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October 2013 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2013-bulletin
<b>Our newsletter for the month of October 2013 can be accessed below. </b>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Highlights</h3>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The National Resource Kit team is pleased to bring you its research for the states of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the Union Territory of Daman and Diu.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The Department of Electronics and Information Technology invited comments on the Framework on the proposed adoption of Open Source Software in E-Governance Systems. CIS gave its feedback. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The Access to Knowledge team in collaboration with the Goa University re-released the Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA-3.0. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Chinmayi Arun participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Bali, Indonesia from October 21 to 25. Overall CIS spoke in 7 panels. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In an article on Spy Files, Maria Xynou examines the legality of India’s surveillance technologies and their potential connection to India’s central monitoring system.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">A clause-by-clause comments on the Working draft version of the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012 was sent to the Ministry of Science and Technology.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">CIS started the first Privacy Watch in India. The map includes data on the UID, NPR and CCTNS schemes, installation of CCTV cameras and the use of drones throughout the country.</li>
</ul>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Accessibility</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of our project (under a grant from the Hans Foundation) on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India, we bring you draft chapters for the states of Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the union territory of Daman and Diu. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 24 states and 5 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the following chapters:</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">National Resource Kit</h3>
<ul>
<li>The <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1dPoDph">Daman and Diu Chapter</a> (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 28, 2013).</li>
<li>The <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1hl4gW4">Arunachal Pradesh Chapter</a> (by CLPR, October 29, 2013).</li>
<li>The <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/17dPn3c">Madhya Pradesh Chapter</a> (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 30, 2013).</li>
<li>The <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/HU91p9">Delhi Chapter</a> (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 31, 2013). </li>
</ul>
<p>Note: <i>All of these are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated</i>.</p>
<p><b>Survey (Other Organisation)</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1dGSsuI">Accessibility of Banks and Financial Services Institutions: A Global Survey</a> (posted by Nilofar Ansher, October 20, 2013). G3ict and Scotiabank, requests senior managers, COO / CEOs, Managing Directors, IT Directors, HR Directors, and accessibility professionals from banks and financial services companies to participate.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/19FSShz">Bengali eSpeak Aids in Disaster Management</a> (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 15, 2013).</li>
</ul>
<h2>Access to Knowledge</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers and human rights, and critically examines Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, and Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software. We produced a column in the Economic and Political Weekly, submitted our feedback on Framework on Open Source Software Adoption in E-Governance Systems, and conducted 3 Wikipedia workshops:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Article</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/18ii0GH">The Fight for Digital Sovereignty</a> (by Sunil Abraham, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII No. 42, October 19, 2013).</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/16ukO3F">Mobile Phone Patents: Prior Art Survey</a> (by Nehaa Chaudhari, October 23, 2013).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/19FxUzz">Ambiguity in the App Store: Understanding India’s emerging IT sector in light of IP</a> (by Samantha Cassar, October 24, 2013).</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Submission</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1dCOKSS">Feedback on the Framework on OSS Adoption in E-Governance Systems</a> (by Nehaa Chaudhari, October 26, 2013). In September, 2013, the DeitY invited comments on the Framework on the proposed adoption of Open Source Software in E-Governance Systems. CIS gave its feedback.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Events Participated In</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/18FO6Aa">OSOD 2013: International Workshop on Open Science and Open Data</a> (organised by Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, October 7, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari participated as a panelist and gave a presentation on Government Accessibility and Copyright Conundrum.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/17RkUq8">National Conference on Opening up by Closing the Circle: Strengthening Open Access in India</a> (co-organised by UNESCO, Central Library, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, October 21, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari was a panelist in the discussion on "Why Open Access?". She gave a presentation on 'Pondering Copyright and Recasting Openness'. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Note: The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (<a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/SPqFOl">http://bit.ly/SPqFOl</a>). As part this project (<a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/X80ELd">http://bit.ly/X80ELd</a>), we held 3 Wikipedia workshops in October:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Co-organised </b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/19y0EJx">Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0</a> (organised by Goa University and CIS-A2K, Goa University Conference Hall, September 26, 2013). Nitika Tandon has blogged about the event.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Events Organised</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/HIiC30">Workshop on Wikipedia in the Indian Undergraduate Language Classrooms</a> (October 1, 203, Christ University, Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1b8MH6a">Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Programme</a> (October 3 – 6, 2013, CEO Center, Gubbi, Bangalore. CIS-A2K Team conducted the workshop. Seventeen people participated in the event.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1a9m8N2">Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization</a> (Goa University, October 19-20, 2013). CIS-A2K team conducted the workshop. Thirty-seven people participated in the event.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Events Participated In</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/18Obr2P">Re-sourcing Indian Cinema: Humanities Research, New Archives and Collaborative Knowledge Production</a> (organised by the Centre for Contemporary Studies and the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, October 29, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk on “Let Cinephiles Collaborate: Pleasures and Perils of Indian Film History on Wikipedia”.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p>CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "> <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1ek8AzW">Mangalore: Konkani writers resolve to form all-India forum at JKS conference</a> (Daijiworld, October 1, 2013).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/Hfh7sI">Wikipedia in Indian Languages on Mobile Phones</a> (by Megha Prakash, Sci Dev Net, October 15, 2013).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/18J3YlB">कोंकणी विश्वकोश ‘विकिपीडिया’वर</a> (Navprabha Daily, October 22, 2013). A detailed article about the digitalization of Konkani Vishwakosh. </li>
</ul>
<h2>Internet Governance</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is doing a project (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) on conducting research on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). So far we have organised seven privacy round-tables and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill. This month we bring you clause-by-clause comments on the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012, and a map monitoring privacy in India. As part of its project (funded by Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the IDRC) on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia we did an interview with Anja Kovacs on cyber security. With this we have completed a total of 10 video interviews:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Internet Governance Forum</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Chinmayi Arun participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Bali, Indonesia in the month of October. Overall, CIS spoke in 7 panels:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1ayYuqJ">Charting the Charter: Internet Rights and Principles Online</a> (organised by IRP Coalition, October 22, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/17ZzPdf">Fair process frameworks for cross-border online spaces</a> (organised by the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Civil Society of France, Western Europe and Others Group and Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Civil Society of Germany, Western Europe and Others Group, October 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham and Chinmayi Arun were panelists for this workshop.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/16OoH6N">Removing Barriers to Connectivity: Connecting the Unconnected</a> (organised by Internet Society and ETNO, October 23, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1av3v2U">FOSS: Smart Choice for Developing Countries</a> (organised by TechNation and Open Source Alliance of Central Asia, October 23, 2013). Sunil Abraham spoke on FOSS and IT Growth Policies in South Asia.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/17DMHGW">Privacy: from regional regulations to global connections?</a> (organised by Internet Society, Bali, October 24, 2013). Sunil Abraham was one of the panelists.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/16OtkxD">Human rights, freedom of expression and free flow of information on the Internet</a> (a Focus Session on Openness, October 24, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker at this event.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/1bgvkNl">Taking Stock: Emerging Issues - Internet Surveillance</a> (a session on Internet Surveillance, October 25, 2013). Pranesh Prakash made intervention in this session.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/17DhpzM">Tweets from Bali IGF 2013</a>: To enable research by those who didn't want to mess around with Twitter's APIs, CIS has made available tweets from the IGF as downloadable .CSV files.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Privacy</h3>
<p><b>Magazine Article</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/HiJ5E1">What India can Learn from the Snowden Revelations</a> (by Elonnai Hickok, Yahoo, October 23, 2013). The title of the article was changed in the version published by Yahoo.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Concerns Regarding DNA Law (by Bhairav Acharya, October 9, 2013): http://bit.ly/1aoxXM9.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Interview with Big Brother Watch on Privacy and Surveillance (by Maria Xynou, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cRDMbV.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Interview with Bruce Schneier (by Maria Xynou, October 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/GS6oDX.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">An Interview with the Tactical Technology Collective (by Maria Xynou, October 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1i1lVNo.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Interview with Dr. Alexander Dix (by Maria Xynou, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/1a7dgtQ.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Open Letter to Members of the European Parliament of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (by Elonnai Hickok, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/17eZntz.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">An Interview with Jacob Kohnstamm (by Elonnai Hickok, October 25, 2013): http://bit.ly/17NcQmD.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Spy Files 3: WikiLeaks Sheds More Light on the Global Surveillance Industry (by Maria Xynou, October 25, 2013): http://bit.ly/1d6EmjD.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Comments</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Re: The Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012 (by Bhairav Acharya, October 9, 2013). CIS provided clause-by-clause comments on the on the Working Draft version of the Human DNA Profiling Bill: http://bit.ly/17Jpp63.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Announcement</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The India Privacy Monitor Map (by Maria Xynou with assistance from Srinivas Atreya, October 9, 2013). CIS has started a first of its kind Privacy Watch in India. The map includes data on the UID, NPR and CCTNS schemes, as well as on the installation of CCTV cameras and the use of drones throughout the country: http://bit.ly/19A5mCZ.</li>
</ul>
<p><b>Event Organised</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Privacy Round-table, New Delhi (organised by FICCI, DSCI and CIS, FICCI, Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, October 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/GAsStr. </li>
</ul>
<p><b>Event Participated In</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">'Free Speech and Media in South Asia: Human Rights Concerns in a Globalizing World (organised by the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Centre for Media and Governance, National Law University, Delhi, Oxford University, October 25, 2013). Chinmayi Arun spoke about “Privacy and Surveillance in India” in a panel discussion: http://bit.ly/18bRGi5.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Cyber Security</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project:</p>
<ul>
<li>Part 11: An Interview with Anja Kovacs (October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/15EAZOE.</li>
</ul>
<p><span><b>Other IG Updates</b></span><b><br />Event Organised</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Mapping Digital Media: Broadcasting, Journalism and Activism in India (co-organised by Alternative Law Forum, Maraa and CIS, Bangalore International Centre, October 27, 2013). Samantha Cassar has blogged about the event: http://bit.ly/17EVtdw. It was covered by the New Indian Express (http://bit.ly/1dGENE6) and Hindu (http://bit.ly/1bcVUIU) on October 28. </li>
</ul>
<p><b>Events Participated In</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Religious Pluralism and the Tensions between Freedom of Expression and Respect for the 'Other’ (organised by Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations project, in cooperation with Jamia Millia Islamia, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, October 10, 2013). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker at the session on “Democracy and the Tension between Freedom of Speech and Respect for the Other’s Religion, Culture, Identity, India and Europe”: http://bit.ly/194dtI7.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Fragmentation in a Democracy: The Role of Social Movements and the Media (organised by the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Berlin at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, October 16, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session on “Impact of Media, Social Media & Technology on Democracy / Governance”: http://bit.ly/17e3PZ9.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Internet, Mobile & Digital Economy Conference (IMDEC) 2013 (organised by FICCI, in association with the Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India, New Delhi, October 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated as a speaker in the session on "The Internet We Want: A Multistakeholder Approach": http://bit.ly/1b8QHDD. </li>
</ul>
<h3><b>New and Media Coverage</b></h3>
<p>CIS<b> </b>gave its inputs to the following media coverage:</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Decline in web freedom steepest in India: Report (by Javed Anwer, The Times of India, October 3, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cVOJ99.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Google survey: 37% of urban Indian voters are online (by Anuja and Moulishree Srivastava, Livemint, October 8, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gtqqDY.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The quest for genuine clout on the internet (by Karthik Subramanian, October 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/1b8TdKa.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">India believes in Complete Freedom of Cyber Space: Kapil Sibal (by Elizabeth Roche, Livemint, October 14, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fZgwd1. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Location Tracking: Why the Govt-Mobile Manufacturer War Won’t End Soon (by Danish Raza, FirstPost, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/HkIvF7.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Bouquets & brickbats for Google's new privacy policy (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, October 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18Rzkqm.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Bali meet to discuss Internet governance issues (by Moulishree Srivastava, October 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/17I4r3M.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Indian politicians yet to tap voters online: CIS’s Abraham (by Venkatesh Upadhyay, Livemint, October 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/17HRV4s. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Beyond the Searchlight (by Debarshi Dasgupta, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/17IitlZ.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Nowhere to hide: Govt making your personal details public (by FirstPost editors, FirstPost, October 28, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dGE6KJ.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Your private data may be online, courtesy govt (by Somesh Jha and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/HpQRMp.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Saving privacy as we knew it (by Somesh Jha and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/16HNYwu.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">E-governance hopes rise as India crosses 1 billion transactions (by J Srikant, Economic Times, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cnJIKd.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Digital Humanities</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Events Participated In</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">GFM 2013 (organized by the University of Luneberg, Germany, October 3 – 5, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah participated in a panel discussion with Wendy Chun, Tom Levine and Geert Lovink, around 'The End of Bibliographies: New Media and Research'. Nishant also participated as a panelist in a panel discussion on 'Open Up: Pragmatism and Politics of Open Access': http://bit.ly/1f9LCOH.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Digitalization of Culture (organized by Leuphana University, Luneberg, October 8, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah did an introduction keynote to 1600 undergraduate students. A video of the lecture can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/1enWQPv. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">RENEW: The 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology (hosted by RIXC Centre for New Media Culture in Riga in partnership with the Art Academy of Latvia, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and Danube University’s Center for Image Science, October 8 - 11, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah was a part of the selection committee for the conference and chaired a session on Network Art on October 9: http://bit.ly/17e41aJ. </li>
</ul>
<p><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<ul>
<li>A Hitchhikers Guide to the Cyberspace (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 4, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ga8yfH. </li>
</ul>
<h2>Knowledge Repository on Internet Access</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at the Internet Institute website: http://bit.ly/1iQT2UB.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Modules</b></p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">World Intellectual Property Organisation (by Anirudh Sridhar and Snehashish Ghosh, October 31, 2013). WIPO is a specialized agency of the United Nations which deals with issues related to intellectual property rights throughout the world. Find out more at http://bit.ly/17a8WEk.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">An Interview on Internet Governance with Professor Milton Mueller and Jeremy Malcolm (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 31, 2013). Professor Milton Mueller from the Syracuse University School of Information and Jeremy Malcolm, an Information Technology and Intellectual Property Lawyer, spoke about current issues and debates surrounding internet governance: http://bit.ly/17ix3Ro. </li>
</ul>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>About CIS</b><br />The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.</p>
<p><b>Follow us elsewhere</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
<li>Twitter:<a href="https://twitter.com/CISA2K"> </a><a href="https://twitter.com/CISA2K">https://twitter.com/CISA2K</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Facebook group: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k">https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Visit us at:<a href="https://cis-india.org/"> </a>https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>E-mail: <a href="mailto:a2k@cis-india.org">a2k@cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Support Us</b><br />Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Request for Collaboration</b>:<br />We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects</i>.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2013-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2013-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceOpennessResearchers at Work2014-01-04T04:31:01ZPageJuly 2014 Bulletin
https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2014-bulletin
<b>Seventh issue of the newsletter (July 2014) below:</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the seventh issue of the newsletter (July 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/">http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">------------------------------ <br /> <b>Highlights </b><br /> ------------------------------</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li> Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 28<sup>th</sup> session of the World Intellectual Property Organisation Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (WIPO-SCCR) held in Geneva from June 30 to July 4, 2014. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) gave its statements on the Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives and Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations.</li>
<li>India became the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty and the Accessible Books Consortium was launched. Nehaa Chaudhari who participated in the 28<sup>th</sup> session of the WIPO-SCCR reports on this in a blog entry.</li>
<li>Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva produced a research paper on patent valuation and license fee determination as part of the Pervasive Technologies project.</li>
<li>Our grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation was approved. CIS has been awarded Rs. 12,000,000 for the next one year for the Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) project.</li>
<li>CIS and the University of Mysore organized the Open Knowledge day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. Six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha was re-released under the Creative Commons (CC license).</li>
<li>We helped the Ministry of Science and Technology draft the Open Access Policy for the DST/DBT.</li>
<li>The first of the seven proposed roundtable meetings on “Privacy and Surveillance” conducted by CIS in collaboration with the Cellular Operators Association of India and the Council for Fair Business Practices was held in Mumbai on June 28, 2014. Anandini K. Rathore has blogged on this.</li>
<li>Bedavyasa Mohanty has produced a blog entry that analyses the nuances of interception of communications under the Indian Telegraph Act and the Indian Post Office Act.</li>
<li>Vinayak Mithal has written a blog entry on the Constitutionality of Indian surveillance law that analyses ICANN's reactive transparency mechanism, comparing it with freedom of information best practices. He describes the DIDP and its relevance for the Internet community.</li>
<li>Nishant Shah speaks on the right to freedom of speech and expression in the latest interview conducted as part of the Cybersecurity series being done with a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa.</li>
<li>Nishant Shah’s peer reviewed article “Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore” was published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, on July 3, 2014. Nishant gives a narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.</li>
<li>CIS recruited two new staff members in its Bangalore office. Rohini Lakshane joined as a Program Officer in the Pervasive Technologies project and K.N. Medini joined as a Senior Accounts Officer. Their profiles can be accessed at <a href="https://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team">http://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">---------------------------------------------- <a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility"> <br /> <b>Accessibility and Inclusion </b></a><b> </b><br /> ---------------------------------------------- <br /> Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. We compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). We will be publishing this soon. The draft chapters along with the quarterly reports can be accessed on the <a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/national-resource-kit-project">project page</a>. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed <a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/nvda-text-to-speech-synthesizer">here</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►NVDA and eSpeak</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Monthly Update</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/nvda-e-speak-update-july-2014.pdf">Work Report for July</a> (by Suman Dogra, July 31, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entry <br /></b></p>
<ul>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/indias-ratification-of-marrakesh-treaty-celebrated">India's Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty Celebrated; Accessible Books Consortium Launched </a> (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 1, 2014): India became the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty.</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/spicy-ip-july-1-2014-thomas-j-vallianeth-spicy-ip-tidbit-india-ratifies-the-marrakesh-treaty-for-the-visually-impaired"><b> </b>SpicyIP Tidbit: India ratifies the Marrakesh Treaty for the Visually Impaired </a> (by Thomas J. Vallianeth, Spicy IP, July 1, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">----------------------------------------------------------- <br /> <b><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k">Access to Knowledge</a> </b><br /> ----------------------------------------------------------- <br /> As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►WIPO</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Event and Statements <br /> </b>Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 28<sup>th</sup> session of WIPO-SCCR held in Geneva from June 30 to July 4, 2014. The following have been the outputs from the event:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/cis-statement-on-proposed-treaty-for-protection-of-broadcasting-organizations"> Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations at WIPO SCCR 28 </a> (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 2, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/opening-statement-of-india-on-limitations-and-exceptions-for-libraries-and-archives"> Opening Comments by India on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives at WIPO SCCR 28 </a> (posted by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 7, 2014). This was the statement made by the Indian delegation at WIPO-SCCR 28<sup>th</sup> session on July 2, 2014. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/cis-statement-on-limitations-and-exceptions-for-libraries-and-archives"> Statement on the Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives at WIPO SCCR 28 </a> (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 3, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/wipo-sccr-28-proposed-treaty-for-protection-of-broadcasting-organizations"> 28th Session of the WIPO SCCR: Report on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations </a> (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 29, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Pervasive Technologies</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Research Papers</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/patent-valuation-and-license-fee-determination-in-context-of-patent-pools"><b> </b>Patent Valuation and License Fee Determination in Context of Patent Pools </a> (by Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva, July 9, 2014). Vikrant has produced research that examines patent valuation and license fee determination in detail. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/grounds-for-compulsory-patent-licensing-in-us-canada-china-and-india"> Grounds for Compulsory Patent Licensing in United States, Canada, China, and India </a> (by Maggie Huang, July 29, 2014). In her research paper Maggie tries to answer questions about the grounds of compulsory licensing in international treaties with specific examples from America and Asia. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Wikipedia <br /> As part of the <a href="https://cis-india.org/a2k/access-to-knowledge-program-plan">project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation</a> we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Announcement <br /> </b>Our grant application to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) of the Wikimedia Foundation was approved by its board which met in Frankfurt from May 21 to 24, 2014. CIS had requested a grant of Rs. 18,406,454 and were <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2013-2014_round2">awarded Rs. 12,000,000</a> for the next one year.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The following were done this month:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Articles / Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/prajavani-july-3-2014-article-on-wikipedia-zero"><b> </b>Aircel & Wikimedia Foundation announce Wikipedia Zero </a> (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, Prajavani, July 3, 2014). As per this, users of Aircel need not pay for data for accessing Wikipedia. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/article-on-akruti-unicode-converter-in-samaja">ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷରସଜ୍ଜା</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Samaja, July 4, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/state-of-odia-language-in-computing-and-future-steps"> State of Odia Language in Computing and Future Steps </a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Sovereign, July 7, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/sambad-july-21-2014-paths-for-development-of-odia-language">ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ବିକାଶର ରାସ୍ତା</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, The Sambad, July 23, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/university-of-mysore-releases-kannada-vishwakosha-under-cc-license"> University of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License </a> (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, July 24, 2014). Leading English and Kannada dailies like Andolana Kannada, City Today, Deccan Herald, Hosa Diganta, Kannada Jana Mana, Kannada Prabha, Rajya Dharma, Samyukta Karnataka, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Udayavani, Vijaya Karnataka, and Vijaya Vani published about this. Scanned versions of the published articles can be <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/open-knowledge-day-mysore-media-coverage-zip">downloaded here</a>. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/wikimedia-blog-dorothy-howard-wiki-loves-pride-2014-and-adding-diversity-to-wikipedia"> Wiki Loves Pride 2014 and Adding Diversity to Wikipedia </a> (by Dorothy Howard, Wikimedia Blog, July 25, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/global-voices-subhashish-panigrahi-july-27-2014-doctors-and-translators-are-working-together-to-bridge-wikipedias-medical-language-gap"> Doctors and Translators Are Working Together to Bridge Wikipedia's Medical Language Gap </a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices, July 27, 2014). This was re-published on the Wikimedia Blog, July 30, 2014. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/odisha-review-june-2014-classical-odia-language-in-digital-age"> Classical Odia Language in the Digital Age </a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odisha Review, posted on July 28, 2014). The essay was published in the magazine’s June edition. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Organized</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/events/open-knowledge-day-mysore">Open Knowledge Day</a> (co-organized by Mysore University and CIS-A2K, Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies, University of Mysore, July 15, 2014). The event coincided with the Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin from July 15 to 17. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the event. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Events</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/state-of-odia-language-in-computing-and-future-steps"><b> </b>National Level Seminar on Computer Application and Odia Language </a> (organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research, July 6, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi was a panelist. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/ok-festival-2014">Open Knowledge Festival 2014</a> (organized by Google, Omidyar, et.al., Berlin, July 15 – 17, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi represented India as the India Ambassador of OpenGLAM local and <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/ok-festival.pdf">made a presentation</a>. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/nama-the-future-of-indic-languages">#NAMA: The Future of Indic Languages</a> (organized by Medianama, The Oberoi Hotel, Bangalore, July 24, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>News and Media Coverage <br /> </b>CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-july-7-2014-renuka-phadnis-wikipedia-edit-a-thons-to-add-content-on-lgbts"> Wikipedia edit-a-thons to add content on LGBTs </a> (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 7, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-telegraph-july-7-2014-bibhuti-barik-font-problem-hits-odia">Font problem hits Odia</a> (by Bibhuti Barik, The Telegraph, July 7, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-july-12-2014-r-krishna-kumar-four-volumes-of-kannada-encyclopaedia-digitised"> Four volumes of Kannada Encyclopaedia digitised </a> (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 12, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-july-14-2014-four-volumes-of-kannada-encyclopaedia-digitised"> ‘ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ’ಕ್ಕೆ ಇನ್ನು ಲೈಸೆನ್ಸ್ ಹಂಗಿಲ್ಲ </a> (Prajavani, July 14, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-july-15-2014-r-krishna-kumar-soon-all-14-volumes-of-kannada-encyclopaedia-to-be-online"> Soon, all 14 volumes of Kannada encyclopaedia to be online </a> (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 15, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/kannada-prabha-july-15-2014-coverage-of-open-knowledge-day">ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ</a> (Kannada Prabha, July 15, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/udayavani-july-15-2014-mysore-university-event-coverage-in-udayavani">ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದ ಆರು ಸಂಪುಟ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ</a> (Udayavani, July 15, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/just-kannada-july-15-2014-wikipedia-kannada-vishwakosha-mysore-university-free-internet-kannada-department"> ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದಲ್ಲಿ kannada ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ : ಈಗ ಆನ್ ಲೈನ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ 6 ಸಂಪುಟಗಳು ಮುಕ್ತ…ಮುಕ್ತ……( </a> Just Kannada, July 15, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/web-india-123-july-15-2014-six-kannada-encyclopaedias-released">Six Kannada encyclopaedias released</a> (Webindia 123, July 15, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/new-indian-express-july-15-2014-anila-backer-150-rare-books-get-new-lease-of-life-online-courtesy-students"> 150 Rare Books Get New Lease of Life Online, Courtesy Students </a> (by Anila Backer, New Indian Express, July 15, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/spicy-ip-swaraj-paul-barooah-july-15-2014-open-access-students-help-revive-and-digitize-rare-books-for-malayalam-wiki-library"> Open Access: Students help revive and digitize rare books for Malayalam Wiki Library </a> (Spicy IP, July 15, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-narayan-lakshman-july-25-2014-trolled-from-us-congress-wikipedia-bans-edits"> 'Trolled' from US Congress, Wikipedia bans edits </a> (by Narayan Lakshman, The Hindu, July 25, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-july-27-2014-renuka-phadnis-telugu-wikipedia-struggles-to-stay-afloat"> Telugu Wikipedia struggles to stay afloat </a> (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 27, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/new-indian-express-july-29-2014-svetlana-lasrado">The joys of being a Wikipedian</a> (by Svetlana Lasrado, New Indian Express, July 29, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/kannada-wikipedia-presentation-vijayavani-coverage">Kannada Wikipedia Presentation</a> (Vijayavani, July 30, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/kannada-wikipedia-presentation-prajavani-coverage">Kannada Wikipedia Presentation for Kannada Science Writers</a> (Prajavani, July 31, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Openness</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/mozilla-brings-indian-communities-together-twice-in-one-month"><b> </b>Mozilla brings Indian Communities together Twice in One Month </a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Mozilla Website, July 8, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/mozilla-brings-indian-communities-together">Mozilla Brings Indian Communities Together</a> (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Opensource.com, July 13, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog/department-of-biotechnology-and-department-of-science-ministry-of-science-and-technology-government-of-india-release-open-access-policy"> Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, release Open Access Policy </a> (by Anubha Sinha, July 18, 2014). We have also been <a href="http://dbtindia.nic.in/docs/DST-DBT_Draft.pdf">acknowledged in the policy</a>. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>HasGeek Event</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-fifth-elephant">The Fifth Elephant</a> (NIMHANS Convention Centre, July 25-26, 2014). CIS was a community outreach partner. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Media Coverage</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-july-22-2014-renuka-phadnis-plan-for-open-access-to-science-research"><b> </b>Plan for open access to science research </a> (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 22, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/medianama-july-23-2014-riddhi-mukherjee-indian-govt-looks-to-provide-free-access-to-public-funded-research-works"> Indian Govt looks to provide free access to publicly-funded research works </a> (by Riddhi Mukherjee, Medianama, July 23, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">----------------------------------------------- <br /> <b><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance">Internet Governance</a> </b><br /> -----------------------------------------------</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Freedom of Expression</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of our project on Freedom of Expression (funded through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation) to study the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute to the debates around Internet governance and freedom of expression at forums like ICANN, ITU, IGF, WSIS, etc., we bring you the following outputs:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/icann2019s-documentary-information-disclosure-policy-2013-i-didp-basics"><b> </b>ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy – I: DIDP Basics </a> (by Vinayak Mithal, July 1, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/reading-between-the-lines-service-providers-terms-and-conditions-and-consumer-rights"> Reading the Fine Script: Service Providers, Terms and Conditions and Consumer Rights </a> (by Jyoti Panday, July 2, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/facebook-and-its-aversion-to-anonymous-and-pseudonymous-speech"> Facebook and its Aversion to Anonymous and Pseudonymous Speech </a> (by Jessamine Mathew, July 4, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/free-speech-and-surveillance">Free Speech and Surveillance</a> (by Gautam Bhatia, July 7, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/delhi-high-court-orders-blocking-of-websites-after-sony-complains-infringement-of-2014-fifa-world-cup-telecast-rights"> Delhi High Court Orders Blocking of Websites after Sony Complains Infringement of 2014 FIFA World Cup Telecast Rights </a> (by Anubha Sinha, July 8, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/gni-and-iamai-launch-interactive-slideshow-exploring-impact-of-indias-internet-laws"> GNI and IAMAI Launch Interactive Slideshow Exploring Impact of India's Internet Laws </a> (by Jyoti Panday, July 17, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>FOEX Live</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We are also posting a selection of news from across India implicating online freedom of expression and use of digital technology: <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/foex-live">July 7, 2014</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Privacy</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entries</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/models-for-surveillance-and-interception-of-communications-worldwide"><b> </b>Models for Surveillance and Interception of Communications Worldwide </a> (by Bedavyasa Mohanty, July 2, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-constitutionality-of-indian-surveillance-law"> The Constitutionality of Indian Surveillance Law: Public Emergency as a Condition Precedent for Intercepting Communications </a> (by Bedavyasa Mohanty, July 4, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/uk-interception-of-communications-commissioner-a-model-of-accountability"> UK’s Interception of Communications Commissioner — A Model of Accountability </a> (by Joe Sheehan, July 24, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Event Report</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-surveillance-roundtable-mumbai">First Privacy and Surveillance Roundtable</a> (by Anandini K Rathore, July 18, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Article</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-hoot-july-17-2014-chinmayi-arun-private-censorship-and-the-right-to-hear"><b> </b>Private Censorship and the Right to Hear </a> (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hoot, July 17, 2014). The article was also mirrored on the <a href="http://ccgnludelhi.wordpress.com/">website of the Centre for Communication Governance</a>. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Participation in Events</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/news/information-influx-conference">Information Influx Conference</a> (organized by the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam, July 2 – 4, 2014). Malavika Jayaram was a speaker. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/consultation-to-frame-rules-under-whistle-blowers-protection-act-2011"> Consultation to Frame Rules under the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2011 </a> (organized by National Campaign for People's Right to Information and Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, New Delhi, July 5, 2014). Bhairav Acharya participated in the event. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/best-practices-meet-2014">Best Practices Meet</a> (organized by DSCI, Hotel Leela Palace, Bangalore, July 9, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a panelist. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/rethinking-privacy"> Rethinking Privacy: The Link between Florida v. Jardines and the Surveillance of Nature Films </a> (organized by Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, July 11, 2014). Bhairav Acharya gave a talk. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/region-as-frame-politics-presence-practice">Region as Frame: Politics, Presence, Practice</a> (organized by International Association for Media and Communication Research, Hyderabad, July 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker for these panels: Governing Digital Spaces: Issues of Access, Privacy and Freedom, UNESCO panel debate, and Special Session on Research Paths In and Outside of the Academy. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/ict-awareness-program-for-myanmar-parliamentarians-yangon">ICT Awareness Program for Myanmar Parliamentarians</a> (organized by Myanmar ICT for Development Organization, July 26 – 27, 2014, Yangon). Sunil Abraham participated in the event as a speaker and presented on Innovation Ecosystem and Thinking about Internet Regulation. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">-------------------------------------- <br /> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news"> <b>News & Media Coverage </b><br /> </a> --------------------------------------<br /> CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-business-line-july-2-2014-kv-kurmanath-cyber-crimes-shoot-up-in-india-over-last-year"> Cyber-crimes shoot up 52% in India over last year </a> (by K.V.Kurmanath, Hindu Businessline, July 2, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/ians-july-4-2014-coai-cis-to-hold-pan-india-meetings-on-privacy-issues"> COAI, Centre for Internet & Society to hold pan-India meetings on privacy issues </a> (IANS, July 4, 2014). The news was mirrored in the <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/COAI-Centre-for-Internet-Society-to-discuss-privacy-issues/articleshow/37776268.cms"> Times of India </a> , <a href="http://gadgets.ndtv.com/telecom/news/coai-cis-to-discuss-legal-framework-for-voice-and-data-surveillance-553074">NDTV</a>, <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/coai-centre-for-internet-society-to-hold-pan-india-meetings-on-privacy-issues-114070400654_1.html"> Business Standard </a> , <a href="http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/corporate/industry/coai-centre-for-internet-society-to-discuss-privacy-issues/37776714"> Economic Times </a> , and <a href="http://article.wn.com/view/2014/07/04/COAI_Centre_for_Internet_Society_to_hold_panIndia_meetings_o/">World News</a>. </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-telegraph-july-16-2014-living-in-a-fish-bowl">Living in a Fish Bowl</a> (by Shuma Raha, The Telegraph, July 16, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-july-18-2014-sandhya-soman-terror-recruiters-target-indians-on-internet"> Terror recruiters target Indians on internet </a> (by Sandhya Soman, July 18, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-july-22-2014-vishal-mathur-the-trouble-with-trolls">The trouble with trolls</a> (by Vishal Mathur, Livemint, July 22, 2014). </li>
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/news/search-security-july-28-2014-harichandan-arakali-indias-dedicated-cryptology-centre-gets-funding"> India’s dedicated Cryptology centre gets Rs. 115 crore funding </a> (by Harichandan Arakali, SearchSecurity.in, July 28, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">►Cyber Stewards <br /> As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the International Development Research Centre, Canada, CIS conducted 2 new interviews. With this it has finished a total of 19 interviews:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Video Interviews <br /></b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-cybersecurity-series-part-18-2013-lobsang-gyatso-sither">Lobsang Gyatso Sither</a> (July 31, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li> <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-cybersecurity-series-part-19-2013-lobsang-sangay">Lobsang Sangay</a> (July 31, 2014).</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">-------------------------------- <br /> <b><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities">Digital Humanities</a> </b><br /> -------------------------------- <br /> CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Peer Reviewed Article</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/routledge-inter-asia-cultural-studies-volume-15-issue-2-nishant-shah-asia-in-the-edges"><b> </b>Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore </a> (by Nishant Shah, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, July 3, 2014). This is the narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” which was hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Blog Entry</b></p>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<b> </b>
<li><b> </b><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/reading-from-a-distance">Reading from a Distance — Data as Text</a> (by P.P. Sneha, July 23, 2014). </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">----------------------------------------------------- <br /> <b><a href="https://cis-india.org/">About CIS</a> </b><br /> ----------------------------------------------------- <br /> The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Follow us elsewhere</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li> Twitter:<a href="https://twitter.com/CISA2K"> </a><a href="https://twitter.com/CISA2K">https://twitter.com/CISA2K</a> </li>
<li>Facebook group: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k">https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k</a> </li>
<li>Visit us at:<a href="https://cis-india.org/"> </a> <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge</a> </li>
<li>E-mail: <a href="mailto:a2k@cis-india.org">a2k@cis-india.org</a> </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Support Us <br /> Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">► Request for Collaboration: <br /> We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at<a href="mailto:sunil@cis-india.org">sunil@cis-india.org</a> or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at <a href="mailto:nishant@cis-india.org">nishant@cis-india.org</a>. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at <a href="mailto:vishnu@cis-india.org">vishnu@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i> CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects. </i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2014-bulletin'>https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2014-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceResearchers at Work2014-08-11T05:46:53ZPageReading from a Distance – Data as Text
https://cis-india.org/raw/reading-from-a-distance-data-as-text
<b>An extended survey of digital initiatives in arts and humanities practices in India was undertaken during the last year. Provocatively called 'mapping digital humanities in India', this enquiry began with the term 'digital humanities' itself, as a 'found' name for which one needs to excavate some meaning, context, and location in India at the present moment. Instead of importing this term to describe practices taking place in this country - especially when the term itself is relatively unstable and undefined even in the Anglo-American context - what I chose to do was to take a few steps back, and outline a few questions/conflicts that the digital practitioners in arts and humanities disciplines are grappling with. The final report of this study will be published serially. This is the third among seven sections.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Sections</h2>
<p>01. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india">Digital Humanities in India?</a></p>
<p>02. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/a-question-of-digital-humanities">A Question of Digital Humanities</a></p>
<p>03. <strong>Reading from a Distance – Data as Text</strong></p>
<p>04. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/the-infrastructure-turn-in-the-humanities">The Infrastructure Turn in the Humanities</a></p>
<p>05. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/living-in-the-archival-moment">Living in the Archival Moment</a></p>
<p>06. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/new-modes-and-sites-of-humanities-practice">New Modes and Sites of Humanities Practice</a></p>
<p>07. <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities-in-india-concluding-thoughts">Digital Humanities in India – Concluding Thoughts</a></p>
<hr />
The concepts of text and textuality have been central to the discourse on language and culture, and therefore by extension to most of the humanities disciplines, which are often referred to as text-based disciplines. The advent of new digital and multimedia technologies and the internet has brought about definitive changes in the ways in which we see and interpret texts today, particularly as manifested in new practices of reading and writing facilitated by these tools and dynamic interfaces now available in the age of the digital. The ‘text’ as an object of enquiry is also central to much of the discussion and literature on DH given that many scholars, particularly in the West trace its antecedents to practices of textual criticism and scholarship that stem from efforts in humanities computing. Everything from the early attempts in character and text encoding <strong>[1]</strong> to new forms and methods of digital literary curation, either on large online archives or in the form of social media such as Storify <strong>[2]</strong> or Scoop-it <strong>[3]</strong> have been part of the development of this discourse on the text. Significant among these is the emergence of processes such as text analysis, data mining, distant reading, and not-reading, all of which essentially refer to a process of reading by recognising patterns over a large corpus of texts, often with the help of a clustering algorithm <strong>[4]</strong>. The implications of this for literary scholarship are manifold, with many scholars seeing this as a point of ‘crisis’ for the traditional practices of reading and meaning-making such as close reading, or an attempt to introduce objectivity and a certain quantitative aspect, often construed as a form of scientism, into what is essentially a domain of interpretation (Wieseltier 2013). But an equal number of advocates of the process also see the use of these tools as enabling newer forms of literary scholarship by enhancing the ability to work with and across a wide range and number of texts.
<p> </p>
<p>The simultaneous emergence of new kinds of digital objects, and a plethora of them, and the supposed obscuring of traditional methods in the process is perhaps the immediate source of this perceived discomfort. There are different perspectives on the nature of changes this has led to in understanding a concept that is elementary to the humanities. Apart from the fact that digitisation makes a large corpus of texts now accessible, subject to certain conditions of access of course, it also makes texts '<em>massively addressable at different levels of scale</em>' as suggested by Michael Witmore (Witmore 2012: 324-327, emphasis as in the original). According to him: "[A]ddressable here means that one can query a position within the text at a certain level of abstraction" (Ibid. 325). This could be at the level of character, words, lines etc that may then be related to other texts at the same level of abstraction. The idea that the text itself is an aggregation of such ‘computational objects’ is new, but as Witmore points out in his essay, it is the nature of this computational object that requires further explanation. In fact, as he concludes in the essay, "textuality is addressability and further ... this is a condition, rather than a technology, action or event" (Ibid. 326). What this points towards is the rather flexible and somewhat ephemeral nature of the text itself, particularly the digital text, and the need to move out of a notion of textuality which has been shaped so far by the conventions of book culture, which look to ideal manifestations in provisional unities such as the book (Ibid. 327).</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Of Texts and Hypertextuality</h2>
<p>An example much closer home of such new forms of textual criticism is that of 'Bichitra' <strong>[5]</strong>, an online variorum of Rabindranath Tagore’s works developed by the School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University. The traditional variorum in itself is a work of textual criticism, where all the editions of the work of an author are collated as a corpus to trace the changes and revisions made over a period of time. The Tagore variorum, while making available an exhaustive resource on the author’s work, also offers a collation tool that helps trace such variations across different editions of works, but with much less effort otherwise needed in manually reading through these texts. Like paper variorum editions, this online archive too allows for study of a wider number and diversity of texts on a single author through cross-referencing and collation. Prof. Sukanta Chaudhuri <strong>[6]</strong>, Professor Emeritus, Department of English and School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University, Kolkata has been part of the process of setting up this variorum. According to him the most novel aspects of this platform, or as he calls it - 'integrated knowledge site' - are to do with these functions of cross-referencing and integration. The bibliography is a hyperlinked structure, which connects to all the different digital versions of a particular text (the most being 20 versions of a single poem). The notion of a bibliography has always evoked hypertextuality – the possibility to link and cross - reference texts, but with the advent of the digital, this possibility has been fully realized, as seen in the case of the hypertext <strong>[7]</strong>. For collation, the project team developed a unique software, titled 'Prabhed,' (meaning difference in Bengali) that helps to assemble text at three levels (a) chapter in novel, act/scene in drama, canto in poem; (b) para in novel or other prose, speech in drama, stanza in poem; (c) individual words.. For instance, you can choose a particular section of a book, poem or play - and compare its occurrences across different editions and versions of the work to note their matches and differences. If two paragraphs have been removed from one chapter, and put into another, that can be traced through the collation software. If a particular word has been omitted in a later edition, or if certain lines have been rearranged in a poem, these changes can be tracked <strong>[8]</strong>. What makes the search engine 'integrated' is not simply that it can search all Tagore's works in one go, but that it links up with the bibliography and thereby with the actual text of the works. It is interesting to note here the different changes that the text undergoes to become available for study on a digital platform, where it is amenable to intense searching and querying of this kind. It is now possible to search across a large corpus of texts, for minute changes in words or sentences, and ask questions of these in terms of their usage, instances and contexts of their occurrence, thus facilitating a kind of enquiry previously never undertaken in textual studies.</p>
<p>The project however is not without its challenges, as Prof. Chaudhuri further outlines. Working with Indic scripts is a persistent problem for digital initiatives in India. In Bengali some work has been done in the form of a scientifically designed keyboard software called Avro, which stores all the conjunct letters preserving their separate characteristics <strong>[9]</strong>. Developing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for scanned material in Indian languages remains a crucial issue for most digitization and archival initiatives in India. Other issues include the problem of vowel markers appearing before the consonants, even if phonetically they follow and are keyed in afterwards. To get the font and keyboard software to recognize this is a big challenge. The third challenge, especially in the case of works printed from the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, is that there are vast differences in spelling; the same word can be spelt in different ways, and as there is no lexicon, one may not do any kind of general search. There is also the issue of a high degree of inflection in the language. A word may have a suffix (or, <em>vibhakti</em>) attached to it to indicate the case: one for the subject of the sentence, another for the object, another for the possessive case and so on. These are multiplied by the different forms of the verbs. The development of a lexicon in Bengali would be one of the ways to resolve many of these issues. However, as most people can only see and interact with the digital interface of Bichitra, and not really understand the process behind it, or the amount of work involved in making the platform work the way it does, funding for research and development, maintenance and sustainability is difficult to obtain. Backroom file management, which includes both paper and digital files remains a big but largely invisible task on such a platform. The total number of files generated from Bichitra is tens of millions or hundreds of millions, and many of these are offline files which would not even go on to the website. Hence while uploading the files, the basic groundwork for a retrieval system for different files serving different functions had already been laid, including the creation of a bibliography, which was a huge exercise in itself. The process of making text available as hypertext is labor that is invisibilized, and is rarely or never available to the end user.</p>
<p>Prof. Chaudhuri also speaks of ways in which the notion of textuality has been rendered differently through the use of the internet and digital technologies. Digital or electronic text has helped theorize better the notion of a fluid text - the fact that a text is never complete, but only bound between the covers of a book at a given point of several processes that are technological as well as social. The notion of the text itself as an object of enquiry has undergone significant change in the last several decades. Various disciplines have for long engaged with the text - as a concept, method or discursive space - and its definitions have changed over time that have added dimensions to ways of doing the humanities. With every turn in literary and cultural criticism in particular, the primacy of the written word as text has been challenged, what is understood as ‘textual’ in a very narrow sense has moved to the visual and other kinds of objects. The digital object presents a new kind of text that is difficult to grasp - the neat segregations of form, content and process seem to blur here, and there is a need to unravel these layers to understand its textuality. As Dr. Madhuja Mukherjee, with the Department of Film Studies, at Jadavpur University points out, with the opening up of the digital field, there are more possibilities to record, upload and circulate, as a result of which the very object of study has changed; the text as an object therefore has become very unstable, more so that it already is. Film is an example, where often DVDs of old films no longer exist, so one approaches the 'text' through other objects such as posters or found footage. Such texts also available through several online archives now offer possibilities of building layers of meaning through annotations and referencing. Another example she cites is of the Indian Memory project, where objects such as family photographs become available for study as texts for historiography or ethnographic work. She points out that this is not a new phenomenon, as the disciplines of literary and cultural studies, critical theory and history have explored and provided a base for these questions, but there is definitely a new found interest now due the increasing prevalence of digital methods and spaces.</p>
<p>Shaina Anand, artist and filmmaker, further espouses this thought when she talks about the new possibilities of textual analysis of film that are now possible, particularly in terms of temporal control, first with the DVD, then the internet and now with online archival platforms like Indiancine.ma <strong>[10]</strong> and the Public Access Digital Media Archive, or Pad.ma <strong>[11]</strong>. The first is an online archive of Indian film from the pre-copyright era (so effectively before 1955), while the second is an archive of found and archival footage, images sound clips and unfinished films <strong>[12]</strong>. Both platforms allow the user to search through an array of material, view/listen to them download or embed them as links. They make available to users not just an online database for storage and retrieval but also a space to work with a range of materials in multiple video and audio formats and themes through annotations and referencing. The annotation tool is perhaps the most innovative aspect of these platforms, wherein a user can pause, isolate a section of a sequence and annotate it using a range of options and filters. The annotations are textual, in the form of comments, commentary and marginalia (in the case of Pad.ma) and can also link to other paraphernalia around the film object, such as posters, images, advertisements and other literature. Users can also contextualize material by adding transcripts, descriptions, events, keywords, and even locating the events in the video on a map. These have brought to the fore several questions on relevance, accessibility and ownership, as in the case of raw footage from films, and opened up possibilities for such materials to be re-contextualized by the reader in different ways. This layering of annotations around the film object also creates a new research object, or text that then necessitates new methods of studying it as well. As opposed to the earlier practice of the researcher/critic having to watch the film first and then comment or analyse it, and relying on memory to generate the scholarship, it is now possible to pause, analyse or read and come back to the film and annotate the text in several ways. What does this do to the film text - the process documenting the form is new, not cinema as a form itself – is a question that comes up quite prominently here. The computational aspect also is important here, given the vast amount of footage that is now available, which then requires better lexical indexing to compute and manage large data sets. This has been a constant endeavour with Pad.ma and Indiancine.ma as well.</p>
<p>As in the case of film, what becomes prominent here is the move to a digital text of some sort. One such example of a digital text perhaps is the hypertext. George Landow in his book on hypertext draws upon both Barthes and Foucault’s conceptualisation of textuality in terms of nodes, links, networks, web and path, which has been posited as the 'ideal text' by Barthes (Landow 2006: 2). Landow’s analysis emphasises the multilinearity of the text, in terms of its lack of a centre, and therefore the reader being able to organise the text according to his own organising principle - possibilities that hypertext now offers which the printed book could not. While hypertext illustrates the possibilities of multilinearity of a text that can be realised in the digital, it may still be linear in terms of embodying certain ideological notions which shape its ultimate form. Hypertext, while in a pragmatic sense being the text of the digital is still at the end of a process of signification or meaning-making, often defined within the parameters set by print culture. As such it is only the narrative, and not the form itself that is multi-linear in hypertext fiction.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Textual Criticism in the Digital</h2>
<p>But to return to what has been one of the fundamental notions of textual criticism, the 'text' is manifested through practices of reading and writing (Barthes 1977). So what have been the implications of digital technologies for these processes which have now become technologised, and by extension for our understanding of the text? While processes such as distant reading and not-reading demonstrate precisely the variability of meaning-making processes and the fluid nature of textuality, they also seem to question the premise of the method and form of criticism itself. Franco Moretti, in his book <em>Graphs, Maps and Trees</em> talks about the possibilities accorded by clustering algorithms and pattern recognition as a means to wade through corpora, thus attempting to create what he calls an 'abstract model of literary history' (Moretti 2005: 1). He describes this approach as "within the old territory of literary history, a new object of study." He further says, "Distant reading, I have once called this type of approach, where distance is however not an obstacle, but a <em>specific kind of knowledge</em>: fewer elements, hence a sharper sense of their overall interconnection. Shapes, relations, structures. Forms. Models" (Moretti 2005: 1, emphasis as in original). The emphasis for Moretti therefore is on the method of reading or meaning-making. There seem to be two questions that emerge from this perceived shift - one is the availability of the data and tools that can 'facilitate' this kind of reading, and the second is a change in the nature of the object of enquiry itself, so much so that close reading or textual analysis is not engaging or adequate any longer and calls for other methods of reading.</p>
<p>As is apparent in the development of new kinds of tools and resources to facilitate reading, there is a problem of abundance that follows once the problem of access has been addressed to some extent. Clustering algorithms have been used to generate and process data in different contexts, apart from their usage in statistical data analysis. The role of data is pertinent here; and particularly that of big data. But the understanding of big data is still shrouded within the conventions of computational practice, so much so that its social aspects are only slowly being explored now, particularly in the context of reading practices. Big data as not just a reference to volume but also its other aspects of data such as velocity, scope, and granularity among others significantly increases the ambit of what the term covers, with implications for new epistemologies and modes of research (Kitchin 2014). But if one were to treat data as text, as is an eventual possibility with literary criticism that uses computational methods, what becomes of the critical ability to decode the text – and does this further change the nature of the text itself as a discursive object, and the practice of reading and textual criticism as a result. Reading data as text then also presupposes a different kind of reader, one that is no longer the human subject. This would be a significant move in understanding how the processes of textuality also change to address new modes of content generation, and how much the contours of such textuality reflect the changes in the discursive practices that construct it. Most of the debate however has been framed within a narrative of loss - of criticality and a particular method of making meaning of the world. Close reading as a method too came with its own set of problems - which can be seen as part of a larger critique of the Formalists and later New Criticism, specifically in terms of its focus on the text. As such, this further contributes to canonising a certain kind of text and thereby a certain form of cultural and literary production (Wilkens 2012). Distant reading as a method, though also seen as an attempt to address this problem by working with corpora as opposed to select texts, still poses the same issues in terms of its approach, particularly as the text still serves as the primary and authoritative object of study. The emphasis therefore comes back to reading as a critical and discursive practice. The objects and tools are new; the skills to use them need to be developed. However, as much of the literature and processes demonstrate, the critical skills essentially remain the same, but now function at a meta-level of abstraction. Kathleen Fitzpatrick in her book on the rise of electronic publishing and planned technological obsolescence dwells on the manner in which much of our reading practice is still located in print or specifically book culture; the conflict arises with the shift to a digital process and interface, in terms of trying to replicate the experience of reading on paper (Fitzpatrik 2011). Add to this problem of abundance of data, and processes like curation, annotation, referencing, visualisation, abstraction etc. acquire increased valence as methods of creatively reading or making meaning of content (Ibid.). More importantly, it also points towards a change and diversity in the disciplinary method. Where close reading was once the only method by which a text became completely accessible to the reader, it is now possible to approach it through a set of processes, thus urging us to rethink the method of enquiry itself.</p>
<p>Whether as object, method or practice, the notion of textuality and the practice of the reading have undergone significant changes in the digital context, but whether this is a new domain of enquiry is a question we may still need to ask. Matthew G. Kirschenbaum in his essay on re-making reading (quoted earlier in this chapter) suggests that perhaps the function of these clustering algorithms, apart from serving to supplant or reiterate what we already know is to also ‘provoke’ new ideas or questions (Kirschenbaum XXXX: 3). The conflict produced between close and distant reading, the shift from print to digital interfaces would therefore emerge as a space for new questions around the given notion of text and textuality. But if one were to extend that thought, it may be pertinent to ask if DH can now provide us with a vibrant field that will help produce a better and more nuanced understanding of the notion of the text itself as an object of enquiry. This would require one to work with and in some sense against the body of meaning already generated around the text, but in essence the very conflict may be where the epistemological questions about the field are located. The digital text, owing to the possibilities of ‘massive addressability,’ mentioned earlier is now more fluid and socialized. The renewed focus on the textual is most apparent in this manner of imagining the text, using the metaphor of a highly interlinked, networked and shared text. It also puts forth important questions then of how we understand technology a certain way, especially in the context of language and representation as an important factor of understanding new textual objects. Is technology a tool for textual analysis, or is it in inherent to our understanding of the nature of the text? Is the development of these methods of enquiry shaped by certain disciplinary requirements, and do they also challenge or create new conflicts for traditional methods of enquiry? The growth in the study of different media objects, such as video and cinema, and the advent of areas such as media studies, oral history, media archaeologies has further prompted concerns regarding the study of the digital object in these disciplines, and a rethinking of how we understand the notion of the text.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Notes</h2>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> "The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a consortium which collectively develops and maintains a standard for the representation of texts in digital form. Its chief deliverable is a set of Guidelines which specify encoding methods for machine-readable texts, chiefly in the humanities, social sciences and linguistics. Since 1994, the TEI Guidelines have been widely used by libraries, museums, publishers, and individual scholars to present texts for online research, teaching, and preservation." See: <a href="http://www.tei-c.org/">http://www.tei-c.org/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> See: <a href="https://storify.com/">https://storify.com/</a></p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.scoop.it/">http://www.scoop.it/</a></p>
<p><strong>[4]</strong> For more on text mining see Lisa Guernsey in 'Digging for Nuggets of Wisdom,' in The New York Times, October 16, 2003 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/16/technology/circuits/16mine.html?pagewanted=print">http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/16/technology/circuits/16mine.html?pagewanted=print</a>. For more on data mining, distant reading, and the changing nature of reading practices see Matthew Kirschenbaum in 'The Remaking of Reading,' <a href="http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~hillol/NGDM07/abstracts/talks/MKirschenbaum.pdf">http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~hillol/NGDM07/abstracts/talks/MKirschenbaum.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[5]</strong> See: <a href="http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/">http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[6]</strong> Interview with author, July 30, 2015.</p>
<p><strong>[7]</strong> A term coined by Theodor H. Nelson, which he describes as "a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways." As quoted in George Landow, <em>Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology</em>, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992, 2-12.</p>
<p><strong>[8]</strong> Bichitra, 'Collation Guide,' accessed on September 17, 2015, <a href="http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/bichitra_collation_guide.php">http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/bichitra_collation_guide.php</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[9]</strong> Omicron Lab, accessed September 17, 2015. <a href="https://www.omicronlab.com/avro-keyboard.html">https://www.omicronlab.com/avro-keyboard.html</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[10]</strong> See: <a href="http://pad.ma/">http://pad.ma/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[11]</strong> See: <a href="http://indiancine.ma/">http://indiancine.ma/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[12]</strong> For more on these platforms see the section on DH institutions in India.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Barthes, Roland. "From Work to Text". In <em>Image, Music, Text</em>. London: Fontana Press, 1977.</p>
<p>Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. "Texts" in <em>Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology and the Future of the Academy</em>. New York: New York University Press, 2011.</p>
<p>Kirschenbaum, Matthew. "The Remaking of Reading". <a href="http://www.csee.umbc.edu/%7Ehillol/NGDM07/abstracts/talks/MKirschenbaum.pdf">http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~hillol/NGDM07/abstracts/talks/MKirschenbaum.pdf</a>.</p>
<p>Kitchin, Rob. 'Big Data, New Epistemologies, and Paradigm Shifts,' <em>Big Data & Society</em>, 2014, April–June, pp. 1–12, DOI: 10.1177/2053951714528481.</p>
<p>Landow, George. <em>Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology</em>. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.</p>
<p>Moretti, Franco. <em>Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History</em>, Verso, 2005.</p>
<p>Wieseltier, Leon, 'Crimes Against Humanities,' The New Republic, September 3, 2013, <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114548/leon-wieseltier-responds-steven-pinkers-scientism">http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114548/leon-wieseltier-responds-steven-pinkers-scientism</a>.</p>
<p>Wilkens, Mathew. "Canons, Close Reading and the Evolution of Method". In <em>Debates in the Digital Humanities </em> Ed. M.K. Gold. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.</p>
<p>Witmore, Michael. "Text: A Massively Addressable Object". In <em>Debates in the Digital Humanities</em>, Ed. M.K. Gold. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/reading-from-a-distance-data-as-text'>https://cis-india.org/raw/reading-from-a-distance-data-as-text</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppDigital KnowledgeMapping Digital Humanities in IndiaResearchDigital HumanitiesResearchers at Work2016-06-30T05:06:58ZBlog EntryInterface Intimacies
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/interface-intimacies/interface-intimacies
<b>Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together, talked about how the digital technologies, replacing interface time with face-time, are slowly alienating us from our social networks. There has been an increasing amount of anxiety around how people in immersive and ubiquitous computing and web environments are living lives which are connected online but not connected with their social and political contexts.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>While there are instances and examples of mobilisation, social networking meets, group formations, etc. there is a growing worry that on an everyday basis, we live our lives more in the company of gadgets, ambience technologies and digital platforms than with people.</p>
<p>At the same time, users of technologies often express their engagement with technologies in affective terms, where they seem to form intimate relationships with their technologies. The interfaces that we see all around us, constantly deflect our attention, emotions and desires on to different surfaces, creating flattened universes with the promises of deep immersion. Especially as the internet becomes mobile and digital interfaces become ubiquitous – from large scale billboards to small wearable devices; from sites of work to spaces of pleasure – there is a new form of intimacy which is shaped, designed, experienced, and lived through interfaces.</p>
<p>The digital interfaces become polymorphous sites of affection, love, desire, aspiration, seduction, transgression and stability. The interface is growing so integral to our everyday lives, that we start thinking of them as metaphors through which we understand ourselves and the world that we connect to. We talk about ourselves as systems that need to be ‘upgraded’ or ‘connected’. We think of the world as a network through which we ‘recycle’ our lives and ‘connect’ to our ‘peers’. The interfaces, are simultaneously opaque and transparent – They allow us to connect to the digital other, crossing boundaries of geography and time, and they also deny us access to the actually mechanics which bring the interfaces to life.</p>
<p><em>Interface Intimacies</em> is a research cluster that is interested in digging deep into interfaces, to examine peoples’ relationships with the digital interfaces around them. What are the affective relationships that people have with their interfaces? What goes into anthropomorphising an interface? What are the larger politics of labour, performance and ownership that surround interface design? What are the ways in which people simulate presence and connections through their interfaces? How is the human presumed in Computer-Human interface design? What aesthetic and political moves are we witnessing with the rise of interface mediated publics? What and who is made opaque when interfaces become transparent? When interfaces get distributed, what are the possibilities and potential for art, theory and practice to move into new forms of politics?</p>
<p>These are the kind of questions that this research cluster seeks to address with a special focus on Asia. The intention is to build a knowledge network of researchers from different disciplines – Art, Architecture, Computer Human Interaction Design, Digital Humanities, New Media Theory, Urban Planning, Public Infrastructure Design, Software Studies, Interface Design etc. – to enter into a dialogue around Interfaces and how they define contemporary conditions of life in their contexts.</p>
<p>The project hopes to organise a workshop exploring these ideas leading to an edited anthology and a special journal issue of peer-reviewed academic scholarship. The project hopes to kick off in February 2012 and take about 18 months till completion.</p>
<p>Collaborators: Audrey Yue (Melbourne University), Namita Malhotra (ALF)</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/interface-intimacies/interface-intimacies'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/interface-intimacies/interface-intimacies</a>
</p>
No publisherAudrey Yue and Namita A MalhotraInterface IntimaciesNet CulturesResearchers at WorkResearch2015-10-24T13:40:18ZBlog EntryThe Stranger with Candy
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-june-16-2013-nishant-shah-the-stranger-with-candy
<b>Beware of online threats, as the distinction between friends and foes is false on the internet. </b>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">Nishant Shah's column was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-stranger-with-candy/1129446/0">published in the Indian Express</a> on June 16, 2013.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">My parents and I were in Oslo, when after a long day in the city, we returned to an intriguing situation. My father, who is quite a digital migrant and uses the internet for daily exchanges, found an email from an uncle waiting in his inbox. The email begins with the uncle travelling to Madrid, Spain, to help an ailing cousin who needs a surgery and requested that my father help the writer, his cousin, with €2,500. The email ended with a note of urgency, "I will check my email every 30 minutes for your reply".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">My father, who was by now rather agitated, asked my brother and me what could be done. People asking for money over email is the modern day equivalent of strangers bearing candy in a car. We were both immediately wary and when we saw the mail, we knew that it was a scam. Somebody had cracked into somebody's account and was now sending out emails to everybody in their contact list, hoping to make a quick buck. The only action we took was to inform the relative that his account seemed to have been compromised and that he needed to protect it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This incident, in the context of disallowing children below 13 years on Facebook in India, got me thinking. How do we trust somebody, or something online? There is a presumption that digital natives instinctively know how to deal with dubious situations online. True, one seldom hears of a digital native falling for scams of Nigerian princes offering their inheritance or widows of bank managers in Saudi Arabia wanting to transfer millions to their bank accounts. But that might be because digital natives live more in gift and attention economies and have always been suspicious of anybody waving a wad of notes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, we do know that the young are often susceptible to other predators on the Web. While it might occasionally seem that the West's paranoia around paedophiles online, preying on young children as sexual victims might have reached the limits of logical absurdity, it remains indisputable that young adults haven't yet developed the codes to trust somebody online. We encounter countless stories of the young who endanger their futures by documenting their follies and foibles in the unforgiving and unforgetting space of the internet. Let us not forget the names of Adnan Patrawala and Koushambi Layek, who fell prey to strangers pretending to be friends and lovers on the social networking site Orkut.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I am not suggesting that the World Wide Web is any more dangerous than the brick and mortar world that we live in. Our flesh- and-bone bodies are under equal danger in our everyday lives. But over time, we have learned and have been taught how to decode conditions that might harm us. We have learned to distance ourselves from strangers with grins, and people who look hostile. The authorities have created visible signposts of danger all around us — from red traffic lights to surveillance cameras — that constantly remind us that safety is not the default mode of our existence but something that we need to incessantly create for ourselves.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The digital world has no such guidelines. The mammoth corporations, which now govern a large part of the cyberspace, individually try to create structures that would save us from falling victim to such attacks. So the filter on your Gmail account is an intelligent system that scans every byte of information that goes in and out of your inbox, learning both your behaviour patterns and your interaction modes, to filter out not only the obvious hoax emails but also things that you might deem as clutter. Smart browsers like Firefox identify IP addresses that are regularly abusive and warn us about installing any software that might originate there. On Facebook, certain pictures and posts with offensive content are censored even before they get into your data stream. The friendship algorithm, further ensures that you increasingly see content from your 'close friends' rather than strangers. In all these mechanisms, which use big data mining tools to recognise harmful patterns as well as encourage you to devise your own vouchsafes, there is an implicit understanding that the people we know will do us less harm. They are designed to keep out unwanted or potentially harmful people because it might lead to danger or conflict.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, as we saw in the case of the email to my father, the distinctions between strangers and friends on the internet, is a forced one. When all digital avatars are a performance of a kind, it becomes easy for an imposter to take on that identity. The only credentials we have of somebody's authenticity are often their user accounts and email — data which can be stolen and manipulated effortlessly. And increasingly, we have learned that when it comes to the online world, the people who infect us with viruses, rob us of our money and crash our digital worlds are people who are our 'friends'.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While we shall learn through experience and through stories, there remains a need to develop a larger social discussion around trust online. This debate cannot be whether content needs to be censored online or whether certain groups should be allowed to get on to social network systems. Instead, it has to be a debate that realises the notions of friendship and trust, of networks and connections, are not merely extensions of the physical into the digital. On the infobahn, these are new modes of operation and being and it is not going to be easy to create a handbook of online safety. What we will need is an involved and inter-generational debate about the social, political and economic safety online and create signposts that remind us of the dangers of being online.</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-june-16-2013-nishant-shah-the-stranger-with-candy'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-june-16-2013-nishant-shah-the-stranger-with-candy</a>
</p>
No publishernishantResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-04-17T11:00:04ZBlog Entry It’s Common Practice
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-may-12-2013-nishant-shah-its-common-practice
<b>Technologies are no longer abstract. They're habits. What constitutes a habit? The gestures that you make as you read this, the way your eyes flick when you encounter somebody you like, the way you stroke your chin in a moment of reflection, or the split second decisions that you make in times of crises — these are all habits. They are pre-thought, visceral, depending upon biological, social and collective memories that do not need rational thinking. Habits are the customised programming of human life. </b>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<hr />
<p>Nishant Shah's column was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/it-s-common-practice/1113490/0">published in the Indian Express</a> on May 12, 2013.</p>
<hr />
<p>However, habits are not natural. They are, in fact, man-made nature. They appear as natural, matter-of-fact, instinctive and intuitive, but they are built over years of shared experiences, learning and empathy. And more often than we realise, habits are formed because of the different technologies that surround us.</p>
<p>If you are reading this column on paper, look at the way you are holding the magazine, folding the paper and note how you can read this easily because the text has been arranged from left to right, top to bottom. If you are browsing through this piece on a digital device, look at how your fingers move on your scroll button, or on your touchscreen, helping you make sense of complex devices without a second thought.</p>
<p>Habits that are formed through technologies work so seamlessly because they make technologies transparent. They make us forget that there is a complex network of machines, devices, grids and information that shape our lives. Do you remember the time when you came across something online and didn't look for the 'Like' button that is now a part of everyday internet practice? Do you remember the last time you struggled to manage the cursor on your screen using a mouse? Do you realise how the mouse has already become obsolete and is now being replaced by other touch-and-flick devices for a new generation?</p>
<p>I recently encountered this habit when my three-going-on-90-year-old Kindle — the Amazon device I use to read books — fell in the hands of a six-year-old. Like many digital natives of her time, she is unfazed by technology and, as her parents confess, is much better at operating most things digital in the house than them. She thinks nothing of streaming her favourite cartoon show from a website. She is adept at customising the many screens on her father's smartphone and has accepted that specific movements of her fingers will produce information on brightly-lit touchscreens.</p>
<p>However, when she used my non-backlit, non-touch Kindle that requires buttons to be pushed, she faced acute frustration. After trying to scroll, flick, activate, zoom and pinch on the screen she flung it at me, bewildered and angry that her habits were suddenly redundant and challenged. I want to use this moment of reflection to understand how technologies are integral to our ways of living. Technologies are habits. You don't need to be online 24x7, constantly upgrading yourself to the latest version of Android to interact with technology. Instead, we need to think about technologies as outlets that allow us to think about who we are and how we relate to the world around us.</p>
<p>One way of looking at technology as habits is to see how we have started thinking of ourselves through metaphors of the machines that we use. For example, it's quite common to hear people complain about "lack of bandwidth" to describe busy schedules. We now think of ourselves as systems that need upgrading. Life has long been lived on windows through which we recycle ourselves.</p>
<p>If technologies are such an inseparable part of ourselves, maybe it is time to stop making a distinction between the human and the technological. It is time to stop thinking about technologies only in terms of gadgets that can be removed from our biological assemblage. And indeed, if we are ready to recognise these technologies as a part of being human, then we need to think of technology politics in a new way. The questions around piracy, privacy, intellectual property, proprietary technologies, openness, etc. which are relegated to the digital world are also questions of us. They are not external problems but are centrally shaping how we construct ourselves as humans. Through habits.</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-may-12-2013-nishant-shah-its-common-practice'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/indian-express-may-12-2013-nishant-shah-its-common-practice</a>
</p>
No publishernishantDigital subjectivitiesCyberculturesResearchers at Work2015-04-24T11:41:47ZBlog EntryDigital Native: Web of Wander
https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-may-20-2018-digital-native-web-of-wander
<b>The idea of travel as a way of expanding our horizon has now been made redundant.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/digital-native-web-of-wander-5183090/">Indian Express</a> on May 20, 2018.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The promise of connected digital networks — that which we now call the internet — was to replace space with time, as the unit of our life. Space has been critical in thinking of our units of a private, personal, social, collective and political organisation. Space had defined our notions of friendship, intimacy, family, society, and sociality. It seemed like a preposterous idea at that time, about four decades ago, to imagine that space would become less relevant in configuring our sense of who we are and how we relate to the world. In the early days of the internet, when people were still working on clunky connections and text-based interfaces, this idea of proximity being replaced by temporality, was relegated to the realms of sci-fi fantasy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Now, our friends are not defined by proximity but through <a href="http://indianexpress.com/about/facebook/">Facebook</a> algorithms. We have come to learn that we might have more in common with a person halfway across the globe than with somebody who might be living next door. We think of global news as local news, consuming faraway information in real time, and being invested in the politics of spaces we have never visited. In IT-service countries like India, entire shadow cities have been built where people define their working times, rhythms, and, even their names, based on the distant geographies they work in — even when located in the back-processing offices in Bengaluru, Gurugram, and Hyderabad. We have started thinking of information as streams of time, and, increasingly, our digital practices have been space independent as we move our life to the cloud.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And yet, we remain enslaved to the geographies of our living and the materiality of our devices. Somebody might be just a click away, but they are also not always available because of the distances in space. Information might be easily available and ready to stream, but without the context of other people sharing and making meaning of it, there might be no relevance or urgency to it. We might lose ourselves in online role-playing games and immerse in social media conversation that makes us forget where we are. But none of it has actually made space irrelevant. If anything, as we become informationally overloaded subjects, and continue to invest all our time on digital screens, space has become a premium and travel has taken on new connotations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Once upon a time, when people talked about travel, it was a journey towards something — to discover new people, cultures, rhythms of life and ways of living. Travel carried with it a sense of purpose: to find more, learn more, explore more and enrich our lives with the experiences of diversity that the world holds for us. The presumption was that we live small and sheltered lives, and travel gifts us new horizons. This idea of travel has now been made redundant for the contemporary information subjects. At the speed of a click, we now have access to information of the world, often in real time, in ways that we could never have imagined. Our cultural references are global, our cuisine, too, is multicultural. We talk of shows and communities that are global. Travel is now just another data stream that adds to this milieu of the informationally overloaded subject.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The digital does not change travel. It does not make travel unnecessary. It doesn’t shrink the world or make it flatter. Instead, because it gives us access to the world already, it makes us ask questions of why we travel and what do we get out of it. The digital access through augmented reality, through virtual reality, through immersive media, and through connected networks, helps us ask a question again of why we travel, and subsequently, what we travel for and what we travel to. Digital travels are travels with an intention, with a purpose, and with a responsibility that makes it necessary for us to connect with the local in a new way. The digital platforms for travel – from Couchsurfing to Wikitravels, from augmented maps to TripAdvisor discussion boards — are a way of showing us the alternative that is no longer the expected brief. They are ways of finding communities, of ethical engagements and new modes of interaction where we take other roles than just being tourists, and become new subjects of critical discovery and exploring horizons with a purpose.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-may-20-2018-digital-native-web-of-wander'>https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-may-20-2018-digital-native-web-of-wander</a>
</p>
No publishernishantResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2018-06-01T00:04:51ZBlog EntryDigital Humanities Alliance of India - Inagural Conference 2018 - Keynote by Puthiya Purayil Sneha
https://cis-india.org/raw/dhai-inagural-conference-2018-puthiya-purayil-sneha-keynote
<b>The inaugural conference of the Digital Humanities Alliance of India (DHAI) was held at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore on June 1-2, 2018. The event was co-organised by the IIM and the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, with support from the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. Puthiya Purayil Sneha was a keynote speaker at the event. Her talk was titled ‘New Contexts and Sites of Humanities Practice in the Digital’. Drawing upon excerpts from a study on mapping digital humanities initiatives in India, and ongoing conversations on digital cultural archiving practices, the keynote address discussed some pertinent concerns in the field, particularly with respect to the growth of digital corpora and its intersections with teaching learning practices in arts and humanities, including the need to locate these efforts within the context of the emerging digital landscape in India, and its implications for humanities practice, scholarship and pedagogy.</b>
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<h4>Tweets from the Conference: <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/dhai2018?f=tweets&vertical=default" target="_blank">#DHAI2018</a></h4>
<p>The above photograph of Sneha presenting at the Conference is courtesy of <a href="https://twitter.com/meldelury/status/1002760287223549952">Melissa DeLury</a>.</p>
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<h3><strong>Abstract of the Keynote</strong></h3>
<p>The discourse around the field of digital humanities in India has emerged at an interesting and crucial juncture, where the ‘digital’ has been the focal point of several changes in governance, policy, industry, education and creative practice among other areas over the last couple of decades. Even as the field has garnered much interest globally, it has also invited criticism, especially due to its largely Anglo-American framing, which traces a history in humanities computing and textual studies, located within a larger neoliberal imagination of the university and academia. Now with increasing efforts to address issues of representation and diversity in emerging digital initiatives, it is imperative to trace where efforts within India have been speaking to these concerns within the global discourse as well.
In India, as with several parts of the world, a large part of the work and scholarship around digital humanities, as we have seen so far has centered around two key processes/concepts - that of digitization, or the creation of a corpora of cultural content, enabled by the availability of the internet and digital technologies, and the need for new methods and tools to work with or study them. These conversations have largely organized around two thematic areas of work within digital humanities and related digital practices - namely the creation of digital corpora in the form of archives and repositories, and the advancement of digital technologies and methods of research, or more specifically through the development of digital pedagogies. Drawing upon excerpts from a study on mapping digital humanities initiatives in India, and ongoing conversations on digital cultural archiving practices, this talk discussed some pertinent concerns in the field, particularly with respect to the growth of digital corpora and its intersections with teaching learning practices in arts and humanities, including the need to locate these efforts within the context of the emerging digital landscape in India, and its implications for humanities practice, scholarship and pedagogy.</p>
<h3><strong>Conference Agenda</strong></h3>
<div><img src="https://cis-india.org/DHAIConf2018_About.jpg/image" alt="DHAIConf2018 - About" class="image-inline image-inline" title="DHAIConf2018 - About" /></div>
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<div><img src="https://cis-india.org/DHAIConf2018_Day1.jpg/image" alt="DHAIConf2018 - Day 1" class="image-left image-inline" title="DHAIConf2018 - Day 1" /></div>
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<div><img src="https://cis-india.org/DHAIConf2018_Day12.jpg/image" alt="DHAIConf2018 - Day 1+2" class="image-left image-inline" title="DHAIConf2018 - Day 1+2" /></div>
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<div><img src="https://cis-india.org/DHAIConf2018_Day2.jpg/image" alt="DHAIConf2018 - Day 2" class="image-left image-inline" title="DHAIConf2018 - Day 2" /></div>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/dhai-inagural-conference-2018-puthiya-purayil-sneha-keynote'>https://cis-india.org/raw/dhai-inagural-conference-2018-puthiya-purayil-sneha-keynote</a>
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No publishersneha-ppDHAIDigital KnowledgeResearchDigital ScholarshipDigital HumanitiesResearchers at Work2018-06-26T12:02:09ZBlog EntryCIS anniversary
https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-business-line-may-5-2013-cis-anniversary
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society will celebrate five years of its existence with an exhibition showcasing its works and accomplishments. </b>
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<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">This was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/cis-anniversary/article4686344.ece">Hindu Business Line</a> on May 5, 2013</p>
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<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">The exhibition will be held concurrently at both Bangalore and Delhi offices from May 20 to 24, 2013, said a press release.</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">“To promote transparency, we're getting the general public to be our auditors by throwing open our account books and contracts which show how we have spent the Rs 8.3 crore received from our donors.”</p>
<p class="body" style="text-align: justify; ">The exhibition will also see artists like Kiran Subbaiah, Tara Kelton, Navin Thomas, Abhishek Hazra, among others exhibiting their works, as well as lectures.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-business-line-may-5-2013-cis-anniversary'>https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-business-line-may-5-2013-cis-anniversary</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceOpennessResearchers at Work2013-05-06T07:28:07ZNews ItemAre India’s much-lauded startups failing their women workers?
https://cis-india.org/raw/are-indias-much-lauded-startups-failing-their-women-workers
<b>Recent protests outside Urban Company’s head office highlight the gendered nature of work in the country’s digital economy.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On October 8, more than 100 women beauty workers gathered outside the head office of <a class="link-external" href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/urban-company-hit-by-protests-promises-to-enhance-partners-earnings/articleshow/86925941.cms" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Urban Company in Gurgaon</a> to protest against their work conditions. The firm, an on-demand platform for home-based services, initially responded by clamping down on protesters, threatening to block their IDs and inviting police action on them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After continued pressure from workers and media, the company reaffirmed its commitment to “giving a voice to the voiceless” and eventually announced some measures to partly meet workers’ demands.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was arguably the first widely-reported instance of women working with digital platforms publicly organising to take collective action. A deeper look at their demands sheds light on the gendered nature of work under India’s much-lauded tech startups.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Women’s labour market decisions are structured around trade-offs between paid work and unpaid care work at home. They also face constraints around physical mobility, security and negative familial attitudes towards their work. Digital platforms have been touted as game-changers that will increase women’s workforce participation and earnings, because of the flexibility their model offers to workers to control their work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/F.png" alt="Tweet" class="image-inline" title="Tweet" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, far from increasing workers’ agency, platform models continue to reinforce gender norms and fail to account for factors that shape women’s work. The recent protests are a reminder that there is much to be corrected if work on platforms is to enhance women’s economic outcomes.</p>
<h3 class="cms-block-heading cms-block">Flexibility for whom?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The term “flexibility” can be understood in various ways. From the workers’ perspective, it is usually understood as the ability to choose when and how much to work. Most platforms, including Urban Company, advertise this as one of their goals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, from the firms’ perspective, it could mean minimising input costs while achieving high labour turnover and service quality. Platforms deploy a range of strategies to manage workforce flexibility and match concurrent demand. Key among these is the system of ratings that determine the number of leads offered to workers and may also be used to coerce them into working longer hours and performing unpaid tasks to satiate customer demands.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In Urban Company’s case, workers’ ratings are determined not just on the basis of customer feedback, but also the rates at which workers accept or cancel tasks. This becomes antithetical to increasing flexibility – workers find themselves compelled to work longer hours to meet incentives and avoid penalties. Women who find work through the app have significant childcare responsibilities, and in many cases are sole earners in female-headed households.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Suman, a single mother working as a prime service partner asked us, “When my child has an accident, will I care about the ratings or penalties? I have to stay at home and take care of him. How will I take orders then if they keep giving me leads?” Workers often face penalties such as non-negotiable deductions from wages and permanent account blockages upon low response and high cancellation rates.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As Suman’s account illustrates, these penalties make it very difficult for women to take leaves for even short intervals. The list of demands put forth by workers also includes the ability to log out from the platform for longer periods on account of maternity or other personal obligations, without rejoining fees being deducted.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another way in which Urban Company manages workforce flexibility is through the use of artificial and arbitrarily determined service categories. During the pandemic, amidst intense fluctuations in consumer demands and spending habits, the firm introduced five sub-categories under their beauty service vertical – classic, prime, silver plus, gold plus and lux. Classification of workers into these categories was primarily based on ratings, without taking into consideration prior experience or quality of work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For workers in the classic category, such arbitrary classifications without considering prior experience in the beauty sector or quality of work could amount to deskilling and undervaluation of their work. Workers who have been promoted to higher categories have shared several negative implications including higher costs for uniforms and equipment, increased distance between customer locations and reduced leads with higher commission rates. In effect, these categorisations further obfuscate the rationale for lead generation and upskilling for workers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The authors asked Urban Company about these and other matters. This article will be updated if the firm responds.</p>
<h3 class="cms-block-heading cms-block">Absence of support</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A key concern highlighted by workers is regarding the complete absence of infrastructural support necessary for dignified work. Women spend long hours commuting between their homes and multiple service locations where they receive orders. Many find it difficult to access critical amenities such as drinking water and toilets while on the commute and are denied these even within customers’ homes due to entrenched caste prejudices and discriminatory practices.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Companies also fail to support workers in case of emergencies, which has emerged as a key cause for concern among women who often work in private spaces such as customers’ homes. Workers emphasise the need for a human to respond to their calls in case of an emergency, rejecting technological solutions such as automated helplines and SOS buttons that leave workers to fend for themselves in case they are harassed by customers or in transit.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_F.png" alt="Abhiraj" class="image-inline" title="Abhiraj" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Beyond considerations of platform design and infrastructure, workers highlight the structural precarity that stems from the business model of platform companies. The “entrepreneurship” model put forth by companies does not allow workers to access the income security that comes with regular-wage employment, nor the control and agency that is necessary for self-employment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Media reports after the protests have lauded Urban Company for being nimble and transforming work relations in ways that are responsive to workers’ demands. What is missed in public discourse are the efforts taken by hitherto unorganised workers to bring the firm to the negotiating table with little external support, while also balancing paid work and care responsibilities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These movements are gaining ground across sectors to hold bigger companies accountable for extracting labour from workers while claiming to empower them. Exploitative practices across lesser-known platforms remain invisible and unchecked, with most continuing with business as usual. If workers’ collective voices are to transform industry-wide conditions, it becomes imperative to listen, amplify and act on their recommendations.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><em>Ambika Tandon and Abhishek Sekharan are researchers at the Centre for Internet and Society, where they study the impact of digital platforms on labour cultures in India. </em><em>Read the original published in Scroll <a class="external-link" href="https://scroll.in/article/1010724/are-indias-much-lauded-startups-failing-their-women-workers">here</a></em></p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/are-indias-much-lauded-startups-failing-their-women-workers'>https://cis-india.org/raw/are-indias-much-lauded-startups-failing-their-women-workers</a>
</p>
No publisherAbhishek Sekharan and Ambika TandonCISRAWResearchers at WorkRAW BlogFuture of Work2021-12-06T16:24:36ZBlog EntryPracticing Feminist Principles
https://cis-india.org/raw/practicing-feminist-principles
<b>AI can serve to challenge social inequality and dismantle structures of power.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Artificial intelligence systems have been heralded as a tool to purge our systems of social biases, opinions, and behaviour, and produce ‘hard objectivity’. However, on the contrary, it has become evident that AI systems can sharpen inequalities and bias by hard coding it. If left unattended, automated decision-making can be dangerous and dystopian.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>However, when appropriated by feminists, AI can serve to challenge social inequality and dismantle structures of power. There are many routes to such appropriation – resisting authoritarian uses through movement-building and creating our own alternative systems that harness the strength of AI towards achieving social change.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Feminist principles can be a handy framework to understand and transform the impact of AI systems. Key principles include reflexivity, participation, intersectionality, and working towards structural change.</strong> When operationalised, these principles can be used to enhance the capacities of local actors and institutions working towards developmental goals. They can also be used to theoretically ground collective action against the use of AI systems by institutions of power.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Reflexivity</strong> in the design and implementation of AI would imply a check on the privilege and power, or lack thereof, of the various stakeholders involved in an ecosystem. By being reflexive, designers can take steps to account for power hierarchies in the process of design. A popular example of the impact of power differentials is in national statistics. Collected largely by male surveyors speaking to male heads of households, national statistics can often undervalue or misrepresent women’s labour and health. See Data2x. “<a class="external-link" href="https://www.data4sdgs.org/sites/default/files/2017-09/Gender%20Data%20-%20Data4SDGs%20Toolbox%20Module.pdf">Gender Data: Sources, Gaps, and Measurement Opportunities</a>,” March 2017 and Statistics Division. “Gender, Statistics and Gender Indicators Developing a Regional Core Set of Gender Statistics and Indicators in Asia and the Pacific.” <a class="external-link" href="https://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/Framework-and-Indicator-set.pdf">United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 2013</a>. <span>AI systems would need to be reflexive of such gaps and plan steps to mitigate them.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Participation</strong> as a principle focuses on the process. A participatory process would account for the perspectives and lived experiences of various stakeholders, including those most impacted by its deployment. <strong>In the health ecosystem, for instance, this would include policymakers, public and private healthcare providers, frontline workers, and patients. A health information system with a bottom-up design would account for metrics of success determined by not just high-level organisations such as the World Health Organisation and national governments, but also by providers and frontline workers</strong>. Among other benefits, participation in designing AI systems also leads to buy-in and ownership of the technology right at the outset, promoting widespread adoption.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Intersectionality</strong> calls for addressing the social difference in the datasets, design, and deployment of AI. <strong>Research across fields has shown the perpetuation of inequality based on gender, income, race, and other characteristics through AI that is based on biased datasets.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The most critical principle is to ensure that AI systems are working to challenge inequality, including inequality perpetrated by patriarchal, racist, and capitalist systems. Aligning with feminist objectives means that systems that have objectives that do not align with feminist goals – such as those that enhance state capacities to surveil and police – would immediately be excluded. Systems that are designed to exclude and oppress will not work to further feminist goals, even if they integrate other progressive elements such as intersectional datasets or dynamic consent architecture (which would allow users to opt in and out easily).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We must work towards decreasing social inequality and achieve egalitarian outcomes in and through its practice. Thus, while explicitly feminist projects such as those that produce better datasets or advocate for participatory mechanisms are of course practicing this principle, I would argue that it is also practiced by any project that furthers feminist goals. Take for example AI projects that aim to reduce hate speech and misinformation online. Given that women and other marginalised groups are often at the receiving end of violence, such work can be classified as feminist even if it doesn’t actively target gender-based violence.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All technology is embedded in social relations. Practicing feminist principles in the design of AI only serves to account for these social relations and design better, more robust systems. <strong>Feminist practitioners can mobilise these to ensure a future of AI with inclusive, community-owned, participatory systems, combined with collective challenges to systems of domination.</strong></p>
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<h3>References</h3>
<p>Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066.</p>
<p>Link to the original article <a class="external-link" href="https://feministai.pubpub.org/pub/practicing-feminist-principles/release/1?readingCollection=c218d365">here</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/practicing-feminist-principles'>https://cis-india.org/raw/practicing-feminist-principles</a>
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No publisherambikaGender, Welfare, and PrivacyCISRAWResearchers at WorkArtificial Intelligence2021-12-07T00:54:54ZBlog EntryGender and gig work: Perspectives from domestic work in India
https://cis-india.org/raw/lse-ambika-tandon-october-21-2021-ambika-tandon-gender-and-gig-work
<b>Platforms have the potential to be instrumental in protecting workers rights, but the current platform design is not optimised to protect workers’ interests especially those of women in the gig economy, argues Ambika Tandon, a senior researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society in India and an author of the report on ‘Platforms, Power and Politics: Perspectives from Domestic and Care Work in India’.</b>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">Digital labour platforms, broadly defined as digital interfaces that enable the exchange of goods or services, have grown exponentially in cities across the world. In sectors such as transportation and delivery, Uber and similar platforms have achieved dominant status, while in other sectors platforms are still making inroads to transform consumption patterns. Researchers at India’s Centre for Internet and Society, sought to understand the impact platforms have had on the paid domestic and care work sector in India, given its importance for women workers. The workforce in this sector is largely constituted of women from Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi (or caste-oppressed) and low-income groups, with a long history of socioeconomic and legal devaluation and lack of recognition. In this context, platforms have positioned themselves as intermediaries that will improve wages and conditions of work, pushing the sector towards formalisation.</p>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">To assess the impact of digital platforms on processes of recruitment and placement and on organisation and conditions of work, we undertook 60 in-depth interviews between June and November 2019. We chose two metropolitan cities, New Delhi in north India and Bengaluru in south India, as our field sites. These are key nodes in the migration corridors of domestic workers in the country. We spoke to workers who were searching for hourly or regular work through platforms, representatives of platform companies and state and central governments, as well as domestic workers unions. We found that platform design breeds and amplifies exclusion and discrimination along the lines of gender and caste, among other social characteristics.</p>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Gig.png" alt="Gig" class="image-inline" title="Gig" /></p>
<h3 class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">Uber for domestic work</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We found that the function of digital platforms in the sector is contingent on the historical organisation of domestic work, rather than any fundamental re-organisation of the supply chain. U<a href="https://datasociety.net/library/beyond-disruption/">nlike in the global North</a>, platforms in India have thus far been unable to ‘gig-ify’, that is, break up most tasks that constitute domestic work – including child and elderly care and cooking – into short-term granular services that have been standardised. Domestic workers continue to find regular term full-time placements through marketplace platforms, which only connect employers to workers with no other role in determining work conditions. <a href="https://helpersnearme.com/">HelpersNearMe</a> and <a href="https://helper4u.in/">Helper4u</a> are examples of platforms that play this role by listing profiles of workers and making these available to employers. These placements are no different from work in the ‘offline’ sector, with complete informality and very little standardisation around hours, wages, and task constitution. As compared to this, on-demand platforms that offer short-term gigs (similar to the Uber model) have grown exponentially in the ‘deep’ cleaning segment by marketing it as a professional service with higher value than ‘regular’ cleaning services.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">The function of digital platforms in the sector is contingent on the historical organisation of domestic work, rather than any fundamental re-organisation of the supply chain.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cleaning gigs provided by on-demand companies have higher hourly wages than ‘regular’ cleaning services in the traditional sector. But accessing these opportunities requires workers to have regular access to a smartphone throughout the day, to be able to accept or reject tasks and receive payments through a mobile application or web-portal. Women workers from low income families <a href="https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/2018-10/A_Tough_Call.pdf">have very low levels of digital access</a>, with most phones being shared between families and controlled by male members. Also, the use of technical equipment such as vacuum cleaners and chemicals has led to deep cleaning being viewed as a masculine task. As a result, almost all cleaning workers we identified in the on-demand sector were men, even though cleaning is a feminised job role in the traditional economy. Some cleaning workers we spoke to did not identify as domestic workers at all, but rather viewed their work as holding a higher status than traditional cleaning. This trend of masculinisation of a job role coinciding with higher wages and social status has also been seen in other sectors globally, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html">such as software programming</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Gig.png" alt="Gig" class="image-inline" title="Gig" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Promises and risks of low-tech platforms</h3>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">One of the reasons that women workers are more likely to find work through marketplace platforms rather than on-demand agencies is because they only require workers to have a basic or feature phone for one-time registration, and subsequently to answer calls from potential employers or the platform. Most platforms in this category do not intervene in task allocation or terms of work, which are negotiated directly between workers and employers. Algorithms and digital interfaces then only facilitate matching, as opposed to on-demand work where all aspects of the job are determined by the platform. This allows women workers to register using shared family phones, or those of their friends, neighbours, and in the case of one of our respondents, her landlady’s phone number. These platforms then may be able to provide placement opportunities to workers who are unable to find work through word-of-mouth networks. This is especially crucial as a result of the unemployment crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, unlike with the on-demand model, these platforms do not offer increased wages or provide better conditions of work.</p>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">Although marketplace platforms provide an additional route into finding opportunities in the sector, they also codify employers’ biases through their design. All marketplace platforms and digital placement agencies we reviewed – upwards of 20 companies – provide demographic filters to employers for filtering workers’ profiles. These include information on workers’ gender, age, religion, state of origin, and in one case, even caste. While practices of employing workers based on demographic characteristics are <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/publications/WCMS_378058/lang--en/index.html">rampant in the sector historically</a>, platforms build them in by design and market them as a key feature of what they are able to offer employers. These open up direct avenues for employers to discriminate against workers from minority religions and oppressed castes. It also reinforces gendered occupational segregation, as employers seek out women workers for feminised roles such as cleaning and care work, and men for tasks such as gardening and plumbing.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">Power structures endemic to the domestic work sector continue to thrive in the platform economy, as do gender and caste-based occupational segregation.</p>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">Platforms have been making claims of formalising the informal sector, especially in global South economies, through increasing efficiency in matching workers to employers. Despite having the potential to be instrumental in protecting workers rights, currently platform design is not optimised to protect workers’ interests. Power structures endemic to the domestic work sector continue to thrive in the platform economy, as do gender and caste-based occupational segregation. To be able to nudge the sector towards formalisation, platforms need to directly intervene in power structures and co-design with workers, rather than merely functioning as digital recruiters. This could imply adopting practices such as removing demographic details where not relevant, introducing written contracts and minimum wage floors for placements, and addressing gender gaps in some segments of the digital economy.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><em>This work forms part of a project on ‘Platforms, Power and Politics: Perspectives from Domestic and Care Work in India’, supported by the Association for Progressive Communications. You can read more about the project <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-perspectives-from-domestic-and-care-work-in-india">here</a>, and find the full project report <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-pdf">here</a>. <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-perspectives-from-domestic-and-care-work-in-india"> </a></em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><em><em>This article gives the views of the author and does not represent the position of the Media@LSE blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.</em></em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The blog first published on LSE website can be accessed <a class="external-link" href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2021/10/21/gender-and-gig-work-perspectives-from-domestic-work-in-india/">here</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/lse-ambika-tandon-october-21-2021-ambika-tandon-gender-and-gig-work'>https://cis-india.org/raw/lse-ambika-tandon-october-21-2021-ambika-tandon-gender-and-gig-work</a>
</p>
No publisherambikaGenderGig WorkResearchers at Work2021-12-07T02:11:49ZBlog EntryThe State of the Internet's Languages Report
https://cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022
<b>The first-ever State of the Internet’s Languages Report was launched by Whose Knowledge? on February 23, 2022 (just after the International Mother Language day), along with research partners Oxford Internet Institute and the Centre for Internet and Society. This extraordinarily community-sourced effort, with over 100 people involved is now available online, with translations in multiple languages. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There are over 7000 (spoken and signed) languages in the world, but only a few can be fully experienced online. Challenges in accessing the internet and digital technologies in our preferred languages also means that a vast body of knowledge, especially from and by marginalised communities, is not represented and remains inaccessible to the world, thereby reiterating existing social inequalities. The State of the Internet's Languages report explores these and many other aspects related to ongoing efforts in creating a multilingual and multi-modal internet. Comprising both numbers and stories, the report features contributions in 13 languages, representing 22 language communities from 12 countries, and explores how communities across the world experience the internet.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">Read the full report <strong><a class="external-link" href="https://internetlanguages.org/en/">here</a>. </strong>See more details of the project<strong> <a class="external-link" href="https://whoseknowledge.org/initiatives/state-of-the-internets-languages/">here</a></strong></p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022'>https://cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022</a>
</p>
No publisherPuthiya Purayil SnehaRAW ResearchFeaturedResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2022-03-07T15:01:11ZBlog 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 EntryDigital Transition in Newspapers in India: A Pilot Study
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-transition-in-newspapers-in-india-pilot-study
<b>This pilot study situates itself at the intersection of global trends in news and journalism, and emergent practises of legacy print media in India. Our aim is to explore how legacy print newspapers are transitioning to the online space. The study will address questions in two thematic clusters: 1) the work of journalism, and 2) how the emergence of the digital, both as a source of news, and the medium of distribution, is shaping the work of newspaper journalists.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>This pilot study situates itself at the intersection of global trends in news and journalism, and emergent practises of legacy print media in India. Our aim is to explore how legacy print newspapers are transitioning to the online space. The study will address questions in two thematic clusters: 1) the work of journalism, and 2) how the emergence of the digital, both as a source of news, and the medium of distribution, is shaping the work of newspaper journalists, which has expanded to include various functions particular to the digital environment. And two, newsroom practices, which focus on the different modalities of convergence emerging in Indian newsrooms, and the organisational re-engineering that is being attempted in order to do journalism in a space where professional editors and journalists no longer have dominance with respect to the production and distribution of content.</p>
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<h2>News Culture in Transition</h2>
<p>The influx of digital technology combined with advancements in the field of telecommunications has had a disruptive effect on the global news industry. This year’s World Press Trends survey, released last month, reports that at least 40 per cent of global internet users read newspapers online and that in most developed countries, readership on digital platforms has surpassed that in print(WAN-INFRA, 2016). However, while revenue from print is said to be declining, it still makes up for more than 92 per cent of all newspapers revenues. At the same time, circulation increased by 4.9 per cent globally, mostly owing to the 7.8 per cent growth in numbers from India, China and other parts of Asia which made up 62% of the global average daily print unit circulation in 2015. This growth, the report suggests, is a function of low prices and expanding literacy in these markets.</p>
<p>While newspapers are a thriving industry in India, newspaper organisations and journalists are adopting new technology in order to remain relevant in a fast changing environment (Chattopadhyay 2012, Panda 2014). One one hand, they are swept up in the disruptive shifts in the global media economy, while on the other, they are in a unique position to convert this disruption into an opportunity.</p>
<p>The WPT report also notes, perhaps to the relief of those struggling to find a sustainable revenue model for digital news, that revenue from paid digital circulation has increased 30 per cent in 2015 and that one in five readers from the countries studied are willing to pay for online news. Revenue from digital advertising on the other hand, is growing at the slower pace of 7.3 per cent.</p>
<p>The report points out that there is a huge opportunity in mobile growth, with more than 70 per cent of readers in countries like USA, UK, Australia and Canada reading newspapers via a mobile device. Similar trends can be seen in India, as internet usage here is increasingly shaped by mobile growth (Google India Report, 2015). The fact that many digital-born news sites are adopting a mobile-first strategy (Sen and Nielsen, 2016) reflects this. More recently, Hindustan Times has hired a mobile editor to build a team of over 700 journalists specialising in mobile journalism.</p>
<p>Earlier this year the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism released a report on digital news start-ups in India (Sen and Nielsen, 2016), which explores how digital-born news start-ups are developing new editorial priorities, funding models and distribution strategies for news in the Indian digital media market. The study, which included observing the practices of The Quint, Scroll, The Wire, Khabar Lahariya, Daily Hunt and InShorts, concluded that India was not short of noteworthy experiments in journalism and online news. It also found that more news publishers are adopting mobile-first approaches, given that internet use in India is increasingly through mobile devices. More relevant to this study, the report established that social media has emerged as a tool for distribution and also stated that digital news start-ups are turning their focus to Hindi and local language content, in order to serve new audiences.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Studying the Effects of Convergence</h2>
<p>Their digital transition can be witnessed on two counts: publishing with digital and publishing for digital. The first involves a shift towards using the digital in the process of sourcing and publishing news. Workflow is managed by advanced content management systems, news articles contain multimedia and interactivity that require technical expertise, and the web and social media are increasingly becoming a reliable source of primary and secondary information for journalists. Second, publishing for the highly competitive comes with it’s own challenges. Distribution and consumption of news is increasingly being carried out on digital platforms, fostering a culture of interdependence that impacts news providers in previously unforeseen ways. As the decision to prioritise their digital products take hold, newsrooms themselves evolve to contain a diverse range of skill and expertise.</p>
<p>According to the 2015 Trends in Newsroom report, editors and senior reporters in newsrooms across the globe are experimenting with new ways of storytelling using podcasts, chat apps, automation, virtual reality and gamification, as well as dealing with new challenges with respect to source protection in the face of increased surveillance and intermediaries like Facebook and Google and reporting on culturally sensitive subjects(World Editors Forum, 2015).</p>
<p>The dynamics of these shifts in different countries may be shaped by several factors including the availability of human and financial resources, and pace of adoption of new technologies by the readers. In markets like Japan, complexities of the existing newspaper trade in the country act as a deterrent to technological change (Villi and Hayashi, 2014). Given the pace at which the media ecology of the web evolves; this transition is an ongoing process characterised by experiments in business, marketing and editorial strategies. A good example of such an experiment is last week’s decision by leading Indian newspapers, to make their content unavailable to those consumers who had ad-blocking software installed.</p>
<p>Such a shift also demands that we ask new questions of news in journalism. In his paper on studying computational and algorithmic journalism, C. W. Anderson tackles how sociologists and media scholars can frame inquiries related to journalism, given its computational turn (Anderson, 2012). He suggests using the added lens of ‘technology’ and ‘institutions and fields’ to Michael Schudson’s (Schudson, 2010) typology on the sociology of news which approaches the study of news from economic, political, cultural and organisational approaches. While most of these are self-explanatory, by institutions and fields, he refers to the ‘field of journalism’ as a whole and the different actors that shape it. This frame will examine the cultural power struggles that occur within the field and the way these struggles shape newsroom practises and news content (Anderson, 2012). Anderson adds that it is imperative to understand that the dynamics of the field of journalism are closely connected to nearby fields which now include computer science, web development and digital advertising.</p>
<p>We adopted a similar approach for our study. We began our inquiry by asking questions about how the emergence of digital technologies and the Internet are changing the process of producing news and how news organisations are rising up to the challenges posed by the digital space: what technologies and software are being used in the production and distribution of news in India, how are these technologies and softwares influencing the process of news production and distribution, how are the everyday practices and roles with respect to journalistic and editorial work transforming with their transition to digital, how do media agencies conceptualise and measure online viewership, and how do these metrics impact journalistic and editorial practices.</p>
<p>These questions led us to explore how leading legacy print newspapers across three language markets - English, Hindi and Malayalam - are making the transition from producing news stories exclusively for print to producing multimedia stories for the highly competitive and and diverse media ecology of the web.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Research Plan</h2>
<p>As already mentioned, the study is divided into two thematic clusters: <strong>work of journalism</strong> and <strong>newsroom practises</strong>.</p>
<p>The former will include asking questions related to strategies and skills of information gathering and validation, methods and tools of communicating a news story in an online-first (or simultaneously print and online) environment, personal engagements with audiences via social media websites, new methods of performance assessment and sources and practices of learning and capacity building.</p>
<p>The latter will explore how choice/emphasis of content and reportage is being re-shaped by the digital environment by inquiring into changes in editorial responsibilities, dynamics of decision making, news-making workflows, technical diversity of the work force, and interaction between news producers within an increasingly convergent newsroom.</p>
<p>This being a pilot study, we will conduct intensive interviews with journalists, editors, and management personnel associated with one newspaper in each language market: 1) <strong>Hindustan Times</strong> in English, 2) <strong>Dainik Jagran</strong> in Hindi, and 3) <strong>Malayala Manorama</strong> in Malayalam. We selected these three languages due to their large market sizes and geographic distribution, and selected the newspapers for either their pioneering efforts in adopting digital technologies, or their dominant position in terms of circulation.</p>
<p>The research team includes Zeenab Aneez and Sumandro Chattapadhyay from CIS, and RISJ Director of Research Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. Vibodh Parthasarathi from CCMG, Jamia Millia Islamia, will contribute to the study as an advisor.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>References</h2>
<p>Anderson, Christopher W. 2013. ‘Towards a Sociology of Computational and Algorithmic Journalism’. <em>New Media & Society</em> 15 (7): 1005-1021.</p>
<p>Bajaj, Ambrish. 2016. “Indian news sites lost 100 million page views and $500K in three weeks - and had no clue why” <a href="http://factordaily.com/indian-news-sites-lost-100-million-page-views-500k-three-weeks-no-clue/">http://factordaily.com/indian-news-sites-lost-100-million-page-views-500k-three-weeks-no-clue/</a>.</p>
<p>Chattopadhyay, Saayan. 2012. ‘Online Journalism and Election Reporting in India’. <em>Journalism Practice</em> 6 (3): 337-48. doi:10.1080/17512786.2012.663596.</p>
<p>Coddington, Mark. 2014. ‘Defending Judgment and Context in “original Reporting”: Journalists’ Construction of Newswork in a Networked Age’. <em>Journalism</em> 15 (6): 678–95.</p>
<p>– 2015. ‘The Wall Becomes a Curtain: Revisiting Journalism’s News–business Boundary’. <em>Boundaries of Journalism: Professionalism, Practices, and Participation</em>. New York: Routledge. [forthcoming]. Accessed from
<a href="http://markcoddington.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/CoddingtonFINAL.NewReferences.docx">http://markcoddington.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/CoddingtonFINAL.NewReferences.docx</a>.</p>
<p>Diakopoulos, Nicholas, and Mor Naaman. 2011. ‘Towards Quality Discourse in Online News Comments’. In <em>Proceedings of the ACM 2011 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work</em>, 133–42. ACM. <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1958844">http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1958844</a>.</p>
<p>Diakopoulos, Nicholas, Mor Naaman, and Funda Kivran-Swaine. 2010. ‘Diamonds in the Rough: Social Media Visual Analytics for Journalistic Inquiry’. In Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST), 2010 IEEE Symposium on, 115–22. IEEE. <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5652922">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5652922</a>.</p>
<p>Hermida, Alfred. 2010. ‘Twittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism.’ <em>Journalism Practice</em>. Special Issue on the Future of Journalism. 4 (3): 297-308. doi:10.1080/17512781003640703.</p>
<p>Jalarajan, Sony, Rohini Sreekumar, and Nithin Kalorth. 2014. ‘“Tweeting” the News: Twitter Journalism as a New Age Crowd News Disseminator in India’. <a href="http://euacademic.org/UploadArticle/317.pdf">http://euacademic.org/UploadArticle/317.pdf</a>.</p>
<p>Kilman, Larry. 2015. ‘World Press Trends: Newspaper Revenues Shift To New Sources - WAN-IFRA’. World Press Trends. June 1. <a href="http://www.wan-ifra.org/press-releases/2015/06/01/world-press-trends-newspaper-revenues-shift-to-new-sources">http://www.wan-ifra.org/press-releases/2015/06/01/world-press-trends-newspaper-revenues-shift-to-new-sources</a>.</p>
<p>K. J., Shashidar. 2016. ‘Hindustan Times has appointed a Mobile Editor’. Published online on Medianama.com. <a href="http://www.medianama.com/2016/07/223-hindustan-times-has-appointed-a-mobile-editor/">http://www.medianama.com/2016/07/223-hindustan-times-has-appointed-a-mobile-editor/</a>.</p>
<p>Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis, Frank Esser, and David Levy. 2013. ‘Comparative Perspectives on the Changing Business of Journalism and Its Implications for Democracy’. <em>The International Journal of Press/Politics</em> 18 (4): 383-91. doi:10.1177/1940161213497130.</p>
<p>Örnebring, Henrik. 2010. ‘Technology and Journalism-as-Labour: Historical Perspectives.’ <em>Journalism</em>. February. 11 (1): 57-74. doi: 10.1177/1464884909350644.</p>
<p>Panda, Jayanta K. 2014. ‘Impact of Media Convergence on Journalism: A Theoretical Perspective’. <em>Pragyaan</em>, 14.</p>
<p>Paulussen, Steve and Pieter Ugille. 2008. ‘User Generated Content in the Newsroom: Professional and Organisational Constraints on Participatory Journalism.’ <em>Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture</em>. 5(2): 24-41.</p>
<p>Royal, Cindy. 2010. ‘The Journalist as Programmer: A Case Study of The New York Times Interactive News Technology Department.’ Presented at the International Symposium in Online Journalism, The University of Texas at Austin, April 20. Accessed from <a href="https://online.journalism.utexas.edu/2010/papers/Royal10.pdf">https://online.journalism.utexas.edu/2010/papers/Royal10.pdf</a>.</p>
<p>Schudson, Michael. 2010. ‘Political Observatories, Databases * News in the Emerging Ecology of Public Information’. <em>Daedalus</em>. 139(2): 100–109. doi:10.1162/daed.2010.139.2.100.</p>
<p>Scott, Ben. 2005. ‘A Contemporary History of Digital Journalism.’ <em>Television & New Media</em>. February. 6(1): 89-126. doi: 10.1177/1527476403255824.</p>
<p>Sen, Arijit and Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis. 2016. <em>Digital Journalism Start-Ups in India</em>. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Accessed from: <a href="http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital%20Journalism%20Start-ups%20in%20India_0.pdf">http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital%20Journalism%20Start-ups%20in%20India_0.pdf</a>.</p>
<p>‘Nine top #TrendsinNewsrooms’. 2015. WAN-IFRA blog. <a href="http://blog.wan-ifra.org/2015/06/02/nine-top-trendsinnewsrooms-of-2015">http://blog.wan-ifra.org/2015/06/02/nine-top-trendsinnewsrooms-of-2015</a>.</p>
<p>Villi, M., and K. Hayashi. 2014. ‘“The Mission Is to Keep This Industry Intact”: Digital Transition in the Japanese Newspaper Industry’. In 64th Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference, Seattle, WA, 22-26 May.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-transition-in-newspapers-in-india-pilot-study'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-transition-in-newspapers-in-india-pilot-study</a>
</p>
No publisherzeenabDigital NewsDigital KnowledgeResearchDigital MediaResearchers at Work2016-07-20T11:43:53ZBlog Entry