Centre for Internet and Society

Reflecting from the Beyond

maesy — 2015-05-14T12:21:29Z

After going ‘beyond the digital’ with Blank Noise through the last nine posts, the final post in the series reflects on the understanding gained so far about youth digital activism and questions one needs to carry in moving forward on researching, working with, and understanding digital natives.

Throughout the series, I have argued the following points. Firstly, the 21^st century society is changing into a network society and that youth movements are changing accordingly. I have outlined the gaps in the current perspectives used in understanding the current form and proposed to approach the topic by going beyond the digital: from a youth standpoint, exploring all the elements of social movement, and based on a case study in the Global South – the uber cool Blank Noise community who have embraced the research with open arms. The methodology has allowed me to identify the newness in youth’s approach to social change and ways of organizing. Although I do not mean to generalize, there are some points where the case study resonates with the broader youth movement of today. In this concluding post, I will reflect on how the research journey has led me to rethink several points about youth, social change, and activism.

While social movements are commonly imagined to aim for concrete structural change, many youth movements today aim for social and cultural change at the intangible attitudinal level. Consequently, they articulate the issue with an intangible opponent (the mindset) and less-measurable goals. Their objective is to raise public awareness, but their approach to social change is through creating personal change at the individual level through engagement with the movement. Hence, ‘success’ is materialized in having as many people as possible involved in the movement. This is enabled by several factors.

The first is the Internet and new media/social technologies, which is used as a site for community building, support group, campaigns, and a basis to allow people spread all over the globe to remain involved in the collective in the absence of a physical office. However, the cyber is not just a tool; it is also a public space that is equally important with the physical space. Despite acknowledging the diversity of the public engaged in these spaces, youth today do not completely regard them as two separate spheres. Engaging in virtual community has a real impact on everyday lives; the virtual is a part of real life for many youth (Shirky, 2010). However, it is not a smooth ‘space of flows’ (Castells, 2009) either. Youth actors in the Global South do recognize that their ease in navigating both spheres is the ability of the elite in their societies, where the digital divide is paramount. The disconnect stems from their acknowledgement that social change must be multi-class and an expression of their reflexivity in facing the challenge.

The second enabling factor is its highly individualized approach. The movement enables people to personalize their involvement, both in terms of frequency and ways of engagement as well as in meaning-making. It is an echo of the age of individualism that youth are growing up in, shaped by the liberal economic and political ideologies in the 1990s India and elsewhere (France, 2007). Individualism has become a new social structure, in which personal decisions and meaning-making is deemed as the key to solve structural issues in late modernity (Ibid).

In this era, young people’s lives consist of a combination of a range of activities rather than being focused only in one particular activity (Ibid). This is also the case in their social and political engagement. Very few young people worldwide are full-time activists or completely apathetic, the mainstream are actually involved in ‘everyday activism’ (Bang, 2004; Harris et al, 2010). These are young people who are personalizing politics by adopting causes in their daily behaviour and lifestyle, for instance by purchasing only Fair Trade goods, or being very involved in a short term concrete project but then stopping and moving on to other activities. The emergence of these everyday activists are explained by the dwindling authority of the state in the emergence of major corporations as political powers (Castells, 2009) and youth’s decreased faith in formal political structures which also resulted in decreased interest in collectivist, hierarchical social movements in favour of a more individualized form of activism made easier with Web 2.0 (Harris et al, 2010).

A collective of everyday activists means that there are many forms of participation that one can fluidly navigate in, but it requires a committed leadership core recognized through presence and engagement. As Clay Shirky (2010: 90) said, the main cultural and ethical norm in these groups is to ‘give credit where credit is due’. Since these youth are used to producing and sharing content rather than only consuming, the aforementioned success of the movement lies on the leaders’ ability to facilitate this process. The power to direct the movement is not centralized in the leaders; it is dispersed to members who want to use the opportunity.

This form of movement defies the way social movements have been theorized before, where individuals commit to a tangible goal and the group engagement directed under a defined leadership. The contemporary youth movement could only exist by staying with the intangible articulation and goal to accommodate the variety of personalized meaning-making and allow both personal satisfaction and still create a wider impact; it will be severely challenged by a concrete goal like advocating for a specific regulation. Not all youth there are ‘activist’ in the common full-time sense, for most everyday activists their engagement might not be a form of activism at all but a productive and pleasurable way to use their free time - or, in Clay Shirky’s term, cognitive surplus (2010).

Revisiting my initial intent to put the term activism under scrutiny, I acknowledge this as a call for scholars to re-examine the concepts of activism and social movements through a process of de-framing and re-framing to deal with how youth today are shaping the form of movements. Although the limitations of this paper do not allow me to directly address the challenge, I offer my own learning from this process for the quest of future researchers.

The way young people today are reimagining social change and movements reiterate that political and social engagement should be conceived in the plural. Instead of “Activism” there should be “activisms” in various forms; there is not a new form replacing the older, but all co-existing and having the potential to complement each other. Allowing people to cope with street sexual harassment and create a buzz around the issue should complement, not replace, efforts made by established movements to propose a legislation or service provision from the state. This is also a response I offer to the proponents of the aforementioned “doubt” narrative.

I share the more optimistic viewpoint about how these new forms are presenting more avenues to engage the usually apathetic youth into taking action for a social cause. However, I also acknowledge that the tools that have facilitated the emergence of this new form of movement have existed for less than a decade; thus, we still have to see how it evolves through the years.

Hence, I also find the following questions to be relevant for proponents of the “hope” narrative. Social change needs to cater to the most marginalized in the society, but as elaborated before, the methods of engagement both on the physical and virtual spaces are still contextual to the middle class. Therefore, how can the emerging youth movements evolve to reach other groups in the society? Since most of these movements are divorced from existing movements, how can they synergize with existing movements to propel concrete change? These are open questions that perhaps will be answered with time, but my experience with Blank Noise has shown that these actors have the reflexivity required to start exploring solutions to the challenges.

The research started from a long-term personal interest and curiosity. In this journey, I have found some answers but ended up with more questions that will also stay with me in the long term. As a parting note before, I would like to share a quote that will accompany my ongoing reflection on these questions.

My advice to other young activists of the world: study and respect history... but ultimately break the mould. There have never been social media tools like this before. We are the first generation to test them out: to make the mistakes but also the breakthrough.

(Tammy Tibbetts, 2010)

This is the tenth and final post in the Beyond the Digital series, a research project that aims to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism conducted by Maesy Angelina with Blank Noise under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.

References:

Bang, H.P. (2004) ‘Among everyday makers and expert citizens’. Accessed 21 September 2010. http://www.sam.kau.se/stv/ksspa/papers/bang.pdf

Castells, M. (2009) Communication Power. New York: Oxford University Press.

France, A. (2007) Understanding Youth in Late Modernity. Berkshire: Open University Press.

Harris, A., Wyn, J., and Younes, S. (2010) ‘Beyond apathetic or activist youth: ‘Ordinary’ young people and contemporary forms of participaton’, Young Vol. 18:9, pp. 9-32

Shirky, C. (2010) Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. London: Penguin Press

Image source:

http://blog.blanknoise.org/2009/08/street-signs.html

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/reflecting-from-the-beyond

Colour Me Political

nishant — 2011-08-04T10:34:27Z

What are the tools that Digital Natives use to mobilise groups towards a particular cause? How do they engage with crises in their immediate environments? Are they using their popular social networking sites and web 2.0 applications for merely entertainment? Or are these tools actually helping them to re-articulate the realm of the political? Nishant Shah looks at the recent Facebook Colour Meme to see how new forms of political participation and engagement are being initiated by young people across the world.

On Facebook, now acclaimed as one of the most popular social networking sites in the world, the one thing that almost all the users engage is, in updating their status updates. These updates can be varied – capturing personal moods and emotions, reporting on things that strike one in the course of a normal day, offering political opinions, suggesting movies and books to friends, and often making public announcements of important events in life. The updates appear as a live feed, updates in almost-real time, letting people in networks connect, know, discuss and share information about their personal lives. Often, to outsiders, these updates would appear pointless; I remember somebody asking me, “But why would I want to know what you had for breakfast?” Many status updates indeed border on the everyday and ordinary, of no interest to anybody but the immediate networks.

However, in the first half of January in 2010, Facebook users across the world started observing a strange pattern. Many people in their networks were making one word status updates with the name of a colour. Just that. A colour. Facebook users woke up to find “Green!”, “Red!”, “White!” “Black!” in their live feed. No explanations and a cryptic silence. It was a viral phenomenon, with the colours appearing across the board, in different parts of the world, spanning all languages, cultures, and contexts. Also, it was observed, almost all of the users putting this update, were women. It created a lot of discussion, speculation, curiosity and conspiracy theories. Blog posts discussing this phenomenon started appearing. People were twitting about it. There was an element of surprise, and perhaps of frustration, because the people making those colour updates were refusing to offer any explanations.

Eventually, after a few internet years (about 3 days, I think!) the word got out. It was a meme. A meme is an internet gene (because it replicates) which spreads virally, through different social communication and networking sites. It invites people to participate in a series of actions, either to answer a question or perform a certain act, and pass it along. The colour updates were a part of the meme which was doing the rounds on the internet:

"Some fun is going on.... just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls, no men .... It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status."

What the message managed to do was take an important cause and through fun, and play, and a little bit of excitement, got young women around the world to ponder on the possibility, cure and prevention of breast cancer. What was just a personal update capturing space suddenly became a place of political mobilisation and participation. Both, men and women, reading those colours, took a moment to think about breast cancer and spread the word among their friends. Discussions, which started with curiosity, ended with a sombre note. While there are speculative theories about how some women in Detroit started this particular meme, there is no credible source of information.

What is particularly of interest, is how, without any apparent funding, or organisation, or the infrastructure that generally accompanies such behemoth projects, this viral meme captured more attention and had more people participating than most campaigns started by traditional activists or governments. What Facebook, and other spaces like it offer, is the infrastructure and the potential for such massive movements. As the Digital Natives grow up with new technologies, they change the landscape of political and social transformation. And the cryptic colour updates is telling us the story of how things will change in the future.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dn2

Survey : Digital Natives with a cause?

pushpa — 2011-08-04T10:35:43Z

This survey seeks to consolidate information about how young people who have grown up with networked technologies use and experience online platforms and tools. It is also one of the first steps we have taken to interact with Digital Natives from around the world — especially in emerging information societies — to learn, understand and explore the possibilities of change via technology that lie before the Digital Natives. The findings from the survey will be presented at a multi-stakeholder conference later this year in The Netherlands.

The Centre for Internet and Society, in collaboration with Hivos' Knowledge Programme, launched the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" Programme in 2008. After the initial study (click here for a free download), we are now gathering responses from young users of technology to help us understand, document and support different practices aimed at social transformation and political participation more efficiently.

We believe that the world is changing very fast and that the rise of Internet technologies has a lot to do with it. As young users of technology (as opposed to young users who use technology) adopt, adapt and use these new technologised tools to interact with their environment, new ways of effecting change emerge. This survey is an attempt to capture some of the information which gives us an insight into who the people are, using these technologies, the ways in which they use them and what their perceptions and experiences are.

The survey will not take more than 7 minutes of your time but it will help us get a better sense of the way things are.

Please click here so start the survey.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/survey-digital-natives-with-a-cause

The Digital Tipping Point

maesy — 2011-08-04T10:36:56Z

Is Web 2.0 really the only reason why youth digital activism is so successful in mobilizing public engagement? A look into the transformation of Blank Noise’s blog from a one-way communication medium into a site of public dialogue and collaboration reveals the crucial factors behind the success.

What images popped in your head when you hear the term ‘digital activism’? Those that popped in mine are of campaigns that originated in the Internet, perhaps with a blog, a Youtube video, or a Facebook group, mobilizing people to take part in a certain action to advocate for a cause or to respond to a specific event. Whether the request is to sign a petition for a new legislation or to wear a specific colour on a specific day, the campaigns also ask people to spread the message, usually responded by re-tweets, status updates, and link-shares that appear on my timeline. These campaigns, like the famous Wear Red for Burma or the Pink Chaddi, are usually responses to certain events and dwindle after the events have passed.

With its four blogs, two Facebook groups, a YouTube channel, and a Twitter account, at first glance Blank Noise certainly resembles the images in my head. However, they popped one by one as I got to know Blank Noise better. For one, as I have shared before, Blank Noise was not a response to a specific event but rather the long term, ongoing, structural problem of street sexual harassment. For another, street interventions started as the main core of Blank Noise and have remained a crucial element despite its prolific online presence. Blank Noise did not start in the Internet nor did it immediately turn to Web 2.0 for its mobilization.

The main blog was created soon after Blank Noise started in 2003 to serve as an archive, information center, and space to announce future street events. The diverse online campaigns, lively discussions in the comment section of blog posts, and abundant blog post contributions by people who have experienced, witnessed, or committed street sexual harassment started after two unexpected events that I call ‘the digital tipping point’.

The first was when Jasmeen Patheja, the founder of Blank Noise, started uploading pictures of her harasser, taken with her mobile phone, to the blog in March 2005. The first picture was of a man who had stalked and pestered her for coffee despite her rejection to his unwelcomed advances. While some readers applauded her action, many challenged the post. How is the action different from “Can I buy you a drink?” Can it trigger the change wanted, especially since the guy might not even have access to the Internet? Is the action of publicly labeling the man as a perpetrator of street sexual harassment ethical, especially since the man has not been proven guilty?

These challenges then spiraled into a long discussion (72 comments!) about the grey areas of street sexual harassment and the ethics around confronting perpetrators. Although Blank Noise still continue to upload snapshots of harassers (this intervention is called ‘Unwanted’), their pictures have since then been blurred until the face is unrecognizable, including the one in the original post. This event was when Jasmeen realized that the blog also has the potential of being a space for discussions, opinions, and debates – the public conversation that Blank Noise aims for.

The second tipping point was when one of Blank Noise volunteers proposed an idea of a blogathon to commemorate the International Women’s Day in 2006. Blogging had become a major trend in India around 2004 and the blogathon basically asked bloggers around India to write about their experience with street sexual harassment in their private blogs and link the post to the Blank Noise blog. The bloggers invited were both women and men, people who have either experienced, witnessed, or committed street sexual harassment. The blogathon was an immense success, perhaps due to the frustration on the silence and downplay of street sexual harassment into eve teasing. Suddenly, eve teasing became a booming topic on the web and Blank Noise received media and (mostly the cyber) public attention.

This is when the idea of online interventions started. In the following year, Blank Noise created the first of its blogs that consist entirely of contributions from the public: the Action Heroes blog, a growing compilation of women’s experiences in dealing with street sexual harassment. It is then followed by Blank Noise Guys and Blank Noise Spectators, which respectively concentrates on the experiences of men and people who have witnessed street sexual harassment. Other than the community blogs, the main blog also introduced collaborative online campaigns in 2008, such as the ‘Museum of Street Weapons’ (a poster project that explores how women uses everyday objects to defend themselves against street sexual harassment) and ‘Blank Noise This Place’ (a photo collection of places where street sexual harassment occurs). These interventions were not only online; they were also collaborative and invited the public to participate.

These tipping points are intriguing not only for being the triggers to Blank Noise’s transformation to one of the most important digital activism in India (Mishra, 2010), but also for the reason why they are successful in doing so: they are able to attract public participation.

The first tipping point was able to attract people to participate by commenting on a post. The said post was very simple; it consists of a picture and a one-paragraph text that depicts a conversation between the harasser and the woman:

“stalker no. 1: " Excuse me, have we met before?" machlee: no Stalker no. 1: Yes we have! On commercial street! I work in a call centre. I am a science graduate." machlee: why are you telling me all this? stalker no. 1: can I have coffee with you? machlee: can i photograph you? stalker no. 1: yes! sure you can! stalker no.1: blah blah blah” (Patheja, 2005)

Having been used to NGO pamphlets and blog posts, I have come to equate discussion on sexual harassment as a very serious discussion with long text and formal language. This post is so different from what I was used to, but it was clear to me that even though the language was casual, the issue and intention were serious. The casual presentation spoke to me “we would like to share our thoughts and activities with you” rather than “we are an established organization and this is what we do”. It is not the space of professionals, but passionate people. As a blogger myself, I recognize the space as being one of my peer’s and immediately felt more attracted and comfortable to jump into the conversation.

The second tipping point attracted the more active, substantial participation than commenting; many people actually created texts, photos, or posters for Blank Noise. It was possible because Blank Noise opened itself. Jasmeen opened up to an idea of a volunteer, who opened up to the possibilities offered by the cybersphere. Instead of depending on a core team to conduct an intervention, Blank Noise opened up to a project that entirely depended on the public’s response to be successful. Moreover, Blank Noise opened up to diverse points of views and many types of experiences with street sexual harassment.

It is widely acknowledged that the success of a digital activism lies on its ability to attract public collaboration; however, the digital tipping points of Blank Noise underline several important factors behind the ability. Attracting public engagement is not always a result of a meticulous pre-planned intervention. On the contrary, it might spawn from unintentional events that welcome diverse points of view, adopt a peer-to-peer attitude, invite contributions, and most importantly, touched an issue that is very important for many different people. Web 2.0 is an enabling tool and site for dialogue, but it is certainly not the only reason behind the success of digital activism in galvanizing youth’s engagement.

This is the fifth post in the Beyond the Digital series, a research project that aims to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism conducted by Maesy Angelina with Blank Noise under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.

Reference:

Mishra, G. (2010) ‘The State of Citizen Media in India in Three Short Ideas’. Accessed

19 May 2010 < http://www.gauravonomics.com/blog/the-state-of-citizen-media-in-india-in-three-short-ideas/>

Patheja, J. (2005) ‘Unwanted. Section 354 IPC.’ Accessed 25 October 2010. < http://blog.blanknoise.org/2005/03/stalker-no.html>

SOURCE OF PICTURE

http://blog.blanknoise.org/2005/07/he-placed-his-hand-on-my-breast-and.html

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-digital-tipping-point

The Class Question

maesy — 2011-09-22T12:45:35Z

Blank Noise aims to be as inclusive as possible and therefore does not identify any specific target groups. Yet, the spaces and the methods they occupy do attract certain kinds of volunteers and public. This raises the class question: what are the dilemmas around class on digital interventions? Are they any different from the dilemmas on street interventions?

My first click to Blank Noise’s main blog was a surprise. Having read so many media coverage about them, I expected to see a professional, minimalist looking website like other women’s organizations[1] where the menu is immediately visible. Instead, I have arrived at the most common and basic form of blogging: the personal blog.

I was greeted by entries on their latest thoughts and activities with photos and text with red font against a black background. I scrolled down a long list of permanent links on the right side of the site and arrived only at its Frequently Asked Questions link on the 28^th item while it would be one of the easiest to spot in other websites. For me, this discovery said, “we would like to share our thoughts and activities with you” rather than “we are an established organization and this is what we do”. It is not the space of professionals, but passionate people. As a blogger myself, I recognize the space as being one of my peer’s and immediately felt more attracted to it.

Reflecting on my own position, my familiarity with the space is due to my background as a young, urban, educated, English-speaking woman for whom the Internet is a key part of life. My ‘peers’ who are also attracted to this place apparently share the same background with me. The main demography of Blank Noise’s volunteers, almost equally men and women, are those between 16-35 years, urban, and English speaking (Patheja, 2010). My interviewees were all at least university educated, some in the U.S. Ivy league, and are proficient users of social media, most of them being bloggers or Twitter and Facebook users.

This dominant base reflects the discourse on the ‘youth of India’, which represents only a fragment of India’s vast population of young people. The two narratives on the youth of India are described by Sinha-Kerkhoff (2005) as ‘the haves’ and ‘have-nots’, a reflection on the broader discourse on the deep social economic inequities in India. ‘The have-nots’ are the majority of Indian youth who are struggling with the basic issues of livelihood, health, and education, while ‘the haves’ are painted as the children of liberalization: the mostly urban, middle class, technologically savvy, and highly educated students and young professionals up who maintain a youthful lifestyle up to their 30s.

Although ‘the haves’ only consist 10% of the total youth population, they are the ones identified as the youth of India by popular discourses. Lukose (2008) explained this by stating that youth as a social category in India is linked to the larger sense of India’s transformation into an emerging global economic powerhouse together with Brazil, Russia, and China (popular as BRIC) after its liberal economic reform in the 1990s. India’s information and technology industry is spearheading this transformation, thus it feeds into the discourse of youth as Digital Natives.

Although there are exceptions to this dominant demography, they are far fewer. Does this then mean that Blank Noise is ‘contextually empowering’ (Gajjala, 2004), given that it reaches only ‘the haves’ due to the digital divide and their sites of participation?

The classed nature of the virtual public space is something Blank Noise fully acknowledges. Some interviewees stated that this is why street interventions are so important; they reach people who may not be Internet users. However, people who have been involved in Blank Noise for more than two years acknowledged that class issues are also present in the physical public space.

Dev Sukumar, one of Blank Noise’s male volunteers, explained to me that the British colonial legacy still shape the way public spaces in Bangalore are organized. The commercial areas in the city centre where Blank Noise interventions were initially organized, such as M.G. Road and Brigade Road, are dominantly inhabited by English speaking people, but in other parts of the city there are many who can only speak the local language, Kannada. After recognizing this, Blank Noise organized street interventions in such places, like the Majestic bus stand, and making flyers and stencils in Kannada. In order to do this, Blank Noise specifically called for volunteers who knew the local language.

The interventions might be in a non-elite space, but the main actors remain those from the middle class. Hemangini articulated the class issue in Blank Noise, saying “Like it or not, a lot of the people in Blank Noise are from the middle class and a lot of the people we have been talking to on the streets are of a certain class. What is the ethics in a middle class woman asking ‘why are you looking at me?’ to lower class men? It is if we already assumed that most perpetrators are lower class men while it is definitely not true.”

The reflexivity Hemangini shows led me to rethink the assumptions around digital activism. It is often dismissed as catering only to the middle class, privileging only one side of the digital divide. But then again, the class issue is also present in the physical sphere. If middle class youth mostly attracts their peers in their digital activism, is it problematic by default or is it only problematic when there is no accompanying reflection on the political implications of such engagement? How is it more problematic than the ethical dilemma of middle class people addressing their ‘Others’ in street interventions? Is the problem related to the sphere of activism (virtual versus physical), or is it more about the methods of engagement and the reflexivity required for it?

Hemangini told me that her dilemma is being shared and discussed with other members in Blank Noise’s core group, consisting of those who dedicate some time to reflect on the growth and development of the collective. They have no answer just yet, but they intend to continue reflecting on it. I have no idea what their future reflection looks like, but I do know that the class implications of the cyber sphere will be resolved with more than simply taking interventions to the streets. Considering that the actors of youth digital activism are, like it or not, urban, middle class, educated digital natives, Blank Noise’s reflection will indeed be relevant for all who is interested in this issue. And if you have your own thoughts on the strategies to resolve this dilemma, why don’t you drop a comment and reflect together with us?

This is the seventh post in the Beyond the Digital series, a research project that aims to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism conducted by Maesy Angelina with Blank Noise under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.

References:

Gajjala, R. (2004) Cyber selves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women. Walnut Creek: Almitra Press.

Lukose, R. (2008) ‘The Children of Liberalization: Youth Agency and Globalization

in India’, in Dolby, N. and Rizvi, F. (eds.) Youth Moves: Identities and Education in a Global Perspective, pp. 133-150.

Patheja, J. (2010) Case Study: Blank Noise. Accessed 7 November 2010 <http://www.indiasocial.in/case-study-blank-noise/>

Sinha-Kerkhoff, K. (2006) ‘Youth Activism in India’, in Sherrod, L.R., Flanagan, C.A.

and Kassimir, R. (eds.) Youth Activism: An International Encyclopedia, pp. 340-348. London: Greenwood Press.

Source for picture: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/photo.php?fbid=73473166363&set=o.2703755288&pid=2095143&id=687356363

[1] For example: http://www.jagori.org/ , one of the most established women organizations in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/the-class-question