The Centre for Internet and Society
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IRC16 - Proposed Session - #SmartThings (Conceptualizing Internet/Digital Technologies in the Age of "Smartness")
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-smartthings
<b>This is a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 by Ravi Shukla and Bharath Palavalli.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Session</h2>
<p>With the increasing focus on making things - devices, services, cities, even planets - smart, there is a need to engage with the idea of smartness. What constitutes it? Who decides? Is there a need to re-conceptualize our understanding of these increasingly pervasive technologies and if so, how do we begin to do so?</p>
<p>The session engages with two inter-related questions - a) What constitutes a smart city? and b) How can we approach internet/digital technologies as enablers of basic, urban public services?</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Plan</h2>
<p>The session is broken up into three sections of half an hour each.</p>
<p><strong>Content Overview</strong></p>
<p>The first section involves the presentation of the findings of a survey across different social groups of what constitutes a "smart city". This is followed by a Q & A session with the audience.</p>
<p>The second section involves presenting the findings of a pilot project using SMS technology as an enabler for public services within a community. This is followed by a Q & A session with the audience.</p>
<p>The third section involves asking people in the audience to list 5 characteristics that constitute (or in some cases, *don't* constitute) public services in a "smart" city. Depending on the size of the audience, either these responses can be collected individually or it can be broken into groups of 3-5 people. The responses are then collected and shared with the audience - either during the session (if time allows) or over email/website.</p>
<p><strong>Expected Outcomes</strong></p>
<p>At the end of the session we expect a set of responses on what characterizes public services in a "smart" city. These are seen as helping in drawing out a research/practice agenda on how internet/digital technologies may act as enablers of public services.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Readings</h2>
<p>None.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-smartthings'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-smartthings</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroIRC16Proposed SessionsInternet Researcher's Conference2016-01-03T06:59:58ZBlog EntryIRC16 - Proposed Session - #KnowledgeCommunity (Computing, Community and Knowledge Production: Problems and Prospects)
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-knowledgecommunity
<b>This is a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 by Ravikant.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Session</h2>
<p>Our session will approach the history of digital knowledge production and dissemination in India from the standpoint of community-oriented experiments and practices in tool making and resource-sharing in the vernacular domain, mainly Hindi. It will attempt to demonstrate that Hindi public domain represents a depth and diversity that is normally not visible to the monolingually-trained, English-only mode of cognition. We wish to argue that the diversity of content is symptomatic of a culture of deeply-ingrained culture of sharing in South Asia. Free software movement, especially its localisation units, Wikipedia and Web 2.0 platforms in general have played a stellar role in handing us the tools of creation, consumption and sharing beyond scripts. But the full potential of how much we can produce and share has not been realised.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Plan</h2>
<p>We will try and present successful and unsuccessful cases in order to understand why certian efforts worked and not others, and try and suggest a few possible strategies of creative engagement with bhasha communities in general.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Readings</h2>
<p>None.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-knowledgecommunity'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-knowledgecommunity</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroIRC16Proposed SessionsInternet Researcher's Conference2016-01-03T06:54:54ZBlog EntryIRC16 - Proposed Session - #PoliticsOnSocialMedia
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-politicsonsocialmedia
<b>This is a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 by Dr. Rinku Lamba and Dr. Rajarshi Dasgupta, with Dr. Mohinder Singh, Professor Valerian Rodrigues and Professor Shefali Jha as co-members.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Session</h2>
<p>Indian politics had witnessed the entry of new social movements in the 1970s, adding a whole set of new issues, actors, and ways of activism to the older nationalist tradition. We suggest a similar change is now taking place, as different ways of governance and interventions aided by latest technologies are emerging in the social media. Websites, blogs, tweets, emails and online petitions are creating a new virtual space for politics, through information, propaganda, debates, appeals and mobilizations.</p>
<p>The proposed session will discuss this emerging field of power, critically considering its democratic potential and interrogating the political issues and ideas at stake in it. The aim is to tackle the new forms of civic and
public-political engagements witnessed in the domain of social media, and analyze their implications for the theory and practice of democracy. In the process our papers would explore conceptual notions such as agency, political act and participation as well as notions of selfhood and subjectivity.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Plan</h2>
<p>We will present four papers, with a question-answer and discussion session at the end. The papers will be addressing broadly three kinds of concerns.</p>
<ul><li>The first concern is to identify novel understandings of the political and political acts in the social media. We ask the following questions in this regard: What are the political issues and ideas at stake and how do they affect conventional understandings of democracy? Who are the new actors outside the fray of party-centered politics and how do they see what is political in the acts of internet-users? How are political institutions including parties reacting to the phenomena?<br /><br /></li>
<li>The second concern relates to probing the new forms of political subjectivity that are emerging in this process. The questions here include: What kind of political actor is getting shaped by the forms of political participation engendered by the social media? How does the virtual nature of practice impact on questions of location and identity as determinants of political membership and political action? Is this nature of virtual participation too fluid for the state to control?<br /><br /></li>
<li>The third concern relates to the forms of exclusion and inclusion that virtual participation entails. This involves questions like: What kind of social capital is necessary for talking part in the process and does it cut across cultural and economic divisions? What kinds of interest drive the social media? How does it shape the meaning of political concepts like representation and rights, accountability and political agency?</li></ul>
<p>It is likely that we will raise more questions than we can answer at this point. However, we think it is important to raise them all the more in keeping with the questions that make up the focus of the conference,
especially, the first question of how do we conceptualize, as an intellectual and political task, the mediation and transformation of social, cultural, political, and economic processes, forces, and sites through internet and digital media technologies in contemporary India.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Readings</h2>
<p>None.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-politicsonsocialmedia'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-politicsonsocialmedia</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroIRC16Proposed SessionsInternet Researcher's Conference2016-01-03T06:51:03ZBlog EntryIRC22 - Proposed Session - #DigitisingCrisesRemakingHome
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-digitisingcrisesremakinghome
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022- #Home.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 </strong>- # <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Session Type:</strong> Panel Discussion</p>
<p><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The session is planned as a panel discussion between three scholars on three distinct, interconnected notions of home – specifically the home as a dwelling unit, an administrative unit (such as a municipality, a city, or a state), and a country (or a nation state) in the context of India. We intend to parse these ideas within the context of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic to discuss notions of ‘safety’, ‘trust’, ‘support’, and ‘access’ by examining the digital turn in all three kinds of ‘home’. The session will open with the scholars speaking to each other, and laying out the central ideas. The conversation between the three scholars will act as provocations to enable a larger discussion with other attendees.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In 2020, when the first Covid-19 lockdowns began, the internet was discussed as a space of solidarity, of meeting, entertainment, work, and of support. But soon it became evident that access to such spaces of solidarity or support was not necessarily equal. While for some it was almost non-existent, for many others it was limited or regulated. In the Indian context these differences only stood out further due to unequal access to infrastructure, healthcare, and even basic necessities such as food that was starkly apparent in the long march of several thousand migrant workers from cities back to their ‘homes’ in rural areas at the height of the Indian summer.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">At the national level, the digital response to the pandemic was most palpable. The use of contact tracing through apps such as <em>Aarogya Setu, </em>the <em>CoWin</em> portal for vaccinations, and the often arbitrary use of drones, facial recognition, and artificial intelligence have raised questions about surveillance, inclusion, and how useful technology can be in assisting a public health crisis. Often such responses reflected a law and order response to what has been a public health crisis. On the other hand, the establishment of<em> Vande Bharat </em>missions to bring stranded Indians from around the world ‘back home to India’ presented a very different idea of home.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Administrative units at the state and local levels had differing procedures and interventions. Many attempted to follow the guidelines and interventions laid out by the central government, others introduced their own digital solutions but soon found that these were not enough to actually deliver governance during the pandemic.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This session will explore the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the digital becoming the default mode of managing the pandemic–or any sort of threat. We ask if the idea of ‘home’ as a ‘safe space’ had ever really been so and whether the pandemic exacerbated existing exploitative mechanisms within a ‘home’ – be it the dwelling, the city, or even one’s country. We also intend to discuss issues of access, surveillance, privacy, vulnerability, the burdens of care-work, the exploitative extraction of data, and divergent understandings of consent frameworks within these three axes of the idea of the ‘home’.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Session Team </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Vidya Subramanian </strong>is Raghunathan Family Fellow, South Asia Institute, Harvard University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests lie at the intersection of technologies and societies. Her current research investigates the changing nature of citizenship in the technological society we now inhabit. Focusing on India, her research is loosely framed by two large issues: the first is the colonisation of the everyday so-called real world by the digital; and the second is how power permeates and is implicated in such technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Kalindi Kokal</strong> is Post Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Policy Studies, IIT Bombay. She has a doctorate in law from the Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Her doctoral work centred on understanding how non-state actors in dispute processing engage with state law. Her dissertation is an ethnographic study of dispute-processing mechanisms in two rural communities in the states of Maharashtra and Uttarakhand in India. She works on understanding how the manner in which people actually experience state law coupled with their perceptions of dispute resolution and state courts underscore the need to explore broader understandings of law and dispute resolution.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Uttara Purandare </strong>is PhD Researcher, IITB-Monash Research Academy. She is pursuing her PhD in Public Policy under a joint programme offered by IIT Bombay and Monash University. Her area of research is smart cities. Looking specifically at the intersection of technology, gender, and governance, Uttara’s research focuses on how safety and surveillance are constructed by the smart city rhetoric and the role of private sector firms in governing the smart city. The COVID-19 pandemic and the technologies that have been introduced by national governments and smart cities purportedly to curb the spread of the virus have raised interesting questions about privacy and citizens’ rights during a crisis. Uttara is presently exploring some of these questions within the Indian context.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-digitisingcrisesremakinghome'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-digitisingcrisesremakinghome</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-04-25T12:23:42ZBlog EntryIRC 22 - Proposed Session - #LetsMoveIn
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-letsmovein
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022</strong> - # <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Session Type:</strong> Workshop/Collaborative Working Session</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This is a collaborative session designed in the form of a workshop to understand the implications on social movements because of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Movements of many kinds have moved geographies from public spaces to within the private space of the home. Not only has the nature of movements changed because of this, but we have seen the idea of home being transformed and gaining novel meanings like never before on a global scale. This metamorphosis had to undergo the collapse of inside and outside of home as two separate spaces which we often used to refer to. We were forced to shift most of our ‘outside’ lives to ‘inside’ breakout rooms. We want to collectively understand through this workshop, the different manifestations that movements have taken through digital media devices and its implications on the idea of home. This session seeks to understand the implications of ‘reterritorialized’ home from an entry point of movements through a participatory dialogue which we hope will bring the multifaceted experiences to the forefront of discussion. In doing so, we would like to engage with broader questions of what transformations have happened to movements when we had to navigate ourselves mostly in the digital arena, how people reciprocate to this transformation, how gender, caste, class etc. shape the digital movements landscape, how digital [dis]enable the possibility of protesting in and from home, etc. Some of the concepts that we want to explore through the activities are spaciality, materiality, agency, public/private dichotomy, sociality, mediation, etc. We would like to use storytelling and role playing as activities to engage with these concepts and find more personal meanings to them. </p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div><strong>Session Team </strong></div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Arathy Salimkumar</strong> is a research scholar in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Calicut University Campus. She is engaged in a research project mapping the emergence and furtherance of Identity politics in Indian Cinema. She is interested in the questions of political identity and the movements and struggles emerging in association with it in contemporary India.</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Faheem Muhammed </strong>is a research scholar in the Department of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, Pondicherry University. His work explores the role of digital technologies in resolving as well as exacerbating the status quo. His research interests include critical media studies, techno-culture, and social theories and policies, with an insight into theories of race, gender, colonialism, and social inclusion and exclusion.</div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Hazeena T</strong> is a research scholar in the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad. Her research interests include social change communication and politics of knowledge. She is interested in understanding the dynamics of knowledge politics in grassroots initiatives and its implications for communities involved. </div>
<div> </div>
<div><strong>Manisha Madapathi </strong>is a research scholar in the department of communication, in the University of Hyderabad. Her thesis project focuses on the phenomenon of internet shutdowns in India and the implications it has on the several stakeholders involved. She is interested in the processes of congregation and assembly during movements, and what channels enable it. </div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-letsmovein'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-letsmovein</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-05-19T14:54:24ZBlog EntryIRC 22 - Proposed Session - #MetaverseInquilab
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-metaverseinquilab
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - </strong># <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Session Type:</strong> Presentation and Panel Discussion </p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">This session will begin with a general overview of various social movements during the pandemic and how they were affected by it. For instance, the Farmer’s Protests and Anti-CAA Protests in India, BLM in America and other environmental, anti-globalization and LGBTQ global movements.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A cursory Google search on the term ‘Social Movements’ suggests -</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">“A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political one. This may be to carry out, resist or undo a social change. It is a type of group action and may involve individuals, organizations or both.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">The broad objectives of this session are -</p>
<ol>
<li>To reimagine the idea of social movements, not just as flash points but consistent, collective, coordinated efforts for effective social transformation over time and,</li>
<li>To broaden its ambit by reimagining spaces for protests, borrowing from “Yunus Berndt’s people-less protests”.</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If geographically distributed work environments are now possible (courtesy of COVID), why not virtually launched DAO based social movements? We are living in unprecedented times. Today, the internet is not just facilitating social movements from home but also allowing many possibilities for more inclusive and democratic participation of communities, collaborative mobilizing and transparent funding mechanisms. The internet has made it possible for all of us to become citizen-activists and imagine create better future(s).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The metaverse is a 3D immersive participatory internet experience that makes use of AR and VR technologies. Combined with the blockchain and DAOs, this trifecta could potentially show the way for everlasting high-impact citizen-led social movements. The advantages of meta-activism include:</p>
<ol>
<li>Transparency - traceable trail of docs</li>
<li>Greater Reach - beyond borders - greater collabs</li>
<li>Efficient - low mobilization cost</li>
<li>Harder to Censor by Govts - cannot delete info on the blockchain</li>
<li>Liberating - use of avatars and pseudonymized identities (free from pre-existing structural inequalities and traditional markers individual, offering a clean slate)</li>
<li>An opportunity to Build New Decentralized Worlds with different (direct) governance structures - shifting human behaviour towards better outcomes</li>
<li>No Hierarchy - shared responsibilities, leaderless movements - reimaging leadership</li>
<li>Egalitarian Decision Making - Decision making occurs when conversations turn into proposals that are voted upon by members of the collective. No action is taken without recorded collective consent.</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> However, new technology by itself cannot fix all societal problems. We will need to put in place consensual principles that enable us to do so. It is precisely this area that excites both of us. How do we create meaningful digital publics? How do we ensure greater inclusion, participation and voice in such digital political spaces? Thus, in the session, we will elucidate on the ways in which citizen-activists can launch and lead sustained future movements on the metaverse:</p>
<ol>
<li>Hacks</li>
<li>Mass Migration from the State’s Central Registries</li>
<li>Social movements as Repositories of Truth - Ex: Farmer NFT & Museum</li>
<li>DAOs to Redeploy Cooperative Wealth</li>
<li>Peace Initiatives that Obliterate Borders - Ex: Aghaz-e-Dosti</li>
<li>Funding Mechanisms for Transparency - Ex: CryptoRelief</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> Regarding session format, we’d like to present the key points from our joint paper followed by a panel discussion with the members of prominent social movements cited above, ending with a Q&A with the audience. Additionally, our paper will exist in the metaverse for people to come and read and engage with us further. We are in touch with the organizers of the Farmer’s Protests and founding members of Aghaz-e-Dosti. We will be contacting members from other social movements as well if our proposal is selected.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-metaverseinquilab'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-metaverseinquilab</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-03-18T13:01:11ZBlog EntryIRC 22 - Proposed Session - #LockdownsAndShutdowns
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-lockdownsandshutdowns
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 -</strong> # <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p><strong>Session Type:</strong> Workshop or Collaborative Working Session<br /><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Internet shutdowns are a form of censorship which can have substantial economic and human rights implications. Despite the potential negative consequences, shutdowns are still used across the globe, and many social perspectives on shutdowns remain under-researched and poorly understood. For example, the relationship between internet shutdowns and one’s sense of safety and freedom at home. This connection is pertinent given the COVID19 pandemic and government recommendations to work from home, which emphasised the importance of the internet and the ability to connect with others freely. By connecting with others online, we create a sense of digital community. While many are spending more time at home, shutdowns continued despite the increasing need for online communication. This session aims to understand community perspectives surrounding shutdowns and other forms of censorship, specifically focusing on one’s “home”. Shutdowns are a common tool to curb forms of collective action (such as protests), and some public spaces have had reduced availability due to COVID19. Therefore, the importance of the internet in enabling social movements, like protests, cannot be understated. Thus, this session will touch upon many essential topics and encourage others to think about shutdowns and the increased importance of the internet in allowing social movements from within one’s home.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The session will last a total of 60 minutes. The first 5 minutes will provide an overview of the session’s structure and why this topic is important. We will then move into a semi-structured format consisting of 3 x 15-minute mini-sessions, with each mini-session touching upon a different question. Example questions may cover topics such as the unique role of the internet in enabling online social movements in times of a lockdown or if shutdowns during lockdowns merit a different moral threshold. The prompt questions will encourage interdisciplinary discussion so that participants from diverse backgrounds can make meaningful contributions. We envisage that this session will be organic and open in a large roundtable format. The last 10 minutes of the session will consist of an open-style discussion so that any remaining thoughts, opinions, and reflections from participants may be shared.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Session Team </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Michael Collyer</strong> is an OTF Senior Fellow in Information Controls and a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Oxford. His research interests are information controls, Bayesian statistics, machine learning, and natural language processing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Joss Wright </strong>is the Co-Director of the Oxford EPSRC Cybersecurity Doctoral Training Centre; Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade; and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. His work focuses on computational approaches to social science questions, with a particular focus on technologies that exert, resist, or subvert control over information.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Andreas Tsamados i</strong>s a doctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute focusing on human control over AI/ML applications within national security and defence. He is also developing the Algorithmic Resistance Cookbook, a guide to using data-driven tools and techniques to practice resistance against intrusive and repressive aspects of present-day algorithmic culture.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Marianne Díaz Hernández </strong>is a #KeepItOn Fellow at Access Now. Marianne is a Venezuelan lawyer, digital rights activist, and fiction writer, currently based in Santiago, Chile. Her work focuses mainly on issues regarding online freedom of speech, privacy, web filtering, internet infrastructure and digital security. She founded the digital rights NGO Acceso Libre, a volunteer-based organization that documents threats to human rights in the online environment in Venezuela. Before joining Access Now, Marianne worked as a public policy analyst for the Latin American NGO Derechos Digitales. She’s volunteered for Global Voices, particularly for the Advox project, since 2010. She has also published several fiction books, and co-founded the small press Casajena Editoras. In 2019, she was recognized with the “Human Rights Hero” award, granted by Access Now, for her “research and leading advocacy efforts against invasive measures taken by the Maduro government in Venezuela. She’s currently working towards a Master’s Degree in Narrative Writing at Alberto Hurtado University.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Nathan Dobson </strong>is a Postdoc at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford. He has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine. His current research is on internet shutdowns in relation to elections and violence in Africa. He has a background in African Studies and has worked at the University of Florida, USA, and the University of Birmingham, UK. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-lockdownsandshutdowns'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-lockdownsandshutdowns</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-05-19T15:05:42ZBlog EntryIRC 22 - Proposed Session - # ActFromHome
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-actfromhome
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p><strong>Session Type:</strong> Workshop or Collaborative Working Session<br /><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Objectives of the Session</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, nations across the world instituted a range of public health measures that limited mobility in many areas, while confining families to homes for indefinite periods of time. Poverty, unemployment and other forms of inequality rose - both within and outside the home. Further, angst against various issues rose- worsening climate injustices, racial violence, gender discrimination, arbitrary layoffs across workplaces, and silencing of minority voices. In a pre-pandemic era, such issues would have elicited physical protest movements by the groups concerned, but with limited mobility - the digital space has become an arena for home-based protests and movements.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">This workshop seeks to answer a fundamental question: “Can democracies under crisis survive the home based protests across digital platforms?” It will highlight the role of emerging technologies in shaping the role of home-based digital protests across nations and cultures, with a specific focus on perspectives from Israel and India. Further, it will analyse the immense opportunities and pitfalls of driving home-based social movements on digital platforms. Moreover, the workshop will investigate the ambiguous positioning of online government surveillance and content moderation on collective human rights, with a specific focus on human rights within the home. In addition, it will examine the impact of digital home-based protests upon the aptness and scope of modern democratic regimes.</p>
<p><strong>Course of the Session and Work Division</strong></p>
<ol><li>Overview on the role of digital spaces and emerging technologies in promoting the role of the home as a space for protest</li><li>Thought exercise involving participants in analysing the merits and demerits of digitising home-based social movements.</li><li>Discussion on government surveillance and content moderation </li><li>Discussion on the impact of digital home-based protests </li><li>Group work involving participants in designing a digital social movement for a given cause (from a range of causes including climate action, gender equality, vaccine nationalism etc.) </li></ol>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div><strong>Session Team </strong></div>
<div><strong>Maya Sherman</strong> is an Israeli Weidenfeld-Hoffmann leadership Scholar and MSc student of Social Sciences of the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute, exploring the aptness of digital surveillance policies in democratic regimes. At Oxford, she was selected to represent the university in the Europaeum Policy Seminar, discussing data governance and stargu in the EU, as well as serving as one of 100 promising young leaders in the Global Leadership Challenge 2021. Maya is currently leading several research and policy projects and teams of AI for Good, cooperating with big tech companies as Dell and Microsoft in the UK.</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div><strong>Rai Sengupta</strong> is currently pursuing an MSc in Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation at the University of Oxford. She is the recipient of the prestigious Weidenfeld Hoffmann Scholarship, a</div>
<div>prestigious full scholarship to Oxford which is granted to 35 scholars globally, in a bid to cultivate the leaders of tomorrow. While at Oxford, Rai is working as a consultant with the Asian Development Bank, helping to</div>
<div>integrate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations across the national statistical infrastructure of 5 Asian nations.</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-actfromhome'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-actfromhome</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-04-25T12:46:10ZBlog EntryIRC22 - Proposed Session - #SocialMediaActivism
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-socialmediaactivism
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 </strong>- # <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p><strong>Session Type: </strong>Individual Presentation/Demonstration of Research Outputs and Methods</p>
<p><br /><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-de385f6c-7fff-07a0-15d4-2ae85ecdbd7c"> </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The said session is based upon the author’s original study on social media as a means of protest in the new digital age. Based on the study “Social Media and Protest: A Case Study on Anti CAA Protest in India” and updating it to “Social Media and Protest: A Case Study of Protest in India during COVID-19” through this session the aim is to bring in light the new ways how dissent or movements of resistance are being navigated. “Home” as being the theme of the conference becomes central point of view in this study and to understand how resistance movement can be participated from home and the impact it makes. This study can be beneficial to understand the socio-political movements in India and usage of digital technologies in mass participation in these movements – these range from amplification of resources, organizing gatherings etc. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The theme social media and modern activism has recently taken the limelight in study of liberal arts. Researchers and universities are now taking social media as a tool to understand modern activism. The proposed study was originally presented in the International Conference on Advanced Research in Social Sciences, Oxford, United Kingdom. The session aims to discuss the findings of the said paper vis-à-vis Anti CAA protest in India as the case study. However, in regards to new developments around global and national politics, the author would also like to bring in perspective new case studies. And highlight the role of social media for dissent in India since 2019, followed in the Farmer’s Protest and much more. </p>
<h3><br /></h3>
<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Social Media and Protest: A Case Study of Protest in India during COVID-19 </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The study aims to understand the role of social media in the current chain of events of various activist protests that have happened in the 21st Century or are going around the world. It specifically focuses on the role of social media in mitigating the protest in India. Role of social media thus was recognized as one of the major influences in organizing and facilitating these protests across the country. A special emphasis has been levied upon how the role of social media and how it was changed during the COVID-19 timeline. Understanding how physical interaction was limited how did people still participate in the resistance movement and helped in amplifying the cause. For instance, the Farmers Protest of 2020 is an example of Pandemic, resistance and social media – using this as an example an attempt is being made to understand how the pandemic has severely use of social media among young audience. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In this study we unfold the active role of Social Media Apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram into creating awareness about the issue, advocating for one’s rights and organizing protests. Thus, looking at a new narrative of activism through online means or to say emergence of “Online Activism" and shift in resistance movements to digital spaces. </p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Keywords</strong>: social media, Activist Protest, COVID-19, Farmers Protest 2020, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Resistance, Digital Spaces, Online Activism </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Presenter </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Ms. Anushka Bhilwar </strong>(pronouns: they/she) are a student of MPP (Masters in Public Policy) at the University of Stirling, Scotland and an alumnus of Ambedkar University, New Delhi. Their research expands to AI and tech-policies to contemporary political thought and conflict studies. Currently, she works as a freelance writer and storyteller for Glasgow Women’s Library, Glasgow, United Kingdom and a contributing writer at People’s History of South Asia. In their previous endeavours they have worked within the capacity of a Research Associate and Technical Writer with United Nations Development Programme, New Delhi and Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-socialmediaactivism'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-socialmediaactivism</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-04-25T13:01:47ZBlog EntryIRC22 - Proposed Session - #“Going Home”: Constructions of a Digital-Urban Platform Interface in Delhi-NCR
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-goinghomeconstructionofadigitalurbanplatforminterfaceindelhincr
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022</strong> - # <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p><strong>Session Type:</strong> Individual Paper Presentation<br /><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">My ongoing fieldwork with taxi drivers in Delhi-NCR suggests that the “go-home” feature and its equivalent in platform apps such as Uber and Ola have generated a lot of interest. This feature matches drivers with rides to their preferred destinations – usually allowing drivers to choose one or two destinations of their choice in a working day (Uber India Help nd). In an environment of algorithmic governance where drivers feel a considerable loss of control and autonomy, this feature offers a semblance of control over their conditions of survival and mobility. Departing from the enthusiasm generated among platform taxi drivers, this paper explores what “home” signifies for platform cultures with specific attention to the social and material infrastructures that enable and contest “going home.” The “home,” as in other instances, conveys familiarity, comfort and (intimate) knowledges. How and why (if so) do platforms as an urban-digital-labour-capital interface rely on or negate these constructions? Does this arrangement offer an incremental step of negotiating interlocking conflicts and if so, how? In summary, this paper provisionally suggests that “home,” as a feature and as an idea, may have been introduced by platform companies but its possibilities are not circumscribed by their designs.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Cited</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Uber India (nd): “Set a Driver Destination,” Uber India Help, viewed on 9 March 2022, <a href="https://help.uber.com/driving-and-delivering/article/set-a-driver-destination?nodeId=f3df375b-5bd4-4460-a5e9-afd84ba439b9">https://help.uber.com/driving-and-delivering/article/set-a-driver-destination?nodeId=f3df375b-5bd4-4460-a5e9-afd84ba439b9</a> </p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Presenter </strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Anurag Mazumdar</strong> is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Geography & GIS, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. </p>
<div> </div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-goinghomeconstructionofadigitalurbanplatforminterfaceindelhincr'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-goinghomeconstructionofadigitalurbanplatforminterfaceindelhincr</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-04-25T13:04:02ZBlog EntryIRC 22 - Proposed Session - #ThisMightNotBeOnline
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-thismightnotbeonline
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 </strong>- # <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p><strong>Session Type:</strong> Demonstration of Research Output and Methods<br /><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Over the past two years, we have been experimenting with developing self-hosted servers as a way to address ideas around agency, capacity and enablement within internet infrastructures. The outcomes of these processes have developed into three projects that we would like to share through this session.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://thisisherefornow.net/fornow/hfaw/index.html">home_for_a_while</a> was a local area WiFi network that was installed as part of the exhibition real time tactics at IIC, Delhi in December 2019. It was openly accessible within and around the exhibition premises and hosted texts, news articles, how-to manuals, notes and other research developed through conversations around internet shutdowns. Three days into the exhibition, protests erupted in various parts of Delhi against the enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The state responded with violence, but also with bandwidth throttling and internet shutdowns localised in neighbourhoods in and around Delhi. The experience of exhibiting home_for_a_while was almost a rehearsal for a process that would then break out of the white cube space and into inquilab network.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://thisisherefornow.net/fornow/inq_net/index.html">inquilab network</a> was an open, portable, community run local area WiFi network that travelled to various public protests in a backpack during the anti-CAA movement of 2019-20 in Delhi, India. inq.net operated independently of the internet. It was designed to enable the sharing of information and resources between everybody in its local proximity. It hosted freely downloadable crowdsourced content like pamphlets, zines, articles, posters, infographics, memes, etc. It eventually found a home in a public park in Hauz Rani, until the pandemic and the hastily executed nationwide lockdown brought the protest movement to a halt in March 2020.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.thismightnotbe.online/">thismightnotbe.online</a> is a self-hosted web server located in our home in Delhi, India. It was developed during the lockdown, and has been online (mostly) since October 2020. It is imagined as a publication platform, a pirate hub, a toolkit, a gathering site. It hosts a collaborative storage drive with <a href="https://nest.thismightnotbe.online/s/bTNZYddeAaxQFFS">books</a>, <a href="https://nest.thismightnotbe.online/s/SQzFn5zwxyHgykQ">music</a>, shared lists of <a href="https://pad.thismightnotbe.online/p/PhD_Hunt">PhD programs</a> and <a href="https://pad.thismightnotbe.online/p/artist_statement_generators">artist statement generators</a>, notes on <a href="https://pad.thismightnotbe.online/p/some_notes_on_contact_mics">building pre-amplifiers for contact mics</a>, <a href="https://pad.thismightnotbe.online/p/notes_about_games">games</a> and <a href="https://pad.thismightnotbe.online/p/mvs7z7mahob3om9p">workshop notes on language and computation</a>. It also hosts an <a href="https://www.thismightnotbe.online/radio_roohafza/">internet radio station</a> and a <a href="https://thismightnotbe.online/CicadaPowerlinesMetalDrawl">museum</a> from Shanghai.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">thismightnotbe.online is unstable, precarious and always under construction. Its internal network consists of old laptops and single board computers that share messy tabletops with a happy meal toy, crochet needles and a money plant among other things. You can tell from the sound of its cooling fan that it has visitors, or perhaps just a botnet sniffing around. It heats up during the summer months and goes offline with the occasional power cut. To maintain thismightnotbe.online is to live with it - to share a home; to host friends and colleagues working across geographies and timezones; to inhabit the liminal space between platform and user.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It is curious to us that technical activities that go into enabling seamless communication - talking to people about connecting to an unknown WiFi network, getting the ISP to assign you a static IP address, securing an exposed web server - are often accompanied by faint discomfort, anxiety, clumsy and tentative interactions. Such instances urge us to think about some questions - How do our infrastructures produce conditions on agency, access and enablement? What affordances of scale, capacity and mobility do they allow for? How does communication as a technical activity affect the very desire to communicate itself? We would like to use the session to generate conversations around these ideas.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Session Team</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Kaushal Sapre </strong>(b. 1990) is an artist based in Delhi, India. He studied physics and chemical engineering before completing his masters in visual art practice in 2017. His work addresses everyday experiences of living within contemporary technical systems, in an effort to think through conceptions of subjecthood, agency and community. His practice often gets articulated through traces of activity within precarious infrastructural arrangements. He is currently - participating in the curatorial fray of Powerlines Cicada Metal Drawl, supported by Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; contributing to conversations around the social experience of telecommunication with -out-of-line-; maintaining a web server infrastructure with thismightnotbe.online; facilitating courses around digital media and technology at Ambedkar University Delhi. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Aasma Tulika </strong>(b. 1992) is an artist currently based in Delhi. She is interested in moments that disturb belief systems, and how mechanisms of control operate in such encounters experienced in everyday life. She locates technological infrastructures as sites to unpack the ways in which power embodies and affects narrative making processes. Her practice engages with narratives that circulate on social networks and mass media, to record and draw out experiences of ideological disorientations and slips. She has been a fellow at the Home Workspace Program 2019-20, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, and is currently participating in Capture All: A Sonic Investigation with Liquid Architecture and Sarai. She is a member of the collective -out-of-line-, and collaboratively maintains a home server hosting thismightnotbe.online.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-thismightnotbeonline'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-thismightnotbeonline</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Infrastructure StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-04-25T12:37:38ZBlog EntryIRC22 - Proposed Session - #TransActandWhatFollowed - Access to care for transgender persons during the COVID-19 pandemic
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-transactandwhatfollowed
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 -</strong> #<a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p><strong>Session Type: </strong>Individual Presentation</p>
<p><br /><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">This session will be an individual presentation by Brindaalakshmi.K. Transgender persons were among the most severely affected during COVID-19 pandemic. The government of India made no special efforts to address the concerns of the transgender community during the lockdowns. Further hampering the access to their rights, the Government of India issued the rules for the new law, Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 while the world was under a global lockdown. Transgender persons have had to go back to living in severely transphobic and abusive environments with their natal families. Access to healthcare and COVID-19 vaccination has also been a challenge for many transgender persons due to the lack of valid identification documents. Digitisation of the process to change the name and gender on identification documents has made the situation worse for a historically silenced population group. The digital process has widened the gap in accessing healthcare and other support systems during the pandemic. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Under the theme of violence and care, this paper will explore the systemic violence faced by the transgender community during the COVID-19 pandemic and their struggles and challenges in accessing healthcare and other relief. The intent is to explore the role of technology in both enabling better access and also widening the access gap for transgender persons and also the data gap further perpetuating the erasure of transgender persons. The widening access gap will be understood by focusing on the digital process to change ID documents while the positive aspects of the use of technology will be explored by looking at some of the community driven online campaigns to raise funds and other support for transgender persons during the lockdowns. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">This session will be based on the initial findings from the qualitative research study, Gendering of Development Data in India: Post-Trans Act 2019 by Brindaalakshmi.K for the Centre for Internet & Society as part of the Our Voices, Our Future project supported by Association for Progressive Communications. For the purpose of this study, qualitative interviews were conducted with NGOs, activists and lawyers to cover the rights related challenges faced by transgender persons. Apart from gender, different intersections of their identity such as caste, religion, urban/rural and disability were also covered in these interviews. Some of the findings will be shared during this presentation. </p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Presenter </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Brindaalakshmi. K</strong> is Co-Lead, Queer & Digital at Point of View. They are authoring the study, Gendering of Development Data in India: Post-Trans Act 2019 for the Centre for Internet & Society, India as part of the Our Voices Our Future project supported by Association for Progressive Communications. They previously authored the study, Gendering of Development Data in India: Beyond the Binary for the Centre for Internet & Society, India as part of the Big Data for Development Network (2020). They are a queer rights activist and peer supporter working with the LGBTIQA+ community in India. </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-transactandwhatfollowed'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-transactandwhatfollowed</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-05-19T15:12:46ZBlog EntryIRC22 - Proposed Session - #CovidConfessions: An internet art project
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covidconfessions
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022</strong> - #<a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Session Type:</strong> Online Interactive Exhibit/Individual Presentation/<span style="text-align: justify;">Demonstration of research outputs and methods</span></p>
<p><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<div> </div>
<div>Featuring anonymous stories of resilience, wisdom, and joy, in Kannada, Hindi, & English</div>
<div> </div>
<ol>
<li dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Background: </strong>Over the past 2 years, digital infrastructures have played an intensified role in the meaning making of the home. As the internet offers up access to work, play, and social contact it also mediates our relationships with our own identities, our successes, and failures. In the anonymity of the online community (for those who are privileged enough to have access to the internet and personal hardware like a smartphone or laptop), physical markers of belonging, material signifiers of social status can become irrelevant. For many who don’t have stable home environments, online communities can become a home that their own physical dwellings cannot.</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Questions: </strong>How can anonymity construct a stable and safe space? How can sharing anonymously via digital technologies help overcome mental health stresses caused by prolonged isolation? Can one find refuge and comfort in the stories and experiences of others? How can online safe spaces be curated as a tool for healing?</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">#<strong>CovidConfessions: </strong>This session is an internet art experiment. The goal is to create an archive of anonymous covid confessions to share in the form of illustrations, voice overs, and animation, with the world. <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JzIidOwfMdz_vJCjUfnfCjEYNIogLjw2/view?usp=sharing">Here is a reference to the art style</a>. This is a long-form story, but I’m looking to create long-form, as well as single-slide bitesized multi-media pieces for social media. I know that there are similar confession style online spaces like <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-confessions-share-your-anonymous-stories-time-covid-19-n1166556">this one</a> but I’m looking to take these words one step further and create art that can be a healing.</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Accessibility:</strong> In order to be accessible to non-English speakers, I’d like to gather and include stories in Hindi and Kannada: #कोविडकहानी #CovidKahani #ಕನ್ನಡಕಥೆ #CovidKatha</p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Gathering Stories</strong>: Stories will be collected through digital platforms like LinkedIn/Twitter/Instagram and personal networks like WhatsApp/Signal/Telegram, via <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y3Lo_zd-PlddKfbbemKPHCrSKzblUDSOpFXmjclGjBE/edit">a google sheet like this one</a>. I will need this translated into Hindi and Kannada. I will reach Kannada speakers through Telegram and WhatsApp, English speakers through instagram, and Hindi speakers through Instagram and WhatsApp. Would love inputs on how to do this better.</p>
</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Marginalised Voices: The internet is inherently a privileged space, and given that online confessions are given anonymously and without physical intervention, I don't see how I can reach out to non-internet users for stories at this point without compromising their anonymity <span style="text-align: justify;">— including them is out of the scope of this project. I acknowledge that it's very difficult to centre marginalised voices in this project <span style="text-align: justify;">— would love inputs on how to tackle that.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Session Type</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">An asynchronous online interactive exhibit, running from April 27 to May 27. <br />The internet is asynchronous, so we should make space for exhibit style projects which are not tied down to particular live “session.” This is an ongoing project that everyone can participate in. This project will be hosted on a microsite, linked to the IRC website, and shared on the instagram handle: @covid.confessions.project.<br />However, if I were hard pressed to choose one of the four formats, I would pick format 3 “Demonstration of research outputs and methods.” I can speak about what has been successful and what hasn’t worked with the project, what the reach and impact has been, and whether it answered any of the questions I began with.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Presenter</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Indumathi Manohar </strong> came to a career in design via theatre, dance, and scuba diving. Currently Communications Designer at CIS, she works on making research publications, annual reports, podcasts, events, and op-eds, more accessible to a larger audience through visual design— whether it be through layout design, infographics, social media creatives or web banners. You can find her work here.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covidconfessions'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covidconfessions</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-04-25T13:16:53ZBlog EntryIRC22 - Proposed Session - #Involute - Jagged Seams of the Domestic and the Vocational
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-involutejaggedseamsofthedomesticandthevocational
<b>Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022</strong> - #<a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
<hr />
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Session Type:</strong> Presentation and Discussion of Papers</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">This session argues that the "new normal" of post-covid society hinges on the involution of modernity's separation of the domestic and the vocational. In this time of the pandemic, spaces of work (offices, factories, construction sites) and sites of public consumption (malls, theatres, markets) are marked by the sign of the virus. The virus as a symbol, is something that interrupts a form of sociality which has been dubbed "offline", "in-person", "face to face" and various other terms which indicate a distinction to screenally mediated sociality that unfolds in an imagined, digital space. Work-from-home then, emerges as a suture that allows for sociality to recommence, having been briefly interrupted in "physical" sites. And this movement is what has been dubbed the new normal. The seemingly contemporaneous cohabitation of the two spatialities that such a reality functionally necessitates is, however, far from seamless.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">At the turn of the 20th century, Max Weber argued that modern rationality consisted in the separation of the domestic and the vocational, of home and office. The separation of business from the affairs of the household constituted for Weber, the condition of possibility of capitalist enterprise. This parallels the separation of bureaucratic office as a vocation distinct from private life, and the inhabiting of them as separate modalities of existence. Such a separation of the vocational and the domestic was primarily articulated with reference to the physicality of the spaces of work, and of dwelling.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We suggest that the normative force of the COViD-normal reimagines the Weberian separation not just physically but also ideationally. The office, then is not just a physically distinct space, its distinction can be imagined by practices such as constituting a certain zoom backdrop, or by wearing a blazer for the webcam as pyjama'd legs tucked away from view. In other words it reconstitutes the temporal habitation of these spaces as simultaneous. Reconstituting such a simultaneous habitation, however, calls for a return to an older and perhaps pre-modern conceptualization of interfaces between the domestic and the vocational as both physical and ideational spaces.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Session Plan</strong></p>
<p><strong>Introduction</strong> to the session problematique - 10 minutes</p>
<p><strong>Section 1. The mise-en-scene of work</strong> - 15 minutes</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">How does the workplace emulate home and home emulate workplace - in a world where boundaries are increasingly non-existent? What can be the politics and aesthetics of choosing zoom backgrounds for a call attended from home? This section unpacks some of these tenuous questions regarding our labouring bodies and the spaces they inhabit. Using examples of lived life, zoom call backgrounds become the mise-en-scene at once fluidly dissolving between home and workplace. Further, erasing the markers of home and deliberately adding ones that emulate the workplace become the neoliberal acts of aesthetic correction that reconfigure home like the workplace. The session aims at illustrating the tensions of inhabiting home within workspace and workspace within home.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Section 2. The Other Side: Homeless and Worklessness of India’s Migrant Labor</strong> - 15 minutes</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">2020 has been the year of unprecedented crisis. While most of the organized sectors of the Indian economy ubiquitously could be seen occupying the digital spaces, the unorganized sector was still coming to terms with this catastrophe. This section explores the complexities of capitalist economies in the Covid 19 pandemic wherein the boundaries of the workplace and home are progressively blurred, but for 94 percent of the population involved in the unorganized sector and in migrant labour, ‘home’ and ‘work’ are both deferred, distant dreams. While digital spaces are meaningless to this demographic as a site of work, the pandemic has forced them to adapt and navigate digital spaces to connect with their household economies (oikonomos) through the transfer money.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Section 3. Inhabiting the Portal: Locking Down Spatialities of Advocacy and Justice</strong> - 15 minutes</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">What does it mean to hold space when faced with the impossibility of inhabiting of spaces? The global Covid-19 pandemic has no doubt changed the way we think of spatiality. One is faced with the odd conundrum of desiring community while inhabiting isolation. A major concern has been the creation of communities of care without the familiar comfort of physical proximity with fellow beings. This piece reflects on the impact that the pandemic has had on vocations of political advocacy for social justice that necessitate visibly occupying specific spaces, particularly in the contexts of movements such as the BLM or anti-CAA protests. This piece also considers questions of inclusivity in moving such vocations from physical to digital spaces.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Conclusion</strong>, or Why migrant laborers walk home, while school teachers teach to empty classrooms. - 10 minutes</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We hope to keep our presentations under an hour so that we can have about 30 minutes of discussion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Session Team </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Akriti, Deepak and Misbah are assistant professors at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, GITAM (deemed to be) University, Hyderabad.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Akriti Rastogi </strong>teaches Film and Media Theory and is interested in mapping cinema effects across contexts. Entry-level film professionals and media industry gatekeeping are her other interests.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Deepak Prince</strong> teaches sociology and is interested in the anthropology of technology. Other interests include politic anthropology, sts and public art. Inhabiting the Portal: Locking Down Spatialities of Advocacy and Justice </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Misbah Rashid</strong> teaches political science. Her research is on Gender in Islamic Jurisprudence, interpretation of Muslim Personal Law. She has worked in the past with developmental organizations that look at the impact</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Satish Kumar</strong> has developed and taught courses in the literatures, histories and cultures of Africa and the African diaspora, Ethnic American literatures, immigrant and migrant literatures and survey courses in World Literature. His research is on South Asian and African literatures.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-involutejaggedseamsofthedomesticandthevocational'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-involutejaggedseamsofthedomesticandthevocational</a>
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No publisherAdminProposed SessionsIRC22Infrastructure StudiesInternet Researcher's Conference2022-05-19T14:46:52ZBlog EntryInternet Researchers' Conference 2022 (IRC22) - Proposed Sessions
https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-sessions
<b>Here is the list of sessions proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
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<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022</strong> - #<a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
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<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-digitisingcrisesremakinghome" class="external-link">DigitisingCrisesRemakingHome</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-letsmovein" class="external-link">LetsMoveIn</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-thismightnotbeonline" class="external-link">ThisMightNotBeOnline</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-metaverseinquilab" class="external-link">MetaverseInquilab</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identitiesvulnerabilitiesopportunitiesdissentir" class="external-link">IdentitesVulnerabilitiesOpportunitiesDissent</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-lockdownsandshutdowns" class="external-link">LockdownsAndShutdowns</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-actfromhome" class="external-link">ActFromHome</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covid19vaccinediscourse" class="external-link">COVID19VaccineDiscourse</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-homebasedflexiworkincovid19" class="external-link">HomeBasedFlexiworkInCovid19</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-homeandtheinternet" class="external-link">HomeAndTheInternet</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-socialmediaactivism" class="external-link">SocialMediaActivism</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-goinghomeconstructionofadigitalurbanplatforminterfaceindelhincr" class="external-link">“Going Home”: Constructions of a Digital-Urban Platform Interface in Delhi-NCR</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-waitingforfood" class="external-link">WaitingForFood</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-transactandwhatfollowed" class="external-link">TransActandWhatFollowed - Access to care for transgender persons during the COVID-19 pandemic</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covidconfessions" class="external-link">CovidConfessions: An internet art project</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identifyingtheideaoflabourinteaching" class="external-link">Identifying the idea of labor in teaching – Negotiating pedagogy at home and inside classroom(s)</a></p>
<p>#<a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-involutejaggedseamsofthedomesticandthevocational" class="external-link">Involute - Jagged Seams of the Domestic and the Vocational</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-sessions'>https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-sessions</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsInfrastructure StudiesInternet Researcher's ConferenceIRC22Researchers at Work2022-04-26T07:07:52ZBlog Entry