the participants pointed out that some initiatives do not work because they are
targeted towards the wrong audiences. For example, when it comes to voting and
elections, poor groups are the ones who go out and vote in large numbers.
Hence, information systems need to be tailored to provide them with the data
that they need most. Access also has to be configured accordingly. In some
instances, the target is too broad to reach out effectively.</p>
<p>It appears that there is a need to
develop strategies on how platforms and databases that have been created to
enhance access to information can be made known among the masses and how people
can be made aware to use them. It is equally important to understand what
constitutes ‘information’ and for whom. Here,
the other issue to explore is how information links back to the people for who
it is provided.</p>
<ol type="1" start="4"><li><u>Technology</u>: In this
area, a key concern was the high costs involved in developing technologies
and whether we could learn from each other’s experience of developing
technologies instead of reinventing the wheel. We also discussed whether
open source software helps to reduce costs of development. The other issue
with respect to open source is whether there is enough assistance and
support available to resolve problems that may crop up during use of
technology from time to time. </li></ol>
<p><strong>Sharing
of Data:</strong> Discussions also veered around the issue of whether
appropriate technology and applications could be created to help with sharing
existing databases and information pools. We did not discuss this issue
in depth, but it remains relevant for subsequent meetings.</p>
<ol type="1" start="5"><li><u>Back end integration</u>: According
to some of the participants, one of major problems is the interface
between government and citizens, which remains weak. Technology
can be used to enhance the interactions. Participants also pointed out
the difficulty in obtaining data from government bodies that is important
to create the interface between government and citizens. A participant
involved with the Jaagore campaign referred to the problem of back-end
integration during their efforts to help citizens register themselves with
the election commission (EC) offices. A participant from Google similarly
reported that they faced problems in obtaining election results from the EC’s
offices as a result of which, they had to rely on their partners for this
information. Here too, we could not deliberate on how to resolve this
problem, but this could be a major theme for a subsequent meeting. <br /></li></ol>
<ol type="1" start="6"><li><u>Performance (monitoring, evaluation)</u>:
One of the themes that participants zeroed in on was the evaluation of
the performance of elected representatives and making this evaluation available for
people to see. Here, the debate was around the problem of evaluation being carried out according to the criteria we set which may not seem relevant
to other sections of society. One of the suggestions that came up was to
develop a matrix for evaluation and put out information accordingly.
People can then use it to make their own judgments. <img src="https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/uploads/00016.jpg/image_preview" alt="rt2" class="image-right" title="rt2" /><br /></li></ol>
<p>In
the post-lunch session, some of the participants shared their experiences with
implementation and also the work they and their organisations are currently
engaged with. Towards the end of the round table, each one of the participants
explained their respective projects and how they may wish to collaborate with
other participants (who were present) in their initiatives. An e-group called “CIS-Info-Access” has
been created to take these conversations and collaborations further. </p>
<h3><strong>Evaluation of the Round Table and Way Forward:</strong> <br /></h3>
<p>When
invitations were sent out to people to participate in the round table, many of
the invitees expressed a genuine and enthusiastic interest in being part of
this effort. As mentioned above, one of the reasons for this enthusiasm was
because this was the first meeting of its kind, bringing together
individuals from the fields of technology, research and implementation. We
invited a total of 35 people out of which 27 finally attended the meeting.
The diversity of the participants was an asset in that a variety of issues were
brought to the table. The drawback was that there was not enough time to
discuss some of the pertinent issues in depth. Future meetings can be tailored
to discuss one or two specific themes such as back-end integration and sharing
of information, technology issues, ideas for mobilising citizens and
communities, etc.</p>
<p>The
possibilities of collaboration between participants in this meeting are immense
and we hope that some of the synergies will materialise into concrete outcomes.
Further, a few participants have expressed an interest in organising similar
meetings in their cities/towns, perhaps focusing on a few issues instead of
bringing people together under a broad theme. Of some of the issues discussed,
participants have indicated that back-end integration with government and
ideating on different ways of disseminating data can be further deliberated on
in future. One of the participants also suggested that there is a need to make
‘data’ more relevant to people’s lives.</p>
<p>While
the meeting was fruitful in many respects, one issue needs to be underlined.
This concerns the imagination of internet and ICTs as mediums that can resolve all existing problems with respect to citizen-government
interface, streamlining of processes and provision of information. Such an
overarching imagination of technology overlooks the cultural, economic, social and
political specificities of communities and contexts. Technology
can also have negative implications in some circumstances. It also needs to be
reinforced that technology is embedded in society and culture. Therefore we
need to view technology as one of the avenues among others available which will
facilitate interactions between people and their governments and the state.
Democratisation is more likely to be realised through such a perspective.</p>
<p></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy'>https://cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaSocial mediaDigital ActivismDigital AccessPublic AccountabilityDiscussionFeaturedTransparency, Politics2011-08-20T22:28:55ZBlog EntryCPOV : Wikipedia Research Initiative
https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov
<b>The Second event, towards building the Critical Point of View Reader on Wikipedia, brings a range of scholars, practitioners, theorists and activists to critically reflect on the state of Wikipedia in our contemporary Information Societies. Organised in Amsterdam, Netherlands, by the Institute of Network Cultures, in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, the event builds on the debates and discussions initiated at the WikiWars that launched off the knowledge network in Bangalore in January 2010. Follow the Live Tweets at #CPOV</b>
<p>Second international conference of the <em>CPOV Wikipedia Research
Initiative</em> :: March 26-27, 2010 :: OBA (Public Library Amsterdam,
next to Amsterdam central station), Oosterdokskade 143, Amsterdam.</p>
<p>Wikipedia is at the brink of becoming the de facto global reference
of dynamic knowledge. The heated debates over its accuracy, anonymity,
trust, vandalism and expertise only seem to fuel further growth of
Wikipedia and its user base. Apart from leaving its modern counterparts
Britannica and Encarta in the dust, such scale and breadth places
Wikipedia on par with such historical milestones as Pliny the Elder’s
Naturalis Historia, the Ming Dynasty’s Wen-hsien ta- ch’ eng, and the
key work of French Enlightenment, the Encyclopedie. <span id="more-10604"></span>The multilingual Wikipedia as digital
collaborative and fluid knowledge production platform might be said to
be the most visible and successful example of the migration of FLOSS
(Free/ Libre/ Open Source Software) principles into mainstream culture.
However, such celebration should contain critical insights, informed by
the changing realities of the Internet at large and the Wikipedia
project in particular.</p>
<p>The CPOV Research Initiative was founded from the urge to stimulate
critical Wikipedia research: quantitative and qualitative research that
could benefit both the wide user-base and the active Wikipedia community
itself. On top of this, Wikipedia offers critical insights into the
contemporary status of knowledge, its organizing principles, function,
and impact; its production styles, mechanisms for conflict resolution
and power (re-)constitution. The overarching research agenda is at once a
philosophical, epistemological and theoretical investigation of
knowledge artifacts, cultural production and social relations, and an
empirical investigation of the specific phenomenon of the Wikipedia.</p>
<p>Conference Themes: Wiki Theory, Encyclopedia Histories, Wiki Art,
Wikipedia Analytics, Designing Debate and Global Issues and Outlooks.</p>
<p>Follow the live tweets on http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23CPOV</p>
<p>Confirmed speakers: Florian Cramer (DE/NL), Andrew Famiglietti (UK),
Stuart Geiger (USA), Hendrik-Jan Grievink (NL), Charles van den Heuvel
(NL), Jeanette Hofmann (DE), Athina Karatzogianni (UK), Scott Kildall
(USA), Patrick Lichty (USA), Hans Varghese Mathews (IN), Teemu Mikkonen
(FI), Mayo Fuster Morell (IT), Mathieu O’Neil (AU), Felipe Ortega (ES),
Dan O’Sullivan (UK), Joseph Reagle (USA), Ramón Reichert (AU), Richard
Rogers (USA/NL), Alan Shapiro (USA/DE), Maja van der Velden (NL/NO),
Gérard Wormser (FR).</p>
<p>Editorial team: Sabine Niederer and Geert Lovink (Amsterdam), Nishant
Shah and Sunil Abraham (Bangalore), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen), Nathaniel
Tkacz (Melbourne). Project manager CPOV Amsterdam: Margreet Riphagen.
Research intern: Juliana Brunello. Production intern: Serena Westra.</p>
<p>The CPOV conference in Amsterdam will be the second conference of the
CPOV Wikipedia Research Initiative. The launch of the initiative took
place in Bangalore India, with the conference WikiWars in January 2010.
After the first two events, the CPOV organization will work on
producing a reader, to be launched early 2011. For more information or
submitting a <a href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/reader">reader</a>
contribution.</p>
<p>Buy your ticket <a href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/practical-info/tickets/">online</a>
(with iDeal), or register by sending an email to: info (at)
networkcultures.org. One day ticket: €25, students and OBA members:
€12,50. Full conference pass (2 days): €40, students and OBA members:
25.</p>
<p>Organized by the Institute of Network Cultures Amsterdam, in
cooperation with the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore,
India.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov'>https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/cpov</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceOpen StandardsDigital ActivismDigital GovernanceDigital AccessPublic AccountabilityResearchFeatured2011-08-23T02:52:25ZBlog EntryThe Future of Journalism: EJC @ Picnic 2010
https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/picnic
<b>Nishant Shah was a speaker at the PICNIC 2010, in Amsterdam, where he made a presentation titled "Citizens in the time of Database Democracies : Information ecology and role of participatory technologies in India"
</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The
relationship between citizenship and government informatics have
historically
been shaped through a series of debates around questions of
citizenship,
security, State-market collaborations, and right based discourse in
India. Even
before the information explosion caused by the emergence of digital and
internet technologies, there has been a strident discourse around
participatory democracy and technology mediated governance as ways of
empowering the citizen's access to rights and resources in the country.
With the emergence of new technologies of storage,
retrieval and dissemination, these expectations have become more
visible. The Indian Government has
officially accepted the transition to become a S.M.A.R.T.
(Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsible and
Transparent) State, with the rise of 'Netizens' who, in their access
to new digital and internet technologies will change the very shape and
structure of governance. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However,
as the digital infrastructure develops and new kinds of citizen
services and consumption come to the fore,
battle-lines are being drawn between stakeholders. On the one hand are
those
who believe that this might be the opening of a Pandora’s Box for a
country
like India where a stark digital divide might create great inequality
in citizens' access to State services and resources, producing unjust
and discriminatory structures based on access, bandwidth and education.
. On the other
hand are those who celebrate the need for transparency, participation
and access to governmentality that these e-governance initiatives usher
in, addressing long standing questions of plutocratic governance,
bureaucratic systems of denial of rights and widespread corruption.
Both the warring factions draw upon partial data – of
failed attempts and projects by different government initiatives to
pilot
studies initiated by different government and civil society
organisations
respectively – to make their arguments for and against the emergence of
a 'Database Democracy' .premised on participatory politics facilitated
by new media practices in the country.</p>
<p>Especially
with the current rolling out of a Unique Identity Project (named Aadhar
– The
Hindi word for ‘Support’) these discussions have become more severe and
the
arguments have become angrier. It is not only timely but also necessary
to
examine the ecology of participatory technologies and processes in the
country in order
to look at the different sides of the debates and explore the role that
new media practitioners and stakeholders would play in efficiently and
responsibly establishing a protocol
of open and transparent governance structures without compromising
either the privacy,
rights or safety of the citizens. This presentation explores the
project Aadhar as symptomatic of a changing relationship between the
State and its Citizens mediated by ICT technologies and stakeholders,
to look at the ways in which new Citizenships are being forged in
emerging information societies like India.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>More news about the panel on Future of Journalism, arranged by the European Journalism Commission, is available at</p>
<p>http://futureofjournalism.net/index.php/EJC_at_PICNIC2010</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/picnic'>https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/picnic</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceDigital ActivismDigital Governance2010-10-13T07:13:29ZBlog EntryLocating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop: Call for Participation
https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/workshop
<b>Deadline for submission: 26th July 2011-06-08;
When: 19th - 22nd August, 2011;
Where: Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) University, Ahmedabad;
Organised by: Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and CEPT University, Ahmedabad.
Please Note: Travel support is only available for domestic travel within India.</b>
<p>LOCATING INTERNETS is an innovative, multi-disciplinary, workshop that engages with some of the most crucial debates around Internet and Society within academic scholarship, discourse and practice in India. It explores Where, When, How and What has changed with the emergence of Internet and Digital Technologies in the country. The Internet is not a singular monolithic entity but is articulated in various forms – sometimes materially, through accessing the web; at others, through our experiences; and yet others through imaginations of policy and law. Internets have become a part of our everyday practice, from museums and archives, to school and university programmes, living rooms and public spaces, relationships and our bodily lived realities. It becomes necessary to reconfigure our existing concepts, frameworks and ideas to make sense of the rapidly digitising world around us. The Internet is no longer contained in niche disciplines or specialised everyday practices. LOCATING INTERNETS invites scholars, teachers, researchers, advanced research students and educationalists from any discipline to learn and discuss how to ask new questions and design innovative curricula in their discipline by introducing concepts and ideas from path-breaking research in India.</p>
<p>Comprised of training, public lectures, open discussion spaces, and hands-on curriculum building exercises, this workshop will introduce the participants to contemporary debates, help them articulate concerns and problems from their own research and practice, and build knowledge clusters to develop innovative and open curricula which can be implemented in interdisciplinary undergraduate spaces in the country. It showcases the research outputs produced by the Centre for Internet and Society’s Researchers @ Work Programme, and brings together nine researchers to talk about alternative histories, processes, and bodies of the Internets, and how they can be integrated into mainstream pedagogic practices and teaching environments.</p>
<h3>Knowledge Clusters for the Workshop</h3>
<p>LOCATING INTERNETS is designed innovatively to accommodate for various intellectual and practice based needs of the participants. While the aim is to introduce the participants to a wide interdisciplinary range of scholarship, we also hope to address particular disciplinary and scholarly concerns of the participants. The workshop is further divided into three knowledge clusters which help the participants to focus their energies and ideas in the course of the four days.</p>
<ul><li><strong>Bridging the Gap</strong>: This workshop seeks to break away from the utopian public discourse of the Internets as a-historical and completely dis-attached from existing technology ecologies in the country. This knowledge cluster intends to produce frameworks that help us contextualize the contemporary internet policy, discourse and practice within larger geo-political and socio-historical flows and continuities in Modern India. The first cluster chartsdifferent pre-histories of the Internets, mapping the continuities and ruptures through philosophy of techno-science, archiving practices, and electronifcation of governments,to develop new technology-society perspectives.</li><li><strong>Paradigms of Practice</strong>:One of the biggest concerns about Internet studies in India and other similar developed contexts is the object oriented approach that looks largely at specific usages, access, infrastructure, etc. However, it is necessary to understand that the Internet is not merely a tool or a gadget. The growth of Internets produces systemic changes at the level of process and thought. The technologies often get appropriated for governance both by the state and the civil society, producing new processes and dissonances which need to be charted. The second cluster looks at certain contemporary processes that the digital and Internet technologies change drastically in order to recalibrate the relationship between the state, the market and the citizen.</li><li><strong>Feet on the Ground</strong>: The third cluster looks at contemporary practices of the Internet to understand the recent histories of movements, activism and cultural practices online. It offers an innovative way of understanding the physical objects and bodies that undergo dramatic transitions as digital technologies become pervasive, persuasive and ubiquitous. It draws upon historical discourse, everyday practices and cultural performances to form new ways of formulating and articulating the shapes and forms of social and cultural structures.</li></ul>
<h3>Workshop Outcomes</h3>
<p>The participants are expected to engage with issue of Internet and it various systemic processes through their own disciplinary interests. Apart from lectures and orientation sessions, the participants will actively work on their own project ideas during the period in groups and will be guided by experts. The final outcome of the workshops would be curriculum for undergraduate and graduate teaching space of various disciplines in the country.</p>
<h3>Participation Guidelines</h3>
<p>LOCATING INTERNETS is now accepting submissions from interested participants in the following format:</p>
<ol><li>Name:</li><li>Institutional affiliation and title:</li><li>Address:</li><li>Email address:</li><li>Phone number:</li><li>A brief resume of work experience (max. 350 words)</li><li>Statement of interest (max. 350 words)</li><li>Key concerns you want to address in the Internet and Society field (max. 350 words)</li><li>Identification with one Knowledge-cluster of the workshop and a proposal for integrating it in your research/teaching practice (max. 500 words)</li><li>Current interface with technologies in your pedagogic practices (max. 350 words)</li><li>Additional information or relevant hyperlinks you might want to add (Max. 10 lines)<br /></li></ol>
<pre>Notes:</pre>
<ul><li>Submissions will be accepted only from participants in India, as attachments in .doc, .docx or .odt formats at <a class="external-link" href="mailto:locatinginternets@cis-india.org">locatingInternets@cis-india.org</a></li><li>Submissions made beyond 26th July 2011 may not be considered for participation. <br /></li><li>Submissions will be scrutinized by the organisers and selected participants will be informed by the 30th July 2011, about their participation.</li><li>Selected participants will be required to make their own travel arrangements to the workshop. A 2nd A.C. train return fare will be reimbursed to the participants. Shared accommodation and selected meals will be provided at the workshop.</li><li>A limited number of air-fare reimbursements will be available to participants in extraordinary circumstances. All travel support is only available for domestic travel in the country.<br /></li></ul>
<p><strong>Chairs</strong>: Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society Bangalore;</p>
<p>Pratyush Shankar, Associate Professor & Head of Undergraduate Program, Faculty of Architecture, CEPT University</p>
<p><strong>Supported by</strong>: Kusuma Foundation, Hyderabad</p>
<p><strong>Experts</strong>:Anja Kovacs, Arun Menon, Asha Achuthan, Ashish Rajadhykasha, Aparna Balachandran, Namita Malhotra, Nithin Manayath, Nithya Vasudevan, Pratyush Shankar, Rochelle Pinto and Zainab Bawa</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/workshop'>https://cis-india.org/research/conferences/conference-blogs/workshop</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDevelopmentGamingDigital ActivismDigital GovernanceResearchCISRAWFeaturedCyberculturesarchivesNew PedagogiesWorkshopIT Cities2011-07-21T06:00:39ZBlog EntryBetween the Stirrup and the Ground: Relocating Digital Activism
https://cis-india.org/raw/between-the-stirrup-and-the-ground-relocating-digital-activism
<b>In this peer reviewed research paper, Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen draws on a research project that focuses on understanding new technology, mediated identities, and their relationship with processes of change in their immediate and extended environments in emerging information societies in the global south. It suggests that endemic to understanding digital activism is the need to look at the recalibrated relationships between the state and the citizens through the prism of technology and agency. The paper was published in Democracy & Society, a publication of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society, Volume 8, Issue 2, Summer 2011.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span"><em>Cross-posted from <a class="external-link" href="http://www.democracyandsociety.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/CDACS-DS-15-v3-fnl.pdf">Democracy and Society</a></em>.</span></p>
<hr />
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>The first decade of the 21st century has witnessed the simultaneous growth of the Internet and digital technologies on the one hand and political protests and mobilization on the other. As a result, some stakeholders attribute magical powers of social change and political transformation to these technologies.</p>
<p>In the post-Wikileaks world, governments try to censor the use of and access to information technologies in order to maintain the status quo (Domscheit-Berg 2011). With the expansion of markets, technology multinationals and service providers are trying to strike a delicate balance between ethics and profits. Civil Society Organizations for their part, are seeking to counterbalance censorship and exploitation of the citizens’ rights. Within discourse and practice, there remains a dialectic between hope and despair: Hope that these technologies will change the world, and despair that we do not have any sustainable replicable models of technology-driven transformation despite four decades of intervention in the 6eld of information and communication technology (ICT).</p>
<p>This paper suggests that this dialectic is fruitless and results from too strong of a concentration on the functional role of technology. The lack of vocabulary to map and articulate the transitions that digital technologies bring to our earlier understanding of the state-market-citizen relationship, as well as our failure to understand technology as a paradigm that defines the domains of life, labour, and language, amplify this knowledge gap.</p>
<p>This paper draws on a research project that focuses on understanding new technology, mediated identities, and their relationship with processes of change in their immediate and extended environments in emerging information societies in the global south (Shah 2009). We suggest that endemic to understanding digital activism is the need to look at the recalibrated relationships between the state and the citizens through the prism of technology and agency.</p>
<h2>Context</h2>
<p>It is appropriate, perhaps, to begin a paper on digital activism, with a discussion of analogue activism[<a href="#1">1</a>] (Morozov 2010). In the recent revolutions and protests from Tunisia to Egypt and Iran to Kryzygystan, much attention has been given to the role of new media in organizing, orchestrating, performing, and shaping the larger public psyche and the new horizons of progressive governments. Global media has dubbed several of them as ‘Twitter Revolutions” and “Facebook Protests” because these technologies played an important role in the production of :ash-mobs, which, because of their visibility and numbers, became the face of the political protests in di)erent countries. Political scientists as well as technology experts have been trying to figure out what the role of Twitter and Facebook was in these processes of social transformation. Activists are trying to determine whether it is possible to produce replicable upscalable models that can be transplanted to other geo-political contexts to achieve similar results,[<a href="#2">2</a>] as well as how the realm of political action now needs to accommodate these developments.</p>
<p>Cyber-utopians have heralded this particular phenomenon of digital activists mobilizing in almost unprecedented numbers as a hopeful sign that resonates the early 20th century rhetoric of a Socialist Revolution (West and Raman 2009). (ey see this as a symptom of the power that ordinary citizens wield and the ways in which their voices can be ampli6ed, augmented, and consolidated using the pervasive computing environments in which we now live.</p>
<p>In a celebratory tone, without examining either the complex assemblages of media and government practices and policies that are implicated in these processes, they naively attribute these protests to digital technologies.</p>
<p>Cyber-cynics, conversely, insist that these technologies are just means and tools that give voice to the seething anger, hurt, and grief that these communities have harboured for many years under tyrannical governments and authoritarian regimes. They insist that digital technologies played no role in these events — they would have occurred anyway, given the right catalysts — and that this overemphasis on technology detracts from greater historical legacies, movements, and the courage and efforts of the people involved.</p>
<p>While these debates continue to ensue between zealots on conflicting sides, there are some things that remain constant in both positions: presumptions of what it means to be political, a narrow imagination of human-technology relationships, and a historically deterministic view of socio-political movements. While the objects and processes under scrutiny are new and unprecedented, the vocabulary, conceptual tools, knowledge frameworks, and critical perspectives remain unaltered. They attempt to articulate a rapidly changing world in a manner that accommodates these changes. Traditional approaches that produce a simplified triangulation of the state, market and civil society, with historically specified roles, inform these discourses, “where the state is the rule-maker, civil society the do-gooder and watchdog, and the private sector the enemy or hero depending on one’s ideological stand” (Knorringa 2008, 8).</p>
<p>Within the more diffuse world realities, where the roles for each sector are not only blurred but also often shared, things work differently. Especially when we introduce technology, we realize that the centralized structural entities operate in and are better understood through a distributed, multiple avatar model. For example, within public-private partnerships, which are new units of governance in emerging post-capitalist societies, the market often takes up protostatist qualities, while the state works as the beneficiary rather than the arbitrator of public delivery systems. In technology-state conflicts, like the well-known case of Google’s conflict with China (Drummond 2010), technology service providers and companies have actually emerged as the vanguards of citizens’ rights against states that seek to curb them.</p>
<p>Similarly, civil society and citizens are divided around the question of access to technology. The techno-publics are often exclusive and make certain analogue forms of citizenships obsolete. While there is a euphoria about the emergence of a multitude of voices online from otherwise closed societies, it is important to remember that these voices are mediated by the market and the state, and often have to negotiate with strong capillaries of power in order to gain the visibility and legitimacy for themselves. Additionally, the recalibration in the state-market-citizen triad means that there is certain disconnect from history which makes interventions and systemic social change that much more difficult.</p>
<h2>Snapshots</h2>
<p>We draw from our observations in the “Digital Natives with a Cause?”[<a href="#3">3</a>] research program, which brought together over 65 young people working with digital technologies towards social change, and around 40 multi-sector stakeholders in the field to decode practices in order to gain a more nuanced understanding of the relationships between technology and politics.</p>
<p>The first case study is from Taiwan, where the traditionally accepted uni-linear idea of senders-intermediaries-passive receivers is challenged by adopting a digital information architecture model for a physical campaign.[<a href="#4">4</a>] The story not only provides insight into these blurred boundaries and roles, but also offers an understanding of the new realm of political intervention and processes of social transformation.</p>
<p>As YiPing Tsou (2010) from the Soft Revolt project in Taipei explains, "I have realised how the Web has not only virtually reprogrammed the way we think, talk, act and interact with the work but also reformatted our understanding of everyday life surrounded by all sorts of digital technologies."</p>
<p>Tsou’s own work stemmed from her critical doubt of the dominant institutions and structures in her immediate surroundings. Fighting the hyper-territorial rhetoric of the Internet, she deployed digital technologies to engage with her geo-political contexts. Along with two team members, she started the project to question and critique the rampant consumerism, which has emerged as the state and market in Taiwan collude to build more pervasive marketing infrastructure instead of investing in better public delivery systems. The project adopted a gaming aesthetic where the team produced barcodes, which when applied to existing products in malls and super markets, produced random pieces of poetry at the check-out counters instead of the price details that are expected. The project challenged the universal language of barcodes and mobilized large groups of people to spread these barcodes and create spaces of confusion, transient data doubles, and alternative ways of reading within globalized capitalist consumption spaces. The project also demonstrates how access to new forms of technology also leads to new information roles, creating novel forms of participation leading to interventions towards social transformation.</p>
<p>Nonkululeko Godana (2010) from South Africa does not think of herself as an activist in any traditional form. She calls herself a storyteller and talks of how technologies can amplify and shape the ability to tell stories. Drawing from her own context, she narrates the story of a horrific rape that happened to a young victim in a school campus and how the local and national population mobilized itself to seek justice for her. For Godana, the most spectacular thing that digital technologies of information and communication offer is the ability for these stories to travel in unexpected ways. Indeed, these stories grow as they are told. They morph, distort, transmute, and take new avatars, changing with each telling, but managing to help the message leap across borders, boundaries, and life-styles. She looks at storytelling as something that is innate to human beings who are creatures of information, and suggests that what causes revolution, what brings people together, what allows people to unify in the face of strife and struggle is the need to tell a story, the enchantment of hearing one, and the passion to spread it further so that even when the technologies die, the signal still lives, the message keeps on passing. As Clay Shirky, in his analysis of the first recorded political :ash-mob in Phillipines in 2001, suggests, "social media’s real potential lies in supporting civil society and the public sphere — which will produce change over years and decades, not weeks or months."</p>
<h2>Propositions</h2>
<p>These two stories are just a taste of many such narratives that abound the field of technology based social transformation and activism. In most cases, traditional lenses will not recognize these processes, which are transient and short-lived as having political consequence. When transformative value is ascribed to them, they are brought to bear the immense pressure of sustainability and scalability which might not be in the nature of the intervention. Moreover, as we have seen in these two cases, as well as in numerous others, the younger generation — these new groups of people using social media for political change, often called digital natives, slacktivists, or digital activists — renounce the earlier legacy of political action. They prefer to stay in this emergent undefined zone where they would not want an identity as a political person but would still make interventions and engage with questions of justice, equity, democracy, and access, using the new tools at their disposal to negotiate with their immediate socio-cultural and geo-political contexts.</p>
<p>In their everyday lives, Digital Natives are in different sectors of employment and sections of society. They can be students, activists, government officials, professionals, artists, or regular citizens who spend their time online often in circuits of leisure, entertainment and self-gratification. However, it is their intimate relationship with these processes, which is often deemed as ‘frivolous’ that enables them, in times of crises, to mobilize huge human and infrastructural resources to make immediate interventions.</p>
<p>It is our proposition that it is time to start thinking about digital activism as a tenuous process, which might often hide itself in capillaries of non-cause related actions but can be materialized through the use of digital networks and platforms when it is needed. Similarly, a digital activist does not necessarily have to be a full-time ideology spouting zealot, but can be a person who, because of intimate relationships with technologized forms of communication, interaction, networking, and mobilization, is able to transform him/ herself as an agent of change and attain a central position (which is also transitory and not eternal) in processes of social movement. Such a lens allows us to revisit our existing ideas of what it means to be political, what the new landscapes of political action are, how we account for processes of social change, and who the people are that emerge as agents of change in our rapidly digitizing world.</p>
<h3>About the Authors</h3>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span">NISHANT SHAH is Director-Research at the Bangalore based Centre for Internet and Society. He is one of the lead researchers for the “Digital Natives with a Cause?” knowledge programme and has interests in questions of digital identity, inclusion and social change.</span></p>
<p><span class="Apple-style-span">FIEKE JANSEN is based at the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (Hivos). She is the knowledge officer for the Digital Natives with a Cause? knowledge programme and her areas of </span><span class="Apple-style-span">interest are the role of digital technologies in social change processes.</span></p>
<h2><span class="Apple-style-span">References</span></h2>
<p>Domscheit-Berg, Daniel. 2011. <em>Inside Wikileaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website</em>. New York: Crown Publishers.</p>
<p>Drummond, David. 2010. “A New Approach to China.” Available at: http:// googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html.</p>
<p>Godana, Nonkululeko. 2011. “Change is Yelling: Are you Listening?” <em>Digital Natives Position Papers</em>. Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society publications. Available at: http://www.hivos.net/content/download/ 40567/260946/file/Position%20Papers.pdf. Retrieved: February 3, 2011.</p>
<p>Knorringa, Peter. 2010. A Balancing Act — Private Actors in Development, Inaugural Lecture ISS. Available at: http://www.iss.nl/News/Inaugural-Lecture-Professor-Peter-Knorringa. Retrieved: February 3, 2011.</p>
<p>Morozov, Evgeny. 2011. <em>The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom</em>. New York: Public Affairs.</p>
<p>Shirky, Clay. 2011. “The Political power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change.” <em>Foreign Affairs</em> 90, (1); p. 28-41.</p>
<p>Shah, Nishant and Sunil Abraham. 2009. “Digital Natives with a Cause.” Hivos Knowledge Programme. Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society publications. Available at: http://cis-india.org/research/dn-report. Retrieved: February 3, 2011.</p>
<p>Tsou, YiPing. 2010. “(Re)formatting Social Transformation in the Age of Digital Representation: On the Relationship of Technologies and Social Transformation”, <em>Digital Natives Position Papers</em>. Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society publications. Available at: http://www.hivos.net/ content/download/40567/260946/file/Position%20Papers.pdf. Retrieved: February 3, 2011.</p>
<p>West, Harry and Parvathi Raman. 2009. <em>Enduring Socialism: Exploration of Revolution and Transformation, Restoration and Continuation</em>. London: Berghahn Books.</p>
<h2><span class="Apple-style-span">End Notes</span></h2>
<p class="discreet"><a name="1">[1]</a> Morozov looks at how ‘Digital Activism’ often feeds the very structures against we protest, with information that can prove to be counter productive to the efforts. The digital is still not ‘public’ in its ownership and a complex assemblage of service providers, media houses and governments often lead to a betrayal of sensitive information which was earlier protected in the use of analogue technologies of resistance.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="1"> </a></p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="2">[2]</a> Following the revolutions in Egypt, China, worried that the model might be appropriated by its own citizens against China’s authoritarian regimes, decided to block “Jan25” and mentions of Egypt from Twitter like websites. More can be read here: <a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/29/2110227/China-Blocks-Egypt-On-Twitter-Like-Site">http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/29/2110227/China-Blocks-Egypt-On-Twitter-Like-Site</a>.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="3">[3]</a> More information about the programme can be found <a href="http://www.hivos.net/Hivos-Knowledge-Programme/Themes/Digital-Natives-with-a-Cause">here</a>.</p>
<p class="discreet"><a name="4">[4]</a> Models of digital communication and networking have always imagined that the models would be valid only for the digital environments. Hence, the physical world still engages only with the one-to-many broadcast model, where the central authorities produce knowledge which is disseminated to the passive receivers who operate only as receptacles of information rather than bearers of knowledge. To challenge this requires a re-orientation of existing models and developing ways of translating the peer-to-peer structure in the physical world.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/between-the-stirrup-and-the-ground-relocating-digital-activism'>https://cis-india.org/raw/between-the-stirrup-and-the-ground-relocating-digital-activism</a>
</p>
No publishernishantDigital ActivismDigital NativesResearchNet CulturesPublicationsResearchers at Work2015-10-25T05:58:59ZBlog EntryStorytelling as Performance: The Ugly Indian and Blank Noise 1
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance
<b>This post compares the production behind a performance with the process of storytelling. To illustrate this analogy, we explore the stories of the Blank Noise project and The Ugly Indian- two civic groups from Bangalore making interventions in the public space. This post looks at the stages of pre-production and the screenplay to explore methods and narratives in storytelling. </b>
<pre><strong>spectacle</strong><span class="lr_dct_ph">
ˈspɛktək(ə)l/</span>
a visually striking performance<strong>
performance
</strong>pəˈfɔːm(ə)ns/
an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people: the audience. Sometimes the dividing line between performer and the audience may become blurred, as in the example of "participatory theatre" where audience members get involved in the
production.</pre>
<p align="justify">One of the mandates of <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway">this project</a> is to locate discrepancies between "spectacles"<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a> and realities of change to identify less visible examples of citizen action. However, an alternative route is to identify the characteristics of the spectacle, and learn how they can be used to make activism more visible: that is, more legible, intelligible and accessible. In this context, storytelling comes across as a method that can provide the same experience and benefits of a performance. This potential manifests itself in two ways:</p>
<p align="justify">a) First, in its<strong> infrastructure. </strong>We find that the structure holding stories together plays an important role in their ability to deliver a clear message. By unpacking the process of staging a performance -from what happens in the dressing rooms to what happens on stage- we will identify the building blocks of performances and by default, those comprised in effective storytelling.</p>
<p align="justify"> b) Second manifestation occurs<strong> in the audience.</strong> The dynamic of performances resembles how we behave every day in our "socially and constructed worlds". We are constantly telling stories about ourselves and this 'sense of being' is what determines our actions and behavior (Holland et al, 1998). Furthermore, as social beings, we also build identities as a community and engage in "collective moments of self-enactment" (Urciuoli, 1995).</p>
<p align="justify">Linking this back to our project, understanding the performative potential of storytelling; its infrastructure and how it can touch on issues of identity, agency and collective action, is relevant to tackle challenges in activism and civic engagement -where the collective is very much linked to the political. To illustrate the relationship between storytelling and performance, I will use the example of two civic groups thriving in Bangalore: Blank Noise
(founded by Jasmeen Patheja, who we interviewed back in January) and The
Ugly Indian; and I will ask you to think about them as theatrical productions:</p>
<p align="justify" class="discreet">(The following images are 'Broadway posters' adapted to the identity of these groups. They were created merely for the purpose of this post and do not reflect the views of these organizations).</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/BatmanTheUglyIndian2.jpg/image_preview" alt="The Ugly Indian" class="image-inline image-inline" title="The Ugly Indian" /></p>
<p align="center"><strong>The Ugly Indian</strong><br />stop talking. start doing.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/ChicagoBlankNoise2.jpg/image_preview" title="Blank Noise" height="224" width="299" alt="Blank Noise" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p align="center"><strong>Blank Noise</strong><br />set new rules for street behavior</p>
<p align="justify">These groups were formed (in 2003 and 2010 respectively) to re-conceptualize how we understand our presence in the public space; <a href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/">Blank Noise</a> focusing on sexual harassment and women safety and <a href="http://www.theuglyindian.com/">The Ugly Indian</a> on waste management and civic interventions. On this post, we will look at their campaigns and identify features of the spectacle/performance in the storytelling methods they are using to communicate their mandates and interact with their volunteers. So, without further ado, let's explore this glossary of tweaked theatrical terminology:</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>How to navigate this post:</strong></p>
<p align="justify"><strong>
</strong></p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Section</th>
<th>Performance<br /></th>
<th>Storytelling<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="#pre-production">Pre-production</a></td>
<td>Preparing all elements involved in a performance including locations, props, costumes, special effects and visual effects.<br /></td>
<td>Preparing all elements needed to convey the message of the story including: spoken word, text, images, audio, video or other artifacts.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#screenplay">Screenplay</a></td>
<td>A written work narrating the movements, actions, expressions and dialogues of the characters. <br /></td>
<td>Building a narrative in storytelling<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#cast">Actors</a><br /></td>
<td>Actors performing characters in a production.<br /></td>
<td>The relationship between storytelling actors and agency<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#stage">Stage</a><br /></td>
<td>Designated space for the performance of productions<br /></td>
<td>The public space as the stage for storytelling<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#action">Action!</a><br /></td>
<td>Cue signifying the start of a performance<br /></td>
<td>When storytelling leads to action<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><a name="pre-production"></a></p>
<p align="center" class="callout"><strong>1. pre-production</strong><br />ˈpri-prəˈdʌkʃ(ə)n/<br />the action of making or manufacturing from components or raw materials prior to the initial performance.</p>
<p align="justify">
The stage of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-production">pre-production</a> is when all the locations, props, cast members, costumes, special effects and visual effects are identified. It works in tandem with <a href="#screenplay">the screenplay</a> to ensure the maximum consistence, coherence and clarity in the story. In the same way, planning storytelling also implies selecting the right elements and materials to hold the story together. Initially, only traditional mediums were available, such as spoken word, text and images; but storytellers today (the directors orchestrating these productions) are experiencing an urgency to re-invent and adapt the language of their stories to make it accessible in the network<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[3]</a> (Hull and Katz, 2006; Urciuoli, 1995) and the practice has evolved into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmedia_storytelling">'trans-media'</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_storytelling">digital storytelling</a>. Formats like audio-bytes, videos, sms, mobile apps are also part of its semiotic makeup and these mediums are mixed and matched to enhance the visibility of the message. As Scott McCloud suggests in ‘Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art’: “we need to invent new ways [and] develop new techniques of showing the same old thing” (1994) to make sure people still listen to what we have to say.</p>
<p>
Both Blank Noise and The Ugly Indian have led highly visual campaigns in the online space, as they combine blogging with videos, audios, images and active community managers that interact with their volunteers. A few examples of the mediums they are using to capture the public's attention:</p>
<p><strong>Video: </strong>Blank Noise did this art intervention, using real rape and sexual harassment reports from 2003 to challenge what we consider 'normal' and 'news'-worthy when it comes to sexual harassment and domestic violence:</p>
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dE6pyVfcwys" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Artifacts</strong>: <a href="http://bit.ly/1mnEhMJ">‘I never ask for it’</a> campaign: Blank Noise asked women to send garments they wore when they experienced ‘eve-teasing’ to challenge the notion “that women ask to be sexually violated”</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Ineveraskedforit.jpg/image_preview" alt="I never asked for it 1" class="image-inline image-inline" title="I never asked for it 1" /><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Ineveraskedforit2.jpg/image_preview" alt="I never asked for it 2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="I never asked for it 2" /></p>
<p align="center">I never ask for it. <a href="http://bit.ly/1mnEhMJ">http://bit.ly/1mnEhMJ</a></p>
<p><strong>Audio:</strong> Blank Noise documents and disseminates stories of sexual harassment as told by their Action Heroes' This is: <a href="http://bit.ly/1fK5qUw">Kitab Mahal's story.</a></p>
<p align="justify">The message transmitted by the garments, the video and the audio are based on cultural and social constructions of what ‘sexual harassment’ means. Removing one of the garments from the installation, for instance, removes it from its resistance identity and hence, it can only exist in the narrative context Blank Noise is constructing alongside its volunteers.</p>
<p align="justify">On the other hand, The Ugly Indian's mandate is to change people's "rooted cultural behaviour and attitudes [...] to solve India's civic problems"; starting with the visible filth on the streets. It does not pursue systemic change, but seeks impact at the behavioral level. One of the methods it uses to achieve this, is the dissemination of images and videos showcasing their work. Their publications minimize the use of text in order to drive attention to aesthetics:</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Beforeafter.jpg/image_preview" alt="" class="image-inline image-inline" title="TUI Before After" /></p>
</td>
<td><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/TUIBeforeAfter2.jpg/image_preview" alt="TUI Before After 2" class="image-inline" title="TUI Before After 2" /><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="left">They recently complemented their graphic stories, by starting <a href="http://theuglyindian.com/books/chapter-1/">a blog</a> that documents "the philosophy and the process" that drives The Ugly Indian. This excerpt from Chapter 3 explains their visual strategy and why they have chosen before-after pictures to communicate their work:</p>
<blockquote>
“The citizens of the online world are brutal – they only care for instant gratification and real results. So are citizens in the real world. They too only care for results. [...] V & X know that and have focused all their energies on delivering this dramatic result, this single Before-After image, that is proof of dramatic change. And it has worked – in terms of creating initial positive impact (both on the ground and online). Whether it will survive and change community behavior is another story. But this initial impact is crucial, as we will discover later, in generating respect from the community and the authorities.”<br /></blockquote>
<div class="pullquote"><br />“When pictures carry the weight of clarity in a scene, they free words
to express a wider area. And when words lock in the meaning of a
sequence, pictures can really take off” Scott McCloud on comics</div>
<p align="justify"> </p>
<p align="justify">This is how pre-production is important for storytelling. Planning, designing and choosing the right elements, and how they interact with one another, will determine the level of legibility and meaning we give to the story (McCloud, 1994). Each medium: video, audio, text, music, etc.- becomes “a new literate space” or “symbolic tool” storytellers have on hand to portray narratives about the self, family community and society (Hull, 2006), and the introduction of digital technologies into storytelling space, coupled with the current hype around the method, signals we are moving towards a more strategic use of technology to produce and share knowledge more effectively. In this way, the choice of mediums and technologies will reflect a "conscious construction of identity" and "performances of the self" (Vivienne, 2011); a theme we will explore further in the 'screenplay' section.</p>
<p align="justify"><span id="docs-internal-guid-4138f50b-6259-ec34-716e-d1298c8e0176"></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-4138f50b-6259-ec34-716e-d1298c8e0176"></span></p>
<h3><br /></h3>
<a name="screenplay"></a>
<p align="center" class="callout"><strong>2. screenplay</strong><br />ˈskriːnpleɪ/<br />The script including descriptions of scenes and some camera/set directions.</p>
<p align="justify">The process of writing a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenplay">screenplay</a> is a careful exercise of creation and articulation. The dialogues, expressions and actions of the characters are narrated and located in a specific context that will determine how the events of the play unfold. The ability to build a coherent narrative structure is, in itself, a powerful tool of self-expression that enables the storyteller to a) construct an identity for the story and b) expose it to the public. Let's take a closer look at each stage:</p>
<p align="justify">a)<strong> Self-expression</strong> is directly related to the amount of freedom we experience in our ecosystem. Barriers to expression can come through our political regime or in the form of social norms and taboos, as is the case of conservative pockets in India. In either context, storytelling comes across an alternative outlet to describe ambiguous, unapologetic and personal truths (Vivienne, 2011). It enables less visible voices to claim a space and construct their own narrative within. Blank Noise has been very active on this front, as it creates opportunities for its volunteers, participants (dubbed Action Heroes), and otherwise silent voices to articulate their emotional and physical experiences in the public space. One of the ways they did it was by publishing a step by step guide to unapologetic walking, and then requesting people to participate:</p>
<div align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/stepbystepguidetounapologeticwalkingposter.jpg/image_preview" alt="Step by step" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Step by step" /></div>
<div align="center">step by step guide to unapologetic walking: <a href="http://bit.ly/1bz3MZZ">http://bit.ly/1bz3MZZ</a><br /><em><br /></em></div>
<em>
</em>
<blockquote><em>
</em>
<p align="center"><em><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">" Our street actions over the last few years have been based on emphasizing small simple scenarios- which can be challenging even though they appear 'normal' and everyday. For instance- should it be hard to just 'stand'
on the street as an 'idle' woman?</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Would you 'dare' try it?</span></span>"</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><br />The
idea behind this intervention is to re-conceptualize how women navigate
the public space, drawing inspiration, ideas and encouragement from the “personal truths” and stories shared by women who are doing
it. This grants them greater autonomy at representing themselves through
their online and offline presence and the narrative is continuously re-shaped through new submissions and testimonials. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">b) <strong>Self-representation</strong>
is how you create yourself: who you want to be and how you want others
to see you. Miller’s work on identity and storytelling explores the role
of storytelling in socialization and self-construction: <em>“stories change depending on who is listening”</em>
(1993) as we construct ourselves with and for other people. In the same way a character in the script cannot come to life without an audience, the identities we create for ourselves need a public that recognizes who we are and our role in the world. Anthony Giddens' work on identity also draws a relationship
between our identity and its narrative:<em> “self-identity
is not a set of traits but a person’s reflexive understanding of their
own biography (...) and the capacity to keep a coherent narrative going:
integrating events in the external world and sorting them into the
story of the self”</em>
(Gauntlett, 2002; Giddens 1991).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The Ugly Indian took a solid stance against middle class apathy and idleness in its narrative, and with this premise, it built an identity for the organization that represents the opposite: a selfless, active, responsible middle class citizen. These are some examples:</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>Anonymous identity
</strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>Middle class citizen<br /></strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>How they are different to the common middle class citizen<br /></strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>“They call themselves <span class="visualHighlight">The Ugly Indians and operate anonymously</span> [...]. If you
aren’t aware of The Ugly Indian (TUI), that’s understandable – <span class="visualHighlight">they work
hard to stay anonymous and underground, and want only their work to
speak for itself.”</span> (Chapter 1)</td>
<td>“<span class="visualHighlight">The
more the urban middle-class see ‘people like them’ </span>mucking about in
garbage, the more they will face up to the issue and start thinking
about it [...] This leap from ‘it’s someone else’s job’ to <span class="visualHighlight">‘it’s my duty
to fix this’</span> is what can transform our cities – <span class="visualHighlight">this leap has to be
made in the mind!” </span>(Chapter 6)</td>
<td>“There is a specific purpose to making Amir (the garbage truck driver)
talk. X and V are looking for cues on what really troubles him, what
improvement in his daily working life he will really appreciate. <span class="visualHighlight">Too
often, well-meaning urban middle-class do-gooders think they know what
the working class needs </span>(gloves, better equipment and so on) and <span class="visualHighlight">they
get it so wrong.</span> <span class="visualHighlight">Listening without being judgmental is an art, and X and
V are good at that.</span> (Chapter 8)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
You can read more about TUI’s story <a>here</a>.
<p> </p>
<div class="pullquote">
<div align="left">
“Human lives become more readable and intelligible when they are applied to narrative modes borrowed from history and fiction; and in function of stories people tell about themselves.”</div>
<div align="right">Ricoeur, 1991</div>
</div>
<p align="justify">The set of traits chosen by The Ugly Indian is important. Their initiative is intentionally gentrified as they <em>want </em>it to resonate specifically with the middle class (as they are "people like them"). But at the same time, they integrate a reflexive understanding of their role as citizens by mentioning the need for a personal awakening ("this leap has to be made in the mind!") and further interaction with stakeholders outside of their network ("making the truck driver talk"), that will enable the common middle class citizen transition into the level of 'street and citizenship authority' TUI is at. On top of this, their clean drives back up this discourse, and while their identity remains incognito, the work is widely shared on social media every week -drawing a coherent narrative between their speech and their actions.</p>
<p> c) <strong>Interaction with audience: </strong>Finally, once the storyteller has created a coherent identity, its sense of purpose must also be evident for the audience. The possibilities for this are endless, but I would like to draw attention to the super-hero narrative chosen by both Blank Noise and The Ugly Indian. Both groups are seeking an internal awakening in their volunteers by juxtaposing their experiences with what a 'hero' would do in the same situation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Bangalore Hero video on The Ugly Indian:<br /></strong></p>
<strong>
</strong>
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/627R6TEuol4" frameborder="0" align="middle" height="315" width="420"></iframe>
<p> </p>
<em><span id="docs-internal-guid-1a1a53ce-5e81-f89d-6c02-60fd710855eb">“Our
message to all Bangalore citizens is simple. Go out and be a hero on
your own street.<br />Take charge of it. Don’t be helpless. You have the
power. You just need to go and us</span>e it”</em>
<p> <strong><br />Blank Noise's Action Hero game:</strong></p>
<div align="center">
<div align="left">
<pre>The <span class="il">Action</span> <span class="il">Hero</span> <span class="il">Game</span> is built on a series of personal challenges in the city.
The <span class="il">game</span> is <strong>simple.</strong> Your <span class="il">game</span> partner and opponent is <strong>you.</strong>
There is no one method or quick solution to be an <span class="il">Action</span> <span class="il">Hero</span>.
Each potential Action Hero goes to a new area in his / her city. On arriving there potential Action Heroes receive 'challenges' via phone messages
Action Heroes across locations receive a set of 6 tasks over 4 hours via sms
If you don't wish to do a task (eg task 1a) text us and we will send you another task (eg task 1B)
Are you an<strong> <span class="il">Action</span> <span class="il">Hero</span>? </strong>
Find out! Play this <span class="il">game</span>!<strong>
</strong></pre>
</div>
<p align="center">
<img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/ActionHero1.jpg/image_preview" alt="Action Hero" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Action Hero" /></p>
<p align="center"> <strong>Blank Noise Action Hero</strong> <br /><a href="http://bit.ly/1fld8cV">http://bit.ly/1fld8cV</a></p>
<div align="center">
<blockquote>
<p><em><span id="docs-internal-guid-1a1a53ce-5e84-d66f-0b84-28e1731e7d64">“Share your <strong>Action Hero </strong>experience: </span>An
Action Hero sets new rules for behaviour. She could experience fear and
threat, but devises ways to confront it. Being fearless is a process.
Every person is a unique Action Hero.Tell us how you said NO to sexual
violence. [...] This blog set out to record testimonials of when and how
you became an Action Hero; documents and shares the memory of when you
surprised yourself, did the unexpected. [...] You are an Action Hero not
by the magnitude of
what you did but how it made you feel. You are an Action Hero by the way
you define your own Action Heroism. We don't have a reference for you.]</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p align="justify"><br />They both advance ideals of courage, fearlessness and responsibility in the
public space through their campaigns. These are not only desirable
traits by any citizen -let alone marginalized or silenced voices in the
case of Blank Noise- but the strategy also speaks to a language of hope and
empowerment we can relate to at a human level. It sheds light on our fears, our limits and the extent to
which we are willing to use our power to act.<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[3]</a><strong> </strong>Mediating this message with digital technologies also creates the illusion of an omniscient narrator who is drawing the volunteers' path to heroism and guiding their journey through it. As Ricoeur puts it:<em> "there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols and texts; and self-understanding will coincide with the interpretation given to these mediating terms"</em><span id="docs-internal-guid-4138f50b-6301-8f0c-4456-7cc57c648db2"></span> (1995) It is ultimately the interpretation the volunteers give to this ideal, and the magnitude to which they identify with it, what will determine their eagerness to emulate it and translate it into action. As said in the last post, one of the faculties of good storytelling is turning the experience being told, into the experience of those who are listening (Benjamin, 1955).</p>
<p align="justify">Before moving on to how 'action' unfolds in the performance, it is worth reflecting on the role of narratives, identities and mediation in collective action. Why do we need the hero narrative to mobilize agents? Why is heroic citizenship the gold standard and why does it work as a method for engagement? The topic is unfortunately out of the scope of this post, but the next one will attempt to address how identities as these ones can mediate our agency and action in the public space. <br /><br />******</p>
<p align="justify">Access Part 2 <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2">here</a> to look at the role of actors and the stage in performances to explore the role of agency and the public space in storytelling. We will also draw some final conclusions relating this back to the Making Change project.</p>
<em></em>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Footnotes:
</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">1</a>] Refer to Nishant Shah's <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway">Whose Change is it Anyway?</a>. He argues that global audiences engage with local causes that embody "spectacles of the rise of the citizen". This is problematic as the more significant -less visible/undocumented- acts remain unnoticed, while they may be central to understand what it means to make change in a networked and information society. He posits we need to move beyond this 'spectacle imperative',recognize the context of these revolutions and re-evaluate how we conceptualize 'action'.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">2</a>] Novelty: Quick exercise: run a quick google search of the
words: <a href="https://www.google.co.in/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=STORYTELLING+%2B+SOCIAL+CHANGE&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gfe_rd=ctrl&ei=rQQLU7SaOciL8Qee44CACQ&gws_rd=cr">‘storytelling + social change’</a>.
You will find stories by influential magazines and publications, including Forbes, the Huffington Post and Open Democracy, all from 2013-2014. ‘Storytelling’ seems to be
the newly (re)discovered tactic to advance business and social impact
objectives, noticed by activists and corporates alike.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">3</a>] For more on our power as agents and the role of narrative and identity, refer to Paul Ricoeur's work on the selves and agents (Oneself as another) and narratives (Time and Narrative). "As the most faithful articulations of human time, narratives present the moments when agents, who are aware of their power to act, actually do so, and patients, those who are subject to being affected by actions, actually are affected." Resources here: <a href="http://stanford.io/1c0pUwQ">http://stanford.io/1c0pUwQ</a></p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Sources:</strong></p>
<p align="left">Benjamin, Walter. (1977): "The storyteller."89.</p>
<p align="left">Gauntlett, David (2002), Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction, Routledge, London and New York.</p>
<p align="left">Giddens, Anthony. "Modernity and self-identity: self and identity in the late modern age." Cambridge: Polity (1991).</p>
<p align="left">Holland,
Lachicotte, Skinner & Cain, (1998). Identity and agency in cultural
worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</p>
<p align="left">Hull, Glynda A., and M. Katz. (2006) "Crafting an agentive self: Case studies of digital storytelling." Research in the Teaching of English 41, no. 1: 43.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">McCloud, Scott. (1993)."Understanding comics: The invisible art." Northampton, Mass</p>
<p align="left">Miller,
P. (1994). Narrative practices: Their role in socialization and
self-construction. In Neisser & Fivush (eds.), The remembering self:
Construction and agency in self narrative (pp. 158-179). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.</p>
<p align="left">Miller,
P. & Goodnow, J. J. (1995). Cultural practices: Toward an
integration of culture and development. New Directions for Child
Development, No. 67 (pp. 5-16). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
Publishers.</p>
<p align="left">Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (1996). Narrating the self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25, 19-43.</p>
<p align="left">Ricoeur, Paul (1991). "Narrative identity." Philosophy today 35, no. 1 : 73-81.</p>
<div align="left" id="gs_cit2" class="gs_citr">Ricoeur, Paul. <em>(1995) Oneself as another</em>. University of Chicago Press,</div>
<p align="left"><br />Urciuoli,
B. (1995). The indexical structure of visibility. In B. Farnell (ed.),
Human action signs in cultural context: The visible and the invisible in
movement and dance (pp. 189-215). Metuchen, NJ & London: The
Scarecrow Press, Inc.</p>
<p align="left">Vivienne, Sonja (2011). "Trans Digital Storytelling: Everyday Activism, Mutable Identity and the Problem of Visibility” Gay & Lesbian Issues & Psychology Review 7, no. 1.</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseDigital ActivismMaking ChangeResearchBlank Noise ProjectNet CulturesResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:31:11ZBlog EntryEffective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi
https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_effective-activism
<b>This post by Sarah McKeever is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Sarah is a PhD candidate at the India Institute, King’s College London, and her work focuses on the impact of social media on contemporary political
movements. In this essay, she explores the increasingly hierarchical system of activism on the Internet, based on Western corporate desire for data, and how it is shaping who is seen and heard on the Internet in India.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Background</h2>
<p>I will preface this post by stating that as an American, my personal experience of the Internet has been shaped by nearly 18 years as an active user. My experience with digital interfaces, websites, and social media has been formed through my experiences during the Internet revolution in the United States. Academic and personal training have shaped what I determine to be trustworthy, useful, and credible when searching for information. This post is based on field research I am conducting in New Delhi from January through June 2015.</p>
<p>With these preconceptions and standards in mind, I began to research organisations that I felt were credible enough to approach for interviews in January 2015. My current research project investigates the impact that social media has had on the issues of corruption and violence against women in New Delhi, following the social movements on these issues in 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 respectively. I started at an organisational level in order to research the impact that social media and the movements themselves had on organisations working on these issues. Areas of interest include any changes in issue engagement and discourse around gender violence and corruption. I focused exclusively on organisations that have an office in New Delhi and engage in activism in an urban context. Many of these organisations also have a presence in other states and include rural as well as urban projects. I conducted semi-structured interviews in order to engage with the changes wrought by the digital on a qualitative rather than quantitative basis.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Activism and Digital Hierarchy: A Divided Internet?</h2>
<p>While conducting initial research, I began to investigate two separate but related areas of inquiry. The first was relatively straightforward: what type of differences were there between groups which actively engaging with the affordances of the Internet and Web 2.0? In my research I examined online awareness groups and campaigns as well as more traditional advocacy and awareness groups that were struggling to translate their work onto the Internet and on social media.</p>
<p>While engaging with the first question, I quickly discovered that the divide between how organisations leveraged the affordances of the Internet - and social media in particular - was stark. Earl and Kimport (2011) write that organisations that directly translate previous advocacy on the ground onto the Internet fail to fully leverage the affordances of the Internet. Organisations that effectively utilise the strengths of the Internet - including flash tactics, crowd-sourcing, and networked leadership - have in fact transformed the world of activism. They have created a new type of “digital activism” through the use of an increasingly digital networked society (Castells 2010, Rainie and Wellman 2012). While this is a simplification of the overall argument – and I personally would argue that in actuality organisations work on a range of digital capabilities and the idea of a spectrum rather than a binary division would be more appropriate at this point – it was clear that both sides were struggling to reach some sort of equilibrium between each other’s capabilities when I conducted interviews with them.</p>
<p>The second inquiry stemmed from my engagement with the first: how was the “active” use of the Internet and social media by an organization translating into an interpretation of their effectiveness? In other words, was an “active” social media presence and a slick website contributing to an impression that they were somehow more impactful than the organisations which lacked these features and is this phenomenon creating a new hierarchy of activism in Delhi?</p>
<p>Many of the organisations that I spoke with who used the Internet and social media “well,” attracted foreign attention and funding. It is clear there is a monetary incentive for organisations to be present and easily accessible via search engines and social media platforms. And while social media has become a huge selling point in India - including in last year’s Parliamentary elections - much of the funding and attention appears to come from outside of India in these particular cases. While social media has become a popular tool for outreach in New Delhi, the emphasis placed on it is possibly being driven by forces outside of India in the activist sphere.</p>
<p>Organisations that had been involved in advocacy and grassroots activism before the Internet boom in India discussed the struggle to make effective use of the affordances of the Internet. My participants unilaterally expressed a desire to engage with the digital audience in India – an audience of approximately 310 million users according to Internet Live Stats (2015) – but were often ill equipped to do so. Stated difficulties included a lack of a dedicated communications and media strategist, lack of experience with social media and web design, and difficulty translating nuanced discussion onto social media sites which are not necessarily designed to facilitate complex and controversial discussions. Some participants directly stated that an online presence, whether it was effective or not, had become essential to obtaining foreign funding and attention, as a digital presence represents a tangible deliverable when applying for foreign grants.</p>
<p>It is clear from any cursory examination of social media sites that the mediums demand an increasing amount of content from its users. Simply put, the more you post, the more you are seen and heard above the increasing noise and chaos of social media. And if being seen and heard represents success, the message itself can get lost in translation. Click bait, sponsored posts, and buzzy headlines attract far more attention and gain more traction than any post attempting to create nuance and demand deeper engagement, at least in the cases I have personally observed and in my experience with activist groups.</p>
<p>The growing popularity of social awareness campaigns and organisations designed for the online world were quite obviously far more successful in utilising social media and web pages to draw attention to a specific issue. These campaigns especially were extremely popular with Delhi youth in particular and effectively used visual displays - such as crowd-sourced images and provocative posters - to highlight issues of gender violence and corruption. Occasionally some participants were outwardly dismissive of older advocacy groups, which they felt were out of step with the times and content to stay in their comfort zones.</p>
<p>In spite of the success of many online campaigns on the issues I researched, few were able to translate the momentum generated by the campaign into a broader discussion and deeper engagement on their chosen issue. While some participants stated this was not necessarily what they desired to do - some chose to remain purely as an awareness campaign without moving into advocacy - other participants stated a desire to do more and engage with the complex cultural, societal, and political constructs surrounding gender and corruption in India. When they attempted to engage in this more nuanced conversation, they often lost momentum on social media and occasionally stopped their campaign efforts altogether.</p>
<p>The rift was clear, and the struggle to merge worlds and effectively translate a variety of skill sets into effective advocacy was fairly well delineated. What troubled me was the implicit assumption that was being made around “effective” and “good” use of the Internet and social media. Why did a glossy website and an “active” social media presence appear to translate into organisational effectiveness? What was driving that assumption? It was an assumption I occasionally found myself making when researching organisations and even in some of my earliest interviews. Why did daily Facebook posts, likes, multiple Tweets, and followers translate into an interpretation of success and impact?</p>
<p>As Western, and in the case of Facebook and Twitter, American publically traded companies, there is a clear business prerogative in encouraging ever-increasing usage of their sites. More posts and tweet equals more data, which can then be analyzed or sold to a variety of different entities that want to utilise this data to create wealth. Facebook and Twitter also happen to be sites that can be used to generate conversation around key issues and act as an easy way to aggregate thousands, if not millions, of users behind a cause. The Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the Delhi Rape case mobilisations are only some of the hundreds of cases where social media sites have played a key role in mobilizing political, social, and cultural change.</p>
<p>However there is a corporate prerogative at work that is often ignored in these narratives. It is in a social media companies’ best interest to encourage frequent usage, as this is how free services generate revenue. Those who post the most win the race to be seen and heard. Those who do not - or do not have the funds to pay for sponsored posts or tweets - get lost in the shuffle, viewed as out of step and struggling to adapt to modern urban India, regardless of the quality work they may be doing offline. The “good” user is the most active user, regardless of what the content actually is. It can easily be termed as a binary between quantity versus quality, but this diminishes the extremely effective and thoughtful work of some digital media campaigns, which demands a different type of quality to actually become an impactful movement. It is therefore a more complex phenomenon than blindly generating massive amounts of content, but this is certainly a critical piece to digital success.</p>
<p>My conclusion, and one which was discussed and inspired by an early participant, was that it was the social media platforms – including key sites like Facebook, Twitter, and to a lesser extent YouTube - were partially generating and multiplying the aura of effectiveness around organisations and groups which had heavily emphasized social media as a core part of their outreach strategy. This is not to deny the very real success that several of these campaigns have had in generating conversation and change around critical issues in India. It instead questions why our notion of success and effectiveness has been altered so quickly, especially in an urban and digital context.</p>
<p>Based on my fieldwork, I encountered a digital hierarchy in three different aspects in activist groups. These divisions emerge at the level of search engines and ranking, web page aesthetics, and finally social media usage and statistical data. I will briefly examine these levels in the following sections.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Level I: Search Engines and Page Rankings</h2>
<p>The first was generated at the level of the search engine. Higher ranked and frequently visited websites appear higher on any search engine page, based on the search algorithm. In the first searches I conducted, several organisations with well-developed and easily navigable websites always appeared high on the search page, and were the first organisations I made contact with. As I began to dig deeper into partner organisations and get recommendations from my participants, I discovered new organisations that had never appeared in any search I had conducted, in spite of their clear links to the issues I was researching. These organisations have less of an audience and less of a digital voice from the very beginning. This is not even engaging with the issue of language on the Internet, as all of my searches were in English and not in Hindi or any other language spoken in India and were focussed initially only on organisations with an office in Delhi.</p>
<p>A second issue at the level of the search engine was that the organisations that appeared highest on the list had links to larger partner organisations in Europe and the United States, and occasionally had head offices in New York or London. The larger global presence may have had an impact on page ranking, as they were more likely to be searched for and recognised globally. The dominance of English on the Internet may also play a role, limiting the potential set of results, though again I made this decision consciously. Language choice has had a demonstrable impact on what a person sees on the Internet and what appears using the same search term. The burden of visibility influencing potential digital impact is clear, and practically forces some organisations to invest in a digital presence without a clear digital strategy. This can prove extremely detrimental – especially if the web page proves difficult to navigate and use, which I discuss in the following section - and move investment away from advocacy and programmes on the ground. Visibility is also a key concern for groups that exist purely as a digital campaign, as their potential success is based almost solely on how easy they are to find. Failure leads to diminished searches and lower rankings outside of the first results page from a search engine, which few people click beyond, thus dramatically limiting the impact an organisational webpage can have from the very beginning.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Level II: Webpage Aesthetics</h2>
<p>The second area consisted of the content and ease of use of the website. As a researcher, I was compelled to look into every recommended organisation that engaged with the issues I was researching. That being said the organisations with more developed websites caught my attention and implicitly created the impression that it was a more desirable contact. This is quite obviously not the case in reality, and often the organisations that had less advanced websites and appeared technologically less capable proved to be highly credible sources doing commendable work. However the difficulty of navigating some of the websites, which included issues such as broken hyperlinks, difficult interfaces, and offered very little information on the activities of the organisations would prove deeply unappealing to an observer with less motivation than myself. Going against my own training and experience and trusting the power of the network of recommendations on the ground proved to be just as useful as fairly random web searches. In terms of first impressions, it is difficult to move beyond these issues of navigation for an outside observer which expects a quality organisation to have a quality website.</p>
<p>Again, organisations with head offices based in the United States or Europe often were easily navigable and had high quality webpage design, representing a clear trend and highlighting the emphasis placed on the digital aboard. It was also very clearly which organisations had started on the Internet, based purely on design and functionality, though there was a certain bias as the Internet campaigners I spoke too had all had had great success as an online campaign. Finding failed campaigns would have added a key counterpoint to my work, but the difficulty of doing so proved insurmountable for this particular project. Design and navigability are key indicators of skill and investment in digital presence from an outsider’s perspective. It is less than representative of the story on the ground and the success of an organisation, especially if it is not a purely digital entity.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Level III: Social Media Use and Statistics</h2>
<p>The third and final level I encountered was determined by social media use. For every organization or participant I met I did cursory research on the various social media platforms they used, how many likes or followers they had near the day of my interview, and roughly how often the organization posted and tweeted. About 90% of my participant organisations had a least a Facebook page and a Twitter account. The number of followers varied widely, from about 200 to nearly 200,000 on Facebook and Twitter. Daily posts and variety of content was a key component to the success of the more widely followed groups online. It was immediately clear that groups that posted sporadically and without immediately stimulating content did not generate or gain nearly as much digital attention.</p>
<p>Many organisations discussed the struggle to move beyond a closed and familiar network, to reach out to the audience they know is there. But without a clear strategy, and even more importantly without a dedicated communications position, their digital engagement often mirrored their offline audience; a closed network of individuals already dedicated to change in the area the organisation was working in. They often failed to meet the incessant demands of the medium for easy content and had difficulties expanding their reach or message beyond their previously established networks of influence.</p>
<p>Those organisations which were able to attract digital attention on social media, while feeling it was an important tool for outreach – especially for youth in Delhi – and places where conversations on key issues could take place, also discussed the importance of social media statistics as a measurable deliverable. Donors, especially foreign funders, placed an emphasis on growth on social media sites as an indicator of success and growing influence. Whether social media growth can actually be an indicator of influence is still up for debate, but it is indicative of the notion that success means quantity, rather than quality, similar to the Western corporate prerogative of growth. That this is the new measure and standard of success for an activist organization is a troubling trend, and one unlikely to change in the near future.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>I have argued that corporate strategies and imperatives are creating this new class system of activism in India. I labelled it a “Western” corporate strategy, based on the American origins of the main players Facebook and Twitter, which are the predominate mediums my participants engaged with and have some of the largest audiences in India. Facebook had 108 million users of May 2014 Twitter has around 19 million users (Statista 2015) in India, though these are estimates and in all likelihood there has been an increase in users. The new hierarchy masks the reality that impact and results cannot be measured by likes and retweets. While there is indeed power in these particular sites, the difficulty in documenting what influence actually translates into in the offline world is a well-documented debate. I do not doubt that the Internet and social media, in urban and increasingly in rural India, have great affordances. But these advances do not have to come at the expense of equally important organisations whose ability to translate these messages digitally is more limited than others, especially when this hierarchy is partially generated by corporate sensibilities whose sole aim is profit generation.</p>
<p>While this hierarchy has been explored as an issue of second-level digital divide- where the issue is not lack of access but lack of training and knowledge of the digital world – I do not believe this is the only issue at stake. The increasing power of large companies to determine the way we interact and the rules of effective communication and transmission are deeply troubling, and leaves little room for alternatives. Collaboration can be an effective way of mitigating some of the differences, but this option is not always available to every group.</p>
<p>While these are questions that require further examination, it is clear that there is a divide between organisation’s digital strategies and whether they are able to leverage the affordances of the Internet and social media applications. I have argued that the operational aspects of social media sites increase this divide in particular, as they demand increasing amounts of data to generate profit. A strong digital presence is increasingly linked to an idea of effectiveness and impact, without investigating offline realities. This in turn can lead to a new hierarchy of activism, which limits the voices of some and magnifies the digital voices of others who are clearly better at manipulating the advantages of the Internet. I do not wish to say that offline activism is more effective than online activism and that we should not engage with digital mediums to promote. I only seek to question how this increasingly digital reality is creating a hierarchal system that is not reflective of offline reality, question what knowledge might be left behind in the process, and critically examine the underlying structures and platforms underlying the growing field of digital activism in India.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Castells, M. (2010) Networks of Outrage and Networks of Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age, Cambridge, MA: Polity Press</p>
<p>Earl, J. and Kimport, K. (2011) Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age Cambridge, MA: MIT Press</p>
<p>Internet Live Stats (2015) www.internetlivestats.com Accessed 23 May 2015</p>
<p>Rainie, L. and Wellman, B. (2012) Networked: The New Social Operating System, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Statista (2015) www.statista.com Accessed 25 May 2015</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>The post is published under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International</a> license, and copyright is retained by the author.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
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</p>
No publisherSarah McKeeverSocial MediaDigital ActivismResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2015-07-16T08:22:13ZBlog Entry Digital Activism in Asia Reader
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader
<b>The digital turn might as well be marked as an Asian turn. From flash-mobs in Taiwan to feminist mobilisations in India, from hybrid media strategies of Syrian activists to cultural protests in Thailand, we see the emergence of political acts that transform the citizen from being a beneficiary of change to becoming an agent of change. In co-shaping these changes, what the digital shall be used for, and what its consequences will be, are both up for speculation and negotiation. Digital Activism in Asia marks a particular shift where these questions are no longer being refracted through the ICT4D logic, or the West’s attempts to save Asia from itself, but shaped by multiplicity, unevenness, and urgencies of digital sites and users in Asia. It is our great pleasure to present the Digital Activism in Asia Reader.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>The Book</h2>
<p>The Reader took shape over two workshops with a diverse range of participants, including activists, change-makers, and scholars, organised by the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme in June 2014 and March 2015. During the first workshop, the participants identified the authors, topics, and writings that should be included/featured in the reader, based upon their relevance in the grounded practices of the participants, who came from various Asian countries. The second workshop involved open discussions regarding how the selected readings should be annotated, from key further questions to strategies of introducing them, followed by development of the annotations by the participants of the workshop. The full list of contributors, annotators, and editors is mentioned at the end of the book.</p>
<p>We are grateful to the <a href="http://meson.press/about/" target="_blank">Meson Press</a> for its generous and patience support throughout the development process of the book.</p>
<p><strong>Please download, read, and share this open-access book from the Meson Press <a href="http://meson.press/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/9783957960511-Digital-Activism-Asia-Reader.pdf" target="_blank">website</a>.</strong></p>
<p>The Reader has been edited by Nishant Shah, P.P. Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with support from Anirudh Sridhar, Denisse Albornoz, and Verena Getahun.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Excerpt from the Foreword</h2>
<p>Compiling this Reader on Digital Activism in Asia is fraught with compelling challenges, because each of the key terms in the formulation of the title is sub-ject to multiple interpretations and fierce contestations. The construction of ‘Asia’ as a region, has its historical roots in processes of colonial technologies of cartography and navigation. Asia was both, a measured entity, mapped for resources to be exploited, and also a measure of the world, promising anorientation to the Western World’s own turbulent encounters. As Chen Kuan-Hsing points out in his definitive history of the region, Asia gets re-imagined as a ‘method’ in cold-war conflicts, becoming the territory to be assimilated through exports of different ideologies and cultural purports. Asia does not have its own sense of being aregion. The transactions, interactions, flows and exchanges between different countries and regions in Asia have been so entirely mediated by powers of colonisation that the region remains divided and reticent in its imagination of itself. However, by the turn of the 21st century, Asia has seen a new awakening. It finds a regional identity, which, surprisingly did not emerge from its consolidating presence in global economics or in globalised structures of trade and commerce. Instead, it finds a presence, for itself, through a series of crises of governance, of social order, of political rights, and of cultural productions, that binds it together in unprecedented ways.</p>
<p>The digital turn might as well be marked as an Asian turn, because with the new networks of connectivity, with Asian countries marking themselves as informatics hubs, working through a circulated logic of migrant labour and dis-tributed resources, there came a sense of immediacy, proximity, and urgencythat continues to shape the Asian imagination in a new way. In the last decade or so, the rapid changes that have emerged, creating multiple registers of modernity, identity, and community in different parts of Asia, accelerated by a seamless exchange of ideas, commodities, cultures, and people have created a new sense of the region as emerging through co-presence rather than competition and conflict. Simultaneously, the emergence of global capitals of information, labour and cultural export, have created new reference points by which the region creates its identities and networks that are no longer subject to the tyranny of Western hegemony...</p>
<p>While the digital remains crucial to this shaping of contemporary Asia, both in sustaining the developmental agenda that most of the countries espouse, and in opening up an inward looking gaze of statecraft and social organisation, the digital itself remains an ineffable concept. Largely because the digital is like a blackbox that conflates multiple registers of meaning and layers of life, it becomes important to unengineer it and see what it enables and hides. The economic presence of the digital is perhaps the most visible in telling the story of Asia in the now. Beginning with the dramatic development of Singapore as the centre of informatics governance and the emergence of a range of cities from Shanghai to Manilla and Bangalore to Tehran, there has been an accelerated narrative of economic growth and accumulation of capital that is often the global face of the Asian turn. However, this economic reordering is not a practice in isolation. It brings with it, a range of social stirrings that seek to overthrow traditional structures of oppression, corruption, control, and injustice that have often remained hidden in the closed borders of Asian countries. However, the digital marks a particular shift where these questions are no longer being excavated by the ICT4D logic, of the West’s attempts to save Asia from itself. These are questions that emerge from the ground, as more people interact with progressive and liberal politics and aspire not only for higher purchase powers but a better quality of rights. The digital turn has opened up a range of social and political rights based discourses, practices, and movements, where populations are holding their governments and countries responsible, accountable, and culpable in the face of personal and collective loss and injustice...</p>
<p>In the face of this multiplicity of digital sites and usages that are reconfiguring Asia, it is obvious then, that the very nature of what constitutes activism is changing as well. Organised civil society presence in Asia has often had a strong role in shaping modern nation states, but more often than not these processes were defined in the same vocabulary as that of the powers that they were fighting against. Marked by a strong sense of developmentalism and often working in complement to the state rather than keeping a check on the state’s activities, traditional activism in Asia has often suffered from the incapacity to scale and the inability to find alternatives to the state-defined scripts of development, growth and progress. In countries where literacy rates have been low, these movements also suffer from being conceived in philosophical and linguistic sophistry that escapes the common citizen and remains the playground of the few who have privileges afforded to them by class and region. Digital Activism, however, seems to have broken this language barrier, both internally and externally, allowing for new visualities enabled by ubiquitous computing to bring various stakeholders into the fray... At the same time, the digital itself has introduced new problems and concerns that are often glossed over, in the enthralling tale of progress. Concerns around digital divide, invasive practices of personal data gathering, the nexus of markets and governments that install the citizen/consumer in precarious conditions, and the re-emergence of organised conservative politics are also a part of the digital turn. Activism has had to focus not only on digital as a tool, but digital also as a site of protest and resistance...</p>
<p>The Reader does not offer an index of the momentous emergence with the growth of the digital or a chronological account of how digital activism in Asia has grown and shaped the region. Instead, the Reader attempts a crowd-sourced compilation that presents critical tools, organisations, theoretical concepts, political analyses, illustrative case-studies and annotations, that an emerging network of changemakers in Asia have identified as important in their own practices within their own contexts.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroDigital ActivismDigital Activism in Asia ReaderFeaturedResearchNet CulturesPublicationsResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:36:44ZBlog EntryDigital Native: Getting through an election made for the social media gaze
https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-april-21-2019-nishant-shah-getting-through-an-election-made-for-social-media-gaze
<b>In the poll season, social media platforms thrive on wounded outrage disguised as politics.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Nishant Shah was <a class="external-link" href="https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/digital-native-the-gaze-5682831/">published in Indian Express</a> on April 21, 2019.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There is palpable excitement as the most populous democracy in the world goes out to vote. Last election, which saw the saffron sweep, we realised the role of social media platforms in electoral politics. From the controversial selfie by the aspiring Prime Minister flaunting the lotus symbol, that was reported as violating the advertisement rules set by the Election Commission, to the mass mobilisation of ideology-based voters, orchestrated by automated bots and the hashtag brigades of #acchedin, there was no denying that digital strategies are going to form the backend of a robust political campaign.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><aside class="o-story-content__related--large o-story-content__related">I<span>n a country of hypervisible lynch mobs staged via WhatsApp, polarised hatred exacerbated by armies of trolls, and the fluency with which hate speech has been normalised on the tweetosphere, social media and digital apps are front and centre in this election. People are coming out of voting booths and, even before the exit pollsters catch them, they are making Snapchat videos and “I voted” selfies, clearly identifying the parties they support. The verified social media accounts of leading political parties are doubling down on their poll promises of a communal purge of “infiltrators”, divine curses for the heretic who doesn’t vote for the “party of gods”, and threats of profiling if a community voted for the correct party and subsequent dire consequences. The door-to-door campaigning of the past has obviously been replaced by the tweet-to-tweet mixture of threats, cajoling, and blood lust that seems to set the tone for our current political climate.</span></aside></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the same time, the manifestos of the two leading coalitions, as well as the affidavits of the people running for office, are under deep public scrutiny. The <a href="https://indianexpress.com/about/bjp/">BJP</a>, in a Freudian blooper, announced itself as working for violence on women, incurring the sarcastic wrath of Twitter. One minister, who has been running through various cabinet positions, including education, was called to task to explain her wide repertoire of unverified degrees that change every voting season. Complaints against suspicious Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) have made themselves heard loudly on social-media discussion forums. And lately, the YouTube videos of people allegedly showing the easy removal of the indelible ink from the voting fingers, exploded into public view, jeopardising the integrity of the one-person-one-vote paradigm.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Social media, it would seem, is everywhere. And its ubiquity is ensuring that all stakeholders of the electoral process are performing for the social media gaze. Our leaders are talking in tweet-sized morsels, hoping to get their last messages in. The organisers of the massive process have taken to debunking false claims, providing verified information, and guiding people to their voting processes. The voters are not only wearing their party colours, but also canvassing for their favourite leaders, either through proclamations of patriotism or through emotional messages of voting against hate and discrimination. Voting groups are scrutinising and discussing the party manifestos and also the unexpected alliances coming into being in the quest of reaching the majority mark.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-april-21-2019-nishant-shah-getting-through-an-election-made-for-social-media-gaze'>https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-april-21-2019-nishant-shah-getting-through-an-election-made-for-social-media-gaze</a>
</p>
No publishernishantResearchers at WorkDigital ActivismDigital IndiaDigital Natives2019-04-28T04:12:45ZBlog EntryDigital AlterNatives with a Cause?
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook
<b>Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society have consolidated their three year knowledge inquiry into the field of youth, technology and change in a four book collective “Digital AlterNatives with a cause?”. This collaboratively produced collective, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen, asks critical and pertinent questions about theory and practice around 'digital revolutions' in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world. It works with multiple vocabularies and frameworks and produces dialogues and conversations between digital natives, academic and research scholars, practitioners, development agencies and corporate structures to examine the nature and practice of digital natives in emerging contexts from the Global South. </b>
<p></p>
<p><strong>I</strong><strong>ntroduction</strong></p>
<p>In the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century, we have witnessed the simultaneous growth of internet and digital
technologies on the one hand, and political protests and mobilisation on the
other. Processes of interpersonal relationships, social communication, economic
expansion, political protocols and governmental mediation are undergoing a
significant transition, across in the world, in developed and emerging
Information and Knowledge societies.</p>
<p>The young
are often seen as forerunners of these changes because of the pervasive and
persistent presence of digital and online technologies in their lives. The “
Digital Natives with a Cause?” is a research inquiry that uncovers the ways in
which young people in emerging ICT contexts make strategic use of technologies
to bring about change in their immediate environments. Ranging from personal
stories of transformation to efforts at collective change, it aims to identify
knowledge gaps that existing scholarship, practice and popular discourse around
an increasing usage, adoption and integration of digital technologies in
processes of social and political change.</p>
<p><strong>Methodology</strong></p>
<p>In 2010-11,
three workshops in Taiwan, South Africa and Chile, brought together around 80
people who identified themselves as Digital Natives from Asia, Africa and Latin
America, to explore certain key questions that could provide new insight into
Digital Natives research, policy and practice. The workshops were accompanied
by a ‘Thinkathon’ – a multi-stakeholder summit that initiated conversations
between Digital Natives, academic researchers, scholars, practitioners,
educators, policy makers and corporate representatives to share learnings on
new questions: Is one born digital or does one become a Digital Native? How do
we understand our relationship with the idea of a Digital Native? How do
Digital Natives redefine ‘change’ and how do they see themselves implementing
it? What is the role that technologies play in defining civic action and social
movements? What are the relationships
that these technology based identities and practices have with existing social
movements and political legacies? How do we build new frameworks of sustainable
citizen action outside of institutionalisation?</p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>Rationale</strong></p>
<p>One of the
knowledge gaps that this book tries to address is the lack of digital natives’
voices in the discourse around them. In the occasions that they are a part of
the discourse, they are generally represented by other actors who define the
frameworks and decide the issues which are important. Hence, more often than
not, most books around digital natives concentrate on similar sounding areas
and topics, which might not always resonate with the concerns that digital
natives and other stake-holders might be engaged with in their material and
discursive practice. The methodology of the workshops was designed keeping this
in mind. Instead of asking the digital natives to give their opinion or recount
a story about what we felt was important, we began by listening to their
articulations about what was at stake for them as e-agents of change. As a
result, the usual topics like piracy, privacy, cyber-bullying, sexting etc.
which automatically map digital natives discourse, are conspicuously absent
from this book. Their absence is not deliberate, but more symptomatic of how
these themes that we presumed as important were not of immediate concerns to
most of the participants in the workshop who are contributing to the book<strong>.</strong></p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>Structure</strong></p>
<p>The
conversations, research inquiries, reflections, discussions, interviews, and
art practices are consolidated in this four part book which deviates from the
mainstream imagination of the young people involved in processes of change. The
alternative positions, defined by geo-politics, gender, sexuality, class,
education, language, etc. find articulations from people who have been engaged
in the practice and discourse of technology mediated change. Each part
concentrates on one particular theme that helps bring coherence to a wide
spectrum of style and content.</p>
<p><strong>Book 1: To Be: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook1/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong></p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p>The first
part, <em>To Be</em>, looks at the questions
of digital native identities. Are digital natives the same everywhere? What
does it mean to call a certain population ‘Digital Natives”? Can we also look
at people who are on the fringes – Digital Outcasts, for example? Is it
possible to imagine technology-change relationships not only through questions
of access and usage but also through personal investments and transformations?
The contributions help chart the history, explain the contemporary and give ideas
about what the future of technology mediated identities is going to be.</p>
<strong>Book 2: To Think: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook2/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong><strong>
</strong>
<p>In the
second section, <em>To Think,</em> the
contributors engage with new frameworks of understanding the processes,
logistics, politics and mechanics of digital natives and causes. Giving fresh
perspectives which draw from digital aesthetics, digital natives’ everyday
practices, and their own research into the design and mechanics of technology
mediated change, the contributors help us re-think the concepts, processes and
structures that we have taken for granted. They also nuance the ways in which
new frameworks to think about youth, technology and change can be evolved and
how they provide new ways of sustaining digital natives and their causes.</p>
<p><strong>Book 3: To Act: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook3/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong></p>
<p><em>To Act</em> is the third part that concentrates on stories
from the ground. While it is important to conceptually engage with digital
natives, it is also, necessary to connect it with the real life practices that
are reshaping the world. Case-studies, reflections and experiences of people
engaged in processes of change, provide a rich empirical data set which is
further analysed to look at what it means to be a digital native in emerging
information and technology contexts.</p>
<strong>
</strong>
<p><strong>Book 4: To Connect : Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Download <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dnbook4/at_download/file" class="external-link">here</a></strong></p>
<p>The last
section, <em>To Connect</em>, recognises the
fact that digital natives do not operate in vacuum. It might be valuable to
maintain the distinction between digital natives and immigrants, but this
distinction does not mean that there are no relationships between them as
actors of change. The section focuses on the digital native ecosystem to look
at the complex assemblage of relationships that support and are amplified by
these new processes of technologised change.</p>
<p>We see this
book as entering into a dialogue with the growing discourse and practice in the
field of youth, technology and change. The ambition is to look at the digital
(alter)natives as located in the Global South and the potentials for social
change and political participation that is embedded in their interactions
through and with digital and internet technologies. We hope that the book
furthers the idea of a context-based digital native identity and practice,
which challenges the otherwise universalist understanding that seems to be the
popular operative right now. We see this as the beginning of a knowledge
inquiry, rather than an end, and hope that the contributions in the book will
incite new discussions, invoke cross-sectorial and disciplinary debates, and
consolidate knowledges about digital (alter)natives and how they work in the
present to change our futures<strong>.</strong></p>
<p><strong><a class="external-link" href="https://www.surveymonkey.com/MyAccount_Login.aspx">Click here</a> to order your copy. We invite readers to contribute reviews of an essay they found particularly interesting. Contact us: nishant@cis-india.org and fjansen@hivos.nl if you want more information, resources, or dialogues</strong></p>
<p>Nishant
Shah</p>
<p>Fieke
Jansen</p>
<p><strong>For media coverage and book reviews,</strong> <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/media-coverage" class="external-link">read here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook</a>
</p>
No publishernishantSocial mediaDigital ActivismRAW PublicationsCampaignDigital NativesAgencyBlank Noise ProjectFeaturedCyberculturesFacebookPublicationsBeyond the DigitalDigital subjectivitiesBooksResearchers at Work2015-04-10T09:22:29ZBlog Entry10th International ISTR Conference
https://cis-india.org/news/istr-conference
<b>The 10th international ISTR conference was organised by ISTR at Universita Degli Studi Di Siena in Italy from July 10 to 13, 2012. Nishant Shah gave a lecture on Beyond Normative Citizenships: Exploring the ‘New’ in Digital Activism. </b>
<p>Nishant Shah spoke as a panelist in the panel "Theoretical Grounding of Civic Driven Change".</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This Tenth International Conference of ISTR marks the 20th anniversary of the formation of this global community of scholars and interested others dedicated to the creation, discussion, and advancement of knowledge pertaining to the Third Sector and its impact on human and planetary well-being and development internationally. <br /><br />In this era of far-reaching changes in the way that societies are organized, the Third Sector is playing a critical role and has significantly gained importance in many countries. Democratization and the role of civil society in social integration and participation are in the spotlight with recent mobilizations particularly in the Middle East and ongoing suppression of civil society under authoritarian regimes in parts of the world. New media, social networks and other technological innovations raise new opportunities and challenges for organizing collective action and the diversity of civil society. Marketization and its impact on the Third Sector is attracting renewed research interest as welfare budgets are cut and the role of nonprofits is called into question in difficult fiscal times in many nations. A second type of marketization is also attracting attention particularly the growth of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the emergence of social enterprises and changing philanthropic paradigms. International research toward a better understanding of the implications of these changes continues to gather momentum.<br /><br />ISTR’s Tenth International Conference in Sienna, Italy offers an excellent opportunity for further dialogue on these and other changes in an environment of rigor, reflexivity, authenticity and creativity. Siena encapsulates a mix of tradition and innovation that is woven from ancient webs of social engagement and enduring beliefs in justice through periods of peace and conflict. It provides an excellent setting to explore the role of third sector studies as an integrative science with short and long term objectives geared towards understanding and addressing societal concerns. Three exciting plenary sessions will canvas major theoretical and practice developments in the Third Sector and highlight the rich history and accomplishments of the host nation’s Third Sector.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">See the event details on<a class="external-link" href="http://www.istr.org/events/event_details.asp?id=191250"> ISTR website</a><br /><a class="external-link" href="http://www.istr.org/resource/resmgr/siena/supplementalprogram.pdf">Read</a> the program supplement for ISTR's 10th International Conference</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/istr-conference'>https://cis-india.org/news/istr-conference</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDigital ActivismDigital Natives2012-08-05T08:03:28ZNews ItemDigital Activism in Asia Reader: Announcement
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader-announcement
<b>The CIS-RAW programme organized an editorial workshop on March 6-7, 2015, as part of its project on a Digital Activism in Asia Reader. The project is a collaborative effort of the Centre for Internet and Society and the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University, Germany, which aims to bring together local knowledge, debates and conversations around Digital Activism in Asia.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>The proposed reader on Digital Activism in Asia will combine stories in multiple forms, including academic essays, case-studies to grey literature from public discourse that reveals and points to the debates around digital activism that have emerged in this particular context. Most of the audience will consist of academics, practitioners and policy actors internationally.</p>
<p>One of the main goals of this reader will be to challenge the prevalent notion in the discourse of Digital Activism of universality and uniformity across contexts and cultures. The focus is on new actors (like digital natives), processes, movements, and networks that such digital activism has engendered.</p>
<p>The editorial workshop was conducted towards completion of the Reader, to better contextualize the material through peer annotations and supporting information. Over the course of two days, a total of six participants worked on two articles each, which had been circulated beforehand, to annotate those using different kinds of material and close reading the texts.</p>
<p>The workshop was structured in the form of presentations and discussion sessions in the morning, followed by a writing sprint in the afternoon. Apart from a larger discussion around digital activism itself, its modes, approaches and forms, the materials were also categorized along four axes – activists using digital tools, activism around the digital, digital shaping activism and activism shaping the digital – which helped structure the discussions and the process of writing. The suggested annotations took different forms – from introductory paragraphs to references for further reading. Participants were also expected to bring in and build on their own practices, experiences and contexts in discussing the articles.</p>
<p>The Digital Activism in Asia Reader is expected to be published by the <a href="http://cdc.leuphana.com/structure/hybrid-publishing-lab/" target="_blank">Hybrid Publishing Lab</a> in mid-2015.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader-announcement'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader-announcement</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppDigital ActivismDigital Activism in Asia ReaderResearchNet CulturesResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:22:39ZBlog Entry