Centre for Internet and Society

Nishant Shah: “We will develop new textual and visual practices to facilitate the transfer of knowledge worldwide”

praskrishna — 2014-03-06T12:05:45Z

Today we are starting with a new format for the blog of the Hybrid Publishing Lab. There will be an interview series with our International Tandem Partners giving an insight on their current work, interest and cooperation with HP.

Read Dr. Shah's interview by Julia Rehfeldt published on the website of Hybrid Publishing Lab

First up is our Tandem Partner Dr. Nishant Shah, Research Associate at Common Media Lab and Hybrid Publishing Lab. He is the co-founder and Director-Research at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India.

Julia Rehfeldt: Dr. Shah, can you introduce yourself briefly und tell us what you are currently concerned with in your research?

Dr. Nishant Shah: This is a question that has always flummoxed me. I have spent all of the last decade trying to figure out how to explain what I do and what my research concerns are and I never have one straightforward answer to give.

The easiest way to answer this would be to say that I wear many hats. I am deeply interested in looking at how the digital shift is changing the way in which we see the world around us. And so my work spans several sectors, disciplines and intersections, trying to look at the mechanics and logics, logistics and structures of the world that we live in.

At the Hybrid Publishing Lab, as an International Tandem Partner, I look at the knowledge infrastructures of the digital times. I learn from the research and practice of my colleagues to explore the future of academic publishing, and I try to critically think through questions of Intellectual Property, Open Access movements, and concerns of Digital Humanities in the global knowledge circuits. Apart from that, I like to translate my research and knowledge for different stakeholders, to work with practitioners, policy makers, artists, technologists, hackers, legal scholars and development actors at the intersection of Internet and Society. As the Director – Research at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, I have been trying to develop South-based global networks that examine the conditions of being human, being social, and being political in emerging network societies. I also enjoy exploring new forms and content of pedagogy for students in and out of the classrooms, to develop new conditions of learning through and with digital media and cultures.

Rehfeldt: What was the most significant change, talk or lecture you experienced in 2013 that had an impact on the rights of open access or on your personal insights on that matter?

Dr. Shah: I think, on a very personal and a professional level, the death of Aaron Swartz and the horrific face of Intellectual Property tyrannies that surround the academic publishing which ironically focuses on questions of human liberty, values, equity and access, has had the most dramatic impact on me. Aaron Swartz committed suicide just over a year ago, and the conditions of his persecution, on the behalf of the American legal system, the intellectual property conglomerates and a globally reputed university that claims to build better futures for our digital worlds, has shocked most of us.

While playing the blame-game is redundant now – it is not going to bring back a young man who only believed in dreams of utopic sharing and commons – it is important to remind us that these battles of information and intellectual property are not for niche circles. We are increasingly living in worlds where more and more of our everyday life is being mediated, mitigated and measured in big data and quantified services.

We don’t only live in information age, but we also live through information, constantly producing data. And the technologies we use, the applications we live with, the platforms we live on, the social networks that we belong to, all take our information and data and copyright it so that we have almost no rights over it. This problem becomes only more amplified in the traditional academic knowledge industries where publicly funded research and practice gets hidden behind paywalls so that it remains in niche circles of access to those with privilege. We are reaching a stage where not only our formal knowledge but even our thoughts, desires and memories are quickly being contained in forms and formats that are no longer accessible to us.

2013 has shown that the more we lose control of our data, the more we lose battles of access to our collective knowledge, the more we concede our rights to information, which is the de facto currency of our times, the more we are going to be at the service of private and governmental conglomerates that shall control and contain the possibilities of radical transformation and change in our future.

Rehfeldt: You are currently involved in setting up a ‘Making Change’ project based on your paper ‘Whose change is it, anyway?’ published April 2013. Can you tell us what prompted your reflections in that paper, and what you seek to achieve with the project?

Dr. Shah: The ‘Making Change‘ project is an example of the multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary, knowledge methods and production that I am interested in. It is shaped by the framework proposed in the ‘Whose Change is it anyway?’ concept paper that proposes that in order to look at the change processes around us, we need to change the ways in which forms, formats, conditions, structures, processes, and life-cycles of knowledge practices need to be re-examined. The project aims to build conceptual frameworks by engaging different change actors in digital storytelling to understand how we analyse and examine the radical processes of change in the times to come.

Making Change is a knowledge exploration through which we seek to unpack the form, function, and practice of social and political change in emerging network societies. With this project, we will map existing traditional and innovative change practices through new knowledge methods and propose hybrid ways of building a knowledge commons that helps consolidate, curate and disseminate these new insights for change actors.

Hence, we will create a Knowledge Commons. The Knowledge Commons is a mash-up of resources, which we will set in motion through four distinct processes of getting insight into the mechanics, logistics, and catalysts of social and political change:

1. In this project, we will use new methods of collaborative knowledge production methods that bring in different knowledge stakeholders and actors to reflect upon and consolidate their existing projects.

2. We will develop new textual and visual practices to facilitate the transfer of knowledge worldwide.

3. We will work with existing knowledge communities – academia, policy, and practice – to build pedagogic resources for training knowledge visionaries about the future of change.

4. We will produce, curate and disseminate knowledge prototypes through storytelling to debate, question and re-energize discussions on important keywords and concepts in the change narratives.

The core of the Knowledge Commons will consist of new narratives and prototypes of how these narratives might help other approaches for social and political change. We shall further organize these narratives to train and help social change actors to develop better strategies of working within digital and network societies. The Knowledge Commons seeks to generate cross-fertilization between different networks of knowledge actors to generate critical insights to gain access, exchange and contribute to knowledge dialogues.

The Knowledge Commons is not just an online platform, but is built up through a combination of knowledge generating workshops (production sprints) as well as reflections, which are curated through online dialogues and critique. The production sprints invite the key change actors from our networks to incite conversations inspired by the thought piece ‘Whose Change is it Anyway?’. The conversations will be further annotated by the ‘Making Change’ white paper which offers more complex and nuanced ways of looking at the contexts, catalyst and processes of change embedded in particular movements.

Rehfeldt: There has been a lot of talk about ‘Twitter revolutions’ and ‘Blackberry riots’ – what would you say do digital technologies contribute to contemporary social movements and political action in the public sphere more generally?

Dr. Shah: I have spent some time trying to do away with the binaries and polarised responses that phrases like ‘Twitter Revolutions’ and ‘Blackberry Riots’ produce. They seem to bring pre-defined responses – they either suggest that the emergence of new digital technologies and applications, by their very presence, are producing radical change practices. They deny the historical conditions, the political contexts, the social and cultural practices of the region, and the structures of inequity and injustice that are often characteristic to particularly geographies and cultures. They refuse to understand that the digital does not merely produce things new – instead, it helps extend the existing movements of social and political change and are a part of a much larger paradigm shift. They alienate existing human endeavours of change and create false dichotomies like the old and new activisms, or traditional and digital movements.

I think it is better to understand that the digital produces ruptures and interruptions in the narrative of change; but the digital also has historical continuities which need to be better embedded in the geographical and political contexts of change. At the end of the day, we need to debunk the idea that digital activism around the globe is the same. Just because everybody uses Twitter to orchestrate people’s movements in different countries, it doesn’t mean that they are doing the same thing or in the same way. We need to do away with the homogenizing rhetoric of the digital that presumes that digital cultures are universal, and learn to look at the intersections of life that inform and are shaped by the emergence of the digital technologies.

Rehfeldt: To finish up, is there an interesting online article, or video you have read or seen lately which you could suggest to our readers?

Dr. Shah: I think one of the most interesting collections around digital and new activism last year was the anthology edited by Kees Biekart: Development and Change – Special Issue: FORUM 2013

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/nishant-shah-we-will-develop-new-textual-and-visual-practices-to-facilitate-the-transfer-of-knowledge-worldwide

Institute for Internet & Society 2014, Pune

samantha — 2014-04-07T11:31:23Z

Last month, activists, journalists, researchers, and members of civil society came together at the 2014 Institute for Internet & Society in Pune, which was hosted by CIS and funded by the Ford Foundation. The Institute was a week long, in which participants heard from speakers from various backgrounds on issues arising out of the intersection of internet and society, such as intellectual property, freedom of expression, and accessibility, to name a few. Below is an official reporting summarizing sessions that took place.

Day One

February 11, 2014

Time	Detail
9.30 a.m. – 9.40 a.m.	Introduction: Sunil Abraham, Executive Director Centre for Internet and Society
10.00 a.m. – 10.15 a.m.	Introduction of Participants
10.15 a.m. – 12.00 p.m.	Internet Governance and Privacy: Sunil Abraham
12.00 p.m. – 12.30 p.m.	Tea-break
12.30 p.m. – 1.00 p.m.	Keynote: Bishakha Datta, Filmmaker and Activist, and Board Member, Wikimedia Foundation
1.00 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.	Lunch
1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.	Participant Presentations
3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.	Tea Break
3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.	Histories, Bodies and Debates around the Internet: Nishant Shah, Director-Research, CIS

This year’s Internet Institute, hosted by the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), kicked off in Pune to put a start to a week of learnings and discussions surrounding internet usage and its implications on individuals of society. Twenty two attendees from all over India attended this year, from backgrounds of activism, journalism, research and advocacy work.

Attendees were welcomed by Dr. Ravina Aggarwal, Program Officer for Media Rights & Access at the Ford Foundation, the event’s sponsor, who started off the day by introducing the Foundation’s initiatives in pursuit of bridging the digital divide by addressing issues of internet connectivity.

Internet Governance & Privacy, Sunil Abraham
The Institute’s first session was led by Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of CIS, and engaged with issues of internet governance and privacy with reference to four stories: 1) a dispute between tweeters from the US and those in South Africa over the use of hashtag #thingsdarkiesays, which is said not to be as racially derogatory as it is in the US; 2) Facebook’s contested policies on photos featuring users breastfeeding, 3) a lawsuit between Tata and Greenpeace over the organization’s use of Tata’s logo in a video game created for public criticism of their environmentally-degrading practices, and lastly, 4) the case of Savita Bhabhi, an Indian pornographic cartoon character which had been banned by India’s High Court and which had served as a landmark case in expanding the statutory laws for what is considered to be pornographic.

Each of these stories has one major thing in common: due to their nature of taking place over the internet, they are not confined to one geographic location and in turn, are addressed at the international level. The way by which an issue as such is to be addressed cuts across State policies and internet intermediary bodies to create quite a messy case in trying to determine who is at fault. Such complexity illustrates how challenging internet governance can be within today’s society that is no longer restricted to national or geographic boundaries.

Sunil also goes on in explaining the relationship between privacy, transparency, and power, summing it up in a simple formula; privacy protection should have a reverse relationship to power—the more the power, the less the privacy one should be entitled to. On the contrary, a direct correlation goes for power and transparency—the more the power, the more transparent a body should be. Instead of thinking about these concepts as a dichotomy, Sunil suggests to see them as absolute rights in themselves—instrumental in policies and necessary to address power imbalances.

The Web We Want, Bishakha Datta
The Institute’s kickoff was also joined by Indian filmmaker and activist, Bishakha Datta, who had delivered the keynote address. Bishakha bridged together notions of freedom of speech, surveillance, and accessibility, while introducing campaigns that work to create an open and universally accessible web, such as the Web We Want and Sexuality and Disability. Bishakha stresses how the internet as a space has altered how we experience societal constructs, which can be easily exhibited in how individuals experience Facebook in the occurrence of a death, for example. Bishakha initiated discussion among participants by posing questions such as, “what is our expectation of privacy in this brave new world?” and “what is the society we want?” to encompass the need to think of privacy in a new way with the coming of the endless possibilities the internet brings with it.

Histories, Bodies and Debates around the Internet, Nishant Shah
CIS Research Director, Nishant Shah, led a session examining internet as a technology more broadly, and our understandings of it in relation to the human body. Nishant proposes the idea that history is a form of technology, as well as time, itself, for which our understanding only comes into being with the aid of technologies of measurement. Although we are inclined to separate technology from the self, Nishant challenges this notion while suggesting that technology is very integral to being human, and defines a “cyborg” as someone who is very intimate with technology. In this way, we are all cyborgs. While making reference to several literary pieces, including Haraway’s Cyborg: Human, Animus, Technology; Kevin Warwick’s Living Cyborg; and Watt’s small world theory, Nishant challenges participants’ previous notions of how one is to understand technology in relation to oneself, as well as the networks we find ourselves implicated within.

Also brought forth by Nishant, was the fact that the internet as a technology has become integral to our identities, making us accessible (rather than us solely making the technology accessible) through online forms of documentation. This digital phenomenon in which we tend to document what we know and experience as a means of legitimizing it can be summed in the modern version of an old fable: “If a tree falls in a lonely forest, and nobody tweets it, has it fallen?”

Nishant refers to several case studies in which the use of online technologies has created a sense of an extension of the self and one’s personal space; which can then be subject to violation as one can be in the physical form, and to the same emotional and psychological effect—as illustrated within the 1993 occurrence referred to as “A Rape in Cyberspace.”

Attendee Participation
Participants remained engaged and enthusiastic for the duration of the day, bringing forth their personal expertise and experiences. Several participants presented their own research initiatives, which looked at issues women face as journalists and as portrayed by the media; amateur pornography without the consent of the woman; study findings on the understandings of symptoms of internet addiction; as well as studies looking at how students engage with college confession pages on Facebook.

Day Two

February 12, 2014

Time	Detail
9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.	Wireless Technology: Ravikiran Annaswamy, CEO and Co-founder at Teritree Technologies
11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.	Tea-break
11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.	Wired Technology: Ravikiran Annaswamy
12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.	Lunch
1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.	Network, Threats and Securing Yourself: Kingsley John, Independent Consultant
3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.	Tea Break
3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.	Practical Lab: Kingsley John
4.45 p.m. – 5.00 p.m.	Wrap-up: Sunil Abraham

Day Two of the Institute entailed a more technical orientation to “internet & society” across sessions. Participants listened to speakers introduce concepts related to wired and wireless internet connectivity devices and their networks, along with the network of internet users and how one may secure him or herself while “online.”

Wireless & Wired Technology, Ravikiran Annaswamy
Senior industry practitioner, Ravikiran Annaswamy had aimed to enable the Institute’s participants to “understand the depth and omnipresent of telecom networks” that we find ourselves implicated within. Ravikiran went through the basics of these networks—including fixed line-, mobile-, IP-, and Next Generation IP-networks—as well as the technical structuring of wired and wireless broadband. Many participants found this session to be particularly enriching as their projects aimed to provide increased access to internet connectivity to marginalized areas in India, and had been without the know-how to go about it.

Network, Threats and Securing Yourself, Kinglsey John
An instructional session on how to protect oneself was given by Kingsley John, beginning with a lesson on IP Addresses—what they are and the different generations of such, and how IP addresses fit into a broader internet network. Following, Kingsley demonstrated and explained email encryption through the use of software, Kleopatra, and how it may be used to generate keys to encrypt emails through Thunderbird mail client.

Evening Discussion

A handful of participants voluntarily partook in an evening discussion, looking at the role of big players in the global internet network, such as Google and Facebook, how they collect and utilize users’ data, and what sorts of measures can be taken to minimize the collecting of such. Due to the widely varying backgrounds of interest among participants, those coming from this technical orientation towards the internet were able to inform their peers on relevant information and types of software that may be found useful related to minimizing one’s online presence.

Day Three

February 13, 2014

Time	Detail
9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.	Free Software: Prof. G. Nagarjuna, Chairperson, Free Software Foundation
11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.	Tea-break
11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.	Open Data: Nisha Thompson, Independent Consultant
12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.	Lunch
1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.	Freedom of Expression: Bhairav Acharya, Advocate and Adviser, Centre for Internet and Society
3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.	Tea-break
3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.	Copyright: Nehaa Chaudhari, Program Officer, Centre for Internet and Society

The third day of the Internet Institute incorporated themes presented by speakers ranging from free software, to freedom of expression, to copyright.

Free Software, Prof. G. Nagarjuna
Chairman on the Board of Directors for the Free Software Foundation of India, Professor G. Nagarjuna shared with the Institute’s participants his personal expertise on software freedom. Nagarjuna mapped for us the network of concepts related to software freedom, beginning with the origins of the copyleft movement, and also touching upon the art of hacking, the open source movement, and what role software freedom plays in an interconnected world.

Nagarjuna looks at the free software movement as a political movement in the digital space highlighting the user’s freedoms associated to the use, distribution, and modification of software for the greater good for all. This is said to distinguish this movement from that of Open Source—a technical and more practical development-oriented movement. The free software movement is not set out to compromise the fundamental issues for the sake of being practical and in that sense, ubiquitous. Instead, its objective is “not to make everybody use the software, but to have them understand why they are using the software,” so that they may become “authentic citizens that can also resonate why they’re doing what they’re doing. We want them to understand the ethical and political aspects of doing so,” Nagarjuna says.

Open Data, Nisha Thompson
Participants learned from Nisha Thompson on Open Data; what it is, its benefits, and how it is involved in central government initiatives and policy, as well as civil society groups—generally for uses such as serving as evidence for decision making and accountability. Nisha explored challenges concerning the use of open data, such as those pertaining to privacy, legitimacy, copyright, and interoperability. The group looked at the India Water Portal as a case study, which makes accessible more than 300 water-related datasets already available in the public space for use from anything from sanitation and agriculture to climate change.

Freedom of Expression, Bhairav Acharya
Bhairav Acharya, a constitutional lawyer, traced the development of the freedom of speech and expression in India. Beginning with a conceptual understanding of censorship and the practice of censorship by the state, society, and the individual herself, Bhairav examines the limits traditionally placed by a nation-state on the right to free speech.

In India, modern free speech and censorship law was first formulated by the colonial British government, which broadly imported the common law to India. However, the colonial state also yielded to the religious and communitarian sensitivities of its subjects, resulting in a continuing close link between communalism and free speech in India today. After Independence, the post-colonial Indian state carried forward Raj censorship, but tweaked it to serve to a nation-building and developmental agenda. Nation-building and nationalism are centrifugal forces that attempt to construct a homogenous 'mainstream'; voices from the margins of this mainstream (the geographical, ethnic, and religious peripheries) and of the marginalised within the mainstream (the poor and disadvantaged), are censored.

Within this narrative, Bhairav located and explained the evolution of the law relating to press censorship, defamation, obscenity, and contempt of court. Free speech law applies equally online. Broadly, censorship on the internet must survive the same constitutional scrutiny that is applied to offline censorship; but, as technology develops, the law must innovate.

Copyright, Nehaa Chaudhari
CIS Programme Officer, Nehaa Chaudhari examined the concept of Copyright as an intellectual property right in discussing its fundamentals, purpose and origins, and Copyright’s intersection with the internet. Nehaa also explained the different exceptions to Copyright, along with its alternatives, such as opposing intellectual property protection regimes, including the Creative Commons and Copyleft. Within this session, Nehaa also introduced several cases in which Copyright came into play with the use of the internet, including Hunter Moore’s “Is Anyone Up?” website, which had showcased pornographic pictures obtained by submission bringing rise to the phenomenon of “revenge porn.” Instances as such blur the lines of what is commonly referred to as intellectual property, and what specific requirements enables one to own the rights to such.

Day Four

February 14, 2014

Time	Detail
9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.	E-Accessibility and Inclusion: Prashant Naik, Union Bank
11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.	Tea-break
11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.	Patents: Nehaa Chaudhari
12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.	Lunch
1.30 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.	Fieldwork Assignment

Day Four of the Internet Institute introduced concepts of eAccessibilty and Inclusion on the internet for persons with disabilities, along with patents as an intellectual property right. Participants were also assigned a fieldwork exercise as a hands-on activity in which they were to employ what they’ve learned to initiate conversation with individuals in public spaces and collect primary data while doing so.

eAccessibility and Inclusion, Prashant Naik

Prashant Naik started off the day with his session on E-Accessibility and Inclusion. Prashant illustrated the importance of accessibility and what is meant by the term. Participants learned of assistive technologies for different disability types and how to create more accessible word and PDF documents, as well as web pages for users. Prashant demonstrated to participants what it is like to use a computer as a visually impaired individual, which provided for an enriching experience.

Patents, Nehaa Chaudhari
Nehaa Chaudhari led a second session at the Internet Institute on intellectual property rights—this one looking at patents particularly and their role within statutory law. Nehaa traced the historical origins of patents before examining the fundamentals of them, and addresses the questions, “Why have patents? And is the present system working for everyone?” Nehaa also introduced notions of the Commons along with the Anticommons, and perspectives within the debate around software patents, as well as different means by which the law can address the exploitation of patents or “patent thickets”—such as through patent pools or compulsory licensing.

Fieldwork Assignment, Groupwork
Participants were split into groups and required to carry out a mini fieldwork assignment in approaching individuals in varying public spaces in Pune in attempts to collect primary data. Questions asked to individuals were to be devised by the group, so long as they pertained to themes examined within the Internet Institute. Areas visited by groups included the Pune Central Mall, MG Road, and FC Road.

Day Five

February 15, 2014

Time	Detail
9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.	E-Governance: Manu Srivastav, Vice President, eGovernments Foundation
11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.	Tea-break
11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.	Market Concerns: Payal Malik, Economic Adviser, Competition Commission of India
12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.	Lunch
1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.	Digital Natives: Nishant Shah
3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.	Tea-break
3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.	Fieldwork Presentations

Day Five of the Internet Institute brought with it sessions related to themes of e-governance, market concerns of telecommunications, and so called “Digital Natives.”

eGovernance, Manu Srivastava
Vice President of the eGovernments Foundation, Manu Srivastava led a session on eGovernance—the utilization of the internet as a means of delivering government services communicating with citizens, businesses, and members of government. Manu examined the complexities of the eGovernance and barriers to implementation of eGovernance initiatives. Within discussion, participants examined the nuanced relationship between the government and citizens with the incorporation of other governing bodies in an eGovernance system, as well as new spaces for corruption to take place.

Market Concerns, Payal Malik
Payal Malik, Advisor of the Economics Division of the Competition Commission of India shared her knowledge on market concerns of the telecommunications industry, and exclaimed the importance of competition issues in such an industry as a tool to create greater good for a greater number of people. She demonstrated this importance by stating that affordability as a product of increased access can only be possible once there is enough investment, which generally only happens in a competitive market. In this way, we must set the conditions to make competition possible, as a tool to achieve certain objectives. Payal also demonstrated the economic benefits of telecommunications by stating that for every 10% increase in broadband penetration, increase in GDP of 1.3%. She also examined the broadband ecosystem in India and touched upon future possibilities of increased broadband penetration, such as for formers and the education sector.

Digital Natives, Nishant Shah
Nishant Shah shed some light on one of the areas that the Centre for Internet & Society looks at within their research scope, this being the “Digital Native.” As referred to by Nishant, the Digital Native is not to categorize a specific type of internet user, but can be said for simply any person who is performing a digital action, while doing away with this false dichotomy of age, location, and geography.

Nishant examines varying case studies in which “the digital is empowering natives to not merely be benefactors of change, but agents of change,” from the Blank Noise Project’s “I NEVER Ask for it…” campaign in efforts to rethink sexual violence, to Matt Harding’s foolish dancing with groups of individuals from all over the world.

As occurrences in the digital realm, however, these often political expressions may be rewritten by the network when picked up as a growing phenomenon, in order to make it accessible to online consumers by the masses. In doing so, the expression is removed from its political context and is presented in the form of nothing more than a fad. For this reason, Nishant stresses the need to become aware of the potential of the internet in becoming an “echo-chamber”—in which forms of expression are amplified and mimicked, resulting in a restructuring of the dynamics surrounding the subject—whether it be videos of boys lipsyncing to Backstreet Boys in their dorm room going viral, or a strong and malicious movement to punish the Chinese girl who had taken a video of her heinously and wickedly killing a kitten after locating her using the Human Flesh Search Engine.

Fieldwork Presentations, Groupwork

To end off the day, participant groups presented findings collated from the prior evening’s fieldwork exercise, in which they were to ask strangers in various public places of Pune questions pertaining to themes looked at from within this year’s Institute. Participants were divided into four groups and visited Pune’s FC Road, Mahatma Gandhi Road, and Central Mall.

Groups found that the majority of those interviews primarily accessed the phone via the mobile. There was also a common weariness of using the internet and concern for one’s privacy while doing so, especially with uploading photos to Facebook and online financial transactions. People were also generally concerned about using cyber cafes for fear of one’s accounts being hacked. Generally people suspected that so long as conversations are “private” (i.e. in one’s Facebook inbox), so too are they secure. Just as well, those interviewed shared a sense of security with the use of a password.

Day Six

February 16, 2014

Time	Detail
9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.	Wikipedia: Dr. Abhijeet Safai
11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.	Tea-break
11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.	Open Access: Muthu Madhan (TBC)
12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.	Lunch
1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.	Case Studies Groupwork
3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.	Tea-break
3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.	Case Studies Presentations

As the Institute came closer to its end, participants got the opportunity to hear from speakers on topics pertaining the Wikipedia editing in addition to Open Access to scholarly literature. Participants also worked together in groups to examine specific case studies referenced in previous sessions, and then presented their conclusions.

Wikipedia, Dr. Abhijeet Safai
The Institute was joined by Medical Officer of Clinical Research at Pune’s Symbiosis Centre of Health Care, Dr. Abhijeet Safai, who led a session on Wikipedia. Having edited over 3700 Wikipedia articles, Dr. Abhijeet was able to bring forth his expertise and familiarity in editing Wikipedia to participants so that they would be able to do the same. Introduced within this session were Wikipedia’s different fundamental pillars and codes of conducts to be complied with by all contributors, along with different features and components of Wikipedia articles that one should be aware of when contributing, such as how to cite sources and discuss the contents of an article with other contributors.

Open Access, Muthu Madhan
Muthu Madhan joined the Internet Institute while speaking on Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature. Within his session, Muthu examined the historical context within which the scholarly journal had arisen and how the idea of Open Access began within this space. The presence of Open Access in India and other developing nations was also examined in this session, and the concept of Open Data, introduced.

Case Studies, Groupworks

Participants were split up into groups and assigned particular case studies looked at briefly in previous sessions. Case studies included #thingsdarkiessay, a once trending Twitter hashtag in South Africa which had offended many Americans for its use of “darkie” as a derogatory term; the literary novel, The Hindus, which offers an alternative narrative of Hindu history had been banned in India for obscenity; a case in which several users’ avatars had been controlled by another in a virtual community and forced to perform sexual acts, referred to as A Rape Happened in Cyber Space; and lastly, a pornographic submission website, Is Anyone Up?, for which content was largely derived from “revenge porn.” Each group then presented on the various perspectives surrounding the issue at hand.

The Cyborg, Nishant Shah
Nishant Shah led an off-agenda session in the evening looking more closely at the notion of the human cyborg. Nishant deconstructs humanity’s relationship to technology, in suggesting that we “think of the human as produced with the technologies… not who produces technology.” Nishant explores the Digital Native as an attained identity for those who, because of technology, restructure and reinvent his or her environment—offline as well as online. Among other ideas shared, Nishant refers to works by Haraway on the human cyborg in illustrating our dependency on technology and our need to care for these technologies we depend on.

Day Seven

February 17, 2014

Time	Detail
9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.	Internet Activism: Laura Stein, Associate Professor, University of Texas and Fulbright Fellow
11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.	Tea-break
11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.	Domestic and International Bodies: Chinmayi Arun, Research Director
12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.	Lunch
1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.	Participant Presentations
3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.	Tea-break
3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.	Hot Question Challenge

The last day of the week-long Internet Institute examined concepts of Internet Activism and Domestic and International Bodies. Some participants led presentations on topics of personal familiarity, before a final wrap-up exercise, calling upon individuals to share any new formulations resulting from the Institute.

Internet Activism, Laura Stein

Associate Professor from the University of Texas, Laura Stein, spoke on activism on the internet. Laura examined some grassroots organizations and movements taking place on the online and the benefits that the internet brings in facilitating their impact, such as its associated low costs, accessibility and possibility for anonymity. Despite the positive effects catalyzed by the internet, Laura stresses that the “laying field is still unequal, and movements are not simply transformed by technology.” Some of the websites exemplifying online activism that were examined within this session includes the It Gets Better Project, which aims to give hope to LGBT youth facing harassment, and the national election watch by the Association for Democratic Reforms. Additionally, Laura spoke on public communication policy, comparing that of the US and India, and how this area of policy may influence media content and practice.

Domestic and International Bodies, Chinmayi Arun
As the Internet Institute’s final speaker, Research Director for Communication Governance at National Law University , Chinmayi Arun, explores the network of factors that affect one’s behavior on the internet—these including: social norms, the law, the markets, and architecture. In referring to Lawrence Lessig’s pathetic dot theory, Chinmayi illustrates how individual’s—the pathetic dots in question—are functions of the interactions of these factors, and in this sense, regulated, and stresses the essential need to understand the system, in order to effectively change the dynamics within it. It is worth noting that not all pathetic dots are equal, and Google’s dot, for example, will be drastically bigger than a single user’s, having more leveraging power within the network of internet bodies. Also demonstrated, is the fact that we must acknowledge the need for regulation by the law to some extent, otherwise, the internet would be a black box where anything goes, putting one’s security at risk of violation.

Hot Question Challenge
The very last exercise of the Institute entailed participants asking each other questions on demand, relating back to different themes looked at within the last week. Participants had the chance, here, to bridge together concepts across sessions, as well as formulate their own opinions, while posing questions to others that they, themselves, were still curious about.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/institute-for-internet-society-2014-pune

Promoting Life

storytellerdubstep — 2012-03-14T08:38:51Z


Name(s): Mike Hickey
Location: Oswego, United States
Age: 21
Profession: I am a full time student who is also a part-time filmmaker.

My video proposal would be centered on my involvement in the electronic music scene. Over the last couple of years I have gained a large following across numerous platforms, including YouTube and Facebook, that puts me as one of the top promoters of this genre. I am an admin on several Facebook pages that total around 200,000 fans. I am a very influential in the music links I post and help shape this music scene to what it is. My video will revolve around this aspect of networking online.

Video Genre
Documentary

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/promoting-life

Alternate Visions: Accessing Leisure Through Interfaces

noopur — 2012-02-18T15:18:34Z

Name(s): Noopur Raval
Location: Delhi, India
Age: 23
Profession: Student, researcher

Video Genre: Animation

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/alternate-visions-accessing-leisure-through-interfaces

Digital Coverage in a Digital World

tjburks90 — 2012-04-04T10:53:19Z

Name(s): Thomas Burks
Location: Birmingham, AL USA
Age: 26
Profession: Cinematographer

Video Genre: Film

Interview

What do you understand by the term Digital Native? Do you consider yourself one?
The term digital native, I understand, is any person living a lifestyle dominated by technology. It is a facet in their day to day lives and a staple in
their structure and organization. I do consider myself a digital native; I spend more time a day dealing with technology than not. I don't think your background could have anything to do with someone's status as a digital native, unless their location and situation would keep them from accessing it. But the beauty of the internet and our way of life is that the world is much smaller today. Our window to the world is becoming a doorway.

There is a perception that a digital native is typical of a young, American geek who’s plugged in to his devices 24x7 and apathetic to social causes. You agree?
I agree that this perception exists. Most people's first thought about my country (U.S.) when you think of a techie or a social media addict is a hipster in a coffee shop with an indie band and a hemp beanie. But this is only in my country; I see people of all cultures and creeds flourishing with technology all the time, involved with causes and doing their bit for society, whether they come from America or other countries.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
Absolutely! Take the Kony 2012 campaign. Although it ended badly for the director, it caused a major buzz in less than a week. It's only a matter of time before pop culture takes a hold of it and we see it in major media like sitcoms and cartoons. I try to stay involved with film making endeavors going on around my town through Facebook and Twitter. I did a digital ad for "Operation Warm", a charity that provides coats to children in need.

Activism has changed in the last decade. How effective are online campaigns in raising awareness about an issue vis-à-vis onsite deployment?
I think it's much more effective than it was five years ago, and seems to still be growing, especially where the younger generation is involved. The only drawback to the effectiveness of digital activism is that it discourages educating yourself about an issue in its entirety. Once again, take Kony2012, so many people took it at face value. But it raised ire with many due to the Foundation's shaky background and vague details. It's easy to get your message to the masses, but it's also easy to not see the whole picture.

Are digital natives taking the easy way out by what critics say is ‘slacktivism’: tweeting, linking and liking about grave social issues?
Unfortunately, yes I think so. Some get so wrapped up in "getting their message out" that they don't remember to ACT. You'll affect more lives out there on the street, than you ever will behind a computer. You have to find balance in the two.

A recent example of digital native activism is the Get Kony video campaign. What are your thoughts on the criticism it received?
I honestly thought the video was well edited and shot, and delivered a message strongly. But further digging led to details that were not so noble about the Invisible Children’s organization; the possibility that Joseph Kony has not been heard from in years and may be dead. It's just important to step back and say, "Okay, they seem to have a strong argument here, but what if..."

Are we seeing a trend where digital natives are more involved with local causes than with global issues?
It's just easier for most people to tackle things close to home, and that's okay. Imagine if EVERYONE focused on their own community and well being, everyone would be better off. That's no reason to try and help someone who's far away, but you can do more good in person than you can do over the internet. It's good to incorporate it into your strategy, but remember it's you actions that count.

Your thoughts on Citizen Action and the use of ICT
I think we're going through a transition, people are learning more and more through the internet, and have access to such powerful tools. It's going to be a renaissance of knowledge and creativity. I have learned more technical details for my trade off the internet in a year, than I have during my time in school. It's an exciting time to be alive.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-coverage-in-a-digital-world

Life in the City Slums

pardvaanoli — 2012-04-04T10:57:21Z

Name(s): E.James Rajasekaran
Location: Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Age: 53
Profession: Social Worker

Video Genre: Documentary

Interview

What do you understand by the term Digital Native?
The term Digital Native is meant for users of digital equipment. Nowadays, even the common man utilizes digital devices in his daily life.
In this sense, I consider myself a digital native.

There is a perception that the digital native is typically a Young, White, Male from the Global North (America), plugged in to his
gadgets and apathetic to causes. Would you agree?
I cannot agree with this perception. People who are connected to gadgets have their own concerns on issues around them and if there is a chance to participate, the youngsters will participate. That’s how we saw the youth participate in Anna Hazare’s campaign against corruption in India.

Activism has changed in the last decade. Hunger strikes and sloganeering are exceptions to the rule. How effective are digital activism campaigns in raising awareness about an issue?
I don’t think activism has changed all that much as we still march on the streets holding placards and utilize hunger strikes effectively to protest. Of course, digital activism campaigns can be a supportive mechanism in our protest to mobilize mass support.

Are digital natives taking the easy way out with what critics refer to as ‘clicktivism’?
Sharing online is used as a tool for mobilizing mass support. However, it is also important to follow the matter in action on the field.

Are we seeing a trend where digital natives are more involved with local causes than with global issues?
I would say we are more interested in global issues than local situations. However, an issue always starts at the local level before it turns global. Unless the campaign has local importance it cannot achieve its goal.

Comment on the role of ICT in citizen action
Scientific progress has made it possible to use ICT tools for the development of society. It is in our hands to use these tools in a positive way to effect change.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/life-in-the-city-slums

Digitally Enhanced Civil Resistance

denisse — 2015-04-17T10:46:50Z

This reflection looks at how civil disobedience unfolds in network societies. It explores the origins of nonviolence, describes digital and non-digital tactics of non-violent protest and participation and finally comments on the possibilities of this form of civil resistance to foster individual and collective civic engagement.

Reflections of the possibilities of non-violence flooded newspapers on October 2, commemorating Gandhi’s birthday and the long-lasting legacy of civil resistance and non-violence. Debashish Chatterjee reflected on India’s founding father as “the true source” of timeless principles on his column in the New Indian Express. He claimed that his unswerving commitment to the core purpose of truth and having non-violence as the main way to achieve his goals was the formula behind the success of his bloodless revolution for political independence. Rajni Bakshi questioned the power and relevance of non-violence in our times in his article for the Hindu. “Stating and repeatedly restating our intention in favour of non-violence is an essential starting point (…) so vital to our species’ present and future”. Courage and ‘the ability to strike’, states Bakshi, are the pre-requisites of non-violence tactics; a claim that ignited reflections and considerations on the political motivations of Digital Natives and the nature of the strategies behind digital activism.

The idea of nonviolence that underpin civil resistance or ‘civil disobedience’ if you will, as outlined in the foreword of Richard Gregg’s essay The Power of Nonviolence, had its origins in the Upanishads back in the 500 BC. Since then, it traveled through Buddhism, Jainism, Jesus, Socrates, and Tolstoy among others, before making its way back to India and Gandhi in 1910. Since then, this idea has gathered “meaning, momentum, organization, practical effectiveness and power” as non-violence tactics are put into action in several instances of political and social resistance. Dr. Gene Sharp drew for the first time in 1973 a list of one hundred ninety eight methods to engage in nonviolent protest, persuasion and noncooperation in his book The Politics of Nonviolent Action. This repository was taken up in 2011 by digital activism scholars Mary Joyce and Patrick Meier, who are identifying the ways in which these methods have been digitally enhanced, in their crowd-source project Civil Resistance 2.0. Regardless of the larger debate that evaluates the effectiveness of non-violent tactics to deter the use of violence, the conceptualization of non-violent civil resistance is a body of knowledge that has not been explored from the point of view of network and information societies as of yet (Joyce, 2011).

Furthermore, tracing the idea of non-violent resistance in the light of Gandhi’s legacies is an interesting point to discuss digital strategies towards change. Is digital activism mainstreaming the use and proliferation of non-violent tactics of protest, taking them from a booming trend to an advocacy norm? Do non-violent online tactics make offline self-sustainable and continuous change more likely? Are these methods more conducive to citizen engagement and a consequent behavioral change in everyday practices? To start answering these questions we will refer back to the principles of Ahimsa and Satyagraha taken up by Gandhi for civil disobedience, complement them with Gregg’s work of the power of nonviolence, and finally with Sharp’s work on the tactics and complexities of defiance, resistance and struggles with social, economic, environmental and political objectives. These three texts will dialogue throughout this entry with the objective of understanding the nature of these methods and how they touch on civic and digital natives’ engagement.

Digital nonviolence and collective action

In Christopher Chapple’s account of nonviolence in Asian traditions, he describes the fundamentals of Ahimsa or non-violence as “the absence of the desire to kill or harm”. This concept, coupled with Satyagraha, the ‘power of truth’, was translated into what is civil disobedience and non-cooperation. Both methods were utilized to break unjust laws back in Gandhi’s struggle for political independence from the British. Aside from the moral debate on what constitutes truth and evil, we can already identify a relationship between these precepts and what sustains collective action. Mario Diani identified “shared beliefs and ties of solidarity attached to specific collective events” and “political and cultural conflicts arising for social change” as two fundamental characteristics in all sorts of social movements. The power of non-violent action and large-scale disobedience requires the intervention of suitably organized and disciplined individuals, acting collectively to stand up against authorities such as the thousands of peasants who stood up against soldiers under Gandhi’s leadership, or the thousands of Egyptian citizens who distributed copies of Sharp’s work on 198 non-violent methods to foster civil resistance and overthrow Mubarak’s regime. As stated by Gregg, the approach unified Indians by giving them the necessary self-respect, self-reliance, courage and persistence to collectively withstand the resistance efforts that ultimately led them to independence. In other words, in the midst of different ‘truths’, a shared set of beliefs and the use of non-violent methods invoked unity among citizens.

How are digital technologies mainstreaming these methods in the social imaginary of digital natives? Collective action requires the mobilization, organization and coordination of “networks of informal interactions” according to Diani’s characterization. This task is being facilitated and amplified by rapid and low-cost communication enabled by digital technology as argued in Anastasia Kavada’s essay on digital activism. She adds that the potential of internet for social movement activities lies on the possibilities of information dissemination, decision-making, and a crucial pillar for citizen engagement: the building of trust and a sense of collective identity. Therefore, although connectivity and collectivity are indeed made more likely through technology, digital tools are still value and content neutral. The challenge for digital non-violent civil resistance is the degree to which it is appeals to the populace and persuades them into being actors of the movements as opposed to loosely connected by-standers; in other words, the need for Gandhian digital leaders that transmit the need and power of civic involvement and public opinion.

Individual and collective resistance

The concept of non-violent civil resistance should be feasible and desirable for the 21^st century digital native, both in the digital and offline realm due to its individual and collective possibilities. In terms of individual resistance; while collective defiance is powerful it starts through individual awareness and everyday actions that build up the public opinion (Gregg, 1960). As Nishant Shah notes while distinguishing resistance from revolution: resistance-based change comes about to correct failures of infrastructure, administration, policy or law, and is not only an integral part of the system but it is also an encouraged form of citizen action, among others (2011). Individuals have now broader options than before to exert this resistant, starting with Sharp’s list of 198 methods. From group-coordinated persuasion strategies including social non-cooperation boycotts, withdrawal from institutions to the use of arts and symbolisms and psychological interventions, there is plenty of room for creativity and action. Furthermore, 196 of these methods have been digitally enhanced through peer-production, self-broadcasting, media attention-competition and other methods which, according to Joyce and Meier, can be feasibly executed by the fluent digital native.

What is more, aside from coordinating offline activities, individuals can also exert civil disobedience on the online realm as demonstrated by Andrew Chadwick’s list of online defiance tactics in Internet Politics. Instances of hacktivism, denial-of-service boycotts and virtual sit-ins (Kavada, 20120) are a few examples of expressions of activism through non-cooperation that showcase the digital autonomy of netizens. For example, recently, the Vietnamese activist group Viet Tan launched a visible and creative online campaign showing citizens how to remove the block from the Facebook site, denouncing state’s censorship and advocating for freedom of expression through ethical hacking. Ultimately, non-violent resistance methods have never been as relevant as today, when citizens are recurring to new mechanisms of participation and contestation to claim their rights, reclaim citizenship and assert democratic freedoms through increased participation (Sharp, 2002; Khanna, 2012).

On the side of possibilities for enhanced collectivity, it is worth looking into the moral covenants present in social justice struggles. Gregg’s work, in spite of being written in 1935 and revised in 1960, provides a very up to date description of the power of information in network societies:

“Although there have been violations of moral laws in the world, there has never been such clear, strong recognition on the part of the holders of power of the importance of public opinion […] shown by propaganda and censorship practiced by governments and the press”.

Whether it comes from the state, civil society or the citizens; attempts to put justice, democracy and rightness at the forefront of all public discourse is today a norm, demonstrating the persuasive power of moral laws if put at the core of citizen action. Glasius and Pleyers also state that democracy, social justice and dignity are the main tenets of collective action enabling solidarity networks and the rise of a collective consciousness that transcends borders (2012). In this respect, it seems that connectivity and collectivity to engage in non-violent resistance is made more likely through technology, and although these tools remain ‘value neutral’, the processes of change will be defined by the consistency between methods and rhetoric brought forward by the citizen. This will also lead to a more complete model of citizenship as these individuals take ownership of the methods, content and the values cross-cutting both; not only for and during the protest, but as a value system defining coherent every day activities and the exercise of responsible democracy beyond the spectacle of mass protests (Pleyers, 2012; Shah, 2013).

Conclusion

Gandhi’s implementation of civil disobedience methods and his adherence to Ahimsa were the result of a combination of religious and cultural factors, which coupled with education and experience, deemed his beliefs a lifestyle as opposed to a mere political strategy. This reflection puts the citizen on the spot light. Having non-violent and digitally facilitated methods of protest and participation on hand what is defining the political motivations and engagement of the digital native? Having the flexibility to adapt these methods to their skills and lifestyles, what is holding back the civic energy of the 21st century citizen? According to Gaventa and Barrett, confidence, awareness and self-identity are the pre-conditions for citizenship and action. The first two can be fostered by non-violence: Sharp argues that experience in applying effective non-violent struggles increases self-confidence, while Gregg explains how unity is a result of adding oneself to a mass civil movement. The latter: self-identity and how the citizen looks at its role in the larger discourse of social struggles, as well as other factors that enhance its civic engagement, sense of citizenship and creativity in political movements, is a question I will leave open to explore in my following blog posts.

Sources

“198 Methods of Nonviolent Action” The Albert Einstein Institution http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations103a.html
“iRevolution. From Innovation to Revolution” last updated April 26, 2012 http://irevolution.net/tag/gene/
Chapple, Christopher. Nonviolence to animals, earth, and self in Asian traditions. SUNY Press, 1993.
Gaventa, John, and Gregory Barrett. "So what difference does it make? Mapping the outcomes of citizen engagement." IDS Working Papers 2010, no. 347 (2010): 01-72.
Gregg, Richard Bartlett, and Mahatma Gandhi. The power of non-violence. Clarke, 1960.
Horgan, John. “Egypt’s revolution vindicates Gene Sharp’s theory of nonviolent activism” Last updated February 11, 2010. Scientific American: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2011/02/11/egypts-revolution-vindicates-gene-sharps-theory-of-nonviolent-activism/
Joyce, Mary C. ed. Digital activism decoded: the new mechanics of change. IDEA, 2010.
Joyce, Mary. Last updated November 29, 2012. “Webinar on Digital Nonviolence” Meta-Activism: Activism analysis for the digital age. http://www.meta-activism.org/2012/11/wedinar-on-digital-nonviolence/
Khanna, Akshay. "Seeing Citizen Action through an ‘Unruly’Lens."Development 55, no. 2 (2012): 162-172.
Meier, Patrick. Last updated April 25, 2012. “Civil Resistance 2.0: A new database of methods” Meta-Activism: Activism analysis for the digital age http://www.meta-activism.org/2012/04/civil-resistance-2-0-a-new-database-of-methods/
Pleyers, Geoffrey. "Beyond Occupy: Progressive Activists in Europe." Open Democracy: free thinking for the world 2012 (2012): 5pages-8.
Sharp, Gene. "The politics of nonviolent action, 3 vols." Boston: Porter Sargent(1973).
Sharp, Gene “From Dictatorship to Democracy: A conceptual framework for liberation” The Albert Einstein Institution.(2010)
Travers, Will. “Civil disobedience for the digital age” Last updated December 23, 2010. Waging NonViolence http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/civil-disobedience-for-the-digital-age/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/digitally-enhanced-civil-resistance

Unpacking Digital Natives from their Shiny Packaging

praskrishna — 2011-12-25T05:04:43Z

The ‘Digital natives’ concept is neither necessarily nor inherently positive, as YiPing Tsou highlights in her article Digital Natives in the Name of a Cause: From "Flash Mob" to "Human Flesh Search". The essay was published in the Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Book 2, To Think. Argyri Panezi reviews the essay.

In this article, the writer supports that China, despite having a plethora of hacker talents, does not conform to the typical paradigm of liberal, usually anti-government, group of digital natives. She explains that the so-called “red hackers” are working hand-in-hand with the dominant ideology, fighting against the enemy abroad while hunting down the enemy within who disrupts the ‘harmony’ (of the nation). Focusing on China’s digital culture, Tsou demonstrates that digital natives, despite what is commonly thought of them as a universal group, can also engage in far from civic-minded activities. The stories of Human Flesh Search as described in the article, gives flesh to this argument.

‘Human Flesh Search’ is a Chinese phenomenon of online crowdsourcing that targets ‘morality violators’ (the modern versions of medieval witches). Most importantly, the punishment meted out to these ‘violators’ is not only harsh (the mob versus an individual) but also reaches beyond cyberspace, affecting the real lives of the one who’s hunted, even affecting the lives of their family. All the examples given, illustrate how this ‘naming-and-shaming’ trend becomes an insidious calling card of the entire hacking society in China.

As Tsou explains, Human Flesh Searches mobilize masses of people online or offline to identify certain violators of ‘morality’ that the community seeks to punish because the ‘crimes’ might not be punishable by the law. Indeed, the Human Flesh Search stories bring in mind B-grade reality shows: as the first story goes, the real identity of a woman staring in a kitten-killing video is discovered and consequently, the woman is attacked both in cyberspace (via email, social media networks) and in real space (her residence, work place). Another story seems more serious, mainly from a political and legal perspective; a student expressing himself in favor of a Korean ruling in a sports game is immediately dealt by the online community as a traitor who has to pay for what he has said online. What seems to follow, within these stories, are blatant violations of privacy and freedom of speech.

What message do the Human Flesh Searches stories convey? What are these stories teaching us? While Internet enthusiasts have connected digital natives with progressive liberal movements, it is also the case that some can be (ab)using the powers of technology, and principally the power of crowd-sourcing, engaging in phenomena that even recap medieval witch-hunt. It is clear that the rationale of the author is not to call for more regulation or censorship online, but rather to point out that technology and the Internet is merely a tool, and as every tool it can have both good and bad uses; a knife might be used safely in a kitchen, it can save lives in the hands of a doctor, and can take lives in the hand of a murderer.

Tsou cleverly alternates between the phrases ‘wisdom of the crowd’, ‘crowd-sourcing’ and ‘irrationality of the crowds’. While the majority can collaborate to get brilliant results, it can also quickly become a tyranny against anything ‘different’, ‘irregular’ or ‘immoral’. Wikipedia is a famous example of the first (a success story of mass collaboration) but also the second (see the editing wars on Wikipedia talk pages).

In all, Tsou effectively reminds us that the aspiring digital stories of peer-to-peer culture and civic empowerment, including technology-mobilized revolutions such as the recent examples in the Middle East and elsewhere, do have a counter side, what the author calls “the dark force of digital natives”. The importance of this realization is immense. Internet romanticism can be at the very least naïve, and at most dangerous as it gives space to the abusers to continue their work using a tool that is wrongly considered solely equalizing, empowering, liberating.

Argyri Panezi, a native of Greece, studied law at the University of Athens and at Harvard Law School (focusing on issues of Internet law and policy), now practicing as an attorney at law in Brussels, Belgium.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/unpacking-from-shiny-packaging

Storytelling and Technology - Sartaj Anand

denisse — 2014-03-12T11:43:19Z

This post outlines the general characteristics of storytelling. The second section is an interview with Sartaj Anand, the founder of EgoMonk and BIllion Strong, who talks about storytelling as a strategy to build trust at the intersections of business and technology. This is the first of a series of installments exploring the potential of storytelling for social change.

CHANGE-MAKER: Sartaj Anand

ORGANIZATION: EgoMonk & Billion Strong

STRATEGY OF CHANGE: Leverage technology by focusing on the relationship between people and technology, and build trust by localizing and personalizing communication

METHOD OF CHANGE: Storytelling

“We all have something to say. Question is: will anyone listen?”

Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud, 1994

Today, everybody seems to be talking about ‘storytelling’. From activists to corporates; they are all jumping on this nostalgic bandwagon and embracing once again an enthralling habit of yesteryear: the ability to tell good stories. The practice has taken an identity of its own. It's distancing itself from its roots in oral tradition, and morphing into a state-of-the-art communication strategy. This is no selfless trend, though. Behind the hype, lies their thirst for (your) attention, and the belief that they do not only have a story to tell, but that it is a story that matters. In the context of “making change” particularly, when political and social crises emerge, the public space is flooded by a series of narratives and discourses as told by different actors. This explosion of stories culminates in an overload of information that could end up saturating its intended audience. This is not only undesirable, but dangerous when underneath the noise lies a message important for human dignity and survival. So, what is it about a story that will make it worthy of your attention? And how can this seemingly simple, yet complex tactic culminate in further engagement?

To explain storytelling as a method to create change, I will focus on how this practice can be utilized to enhance visibility and effectiveness of advocacy practices, as outlined in the research overview. I will start by unpacking ‘storytelling’: focusing on its purpose and functions. I will also look at the the relationship between the storyteller and the audience, and also at how storytelling redefines ‘the public space’. Although I will be putting my best effort to explain the workings behind his method, I will rely on the storytellers themselves to learn about the power of well-crafted and well-delivered stories to make change. This opportunity’s change-actors: Sartaj Anand, The Ugly Indian, Blank Noise, come from different fields and will show very different perspectives of how the narratives of change utilized in their stories, re-articulates how users/citizens/customers interact and experience content.

Telling Stories

So, what is storytelling? And what makes it so different from other forms of narration? I consulted the work of German philosophers Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt to unpack the nature of this practice and its ability to transmit knowledge.

“the storyteller takes what he tells from the experience and he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening”

W. Benjamin, 1977

In Benjamin’s essay “The Storyteller” (1955) he laments the demise of storytelling: “less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly [as if] the ability to exchange experiences [had been taken away from us]”. Having its origins in oral tradition, storytelling for the most part consists of taking experiences worth sharing and disseminating them in the community with a specific, and according to Benjamin, a useful purpose in mind. It could be a moral, a maxim or a practical advice (1977), but at the end of the day, the audience takes away a new piece of information it did not have at the beginning of the story. This lesson may be related to the past of the storyteller or one of his characters, but its value lies in how it can now be extrapolated to the audience’s future.

Ann Rippin's rendition to The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin. Visit her wordpress here.

Hannah Arendt, German-American philosopher from the early 20th century also had a lot to say about storytelling and ‘narratives’. She understood it as a framework, backed up by a strong tradition of its own, and a structure that embodies how our mind works: “the mind doesn’t simply re-create sequences of events as they occur, but it creates new sequences and integrates events into appropriate existing sequences; the mind is constantly forming narratives” (Kieslich, 2013.). This understanding of the practice goes beyond Benjamin’s proposition that we become part of the narration as it occurs. Arendt posits that our mind is already manufactured to construct sequences and connections in the same way in which we build stories -as opposed to the way we structure our essays, novels or tweets- before we tell them. Being such an embedded cognitive process, it feels familiar, comfortable and natural, which derives into a “critical appreciation” for the events of the story, and leads you to make deeper connections on how they relate to your life (Oni, 2012).

(Read more on Arendt and storytelling here: The Story of Reconciliation – Hannah Arendt Center)

However, both Benjamin and Arendt’s analysis is still very focused on the oral vs. prose question. Entering the 21st century we face the question of the role of digital technology and our highly visual culture in facilitating, amplifying or limiting the process of storytelling. On this point, I jumped to the end of the 20th century and looked at one of the many forms of storytelling: the comic. Scott McCloud’s “Understanding the Comic” (1994) takes you through the whole process of creating a coherent interplay of words and pictures that “convey information” and/or produce an “aesthetic response in the viewer”. Why are aesthetics important? , Because, according to McCloud, the inclusion of art is both the rejection and affirmation of our human condition. On one hand, art (or how we respond to it) is a rejection to our basic instincts, allowing us to express needs beyond survival and reproduction. On the other hand, it is a vehicle through which we assert our identities as individuals and pursue a “higher purpose and truth” (1994). Digital storytelling is imbued with visual stimuli: pictures, videos, graphics, that enhance the sensory experience, and as we explored in the Information Design posts (Find Part 1:Information Activism, and Part 2: Information Design) create new (and deeper) channels to approach and understand the message delivered by these stories.

Excerpts of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

From these three perspectives we understand the following about storytelling. It is:

A practice rooted in the tradition of sharing experiences

Participatory and interactive: the experience of the storyteller becomes the experience of the audience.

The purpose of storytelling is to pass on a message, moral guidance or practical advice to the audience, through its content.

The form or structure of narratives is determined by sequences of facts and events, which is the same way we build stories in our minds.

The experiential and familiar nature of storytelling makes it easier to engage with and relate to.

The inclusion of images, art and media produces an aesthetic response in the viewer, providing the audience an opportunity for self-expression and freedom.

Translating these characteristics to the theme of the Methods for Social Change project (how to build a sense of citizenship and civicness through technology-mediated practices. More here): storytelling (re)emerges as a promising vehicle for political change, especially when in par with the “technological possibilities” of our times (Benjamin, 1977). If we choose to entertain this thought, we find how its roots in community traditions make stories an excellent meeting point to form solidarity networks and stronger offline communities to sustain activism. The logical and sequential format of stories are interesting mediums, not only to transmit new ideas on citizenship and engagement; but make them relevant and appealing. Finally, 'the moral of the stories' are seeds for introspection and reflection, that may shape how we understand our role in society as a whole. At the end of the day though, it is storytellers who will lead this journey and meeting them is the first step to gauge how the theory of storytelling unfolds in the practice.

In the next section, we will meet some of the actors utilizing this method in different fields - and there are plenty of storytellers out there, gifted in skill and practice conveying an array of messages to an equally diverse public- but before moving on I will close with an excerpt from Lisa Disch’s essay that brings all these points together:

“[Storytelling] is more adequate than arguments to depict ambiguities of a multidimensional social reality”

In other words, it is a practice that strips narratives from all ornaments, displaying the complexities of humanity in its most intuitive and experiential form.

(Story)Tellers

Great storytellers: creators who devote their resources in controlling

this medium to convey their messages effectively”

Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud (1993)

Our first storyteller is Sartaj Anand; an India-based entrepreneur, founder of the innovation and strategy consulting firm: EgoMonk and active member of TED, Ashoka, Sandbox, Kairos Society and the Pearson Foundation networks (More about his work in his Social Good profile). His self-described “unreasonable dream” is to impact one billion people with his work and create “life-changing experiences”. He strives to do this by a) leveraging the relationship between people and technology and b) through his recently launched non-profit Billion Strong. Also, as opposed to other change-makers we’ve interviewed in the project, he comes from an engineering and business background; bringing a for-profit perspective into our melange of multi-stakeholder approaches to change.

The following interview touches on digital storytelling as one of the ways Anand is using to leverage technology. His vision highlights how you cannot disconnect people from the processes you are utilizing to impact their lives. Incorporating a more humane focus in the way we use technology, and in how we construct stories, is according to his experience, the best way to have practices resonate to and be appropriate for the public.

Sartaj Anand,

Founder of EgoMonk and Billion Strong

Tell us about your background and the intersections of your work with technology.

I started with an engineering background and my thesis was on language processing; figuring out how people talk and how that needs construction data. Fundamentally at some point, I figured out that technology is not the problem, people are; so that’s how I moved into my current focus in business: which is innovation strategic consulting. I frequently rely on technology to enable or actualize change but I don’t necessarily create it. The challenge is how we leverage the technology we have [...] and that’s where I can add the most value.

How do you leverage technology in the context of making change then?

I leverage technology in terms of using it but focusing on the ‘people’ side of it”: the relationship between people and technology. That’s the main intersection point. [...] This is what I mean when I talk about technology, innovation, social structures and change.

Ideas for Change from Sartaj Anand

Economically, business models have to replicate and service society. If businesses serve their people, they capture maximum value and gain efficiency over ten, twenty years (and this is appealing to all the capitalists in industrial businesses). However, towards the course of these years a lot of things can change and you progressively become more and more outdated. When you have this premonition, that's the point when you need to step in and cannibalize your own business model.

For example, for seven years, music labels sold cds only. Then Apple came in with iPods and digital music downloads. After milking this for 10 years, what it should have done is fortify it and start streaming music to capture maximum value, like Spotify did. [...] This is a model EgoMonk works with and we try to communicate these things to our clients. They have the power to execute it, but they have to internally feel confident with all their stakeholders, whether it is for-profits with their board; or non-profits with donors and program partners. This is a choice we need to commit to. A lot of the problem in the change process (technology enabled or otherwise) is trust building. At the end of the day you are working with people, and this is a challenge.

In order to build this trust you must be aiming for a deeper and personal communication with your clients. How are you including this in your business model?

We focus a lot on communication and that’s something we rely on increasingly; and I found it has to have a Why-What-How model -borrowing from Simon Sinek's gold circles. In that order.

Storytelling 101 from Sartaj Anand

People don’t buy the 'what' of it, without the 'why' you do it. For example, Apple is great because it works to improve your life, to inspire you, amuse you: make your life better. What they do comes second: Apple is an electronics company, an application company. Last is the how: It makes the iPhone. We apply a similar model and this is something I apply in my storytelling also. I’m a believer that every story has to have an end or a moral: something that is more hopeful and optimistic. Rely on that but decide that also, I’m not the only one around: stories are increasingly personal and local.

Given the personal and experiential nature of storytelling, I assume it is a challenge to mainstream it in your services. Tell us more about the practices you are using to implement it and how they break from more traditional communication practices in the past.

EgoMonk

EgoMonk is an Innovation and Strategic Management Consultancy (More about EgoMonk here). Particularly this means that:

a) We start with the hypothesis that we don't know everything. With that in mind, we borrow amazing frameworks from amazing institutions. For example, Holacracy; (a “purposeful organization” technology that changes how the organization is structured, how decisions are made and how power is distributed); 'How will you win' philosophy from traditional large companies,, where they equate every decision to a couple of questions like what's your winning aspiration?, where will you plan?, how will you win?, what capability systems/processes need to exist to make this a sustainable practice that outlives you? This approach gets us halfway there, [especially] working with people who haven't had access to this before.

EgoMonk's services

b) We localize it. We work with high impact entrepreneurs and turn their life goals into a four week plan. We frame it: What happens if after four weeks, you die. If these are four weeks you have to live: what really matters to you? What do you want to accomplish professionally and personally? Once you go through that exercise we say: What can continue sustainable during your life? What can you take away? We focus on timing and what you have to do. Once you put that concept of mortality into every day's existence, you start behaving differently.

c) We work with gamification. For example, we worked in a factory and completely changed the incentivization for their workers into something that is more fun. The challenge was: how do you improve the process of well-being in an industrial environment. How do we make working enjoyable for them? This model consists of short-term rewards: if you work really hard over this much time, you get 10 points and this gets you a (reward) with your family. This has never happened before.

Billion Strong

Billion Strong is a platform. We want to impact a billion people and mobilize a billion dollars every year. The concept behind it is that the future is completely decoupled from our reality. It is highly utopian and right now we are not there and my hypothesis is that we'll never get there because our perspectives and assumptions keep evolving. This non-profit aims to accelerate the future in our lifetime so we can at least enjoy some of its benefits. It focuses on six things: culture, mobility, technology, art, nutrition and divinity. Each of these will be used as levers to impact a billion people. In the case of Billion Strong, user adoption is the most frequent challenge you face in the non-profit space. I will explain this using our first two projects:

a) Project 1 - Divinity:
We want to take religion, God and spirituality as a lever to impact people. A manifestation of this is the release of an open source tool kit to convert religious institutions into co-working spaces.

Centers of religion are:

Everywhere and permanent

Well known by the community

Community centers

Safe

Non-profit and non-taxable

Underutilized 99% of the time

Disconnected from youth

Centers of religion have always been centers of education and community oriented, but within the last generation they've become prayer halls, and I think this is the wrong way of using this infrastructure. There are a couple of narratives being negotiated here (See box to the left).

In this case [the open source tool-kit] has a framework, and it is dynamic to the point where your choices in real time will influence the policies of this place and their physical manifestation. So you ask questions in a flow chart: Do you want men and women to work together or not?; Do you have the ability to buy new furniture or you want to use the existing furniture?; when you ask these questions you navigate a flow chart, depending on your choices. They will lead to a different output and when they see that, it is immediately empowering. This is storytelling, and this what will help us navigate the adoption issues. It's essentially us saying you own it; you know exactly what is good for your own community. In terms of the narrative, each copy will be different and adapted to its language. It has to be made for this community and everything has to be localized for that story you are telling. The religious and cultural narrative needs to be blended into it.

b) Project 2 - Nutrition:
Meat consumption is a huge challenge and highly unsustainable. We will use kick-start mechanics in a mobile app to trigger and enable change in food habits. We are obviously very digitally inclined right now. It's easy to capitalize on that, but instead of giving them money, we will ask them to skip a meal, go vegetarian for today or for the week and we are going to support that.

Adoption is a huge challenge, so we'll ask them: Where do you stay? They'll say: Amsterdam [for example], and it will provide them with a template. If you are vegetarian for today, for the week, or the month, this is your meal plan and all you need. Users will find meals close to them and won't have to worry about it anymore. And we will map their impact in real time through info-graphics and data visualization. They will be constructing and visualizing their own story in real time and we’ll present it through different narratives.

We are also looking at multi-stakeholderism in this project. Both EgoMonk and Billion Strong seem to be a combination of business, technology and communication strategies. Why multi-stakeholderism?

Three reasons:

a) The future is multi-domain. You will never understand the whole picture if you say: I’m only going to solve water, but what about the pipes, the roads, the environment, infrastructure, cultural issue. One domain is no longer good enough. You will never be a complete expert of the complete ecosystem.

b) Adoption models will always be a challenge and right now it’s a compromised formula. Now it's a zero-sum game. We literally need to escape that and make it future-oriented; make it 1+1 through partnerships.

c) Storytelling is also getting more mainstreamed into change management and multi-stakeholderism. At the end of it, if you tell a good enough story, you can sell and get people to believe in your projects. This inherently builds partnership models. There is something that is permission marketing: all sales in the future are relationship based and indirect sales.(E.g. Red Bull is all about the experience) That’s how we have to be when we talk about multi-stakeholderism. Everything needs to be built in.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

** Next installment will look at how storytelling enhances visibility and accessibility, and how it is being used by Urban Governance groups in Bangalore.**

Sources:

Arendt, Hannah (1994) Essays in Understanding Edited with an Introduction by Jerome Kohn. The literary Trust of Hannah Arendt Bluecher.p.308
Benjamin, Walter. (1977): "The storyteller."89.
Disch,Lisa Jane (1994) Hannah Arendt and the limits of Philosophy. Cornell University Press. p.172-173
Kieslich, Ingo. (2013) "Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt: Storytelling in and as theoretical writing." PhD diss., Vanderbilt University,
McCloud, Scott. (1994)."Understanding comics: The invisible art." Northampton, Mass
Oni, Peter (2012). "The Cognitive Power of Storytelling: Re-reading Hannah Arendt in a Postmodernist/Africanist Context."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-sartaj-anand

Digital Native: Do not go Gently into the Good Night

nishant — 2017-03-03T16:07:36Z

If there’s a lesson to be learned from the resistance to the Trump administration, it is this — patriotism is not a feeling, it is an action.

The article was published by the Indian Express on February 9, 2017.

It was that time of the year. We wore our patriotism on our sleeves, painted our faces in the colours of the national flag, proclaimed our joy for the republic we live in. We performed our proud presence as nation-loving citizens on the social web, while ignoring the ominous fact that the chief guest at the celebration of our constitutional existence represented a country where lashes and stoning to death are still legal punishments. Be that as it may, it is undeniable that our peer-to-peer networks helped catalyse and stir the pride in our Constitution that enshrines us with some of our most basic, fundamental, and human rights, for life and living.

As Republic Day recedes from our memory, let me warn you that the future of our social media feeds is grim. As we consume the impending Trumpocalypse, we cannot but realise that we have not only been there, but also done that. A government which does not communicate freely with the press: check. A discourse that supports messages of hate against specific religions and provides “alternative facts” in our history books: check. Politicians spreading fake news and populations being swayed by it: check.

For all our Amreeka-loving souls, it might be a grim reassurance that we are ahead in the game and the United States of Trumpistan is merely catching up. The social web might seem to mimic the trend, where a problem becomes a problem only when it hits the developed countries in the north, but it is good for us to realise that the doom and gloom that these trends are forecasting are already the realities that we live in.

However, there is one major difference that is worth noting. In the USA, even as this orange-hazed madness unfolds, there are people marching, protesting, and fighting to defend the annihilation of their democratic, constitutional rights. Their patriotism is not going to wait till Independence Day, but is right now on the streets, flooding the social web, inundating airports, and demanding in unprecedented ways, the recognition and the defence of their rights. While there isn’t much to be said about a nation that had an electoral system that allowed for a populist to come into power, there is something that we need to drive home —patriotism is not a feeling, it is an action.

And so, if this Republic Day, you shared, consumed, viewed, read and rejoiced, even one item of patriotic impulse — even if you merely retweeted Kiran Bedi’s photoshopped image of world monuments adorned in the tricolour —here is my challenge for you.

Before the memory of patriotism and the pride of the Constitution fade away completely, we are going to head into Valentine’s Day. It is a day that is fraught with tension in India. On the one hand, there will be the sceptre of consumerist capitalism that will wear us down with the sales, the dances, the parties, and an aggressive market to sell, sell, sell, everything that they can, pretending that true love is in buying gifts. On the other hand, we will have the righteous people who even their mothers might find difficult to love, standing on the streets with weapons and force, intimidating people on the streets and slut-shaming women who they will deem too “Western” to be allowed to live their lives in peace.

Whether you believe in the fabricated spirit of St Valentine or not, whether you want to join the candy-flavoured pink brigade or not, whether or not you participate in the dhamaka shopping frenzy of the season — here is your chance to put your patriotism to practice.

One of the most beautiful expressions of our Constitution is in our right to life, dignity, and self-determination. It means that as long as our actions do not harm and hurt others intentionally, it is our right to live, love, and express our life and love in ways that we determine worthy. So, as people around the country gear up to celebrate Valentine’s Day, and hooligans across the states polish their trishuls and lathis to obstruct these celebrations, bring your patriotism to the streets. Go and stand in solidarity with these people, defending their right to live their life without fear and intimidation. I am offering you the #RightToLove to show your support of people who want to take that brief moment from humdrum lives to find and experience love and longing, and if you see any acts of intimidation or violence, whisk out your phone and capture the event, share it on social media, make an intervention in person and fight against those who insist on violating our Constitution, and defend our country from the forces within.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-february-9-2017-digital-native-do-not-go-gently-into-the-good-night

Digital native: Who will watch the watchman?

nishant — 2017-03-03T16:18:50Z

The state mining its citizens as data and suspending rights to privacy under the rhetoric of national security is alarming.

The article was published in the Indian Express on February 19, 2017

I want you to start getting slightly uncomfortable right now. Because even as you read this, your emails are being read without your knowledge. Your social media network has been accessed by an unknown agent. Somebody is getting hold of your financial transactions and your credit card purchases, and creating a profile of your spending habits. Somebody pretending to be you is checking the naked pictures you might have backed up in your private cloud.

Somewhere, the profiles that you created for your dating apps are under scrutiny. Your Google search history is slowly being browsed by people who now know what you searched for last Friday at 3.30 am when you just couldn’t find sleep. Your WhatsApp texts, including that long sexting session with your ex, is now being stored in some other memory.The false account that you had created on Twitter to troll the world, is now linked to all your other IDs. The LinkedIn connections you sent to a rival company in search for a better job, are now available for others to find.

I wish that I was only presenting a hypothetical dystopia to warn us about the future of privacy. But, I am not. Because, the future is already here and it is slowly unfolding in front of you. We often think of the Internet as a secure system, mumbling things about encryption and passwords, imagining that if so many people are using it, then it must surely be safe. And it is true, that largely most of our electronic communication on the digital circuits is secure, or, at least, not easily vulnerable to vicious attacks.

Every time we hear about hackers intercepting sensitive information in databases, we are assured that it was a one-time exceptional case, and that forensic investigations are being conducted to keep our data safe. The digital security industry is indeed working hard to make it increasingly difficult for people with malicious intent to actually read and manipulate our data that we secure with passwords, fingerprints, and encryption keys that become more complex and robust.

However, the biggest concern around privacy, in the Internet of Things, is not about these cat-and-mouse games of data breaches and theft. Instead, perhaps, the biggest act of data theft and interception is conducted in full public view, with our consent. This happens when we download apps, use single user verification accounts and join free public hotspots, allowing our data to be freely captured by unseen actors.

The corporate mining of human users is not the only scenario in this landscape. In the recent reality TV edition of the US politics, they have just announced that border control in the US can now demand anybody to hand over their digital devices, passwords to email and social media accounts, and access to all their digital information in order to gain entry into the country. Or, in other words, you can be as secure as you like, but if the government wants, they will get that information from you as a price of entry into the country. You don’t need the NSA when you can just walk to the person and ask them to hand over this information.

Closer home in Digital India, things are not better. The Aadhaar project has failed to address data privacy questions. The data that we have voluntarily given to Aadhaar can be used to create a massive surveillance system that sells our data for profits and transactions to private companies. Similarly, in the post-demonetisation move, as we all went cashless, we increased our digital footprint in an ecosystem that has almost no safeguards to protect you from people knowing about your purchases at the chemist shop last weekend.

As we connect more online, and more devices are linked to our user profiles, we continue to leak and bleed data which violates the very core of what we consider our private selves. When we learned about the market exploiting our private data, we thought that the state would be the watchman. As the states start being run as markets, we now have a new question: who shall watch the watchman?

The new interest of the state in mining its citizens as data and suspending our rights to privacy under the rhetoric of national security and interest is alarming. The state now thinks of our private data as capital. We need mechanisms to protect ourselves from the predatory impulses of the new information states, and while we might not have remedies, we do need to start the conversation now to safeguard our futures from the war against privacy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-february-19-2017-digital-native-who-will-watch-the-watchman

Digital native: You are not alone

nishant — 2017-09-12T13:22:14Z

Away from the guidance of adults, the internet can be a lonely place for youngsters, pushing them towards self-harm.

The article was published in the Indian Express on August 27, 2017.

We have always known that the World Wide Web is a terrifying space. From the vicious rickrolling on Redditt to the lynch mobs on Twitter, we have seen and heard enough to know that when it comes to the social web, nothing is sacred and nobody is safe. As the web exposes the dirty, dangerous, and forbidden desires of our collective depravity, there is a growing concern for the safety of digital natives who come of age online.

Children are taught to identify signs of danger, protect themselves from strangers, and remain alert when alone in public because we know that despite decades of governance, our physical spaces are not free from danger. However, we do not stop children from going out. Instead, we assign signposts and take responsibility to look out for young people who might end up in trouble because of their naiveté or poor judgement.

However, when it comes to the connected web, the youth don’t have the comfort of this buffering adult, who might guide, protect and direct them in difficult situations. The lives of digital natives are so new that most elders in their life do not have a sense of what is happening there. For most digital natives, the foray into the world of connected media is unchartered territory of collective trial and sometimes ruinous error. It puts them in a condition of profound vulnerability.

On the one hand, they are being subjected to incredible risks of bullying, exposure, manipulation and coercion by strangers on the web. On the other hand, they know that their teachers, parents or mentors are going to be useless in giving productive advice. This only gets compounded by the fact that most elders think removing access to these spaces would put an end to the problem — a solution that can lead to such extreme isolation that the young victim would prefer to struggle in that situation rather than go to an elder.

It is from these conditions of digital loneliness that we see the horrors of internet phenomenon like the Blue Whale. Disguised as a game, Blue Whale is not really a game but a finely orchestrated circus of violence that preys upon young teens struggling with depression. An anonymous coordinator, through temptation, coercion, threats and manipulation over 49 days, instigates the player to harm themselves and, on the 50th day, to take their own life and broadcast it online.

Blue Whale has now reportedly claimed victims in more than 21 countries and despite governments, schools and parents on the vigil, it continues to replicate on the darker nodes of the web. We know from the past that attempts at censorship or education are only going to take us so far. Since the Blue Whale reared its head in India, I get asked many times by concerned parents and teachers how they can stop this from happening to their children. Trying to impose bans or take away access is not the way forward. Here are three strategies you could try to let those digital natives in your life know that they are not alone:

Be a part of the digital world. One of the easiest responses that a lot of older people have is that they don’t understand technology. They roll their eyes at the social web and reminisce about how, when they were young, things were better. The web isn’t an additional thing for digital natives — it’s central to their growing up. The more you exclude yourself from it, the more they are going to find it difficult to talk to you about it. An easy way of doing this might be to set up family social time online. Just like your Sunday lunch, you have a Friday evening online time, where you talk, play, interact, share, make videos, pass comments and traverse the digital web together.

Learn with them. It is OK to admit that the digital natives know more about how to Boomerang and what filters to use on Snapchat. You are not competing with them for expertise. Instead, if you put yourself out there as a learner and ask for their advice, you’d be surprised at the nuanced information they might be able to give you.

Troubleshoot together. The internet is essentially a space for tinkering. Most digital natives learn by experimenting and, when things collapse, they learn from each other. The next time you face a problem with your gadget or can’t figure out a functionality, don’t just ask somebody to sort it out for you. Instead sit with the digital native — learn with them and show that you can take control once you have the information at hand.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-august-27-2017-digital-native-you-are-not-alone

April 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T03:38:00Z

The newsletter for the month of April can be accessed below:

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the fourth issue of the newsletter (April) for the year 2014. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

We have published a compilation of the various central government schemes in a blog post as part of our National Resource Kit project.

The 27^th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (WIPO-SCCR) was held in Geneva from April 28 to May 2, 2014. Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the event. CIS made its statements on Technological Measures of Protection on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, Orphan Works, Retracted and Withdrawn Works, and Works out of Commerce on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, and on the WIPO Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations.
CIS signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Mysore University for converting to Unicode and re-releasing their encyclopaedia under Creative Commons License. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU.
A two-day global stakeholder meeting on future of internet governance (NETmundial) was organized by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee in partnership with /1Net at Sao Paulo in Brazil on April 23 and 24, 2014. Achal Prabhala participated in the event. As part of its research to enable productive discussions of the critical internet governance issues at the meeting and elsewhere CIS published a total of 16 blog entries.
We conducted an empirical study of five separate and diverse banks (State Bank of India, Central Bank of India, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, and Standard Chartered Bank) to gain a practical perspective on the existing banking practices and policies in India, and published a Banking Policy Guide.
As part of the Making Change project Denisse Albornoz interviewed Tuhin Paul, an artist and storyteller behind Menstrupedia, an India-based social venture creating comics to shatter the myths and misunderstandings surrounding menstruation around the world. Denisse provides an analysis of ‘menstrual activism’ — a movement that despite its trajectory in feminism remains unnoticed in most accounts of traditional and digital activism.
Six research studies were commissioned by HEIRA-CSCS (over November 2013-March 2014) as part of the collaborative exercise with CIS to map the Digital Humanities within a broad rubric of exploring changes at the intersection of youth, technology and higher education in India. P.P.Sneha in her blog post presents a broad overview of some of the key learnings from these projects.

Jobs
CIS is seeking applications for the post of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge). There are two vacancies for this post one in Delhi and one in Bangalore. To apply, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org), Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three writing samples of which at least one demonstrates your analytic skills, and one that shows your ability to simplify complex policy issues.

Accessibility and Inclusion

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 first draft of the kit (29 states and 6 union territories). The chapters along with the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. 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 here.

NVDA

Monthly Update

NVDA e-Speak Text-to-Speech Project Update (by Suman Dogra, April 28, 2014).

National Resource Kit

Blog Entry

Central Government Schemes (by Anandhi Viswanathan and CLPR, April 27, 2014).

Other

Blog Entry

Polling Pains (by Amba Salelkar, April 30, 2014).

Media Coverage

Are Elections Fair to People With Special Needs? (by Papiya Bhattacharya, New Indian Express, April 8, 2014).
Enabling Elections (Vijay Karnataka, April 9, 2014). This was published in Kannada.

Access to Knowledge

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.

WIPO SCCR

Participation in Events

Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights: Twenty-Seventh Session (organized by WIPO, Geneva, April 28 – May 2, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the event. France, Greece, India and the European Union signed the Marrakesh Treaty. CIS delivered statements on Technological Measures of Protection on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, Orphan Works, Retracted and Withdrawn Works, and Works out of Commerce on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, and on the WIPO Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. Transcripts of the discussions can be accessed here.

Blog Entries

Report on CDIP-12 (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 22, 2014).
Signing and Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled (by Nehaa Chaudhari, April 25, 2014).
Report on the WIPO Director General’s Meeting with NGO’s (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 30, 2014).

Media Coverage

Is the WIPO Treaty for Broadcasters Moving Forward at SCCR 27? (by Manon Ress, Knowledge Ecology International, April 29, 2014).
At WIPO, Authors, Civil Society Watchful of Rights for Broadcasters (by Catherine Saez, IP Watch, May 1, 2014).

Other

Event Organized

NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2014 (CIS, Bangalore, April 12 – 13, 2014).

Blog Entries

Online Survey for Indian Mobile App Developer Startups & Enterprises (by Samantha Cassar, April 9, 2014).
App Developers Series: Services, Products, Dichotomy & IP – Part I (by Samantha Cassar, April 10, 2014).
Report on CDIP-12 (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 22, 2014).
Report on the 31st Session of the Standing Committee on Trademarks (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 29, 2014).

Wikipedia

The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation:

Announcement

CIS Signs MoU with Mysore University (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, April 16, 2014): for converting to Unicode and re-releasing their encyclopaedia under Creative Commons License. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU. The signing event took place earlier on February 22, 2014.

Articles

Vachana Sanchaya: Bringing Access to 11th century Kannada Literature (by Subhashish Panigrahi, April 3, 2014)
୭୯ ବର୍ଷରେ ସ୍ୱତନ୍ତ୍ର ଓଡ଼ିଶା: ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଏହାର ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Amalekha, April 4, 2014).
ଓଡ଼ିଅା ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର (by Subhashish Panigrahi, The Kadambini, April 8, 2014).
Report from India: Relicensing books under CC (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Creative Commons Blog, April 19, 2014).
14 Odia books re-released under Creative Commons license (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, April 26, 2014). The article was edited by Rohini Lakshane.

Events Organized

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop (organized by CIS-A2K, Balmatta Computer Centre, Mangalore, April 5, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (co-organized by All India Konkani Writers Organization and CIS-A2K, Kalaangann Shaktinagar, April 6, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Tulu Wikipedia Editathon (co-organized by Karnataka Theological College and CIS-A2K, Mangalore, April 19, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

Participation in Events

Wikipedia Session for Trainee Journos (organized by Prajavani, Bangalore, April 28, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja took a session for the trainee journalists of Prajavani Kannada daily on Wikipedia.
World Book Day (organized by Karnataka Publishers’ Association, Indian Institute of World Culture, Basavanagudi, Bangalore, April 23, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was a speaker.
Relevance of Bhagabat Tungi in the evolution of Odia language from Buddha era to digital age (organized by The Intellects, Shree Jagannath Mandir and Odisha Art and Cultural Center, New Delhi, April 24, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Media Coverage
CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

M'lore: Wikipedia Workshop held for Konkani writers (Daijiworld, April 6, 2014).
Odia Loves Wikipedia (Rising Voices, April 10, 2014). This was also published in Spanish and in Russian.
International Book Day (The Hindu, April 21, 2014).
Books are a bridge between generations (The Deccan Herald, April 23, 2014).
World Book Day Report (Vijaywani, April 23, 2014).
Seminar on Odia Language in New Delhi by the Intellects (Odisha Samachar, April 24, 2014).
Delhi meet focuses on Bhagabat Tungi revival (The Pioneer, April 26, 2014).

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

NETmundial

As part of its participation in the NETmundial event organized in Brazil by Brazilian Internet Steering Committee in partnership with /1Net at Sao Paulo on April 23 and 24, 2014 CIS produced a total of 16 outputs:

Sumandro Chattapadhyay produced these visual representations: Comparing Appearance of Fifty Most Frequent Words, Contributions by Countries of Origin, Contributions by Types of Organisation, Which Countries Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?, Which Governments Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?, Word Clouds of Contributions by Types of Organisation and Tracking *Multistakeholder* across Contributions. Achal Prabhala participated in the event and wrote these: Day 0, Day 1, and Day 2. Transcript of the NETmundial for archival purposes was made available by Pranesh Prakash. Smarika Kumar produced two research outputs: NETmundial and Suggestions for IANA Administration and Accountability of ICANN. Geetha Hariharan wrote two blog posts: Marco Civil da Internet: Brazil’s ‘Internet Constitution’ and Brazil passes Marco Civil; the US-FCC Alters its Stance on Net Neutrality. Jyoti Panday wrote one blog post: NETmundial Roadmap: Defining the Roles of Stakeholders in Multistakeholderism.

Privacy

Analyses

Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy vs. The Leaked 2014 Privacy Bill (by Elonnai Hickok, April 14, 2014).
Banking Policy Guide (by Elonnai Hickok, April 22, 2014).
The Embodiment of the Right to Privacy within Domestic Legislation (by Tanvi Mani, April 29, 2014).

Articles

Who Governs the Internet? Implications for Freedom and National Security (by Sunil Abraham, Yojana, April 4, 2014).
Privacy Law in India: A Muddled Field – I (by Bhairav Acharya, The Hoot, April 15, 2014).
Very Big Brother (by Sunil Abraham, GeneWatch, January – April 2014 Issue).

Blog Entry

South African Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (by Divij Joshi, April 16, 2014).

Participation in Events

Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy: The Third Man Theme Revisited: Foreign Policies of the Internet in a Time Of Surveillance and Disclosure (jointly organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, the American Austrian Foundation (AAF), and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (DA), Vienna, March 30 – April 1, 2014). Nishant Shah participated in the event as a panelist.
GSMA Partners Meeting (organized by Privacy International, London, April 9, 2014). Elonnai Hickok participated in this meeting.
The Critical Life of Information (organized by Yale University, 100 Wall Street, April 11, 2014). Nishant Shah spoke in the panel on Big Data and Governance. Malavika Jayaram spoke in the panel on Big Data and the Arts.
Round-table on User Safety on the Internet (organized by Consumer Voice and Google, Infantry Road, Bangalore, April 24, 2014).
6th Biannual Surveillance and Society Conference (organized by Eticas Research and Consulting, University of Barcelona and CCCB, April 26 – 24, 2014). Malavika Jayaram gave a talk on “Biometrics in beta: experimenting on a nation (while normalising surveillance for 1.2 billion people)”.

Other

Articles

Between the Local and the Global: Notes Towards Thinking the Nature of Internet Policy (by Nishant Shah, cgcsblog, April 1, 2014).
Networks: What You Don’t See is What You (for)Get (by Nishant Shah, April 17, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Two Indians in Global Commission on Web Governance (April 1, 2014): Sunil Abraham was named as one of the experts. This was published in Outlook, Economic Times, and in Matters India.
The Take Down of Free Speech Online (Newslaundry, April 1, 2014): CIS research on Intermediary Liabilities is quoted.
The politics of Facebook (by Shweta Tiwari, April 1, 2014).
New privacy Bill more refined & has wider ambit, say experts (by Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, April 2, 2014).
Should Nandan Nilekani's Aadhaar project, for identity proof and welfare delivery, exist at all? (by M. Rajshekhar, April 3, 2014).
Lok sabha polls: Social media companies launch special pages for polls (by Varuni Khosla, Economic Times, April 10, 2014).
Parties give short shrift to privacy (by Pratap Vikram Singh, GovernanceNow.com, April 12, 2014).
No party's got a clear stand, Aadhaar's fate hangs in balance (by Pratap Vikram Singh, GovernanceNow.com, April 13, 2014).
'India wants core internet infrastructure' (by Indrani Bagchi, April 24, 2014).
India for inclusive internet governance (by Indrani Bagchi, April 25, 2014).
Facebook launches FB Newswire for journalists; loses part of its immunity under IT Act 2000 (by Amrita Madhukalya, DNA, April 26, 2014).

Digital Humanities

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:

Blog Entries

Confession in the Digital Age (by Rimi Nandy, April 14, 2014).
Animating the Archive – A Survey of Printed Digitized Materials in Bengali and their Use in Higher Education (by Saidul Haque, April 14, 2014).
‘Doing’ Digital Humanities: Reflections on a project on Online Feminism in India (by Sujatha Subramanian, April 14, 2014).
The Machinistic Paradigm Collapse (by Anirudh Sridhar, April 14, 2014).
Exploring the Digital Landscape: An Overview (by P.P.Sneha, April 14, 2014).
Digital Humanities and the Problem of Definition (by P.P.Sneha, April 25, 2014).

Digital Natives

CIS is doing a research project titled “Making Change”. The project will explore new ways of defining, locating, and understanding change in network societies. Having the thought piece 'Whose Change is it Anyway' as an entry point for discussion and reflection, the project will feature profiles, interviews and responses of change-makers to questions around current mechanisms and practices of change in South Asia and South East Asia:

Making Change Project

Blog Entry

Multimedia Storytellers: Panel Discussion (by Denisse Albornoz, April 16, 2014).
From Taboo to Beautiful – Menstrupedia (by Denisse Albornoz, April 30, 2014).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Event Organized

Tech Talk: Landscape of Wireless Communications & Electromagnetic Spectrum (CIS, Bangalore, April 28, 2014). A. Radha Krishna gave a talk on wireless communication technologies.

About CIS

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.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

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.

► Request for Collaboration:
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.

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.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2014-bulletin

October 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-11-08T11:42:01Z

Welcome to the newsletter of October 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features an analysis by Ujwala Uppaluri of the Delhi High Court’s judgment in Super Cassettes v. MySpace, announcement of public call for comments for reports on “Banking and Accessibility in India” and “Making TV Accessible in India”, and updates on Indic languages.

Jobs
CIS is seeking applications the posts of Research Manager and Programme Officer – Internet Governance. To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org.

HasGeek HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru. The following event was organised by HasGeek in the month of October: Droidcon 2012 (CIS, Bangalore, October 27 – 28, 2012).
Accessibility India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies: Public Call for Comments Banking and Accessibility in India: A Study on Banking Accessibility in India (by Vrinda Maheshwari, October 30, 2012). Making TV Accessible in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, October 8, 2012). Blog Entries The HathiTrust Judgment and its impact on TVI negotiations at WIPO (by Rahul Cherian, October 30, 2012). WIPO General Assemblies Approve Road Map on Treaty for the Visually Impaired (by Rahul Cherian, October 11, 2012).
Access to Knowledge The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge: Analysis Super Cassettes v. MySpace (by Ujwala Uppaluri, October 31, 2012). Blog Entry ICOMM2012: International Communications and Electronics Fair (by Jadine Lannon, October 31, 2012). Event Organised A Workshop on "Exploring the Internals of Mobile Technologies" (TERI Southern Regional Centre 4th Main, Domlur II Stage Bangalore, October 27, 2012).
Openness The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Wikipedia Education Programs Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University (by Nitika Tandon, October 22, 2012). Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates (by Shiju Alex, October 29, 2012). Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012). Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia (by Noopur Raval, October 31, 2012). Wikipedia Workshops Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 16, 2012). Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad (by Nitika Tandon, October 19, 2012). Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus, Pune, October 28, 2012). First Pune Odia Wikipedia Organized! (by Subhashish Panigrahi, October 31, 2012). Wikipedia Event Wikipedia Hackathon at BITS Hyderabad (organized by CIS - A2K team and BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, October 26 – 27, 2012). Wikipedia Press Coverage Odisha: Odia Wikipedia workshop organized in Pune to promote Odia language (OdishaDiary.com, October 31, 2012). Wikipedia Team Updates The A2K team consists of three members based in Delhi: Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval. We are seeking applications for the post of Programme Director (Access to Knowledge) for the New Delhi office. Shiju Alex, Program Manager, Access to Knowledge is leaving the organisation. November 16, 2012 will be his last working day. We wish him success in all his future endeavours.
Internet Governance The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes: Column Rethinking DNA Profiling in India (by Elonnai Hickok, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol - XLVII No. 43, October 27, 2012). Analysis Privacy Perspectives on the 2012 -2013 Goa Beach Shack Policy (by Elonnai Hickok, October 25, 2012). Upcoming IGF Events At the seventh annual IGF meeting to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November 2012, CIS is organising one workshop: National IG Mechanisms – Looking at Some Key Design Issues (co-organising with Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, Institute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, et.al., November 8, 2012 from 2.30 p.m. to 4.00 p.m). Pranesh Prakash is a panelist in the following workshop: New Trends in Industry Self-Governance (organised by Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK and Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ, University of Zurich, Switzerland and Nominet, UK, November 7, 2012 from 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m). CIS fellow Malavika Jayaram is a panelist for these workshops: Civil rights in the digital age, about the impact the Internet has on civil rights (organised by ECP on behalf of the IGF-NL, November 7, 2012, 4.30 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.). Governing Identity on the Internet (organised by Brenden Kuerbis, Citizen Lab and Christine Runnegar, Internet Society, November 8, 2012, 11.00 a.m. to 12.30 p.m.). Other Upcoming Event DML Conference 2013 (Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2012): CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central are jointly organizing the DML Conference 2013 in Chicago. Event organised The Public Voice: Privacy Rights are a Global Challenge (Punta del Este, Uruguay, October 21, 2012): Malavika Jayaram was a speaker at this event. Events Participated 3rd Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit (organised by EastWest Institute in partnership with NASSCOM and FICCI, Federation House, New Delhi, October 30-31, 2012): Sunil Abraham and Elonnai Hickok participated in this event. Fourth Annual Legal Services Conference in India (organised by US India Business Council, New Delhi, October 11, 2012): Pranesh Prakash was a panelist in the session on “Censorship and Content Restrictions: The Future of Internet Speech in India”. Meeting on Lawful Access by Law Enforcement (Brussels, October 3 – 5, 2012): Elonnai Hickok participated in the meeting. Video Arrested for tweeting: Legitimate or Curbing Free Speech? (NDTV, October 31, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in this discussion aired on NDTV along with Shivam Vij, SB Mishra and Sanjay Pinto. Media Coverage On social media, Modi goes soft (by Zia Haq, Hindustan Times, October 26, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted. Bolstering right to remain private (by Apar Gupta, The Pioneer, October 29, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted. CIS was part of the expert committee even though not explicitly mentioned in these: Panel suggests law to protect individual privacy (Newstrack India, October 18, 2012), Privacy law mooted to protect people against misuse of info (Business Standard, October 18, 2012), Experts' committee moots law to protect privacy (by Saikat Datta, Daily News & Analysis, October 19, 2012), Govt panel wants curbs on phone taps (The Times of India, October 19, 2012), Privacy Act should not circumscribe RTI: expert group (by Amitabh Sinha, Indian Express, October 19, 2012), Nine-point code set out to safeguard personal information (Hindu Business Line, October 18, 2012), Privacy law mooted to protect people against misuse of info (Zee News, October 18, 2012). Court’s approval needed to tap phones: Panel (by Surabhi Agarwal, LiveMint, October 18, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted. Could better DNA testing facilities in India have saved the Talwars? (by Pallavi Polanki, October 11, 2012): CIS press statement is mentioned.
Telecom While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum: Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India CIS and Ford Foundation joined hands to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers. The following are the new outputs: Spectrum Management (by Snehashish Ghosh, October 31, 2012). Cable Television (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, October 16, 2012). Column in Business Standard The Supreme Court Delivers (by Shyam Ponappa in Business Standard, October 4, 2012 and Organizing India Blogspot, October 11, 2012).
Digital Natives Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South: Newspaper Column The Rules of Engagement (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, October 29, 2012).
Researchers at Work CIS organised the Habits of Living Workshop in Bangalore from September 26 to 29, 2012. Three columns by Nishant Shah arising from these workshops were published in the month of October: Habits of Living: Being Human in a Networked Society (DML, Central, October 22, 2012). Digital Habits: How and Why We Tweet, Share and Like (FirstPost, October 12, 2012). Who’s that Friend? (Indian Express, October 23, 2012).

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc. CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO, and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

*Follow us elsewhere*

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

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.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2012-bulletin

Digital Native: Hashtag Along With Me

nishant — 2018-08-01T00:25:04Z

A hashtag that evolved with a movement.

The article was published in Indian Express on July 29, 2018.

Hashtags generally come with shelf lives and expiry dates. They come to life in a moment of public excitement and then slowly peter out as the attention shifts to something else. Even the most viral hashtags, which contain all the visceral power of explosive emotion, quickly get replaced by the next big thing. Hashtags have been critiqued as inefficient tools for activism. Because they absorb so much energy and attention, only to fade.

While it is true that in the rapidly overloaded information cycles of social media, hashtags might disappear in due time, maybe we need to think of their disappearance as hibernation rather than forgetting, being archived to memory rather than being lost to recall. Perhaps, it is not yet time to wash our hands of hashtag-based activism, because they do not stay in continued attention. Maybe, it is possible that even when hashtags might not be trending and garnering eyeballs, in their very presence and emergence, they transform something and catalyse actions that take incubation cycles longer than the accelerated digitalisation allows for.

Recently, this reminder came when I saw #NotGoingBack trending on Twitter. In 2013, when the Supreme Court of India overturned the Delhi High Court’s judgment reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, it was a moment of despair for human rights and queer communities that fight for their right to life and love. The judgment reinforced shame, persecution and pain that the queer community in India faced because of an arcane law that punished consenting same-sex love.

In that moment of despair, fighting against the oppression by law and in validation of #queerlivesmatter, a hashtag was born: #NotGoingBack. The hashtag referred both to the metaphorical closet that this judgement would force queer people back into, and also to a political determination of not accepting this verdict — of not going back on our commitments to build diverse, inclusive, and safe societies for all our people. #NotGoingBack captured the narratives of despair, but also the collective resolve to continue fighting for a nation that is for everyone, in 2013.

Since then, it has resurfaced at different points during moments of hope — like the NALSA judgement that legalised the rights of trans-gender people to be identified as the third gender, or, in moments of pain — when we heard of queer people killing themselves, unable to bear the social stigma of being criminalised for their right to love. The hashtag has continued to come up, when legal fights to protect queer rights and lives have proceeded, or when attention had to be drawn to the inhumane reports of murder, torture, rape and imprisonment that followed.

In July 2018, when the new bench constituted by the Supreme Court agreed to question the re-criminalisation verdict, and started hearings about the constitutional validity of this judgment, the hashtag returned in full force — and unlike the other times, it was also suffused with love, hope, and solidarity of a large community of queer, queer-allied, and queer-friendly people who supported this revision. It has been extraordinary to see how public support has changed in the five years since the hashtag made its first appearance. More and more people have realised that while this is a question of queer rights, it is also a question of human rights, and how we live and love. The 2013 verdict suggested that the people were not ready to accept queer lives. The 2018 bench has clearly opined that the role of the court is to protect the people based on constitutional rights, not to pander to populism.

And yet, what has been inspiring is that the popular response to decriminalisation has been overwhelmingly positive. To the extent that even the conservative government at the centre has indicated that it will not challenge the wisdom of the court if it decides to read down Section 377. As we await the final judgment that promises to be historic and hopeful, we cannot deny the indefatigable commitment, movement and protest that the lawyers, activists, and queer community leaders have invested in making this happen. At the same time, it is also a good indicator of how hashtags live, morph, and re-emerge across longer timelines. We need to start recognising them not only in their fruit-fly like presence but as catalysts for longer movements.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-native-hashtag-along-with-me

Centre for Internet and Society

Nishant Shah: “We will develop new textual and visual practices to facilitate the transfer of knowledge worldwide”

Institute for Internet & Society 2014, Pune

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Day Seven

Promoting Life

Video Proposal

Alternate Visions: Accessing Leisure Through Interfaces

Video Proposal

Digital Coverage in a Digital World

Video Proposal

Interview

Life in the City Slums

Video Proposal

Interview

Digitally Enhanced Civil Resistance

Conclusion

Sources

Unpacking Digital Natives from their Shiny Packaging

Storytelling and Technology - Sartaj Anand

“We all have something to say. Question is: will anyone listen?”

Telling Stories

“[Storytelling] is more adequate than arguments to depict ambiguities of a multidimensional social reality”

(Story)Tellers

Great storytellers: creators who devote their resources in controlling

this medium to convey their messages effectively”

EgoMonk

Billion Strong

Sources:

Digital Native: Do not go Gently into the Good Night

Digital native: Who will watch the watchman?

Digital native: You are not alone

April 2014 Bulletin

Highlights

NVDA

National Resource Kit

Other

WIPO SCCR

Other

Wikipedia

NETmundial

Privacy

Other

Making Change Project

October 2012 Bulletin

Public Call for Comments

Blog Entries

Analysis

Blog Entry

Event Organised

Wikipedia Education Programs

Wikipedia Workshops

Wikipedia Event

Wikipedia Press Coverage

Wikipedia Team Updates

Column

Analysis

Upcoming IGF Events

Other Upcoming Event

Event organised

Events Participated

Video

Media Coverage

Column in Business Standard

Newspaper Column

*About CIS*

Digital Native: Hashtag Along With Me

About CIS