Centre for Internet and Society

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

Multimedia Storytellers: Panel Discussion

denisse — 2015-10-24T14:26:51Z

This post brings three storytellers together to find points of intersection between their methods. The format will be that of a panel discussion and it features: Arjun Srivathsa from Pocket Science India, Ameen Haque from the Storywallahs, and Ajay Dasgupta from The Kahani Project. They discuss technology, interpretation and action in storytelling.

CHANGE-MAKERS: Arjun Srivathsa, Ameen Haque and Ajay Dasgupta

ORGANIZATIONS:Pocket Science India, The Storywallahs and The Kahani Project

METHOD OF CHANGE: Storytelling

Over the last couple of weeks, I had the privilege of interviewing three storytellers. What struck me the most, besides from their fascinating ideas about storytelling, was how many of their ideas overlapped. As much as I would love to sit all of them in the same room and enjoy the fireworks, there are a number of logistical constraints that shut my storyteller reunion daydreams down; so for this post, I decided to be a self-appointed liaison between you and them. I will mimic this discussion by putting my conversations with them side by side, in the format of a panel discussion. Their interaction will have to happen in the realm of your imagination.

The questionnaire I used for my interviews was open-ended. I was curious to hear what they wanted to share about their work, as opposed to filtering and steering the conversation in a certain direction; so I let them take their own turn. While I clearly inquired about the relationship between storytelling and making change, it was fascinating to see each storyteller reach the question of ‘social impact' through different channels; testimony of the influence of their education and professional backgrounds in their work.

If I were to bring them together, the topic of the discussion would be: 'Technology, Interpretation and Action in Storytelling'. We briefly discussed mediation and semiotics[1] in the Pre-Production section of the Storytelling as Performance post. We mentioned then:

"mediums are combined to enhance the visibility of the message and the power of the experience of stories. [...] Each medium: video, audio, text, music, etc.- becomes “a new literate space” or “symbolic tool” storytellers use to portray narratives about the self, community and society (Hull, 2006)”

These thoughts were triggered by the work of the French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, who considers our self-identity a result of sign mediation and interpretation. Other themes in his work include: discourse and action, temporality, narrative and identity; also useful and relevant when exploring how storytelling and reality intersect. For example, how does building a narrative develop into a discourse that mirrors our context and existence? How does the medium chosen to carry this narrative define the language system of our discourse? Finally, let’s not forget this discussion is happening amid the digital question: how does the mediation of digital technologies enable or constrain our narratives of change?

Against this background, I would like to propose a discussion around five points of intersection that came up organically* during my conversations with them.

a) The power of storytelling:
What makes it a powerful vehicle of communication? How does this practice break from more traditional strategies of information dissemination?

b) Storytelling as a vehicle to make change:
How does the practice of storytelling intervene in the social imagination of its audience? Is it the experience or the content of stories what drives the message of change forward? Where does change happen: at the value, behavioral, community or macro level?

c) The role of technology in storytelling:
What is the part technology plays in storytelling vis-a-vis traditional storytelling? Is it a static infrastructure or does it shape the force and direction of the story? How does technology influence and impact their work

d) Translating awareness to action through stories:
Can you guarantee the ideas and values imbued by the story will translate into action in the public space?

e) Influence of stories on citizenship and political participation:
Can the power of stories be leveraged to instill a sense of responsibility in the audience?

* With the exception of Arjun Srivathsa, who addressed these points in a conference I attended. He later responded to a questionnaire in which I inquired about the intersections specifically.

Introductions

We first have Arjun Srivathsa. He has a Masters in Wildlife Biology and Conservation and currently works as a Research Associate for the Centre for Wildlife Studies (CWS India). In tandem, he started Pocket Science India, an initiative that combines wildlife science with art and cartoons to promote conservation in India and disseminate information from scientific journal articles. He aims to bridge the gap between the work of scientists and people using art and humour.

Arjun: I find the world of science and scientists very cool. Finding new things, discovering and inventing ways to understand the world better is an awesome way of life. I chose a career in science for this reason, second only to my love for nature and wildlife. But the essence of science, according to me, is not just to discover, but also to communicate. Even though wildlife research in India has progressed massively in the past few decades, the only notion people have is that of exaggerated scenes from television documentaries. When I discovered that most of the work by Indian scientists on wildlife and conservation of India is making no difference to people (mostly because they are unaware), I decided to use the easiest way to bridge the gap: through humour and art.

Second speaker is Ameen Haque from The Storywallahs. In what he calls his past life, he worked for 18 years in Advertising and Brand Strategy Consulting. Ameen also has a background in theatre and now works as as storyteller for The Storywallahs.

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Finally, we have Ajay Dasgupta, the founder of The Kahani Project, who also has a background in theatre and believes listening to stories is a fundamental right of children. His team works to capture stories in audio format and make them accessible.

I will now invite them to share their thoughts on the points described above. Each panelist will respond to the questions using a different medium: Arjun will comment with text and images, Ameen will comment with video and Ajay will comment using audiobytes. The idea is for each storyteller to use the medium and language they use for their own storytelling: cartoons, body language and audio respectively, as we explore how this choice mediates how they conceptualize change. I will act as a moderator and comment on common themes in the light of Paul Ricoeur’s characteristics of narratives.

1. The Power of Storytelling

What makes it a powerful vehicle of communication?

“narrative attains full significance when it becomes a condition of temporal existence” Time and Narrative

The first characteristic of narratives according to Ricoeur is: the ability to bring independent elements and episodes together into a plot within a specific context and time. The relationship between time and narrative is addressed by the philosopher in his work 'Oneself as Another,' in which he frames narratives as the most 'faithful articulations of human time'. This leads to an understanding of time as a framework where we can locate unique events and patterns, trajectories and sequences. Our three storytellers comment on how stories are an effective mean to communicate information, and how this information resonates because it can be located in the frame of our human existence.

Arjun: Storytelling really is the nascence of any communication technique. As kids we were all told stories with bees and birds, which spoke and thought. The moral life lessons and similar “information” were served to us on these fascinating platters.

Dugongs are closely related to whales and dolphins. They are peaceful mammals that swim around gracefully and feed on sea grass.
They are categorized as “VULNERABLE” because there are not too many of them left in the world.

Find full cartoon here

At some point in life, we all seem to stop appreciating the power of storytelling. Plain reporting of information has been done to death. Even an amazing discovery written as a formal report will fail to excite audience. It is time we all get back to appreciating stories. They sell. Movies generally do better than documentaries don’t they?

Ameen:

Ajay:

2. Storytelling as a vehicle to make change

How and where does change happen?

“All action is in principle interaction [...] change happens through interaction, as others are also encouraged to change” From Text to Action

The second characteristic of narratives is how the episodes in our narratives involve contingencies that will be shaped and reformulated through the development of the story. The narratives are constructed in such a way that induce us to imagine possible events in the future and how we would act in said circumstances. This characteristic is supported by Ricoeur's understanding of the 'self' as an 'agent', who can act and influence causation by taking initiative or interfering[2] in the story. Even if the listener cannot necessarily influence the outcome of the story (unless it is participatory storytelling), it triggers thoughts about its capability to act and its ability to change future realities, as he imagines himself n the situation of its characters. This out-of-body experience is what turns story into experience.

Our storytellers comment on how stories can influence and activate our agency and enable listeners to act towards creating change.

Arjun: Of course! Like I said, it is easier to influence people when you are not being preachy. Storytelling sidesteps the moral high ground that change makers are often blamed to occupy and takes a pleasantly shrewd path, as silly as it may sound.


#2: Increase in wildlife tourism has been brought about by the increasing population of the ‘Tourist’. This species is easy to recognize (see figure). The species has created an ecosystem of its own. It eats any kind of high or low profile food. Lives in resorts. Seeks charismatic animals like the tiger. Its daily activity involves excessive use of its camera. This species facilitates wildlife tourism	#9: Wildlife tourism is an excellent way to expose people of India and abroad to its rich natural heritage [...] We definitely need to regulate the number of tourists to avoid crowding in the forests, but we also need to educate tourists, especially the first-timers, about wildlife and its conservation. The tourist can be an important tool in conservation – let’s not let it go waste!"

#2: Increase in wildlife tourism has been brought about by the increasing population of the ‘Tourist’. This species is easy to recognize (see figure). The species has created an ecosystem of its own. It eats any kind of high or low profile food. Lives in resorts. Seeks charismatic animals like the tiger. Its daily activity involves excessive use of its camera. This species facilitates wildlife tourism

#9: Wildlife tourism is an excellent way to expose people of India and abroad to its rich natural heritage [...] We definitely need to regulate the number of tourists to avoid crowding in the forests, but we also need to educate tourists, especially the first-timers, about wildlife and its conservation. The tourist can be an important tool in conservation – let’s not let it go waste!"

Find full cartoon here.

To the question of where we locate change, it depends on what this change is. Through my work, I often target individuals and smaller communities (say students, villagers etc.). I don't necessarily grab my paintbrush and declare that I will change the world. My idea of change is a tailored, targeted and therefore an efficient influence on individuals.

Ameen:

Ajay:

3. The role of technology in storytelling

How does technology influence and impact your work?

Ricoeur’s thoughts on the relationship between text and action, makes us reconsider how we think about ‘text’ and how this reading can be applied to technology. According to him, the distinction between text and action is not at the linguistic, but at the discursive level. This is how he differentiates language from discourse:

	Language	Discourse
Structure	A system: timeless and static	Located at a given time and moment
Composition	A sequence of signs	A sequence of events that describe, claim and represent the world
Meaning	Refers to signs	Refers to the world
Communication	Provides codes for communication. Necessary but not sufficient	Communicates

Using these working definitions, we can understand the medium as a language: a system that provides us with signs and codes for communication. A creative use of language and mediums will hence, enable us to create narratives and produce meaning (which will be generated and negotiated by the audience). Technology is in this case our language, and how each storyteller uses it determines new ways to create meaning: experiences, connections and associations with and within their stories. We now ask them if/how the use of this 'language' mediates and impacts their work.

Arjun: Technology is the best facilitator in the realm of my science-art-communication. I depend on it extensively, to first educate myself. Then to create artwork (computer, tablet, smartphone). And then eventually I depend heavily on social media to broadcast my work. I will definitely credit the power of technology for fostering and enabling effective communication.

# 11: The story of Ajoba was carried far and wide in newspapers, television news and the internet. Find full cartoon here.

In my capacity, I feel most confident targeting students and urban youth. But thanks to the power of social media, putting my work out there has grabbed the attention of change-makers who are capable of things that is beyond my scope. This has led to collaborations through which the reach has become wider. Teachers use my art work in their classes, some organisations are using it in forest department buildings to educate visitors, some local groups have translated my work into regional languages.

Ameen:

Ajay:

4. Translating awareness into action through stories

Can you guarantee the ideas and values imbued by the story translate into action in the public space?

“what must be the nature of action...if it is to be read in terms of change in the world?” From Text to Action

So far they have told us about the power and content of stories. However, we have yet to find out what is it in stories that make listeners translate fiction into real life action. Ricoeur's final characteristic of narratives points us in the direction of empathy and interpretation.

Like discourse, action is open to interpretation. He posits that characters of our stories rise to the status of ‘persons’ when we evaluate their actions, including their doings and sufferings. This ethical verdict determines the identity of the character in the eyes of the audience (above any other physical or emotional characteristics) and this is what ultimately adds meaning to the events of the story, as it inspires the audience to emulate or reject this behavior through their actions.

We asked our storytellers their thoughts on how to translate stories' messages into meaningful action, or if it was even possible to guarantee this transition to begin with:

Arjun: I don’t [know]. One never does, I feel. But a lot of good awareness programs have made me change little things in my life. The people or groups who initiated those campaigns don't know of this, do they? This is somewhat similar. I believe that even if ONE person in the thousand who view my work gets influenced into making little changes, then it was worth my time and effort.

Ameen:

Ajay: (Ajay commented on the impact of stories while we were discussing how to gauge the impact of his work. In our first conversation he said: "Change is happening but there are no tests that can measure it and quantify it." and he elaborates on this idea below:)

5. Influence of stories on citizenship and political participation

Can the power of stories be leveraged to instill a sense of responsibility in the audience?

"You can only achieve power in common by including the opinions of as many people as possible in the discourse"

Finally, as stated in the brief of the project on methods for change, we are also interested in defining how political participation should be manifested in the public space. Ricoeur frames political action as a result of discourse and political deliberation.For a brief discussion of the relationship between storytelling and our political identity visit Part 2 of Storytelling as Performance.)

This last section captures the storytellers' point of view on how stories may affect our sense of citizenship and political responsibility.

Arjun: We are living in a society which is becoming increasingly insensitive and arrogant. There seems to be no time to stop and see the big picture: what are we doing? are our demands and lifestyles sustainable? Is the future generation secure? Impacts of our actions on the natural world.


#1: Most of us love seafood. And why shouldn't we? It tops the charts as some of the most delicious delicacies in the world! It so happens that we rarely think about what goes on “behind-the-scenes” and take many things for granted. The story behind how food reaches your plate is quite a scary one!	#12: So next time you feel like a getting a seafood dinner, do it with some perspective.

Find full cartoon here

Ameen:

Ajay:

Closing Remarks

I hope you enjoyed reading, watching and listening these three wonderful storytellers share their ideas on technology, interpretation and action. The question that remains unresolved is whether the effect of the story is shaped by the use of technology or not. At the end of the day it is the interpretation of stories -more than what it is said and how it is being said- what will determine the sustainability of these intents for change. The answers of our storytellers reinforce the notion that technology is a system, a language, a medium that transports our messages and intentions, but that inherently lacks the ability to provide guarantees for action and sway users into a lifestyle of responsible citizenship the second they pull out from their cartoon, screen or mp3.

The box below includes a quick run through the main ideas discussed throughout the post:

1. On the power of storytelling:

Arjun argues that storytelling is the origin of all communication techniques, and this makes it extremely attractive for the public.
Both Ajay and Ameen bring up the ability to influence behavior, shape the minds of people and transmit experiences, values and beliefs.
Both also brought up how dominant religions, ideologies, markets governments use storytelling to build movements and sustain their support
Finally Ajay comments on the issue of access: stories are powerful yet only a small share of stories are being told Hence, the need for this method to become more pervasive.

2. Storytelling as a vehicle for change:
Each storyteller locates change in different yet complementary spaces:

Arjun believes it must occur at the community level and hence the approach (stories) must be tailored and targeted in order to achieve an effective influence. His approach to change is very contextual.
Ameen locates it at the behavioral level; in our ability to make decisions and choices. His approach to change is based on how we use information from stories to interact with our surroundings.
Ajay locates it at the value level: He believes stories should influence us to adjust our values and only then, we will shape our behavior accordingly.

3. Role of technology:
We approached technology as a 'text' and as a 'language' that creates new possibilities for meaning and interpretation.

For Arjun and Ajay, technology enabled them to connect with other organizations and increased possibilities for partnerships and collaborations.

The three of them believe technology is an accelerator of the journey of stories and that it enables them to reach a larger audience.
Ameen argued that each medium requires different fluencies, and that the language of each medium should be adapted for the story. For example, a story will be told in different ways if using body language, video, audio, etc. He uses the example of the Twitter adaption of the Mahabharata.
Ajay closes by noting that although technology enables, it cannot replace the storyteller.

4. Translating awareness into action

Arjun and Ameen comment on the power of effectively and positively influencing one person. They believe the impact will exponentially spread and grow through that person's network or community.
Arjun believes you can guarantee it will turn into action.
Ameen believes you need to move them and inspire them through your characters to the point they feel they can be the hero of that story and act accordingly.
Ajay takes a more pragmatic approach towards action and shares some of the activities The Kahani Project uses to complement his storytelling sessions, such as: story-thons, story-booths and interactive storytelling, where they engage the audience in the production of their own stories.

5. Impact of storytelling on citizenship and political participation

Arun and Ajay believe this will come as a result of self-reflection and an evaluation of our impact in the world.
Ameen believes effective stories transmit the 'responsibility of action' through rhetoric. He uses the example of the popularity of India Against Corruption movement.
Ajay believes storytelling is a humanizing force that has the power of healing. He recommends institutions should utilize this method to spread confidence and inclusion among society and particularly with excluded groups.

Footnotes

[1] Semiotics is defined as the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. It is the study of making meaning and is essential to understand communication processes. While we will not look at any specific semiotics theory, we will focus on how stories create meaning through different signs and mediums, and how this meaning can be leveraged for making change.

[2] Refer to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s page on Paul Ricoeur and the section on ‘Selves and Agents’ to learn more about how action is mediated by causation, interference and intervention. Some interesting thoughts that inspired the above post

“What must be the nature of the world … if human beings are able to introduce changes into it?. Ricoeur adopts the analysis of interference or intervention that G. H. von Wright gives in Explanation and Understanding, and shows that for there to be interference, there must be both: an ongoing anterior established order or course of things and a human doing that somehow intervenes in and disturbs that order. Moreover, interference is always purposeful. Hence an interference is not merely ascribable to an agent. It is also imputable to the agent as the one whose purpose motivates the interference.”

“The second crucial question about action is “What must be the nature of action … if it is to be read in terms of a change in the world?” Ricoeur argues that every action involves initiative, i.e., “an intervention of the agent of action into the course of the world, an intervention that effectively causes changes in the world” (Oneself as Another, 109, translation modified). Initiative requires a bodily agent possessing specific capabilities and vulnerabilities who inhabits some concrete worldly situation.”

Sources:

Dauenhauer, Bernard and Pellauer, David, "Paul Ricoeur", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/ricoeur/>.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/multimedia-storytellers

‘Doing’ Digital Humanities: Reflections on a project on Online Feminism in India

sneha — 2015-03-30T12:48:16Z

A core concern of Digital Humanities research has been that of method. The existing discourse around the field of DH assumes a move away from traditional humanities and social sciences research methods to more open, collaborative and iterative forms of scholarship spanning some conventional and other not so conventional practices and spaces. In this guest blog post, Sujatha Subramanian reflects upon her experience of undertaking a research study on online feminist activism in India and its various challenges.

When the chance to do a research project on Digital Humanities presented itself, I deliberated over the possible topics I could explore. As a student of Media and Cultural Studies, I have on previous occasions studied digital technology and online spaces. Those studies, however, were simply “social sciences” research. I had little understanding of what Digital Humanities as a discipline entailed. While I admit that I am still unable to come up with a concrete definition of the same, the process of conducting the research and the DH workshop organised at CIS led to some clarity about the field and methods of Digital Humanities.

Before beginning the research I asked myself what could I, a feminist media scholar, learn from Digital Humanities and how could I contribute to the same. I wondered if the lack of familiarity with technological skills such as design, statistics and coding- knowledge that I saw as prerequisite to Digital Humanities- meant that I couldn’t really engage with the field of Digital Humanities. While grappling with this question, I chanced upon the #TransformDH project. At the heart of the project is the question- “How can digital humanities benefit from more diverse critical paradigms, including race/ethnic studies and gender/sexuality studies?” [1]

In a blogpost titled “Queer Studies and the Digital Humanities”,[2] the author states,

"...a lot of queer/critical ethnic studies/similar scholars also lack access to the resources that make it easier to combine digital and humanities work. That might not only mean physical access and training in technology, but also the time to add yet another interdisciplinary element to a project...my experience suggests that many, many politicized queers and people of color engaged in scholarly work in and out of the academy do use digital tools and think critically about them and even create them; they just don’t necessarily do so under the sign of the digital humanities."

As someone who used the space of Facebook to initiate conversations around feminist issues and was actively engaged in fighting the sexism entrenched in social media spaces, was I then already “doing” digital humanities? I reflected that since feminist activism finds such little space in mainstream media, a worthwhile Digital Humanities project could be to document and archive the contemporary feminist movement and the ways in which it is transforming our understanding of the digital space. As part of the project, I explored how feminist activists have revolutionised digital spaces for the creation of alternative public spheres, constituted of not just women but also other marginalised communities. The project gave me the opportunity to study the inclusions and exclusions facilitated by the digital space, with questions of gender, sexuality, class, caste and disability as central to the enquiry. The project also raised questions regarding popular assumptions of digital space as a disembodied, liberatory space free of power relations by exploring gendered and sexualised violence that these feminist activists face.

While the political vision of my project was clear, my methodological skills needed a little honing. The DH workshop organised at CIS was of great help in this regard. The feedback received at the workshop was instrumental in recognising the importance of “big data”. As a feminist researcher, life histories, personal narratives and stories remain important sources of knowledge for me. However, in studying social movements and their impact, the limitations of such methodological tools are revealed. Understanding how a feminist activist with 11,000 followers on Twitter offers important insight into public discourse is contingent on the ability to analyse such data. The workshop also helped me in realising that in my definition of activism, I had precluded many feminist engagements with digital technology, including the efforts of feminist Wikipedians, feminist gamers and feminist encounters with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). While these remain the shortcomings of my project, the workshop helped in foregrounding the scope for collaboration that lies at the heart of all our projects. A discussion of my project alongside Ditilekha’s project on LGBT Youth and Digital Citizenship brought to fore the intersections as well as the different activist strategies employed by the two movements in their use of social media. Sohnee’s project on the gender gap on Wikipedia underlines that an important aspect of working towards a feminist epistemology, and changing the relations of power that characterise technology, are issues of access and participation. Rimi’s use of a text mining tool to analyse the different patterns of language on confessions pages highlighted the value of such technological tools in socio-cultural analysis. The workshop which brought together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds, helped in highlighting shared concerns of methodology, content and political visions and prompted discussions on innovative approaches to conducting research. This attempt at collaborative knowledge production- whether it is the constant communication between the research scholars through email, the workshop with the scholars and the mentors or even the dissemination of our reports on an open access site- has been the essence of my engagement with Digital Humanities. The ethos of collaboration as central to Digital Humanities is reflected in Joan Shaffer’s definition of Digital Humanities as “...a community interested in collaborative projects and sharing knowledge across disciplines." [3] This ethos of learning from fellow researchers and working together to create accessible knowledge is something that I shall carry forward to my future research endeavours.

[1]. http://transformdh.org/2012/01/

[2]. http://www.queergeektheory.org/2011/10/conference-thoughts-queer-studies-and-the-digital-humanities/

[3]. http://dayofdh2012.artsrn.ualberta.ca/members/echoln/profile/

Sujatha Subramanian is an M.Phil. Scholar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. This research study was part of a series of six projects commissioned by HEIRA-CSCS, Bangalore as part of a collaborative exercise on mapping the Digital Humanities in India. See here for more on this initiative.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/doing-digital-humanities

Atmanirbhar Bharat Meets Digital India

ankan — 2021-06-03T12:32:47Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/files/atmanirbhar-bharat-meets-digital-india.pdf

September 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-10-24T06:48:33Z

Our newsletter for the month of September 2013 can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) welcomes you to the ninth issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. During this month we signed an MoU with the Goa University to enhance digital literacy in Konkani language, submitted a report on Inclusive Disaster and Emergency Management for persons with disabilities to the National Disaster Management Authority, published an updated version of the Privacy Protection Bill, 2013 based on feedback collected from the Privacy Round Table held on August 24, and published an analysis of the Crucifixion Protests in Paraguay. Further, updates on our upcoming events and media coverage are brought in this newsletter.

Our policies on Ethical Research Guidelines, Non-Discrimination and Equal Opportunities, Privacy, Terms of Website Use, and Travel can be accessed here.

Accessibility

As part of our project on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India with the Hans Foundation, we bring you a new draft chapter on the union territory of Andaman and Nicobar. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 21 states and 4 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for this chapter:

National Resource Kit Chapter

The Andaman and Nicobar Chapter (by CLPR, September 30, 2013).

Reports

Inclusive Disaster and Emergency Management for Persons with Disabilities (by Deepti Samant Raja and Nirmita Narasimhan, September 17, 2013). It was submitted to the National Disaster Management Authority of India (NDMA) on September 17 for their action.
The ICT Opportunity for a Disability-Inclusive Development Framework (by leading international organisations such as G3ict, ITU, Microsoft, UNESCO, et.al.) was released on September 24. CIS gave its inputs to this report.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

The Access to Knowledge team at CIS is working on expanding the Indic language Wikipedia in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation . As part this project, we held seven Wikipedia workshops. Our project on Pervasive Technologies examines the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property and we have produced a column in EuroScientist as part of our efforts of promoting openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software:

Open Access
Column

Open Access: An Opportunity for Scientists around the Globe (by Subbiah Arunachalam, Euro Scientist, September 25, 2013).

Blog Entries

e - DIRAP Google+ Hangout: Open Government (by Christine Apikul, September 18, 2013).
The Indian Council of Agricultural Research Adopts an Open Access Policy (by Nehaa Chaudhari, September 30, 2013).

Wikipedia
Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programmes, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications here.

Announcements

CIS Signs MoU with Goa University: The A2K team at CIS has signed an MoU with the Goa University to digitize the “Konkani Vishwakosh” under the Creative Commons license and build a digital knowledge partnership to enhance digital literacy in Konkani language. See here for more details.

Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project: The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the University of Goa invites you to a two-month project on digitization of Konkani Vishwakosh. Please send in your applications by October 5, 2013.

Video

Wikipedians Speak: Piotr Konieczny: This episode brings you a conversation with Piotr Konieczny, a veteran Wikipedian from Poland. He has contributed to over 514 DYK articles on Wikipedia.

Columns and Blog Entries

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Startup Goa Blog, September 9, 2013).
ଅବସର ପରର ଦ୍ବିତୀୟ ଜୀବନ, ଅବସର ପରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଜାରୀ ରଖିଥିବା ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତରଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଭାବାଲୋଚନା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odiapua, September 10, 2013).
Selection of Programme Officer — Pilot Projects, CIS-A2K (by Nitika Tandon, September 10, 2013).
Wikipedia reaches Classrooms in Hyderabad (by Syed Muzammiluddin, September 20, 2013).

Events Organised

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mysore (University of Mysore, August 6, 2013): This is a report of the workshop conducted last month. Dr. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Wikipedia Introductory Workshop (Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Goa, September 28, 2013). Nitika Tandon conducted this workshop. The details will be posted soon.
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 3 – 6, 2013).

Events Co-organised

Digital Resources in Telugu: A Workshop for Research Scholars (co-organised by CIS-A2K and the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, September 13, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan participated in this event.
Re-releasing Konkani Vishwakosh & Building Konkani Wikipedia (organised by CIS-A2K and the University of Goa, Conference Hall, Goa University, Taleigao, September 26, 2013).
Wikipedia Introductory Workshop (co-organised by CIS-A2K and wikipedians John Noronha and Supriya Kankumbikar, September 27, 2013). Nitika Tandon participated in this workshop.
Odisha: Wikipedia workshop at IIMC, Dhenkanal (co-organised by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikimedia community, September 30, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi coordinated the entire event along with members of Odia Wikipedia, Dr Subas Chandra Rout, Mrutyunjaya Kar and Sasanka Sekhar Das. This was covered by Odisha Diary (http://bit.ly/1bna9zd), and eOdisha Samachar (http://bit.ly/1aNJvv4).

Events Participated In

Workshop on e-Content Development (organised by Centre for Staff Training and Development, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 4 – 6, 2013). Vishnu Vardhan gave a guest lecture on Open Source to Open Knowledge, Building Knowledge Bases and Platforms via Mass Collaboration on the Internet, e-Content in Indian languages – History, Challenges and Opportunities, Wikipedia Users to Wikipedia Authors – Exploring Wikipedia as an OER Tool, and e-Content, e-Student, e-Faculty – Reimagining classroom in the digital Age.
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (organised by Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, SDM College, Ujire, September 15, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja participated in this workshop.
Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (organised by St. Aloysius College, AIMIT, St Aloysius College (Autonomous), Beeri, Mangalore, September 13, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja participated in this.

Media Coverage

'Help Konkani Wikipedia come out of incubation' (Deccan Herald, September 13, 2013): The article talks about the relative lack of content in Konkani Wikipedia. “To get it out of incubation, many should write Konkani articles for Wikipedia,” Dr. Pavanaja was quoted as having said.
Konkani Vishwakosh relaunch tomorrow (The Hindu, September 26, 2013). A coverage of the re-release of the Konkani encyclopaedia under Creative Commons license.
Goa university re-releasing Konkani encyclopaedia on Sept 26 (The Times of India, September 24, 2013): Goa University and CIS-A2K re-released the four volume 3632 page Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopaedia) in Goa.
Goa University announces plan to upload Konkani encyclopedia on Wikipedia (Navhind Times, September 27, 2013).
Konkani Wikipedia from Goa University in 6 months (The Times of India, September 27, 2013): Goa University becomes the first varsity in India to allow data produced and copyrighted by an Indian university to be used by internet users. Professors, students and anyone with expertise or love for Konkani can come forward to help with the project for which training will be provided, says Vishnu Vardhan.
Konkani Wikipedia in the making (by Prakash Kamat, The Hindu, September 29, 2013): Goa University re-launched a four-volume Konkani encyclopaedia and will upload it on Wikipedia. The process will be completed in six months times, says Vishnu Vardhan.
For the love of Konkani: Preserving Goa's official language (by Joanna Lobo, DNA, September 29, 2013): Konkani has 24 lakh speakers as per the Census Department of India 2001 but online documentation is limited. CIS-A2K wants to strengthen the Konkani Wikipedia, says Nitika Tandon.
Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months (by Jagran Josh, September 30, 2013).
Goa University Partners CIS India to Build Konkani Wikipedia (by Apurva Chaudhary, Medianama, September 30, 2013).

Access to Knowledge (Copyright and Pervasive Technologies)

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:

Event Participated In

The Law and Economics of Copyright Users Rights (organised by the American University Washington College of Law, Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington DC, September 26, 2013). Sunil Abraham presented the Pervasive Technologies project.

Internet Governance

We are doing a project on conducting research on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS) with Privacy International and IDRC. So far we have organised six privacy round tables and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill. This month we bring you the latest version of the Privacy (Protection) Bill and an analysis of the six privacy round tables. We are also doing a project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and IDRC. We did an interview with Lawrence Liang on privacy and free speech:

SAFEGUARDS Project
Bill

Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013: Updated Third Draft (by Bhairav Acharya, September 30, 2013): CIS has been researching privacy in India since 2010 with the objective of raising public awareness around privacy, completing in depth research, and driving a privacy legislation in India. As part of this work, we drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill, 2013. This is the latest version with changes based on feedback from the Privacy Round Table held on August 24.

Event Reports

A Privacy Meeting with the Federal Trade Commission (co-organised by CIS and the Federal Trade Commission, Imperial Hotel, Janpath, New Delhi, September 20, 2013). Elonnai Hickok participated in this meeting.
The National Privacy Roundtable Meetings (by Bhairav Acharya, September 19, 2013). Bhairav provides an analysis of the six round table meetings held in the cities of New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, and Kolkata.

Interview

An Interview with Suresh Ramasubramanian (by Elonnai Hickok, September 6, 2013): Suresh Ramasubramanian from IBM speaks about cyber security and issues in the cloud.

Articles and Blog Entries

India: Privacy in Peril (by Bhairav Acharya, Frontline, July 12, 2013). The article was published in Frontline in July but was mirrored only recently on our website.
Privacy Law Must Fit the Bill (by Sunil Abraham, Deccan Chronicle, September 9, 2013).
Transparency Reports — A Glance on What Google and Facebook Tell about Government Data Requests (by Prachi Arya, September 12, 2013).
The National Cyber Security Policy: Not a Real Policy (by Bhairav Acharya, Observer Research Foundation's Cyber Security Monitor Vol. I, Issue.1, August 2013).
The Central Monitoring System: Some Questions to be Raised in Parliament (by Bhairav Acharya, September 19, 2013).
CIS and International Coalition Calls upon Governments to Protect Privacy (by Elonnai Hickok, September 25, 2013).
An Analysis of the Cases Filed under Section 46 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 for Adjudication in the State of Maharashtra (by Bhairav Acharya, September 30, 2013): This is a brief review of some of the cases related to privacy filed under section 46 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 seeking adjudication for alleged contraventions of the Act in the State of Maharashtra.

Media Coverage

Gmail ban looms for Indian gov't workers (by Beatrice Thomas, Arabian Business.com, September 1, 2013): The article says that government would ban Gmail for official communication in light of cyber spying by the US. Sunil Abraham agrees with the ban.
Indien: Regierung will Nutzung von US-Mailprovidern in Verwaltungen verbieten (Netzpolitik, September 3, 2013). Sunil Abraham was quoted in this German newspaper.
A dangerous trend: social media adds fire to Muzaffarnagar clashes (by Zia Haq, The Hindustan Times, September 9, 2013). The article speaks about censorship in wake of publication of malicious content. In such cases the government has a legitimate reason to censor speech, says Sunil Abraham.
Three Years Later, IPaidABribe.com Pays Off (by Jessica McKenzie, TechPresident, September 23, 2013): The article talks about IPaidABribe.com, an online portal focusing on civic engagement and improving governance. But the real problem in India is “high ticket bribes...at the top of the pyramid,” Sunil Abraham was quoted as having said.
Indian biometric ID plan faces court hurdle (by John Ribeiro, Computer World, September 25, 2013): The article talks about Aadhar (India’s biometric system). The Aadhaar number now allows different agencies including private organizations to collect and exchange data between them, says Pranesh Prakash.

Upcoming Event

Privacy Round Table, New Delhi (co-organised by FICCI, DSCI and CIS, FICCI Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, October 19, 2013).

Event Organised

Public Law and Jurisprudential Issues of Privacy (CIS, Bangalore, September 27, 2013): Abhayraj Naik, a graduate from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and the Yale Law School gave a talk on public law and jurisprudential issues related to privacy.

Events Participated In

Young Scholar Tutorials (organised by Communication Policy Research South, September 3-4, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari participated in this event.
Privacy and Surveillance in India (organised by the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, September 18, 2013). Sunil Abraham gave a talk.
Syllabus: “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar: An introductory course” (organised by LIRNEasia in collaboration with Myanmar ICT Development Organization, and with support from the Open Society Foundation and the International Development Research Centre of Canada, September 28 – October 5, 2013). Sunil Abraham is supporting Prof. Samarajiva on the last optional day of this course in Yangon.
Congress on Privacy and Surveillance (organised by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, September 30, 2013). Maria Xynou participated in this event.

Cyber Security Project
Video Interview

Part 10: Interview with Lawrence Liang (September 10, 2013): In the ecology of online communication it is crucial for us to look at right to privacy and right to free speech as inseparable.

Forthcoming Events

11th India Knowledge Summit 2013 (organised by ASSOCHAM India, Hotel Shangri-La, New Delhi, October 14-15, 2013). CIS is one of the organisations supporting this event.
CYFY 2013: India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Governance (organised by Observer Research Foundation and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi, October 14-15, 2013). Sunil Abraham will participate in this event as a speaker.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access
CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at www.internet-institute.in.

Modules

International Telecommunication Union (by Snehashish Ghosh and Anirudh Sridhar, September 30, 2013).
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) (by Snehashish Ghosh and Anirudh Sridhar, September 30, 2013).

Telecom

Shyam Ponappa, a Distinguished Fellow at CIS is a regular columnist with the Business Standard. The articles published on his blog Organizing India Blogspot is mirrored on our website:

Newspaper Column

Regrouping for Growth - Interest Rates – III (originally published in the Business Standard on September 4, 2013 and mirrored in Organizing India Blogspot on September 6, 2013).

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:
Event Report

Bangalore + Sustainability Summit (organized by Ashoka India, Green Lungi and IDEX, September 21, 2013, CIS, Bangalore): Denisse Albornoz has summarised the happenings in this report.

Media Coverage

Youths brainstorm at social summit (The Times of India, September 21, 2013): A coverage of the Bangalore + Sustainability Summit hosted at CIS.

Blog Entry + Video

Revealing Protesters on the Fringe: Crucifixion Protest in Paraguay (by Denisse Albornoz, September 20, 2013): Denisse provides an analysis of the crucifix protest in Paraguay in the light of Nishant Shah’s piece: Whose Change is it Anyway?.

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:

Interview

Thinking Digital Beyond Tools: Interview with Dr. Nishant Shah (by Noopur Raval, HASTAC, September 10, 2013): Nishant speaks about his interest in digital studies, the future of humanities, and his HASTAC experience.

Event Participated In

Reclaim Open Learning Symposium (organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, University of California Humanities Research Institute, UC Irvine, September 26-27, 2013): Nishant Shah participated in this event as a panelist.

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 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/september-2013-bulletin

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

Internet Researchers' Conference 2018 (IRC18): Offline - Call for Sessions

sneha-pp — 2017-11-29T12:30:13Z

Does being offline necessarily mean being disconnected? Beyond anxieties such as FOMO, being offline is also seen as disengagement from a certain milieu of the digital (read: capital), an impediment to the way life is organised by and around technologies in general. However, being offline is not the exception, as examples of internet shutdown and acts on online censorship illustrate the persistence and often alarming regularity of the offline even for the ‘connected’ sections of the population. The *offline* is the theme of the third Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC18). We invite teams of two or more members to submit sessions proposals by Sunday, November 19 (final deadline). The session selection process is described below. The Conference will be hosted by the Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics (Kandbari, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh) on February 22-24, 2018.

IRC18: Offline

Call for Sessions

Proposed Sessions (Conference Website)

Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics (External Link)

IRC18: Offline

State and commercial providers of internet and telecommunication services work in tandem to produce both the “online” and the “offline” - through content censorship, internet regulation, generalised service provision failures, and so on. Further, efforts to prioritise the use of digital technologies for financial transactions, especially since demonetisation, has led to a not-so-subtle equalisation of the ‘online economy’ with the ‘formal economy’; thus recognising the offline as the zones of informality, corruption, and piracy. This contributes to the offline becoming invisible, and in many cases, illegal, rather than being recognised as a condition that necessarily informs what it means to be digital.

Who is offline, and is it a choice? The global project of bringing people online has spurred several commendable initiatives in expanding access to digital devices, networks, and content, and often contentious ones such as Free Basics / internet.org, which illustrate the intersectionalities of scale, privilege, and rights that we need to be mindful of when we imagine the offline. Further, the experience of the internet, for a large section of people is often mediated through prior and ongoing experiences of traditional media, and through cultural metaphors and cognitive frames that transcend more practical registers such as consumption and facilitation. How do we approach, study, and represent this disembodied internet – devoid of its hypertext, platforms, devices, it's nuts and bolts, but still tangible through engagement in myriad, personal and often indiscernible ways.

For the third edition of the Internet Researchers’ Conference (IRC18), we invite participants to critically discuss the offline. We invite sessions that present or propose academic, applied, creative, or technical works that explore social, economic, cultural, political, infrastructural, or aesthetic dimensions of the offline.

For example, the sessions may explore one or more of the following themes:

Geographies of internet access: Infrastructural, socio-political, and discursive forces and contradictions
Terms, objects, metaphors, and events of the internet and their offline remediation and circulation
Minimal computing, maker cultures, and digital collaboration and creativity in the offline
Offline economic cultures and transition towards less-cash economy
Offline as democratic choice: the right to offline lives in the context of global debates on privacy, surveillance, and data justice
Methodologies of studying the *offline* at the intersections of offline and online lives

Please note that the above are not sub-themes or tracks under which a session should be proposed, but are illustrations of possible session themes and concerns.

Call for Sessions

We invite teams of two or more members to propose sessions for IRC18. All sessions will be one and half hours long, and will be fully designed and facilitated by the team concerned, including moderation (if any). Please remember this when planning the session. Everything happening during the session, except for logistical support, will be led and managed by the session team.

The sessions are expected to drive conversations on the topic concerned. They may include presentation of research papers but this is not mandatory.

We look forward to sessions that involve collaborative work (either in groups or otherwise), including discussions, interactions, documentation, learning, and making, are most welcome.

We also look forward to sessions conducted in Indic languages. The proposing team, in such a case, should consider how participants who do not understand the language concerned may engage with the session. IRC organisers and other participants shall help facilitate these sessions, say by offering translation support.

The only eligibility criteria for proposing sessions are that they must be proposed by a team of at least two members, and that they must engage with the *offline*.

The deadline for submission of sessions proposals for IRC18 is Sunday, November 19 (final deadline).

To propose a session, please send the following documents (as attached text files) to raw@cis-india.org:

Title of the Session: The session should be named in the form of a hashtag (check the IRC17 selected sessions for example).
Context of the Session: This should be a 300 words note discussing the context, the motivations, and the expectations behind the proposed session.
Session Plan: This should describe the objectives of the session, what will be done and discussed during the session, and who among the people organising the session will be responsible for what. This note need not be more than 300 words long. If your session involves inviting others to present their work (say papers), then please provide a description and timeline of the process through which these people will be identified.
Session Team Details: Please share brief biographic notes of each member of the session team, and contact details.

There is no registration fee for the Conference, but participants are expected to pay for their own travel and accommodation (to be organised by CIS) expenses. Limited funding will be available to support travel and accommodation expenses of few participants who are unemployed or under-employed.

Session selection process:

November 19: Deadline of submission of session proposals.All submitted sessions will be posted on the CIS website, along with the names and details of the session team members.
November 20 - December 17: Open review period. All session teams, as well as other interested contributors, are invited to review and comment upon each other's submitted proposals and revise their own. Read the proposed sessions here: Conference Website.
December 18-31: The selection process takes place. All session teams will select 10 sessions to be included in the IRC18 programme. The votes will be anonymous, that is no session team will know which other sessions have voted for their session.
January 08: Announcement of selected sessions.
February 22-24: IRC18 at Sambhaavnaa Institute!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc18-offline-call

Technology, Social Justice and Higher Education

praskrishna — 2015-03-30T14:54:21Z

Since the last two years, we at the Centre for Internet and Society, have been working with the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, on a project called Pathways to Higher Education, supported by the Ford Foundation.

The main aim of the project is to research the state of social diversity and justice in undergraduate colleges in India and encourage students to articulate the axes of discrimination and exclusion which might keep them from interacting and engaging with educational resources and systems in their college environments.

Peer-to-Peer Technologies

The entry point into these debates was digital technologies, where through an introduction to peer-to-peer technologies, digital story telling through various web based platforms, and a collaborative thought environment mediated by internet and digital technologies, we facilitated the students to identify, articulate and address questions of discrimination, change and the possibility of engaging with these critically in order to build a better learning environment for themselves (and their peers) in their own colleges.

Each workshop was designed not only to be sensitive to the specificities of the locations of the colleges, but also to accommodate for the needs, desires and aspirations of the students involved. The participants looked at their own personal, family and community histories, their everyday experiences, their affective modes of aspiration and desire, and their own circumstances which often circumscribe them, in order to come up with certain themes that they thought were relevant and crucial in their own contexts.

As a follow-up on the workshops, the students developed specific projects and activities that will help them strengthen their hypotheses by looking beyond the personal and finding ways by which they can engage with the larger communities, spreading awareness, building histories and acquiring skills to successfully bolster their classroom interaction and learning.

The following is a bird’s eye view of the key themes that have emerged in the workshops:

The Costs of Belonging

Almost unanimously, though articulating it in different ways, the students looked at different costs of belonging to a space. Sometimes it was the space of the web, sometimes of the larger educational institution, sometimes to distinct language groups which do not treat English as the lingua franca, and sometimes to communities and friend circles within the college environment.

It was particularly insightful for us to understand that granting access, providing infrastructure or equipping ‘underprivileged’ students with skills is not enough. In fact, it became apparent that there is a certain policy driven, post-Mandal affirmative action that has already bridged the infrastructural and access gap in the educational institutions. The easy availability of computers, internet access, the ubiquitous cell phone, were all indicators that for most of the students, it wasn’t a question of affording access. Even when we were dealing with economically disadvantaged students, there were a plethora of technology devices they had access to and familiarity with. Shared resources, public access to digital technologies, and institutional support towards promoting digital familiarity all played a significant role in demystifying the digital for them. In many ways, these students were digital natives if defined through access, because they had Facebook accounts and browsed Google to find everything they wanted. Their phone was an extension of their selves and they used it in creative ways to communicate and connect with their peers.

Based on this, the students are now prepared to work on documenting, exploring and raising awareness about these questions, to see what the gating factors are that disallow people with access to still feel excluded from the power of the digital.

The Need for Diversity

It is a telling sign about the state of the Internet in India that every student presumed that the only way to be really fluent with the digital web is to be fluent in English. The equation of English being synonymous with being online was both fascinating and troubling to us. Of course, a lot of it has to do with India’s own preoccupations, marked by a postcolonial subjectivity, with English as the language of modernity and privilege. But it also has to do with the fact that almost all things digital in India, lack localisation. The digital technologies and platforms remain almost exclusively in English, fostered by the fact that input devices (keyboards, for example) and display interfaces favour English as the language of computing.

Such an idea might also help in reducing the distance between those who can fluently navigate the web through its own language, and those who, through various reasons, find themselves tentative and intimidated online.

The breakthrough that the participants had, when they realised that they don’t have to be ‘proper in English’ while being online – the ability to find local language resources, fonts, translation machines, and the possibility of transliterating their local language in the Roman script was a learning lesson for us.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Learning

As a part of their orientation to the world of the digital, especially with the methodologies of the workshops, the students literally had an overnight epiphany where they could see the possibilities and potentials of P2P learning. The recognition that they are not merely recipients of knowledge but also bearers of experience and contexts which are rich and replete with knowledge, gave them new insights on how to approach learning and education. Through digital storytelling, the workshops demonstrated how, in our own stories and accounts of life, there are many indicators and factors which can help us engage with the realities of exclusion and injustice.

Working together in groups, not only to excavate knowledge from the outside, as it were, but also to unearth the knowledge, experience, stories, emotions that we all carry with ourselves and can serve as valuable tools to bring to the classroom, is a lesson that all the groups learned. The idea of a peer also led them to question the established hierarchies within formal education. What was particularly interesting was that they did not – as is often the case – translate P2P into DIY education. They recognised that there are certain knowledge and skill gaps that they would like experts to address and have incorporated special trainings with different experts in areas of language, communication, ethnography, interviews, film making, etc. However, the methods for these trainings are going to emphasise a more P2P structure that is different from the regular classroom learning.

What would happen if a teacher is looked at as a peer rather than a superior? How would they navigate curricula if the scope of their learning was greater than the curricula? How could they work together to learn from each other, different ways of learning and understanding? These are some of the questions that get reflected in their proposed campus activities, where they are trying to now produce knowledge about their communities, cities, families, groups and experiences, by conducting surveys, ethnographies, historical archive work, etc. The digital helps them in not only disseminating the information they are collecting but also in re-establishing their relationship with learning and knowledge.

Ideas like open space dialogues, collaborative story-telling, mobilising resources for knowledge production, creating awareness campaigns and interacting with a larger audience through the digital platforms are now a part of their proposals and promise to show some creative, innovative and interesting uses of these technologies. How the teachers would react to such an imagination of the students as peers within the formal education system, remains to be seen as we organise a faculty training workshop later in December.

These three large themes find different articulations, interpretations and executions in different locations. However, they seem to be emerging as the new forms of social exclusion that we need to take into account. It is apparent that the role of technologies – both at the level of usage and of imagination – is crucial in shaping these forms of social inequities. But the technologies can also facilitate negotiations and engagements with these concerns by providing new forms of knowledge production and pedagogy, which can help the students in developing better learning environments and processes. The Pathways to Higher Education remains committed to not only documenting these learnings but also to see how they might be upscaled and integrated into mainstream learning within higher education in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways/blog/higher-education

Reading from a Distance — Data as Text

sneha — 2015-11-13T05:29:12Z

The advent of new digital technologies and the internet has redefined practices of reading and writing, and the notion of textuality which is a fundamental aspect of humanities research and scholarship. This blog post looks at some of the debates around the notion of text as object, method and practice, to understand how it has changed in the digital context.

The concepts of text and textuality have been central to the discourse on language and culture, and therefore by extension to most of the humanities disciplines, which are often referred to as text-based disciplines. The advent of new digital and multimedia technologies and the internet has brought about definitive changes in the ways in which we see and interpret texts today, particularly as manifested in new practices of reading and writing facilitated by these tools and dynamic interfaces now available in the age of the digital. The ‘text’ as an object of enquiry is also central to much of the discussion and literature on Digital Humanities, given that many scholars, particularly in the West trace its antecedents to practices of textual criticism and scholarship that stem from efforts in humanities computing. Everything from the early attempts in character and text encoding (see TEI) to new forms and methods of digital literary curation, either on large online archives or in the form of apps such as Storify or Scoop it have been part of the development of this discourse on the text. Significant among these is the emergence of processes such as text analysis, data mining, distant reading, and not-reading, all of which essentially refer to a process of reading by recognising patterns over a large corpus of texts, often with the help of a clustering algorithm[1]. The implications of this for literary scholarship are manifold, with many scholars seeing this as a point of ‘crisis’ for the traditional practices of reading and meaning-making such as close reading, or an attempt to introduce objectivity and a certain quantitative aspect, often construed as a form of scientism, into what is essentially a domain of interpretation. But an equal number of advocates of the process also see the use of these tools as enabling newer forms of literary scholarship by enhancing the ability to work with and across a wide range and number of texts. The simultaneous emergence of new kinds of digital objects, and a plethora of them, and the supposed obscuring of traditional methods in the process is perhaps the immediate source of this perceived discomfort. There are different perspectives on the nature of changes this has led to in understanding a concept that is elementary to the humanities. Apart from the fact that digitisation makes a large corpus of texts now accessible, subject to certain conditions of access of course, it also makes texts ‘ massively addressable at different levels of scale’ as suggested by Micheal Witmore. According to him “Addressable here means that one can query a position within the text at a certain level of abstraction”. This could be at the level of character, words, lines etc that may then be related to other texts at the same level of abstraction. The idea that the text itself is an aggregation of such ‘computational objects’ is new, but as Witmore points out in his essay, it is the nature of this computational object that requires further explanation. In fact, as he concludes in the essay, “textuality is addressability” and further...this is a condition, rather than a technology, action or event”. What this points towards is the rather flexible and somewhat ephemeral nature of the text itself, particularly the digital text, and the need to move out of a notion of textuality which has been shaped so far by the conventions of book culture, which look to ideal manifestations in provisional unities such as the book.[2]

The notion of the text itself as an object of enquiry has undergone significant change. Various disciplines have for long engaged with the text - as a concept, method or discursive space - and its definitions have changed over time that have added dimensions to ways of doing the humanities. With every turn in literary and cultural criticism in particular, the primacy of the written word as text has been challenged, what is understood as ‘textual’ in a very narrow sense has moved to the visual and other kinds of objects. The digital object presents a new kind of text that is difficult to grasp - the neat segregations of form, content, process etc seem to blur here, and there is a need to unravel these layers to understand its textuality. As Dr. Madhuja Mukherjee, with the Department of Film Studies, at Jadavpur University points out, with the opening up of the digital field, there are more possibilities to record, upload and circulate, as a result of which the very object of study has changed; the text as an object therefore has become very unstable, more so that it already is. Film is an example, where often DVDs of old films no longer exist, so one approaches the ‘text’ through other objects such as posters or found footage. Such texts also available through several online archives now offer possibilities of building layers of meaning through annotations and referencing. Another example she cites is of the Indian Memory project, where objects such as family photographs become available for study as texts for historiography or ethnographic work. She points out that this is not a new phenomenon, as the disciplines of literary and cultural studies, critical theory and history have explored and provided a base for these questions, but there is definitely a new found interest now due the increasing prevalence of digital methods and spaces. One example of such a digital text perhaps is the hypertext[3]. George Landow in his book on hypertext draws upon both Barthes and Foucault’s conceptualisation of textuality in terms of nodes, links, networks, web and path, which has been posited in some sense as the ideal text. Landow’s analysis emphasises the multilinearity of the text, in terms of its lack of a centre, and therefore the reader being able to organise the text according to his own organising principle - possibilities that hypertext now offers which the printed book could not. While hypertext illustrates the post-structural notion of what comprises an open text as it were, it may still be linear in terms of embodying certain ideological notions which shape its ultimate form. Hypertext, while in a pragmatic sense being the text of the digital is still at the end of a process of signification or meaning-making, often defined within the parameters set by print culture.

But to return to what has been one of the fundamental notions of textual criticism, the ‘text’ is manifested through practices of reading and writing [4]. So what have been the implications of digital technologies for these processes which have now become technologised, and by extension for our understanding of the text? While processes such as distant reading and not-reading demonstrate precisely the variability of meaning-making processes and the fluid nature of textuality, they also seem to question the premise of the method and form of criticism itself. Franco Moretti, his book Graphs, Maps and Trees talks about the possibilities accorded by clustering algorithms and pattern recognition as a means to wade through corpora, thus attempting to create what he calls an ‘abstract model of literary history’. He describes this approach as ‘within the old territory of literary history, a new object of study’...He further says, “Distant reading, I have once called this type of approach, where distance is however not an obstacle, but a specific kind of knowledge: fewer elements, hence a sharper sense of their overall interconnection. Shapes, relations, structures. Forms. Models.” The emphasis for Moretti therefore is on the method of reading or meaning-making. There seem to be two questions that emerge from this perceived shift - one is the availability of the data and tools that can ‘facilitate’ this kind of reading, and the second is a change in the nature of the object of enquiry itself, so much so that close reading or textual analysis is not engaging or adequate any longer and calls for other methods. An example much closer home of such new forms of textual criticism is that of ‘ Bichitra’, an online variorum of Rabindranath Tagore’s works developed by the School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University. The traditional variorum in itself is a work of textual criticism, where all the editions of the work of an author are collated as a corpus to trace the changes and revisions made over a period of time. The Tagore varioum, while making available an exhaustive resource on the author’s work, also offers a collation tool that helps trace such variations across different editions of works, but with much less effort otherwise needed in manually reading through these texts. Like paper variorum editions, this online archive too allows for study of a wider number and diversity of texts on a single author through cross-referencing and collation.

As is apparent in the development of new kinds of tools and resources to facilitate reading, there is a problem of abundance that follows once the problem of access has been addressed to some extent. Clustering algorithms have been used to generate and process data in different contexts, apart from their usage in statistical data analysis. The role of data is pertinent here; and particularly that of big data. But the understanding of big data is still shrouded within the conventions of computational practice, so much so that its social aspects are only slowly being explored now, particularly in the context of reading practices. Big data as understood in the field of computing is data that is so vast or complex that it cannot be processed by existing database management tools or processing applications[5]. But if one were to treat data as text, as is an eventual possibility with literary criticism that uses computational methods, what becomes of the critical ability to decode the text - and does this further change the nature of the text itself as a discursive object, and the practice of reading and textual criticism as a result. Reading data as text then also presupposes a different kind of reader, one that is no longer the human subject. This would be a significant move in understanding how the processes of textuality also change to address new modes of content generation, and how much the contours of such textuality reflect the changes in the discursive practices that construct it. Most of the debate however has been framed within a narrative of loss - of criticality and a particular method of making meaning of the world. Close reading as a method too came with its own set of problems - which can be seen as part of a larger critique of the Formalists and later American New Criticism, specifically in terms of its focus on the text. As such, this further contributes to canonising a certain kind of text and thereby a form of cultural and literary production. [6] Distant reading as a method, though also seen as an attempt to address this problem by including corpora, still poses the same issues in terms of its approach, particularly as the text still serves as the primary and authoritative object of study. The emphasis therefore comes back to reading as a critical and discursive practice. The objects and tools are new; the skills to use them need to be developed. However, as much of the literature and processes demonstrate, the critical skills essentially remain the same, but now function at a meta-level of abstraction. Kathleen Fitzpatrick in her book on the rise of electronic publishing and planned technological obsolescence dwells on the manner in which much of our reading practice is still located in print or specifically book culture; the conflict arises with the shift to a digital process and interface, in terms of trying to replicate the experience of reading on paper. Add to this problem of abundance of data, and processes like curation, annotation, referencing, visualisation, abstraction etc acquire increased valence as methods of creatively reading or making meaning of content. [7]

Whether as object, method or practice, the notion of textuality and the practice of the reading have undergone significant changes in the digital context, but whether this is a new domain of enquiry is a question one may ask. Matthew G. Kirschenbaum in his essay on re-making reading suggests that perhaps the function of these clustering algorithms, apart from serving to supplant or reiterate what we already know is to also ‘provoke’ new ideas or questions. This is an interesting use of the term, given that the suggestion to use quantitative methods such as clustering and pattern recognition in fields that are premised on close reading and interpretation is itself a provocative one and has implications for content. The conflict produced between close and distant reading, the shift from print to digital interfaces would therefore emerge as a space for new questions around the given notion of text and textuality. But if one were to extend that thought, it may be pertinent to ask if the Digital Humanities can now provide us with a vibrant field that will help produce a better and more nuanced understanding of the notion of the text itself as an object of enquiry. This would require one to work with and in some sense against the body of meaning already generated around the text, but in essence the very conflict may be where the epistemological questions about the field are located.

References:

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen, “Texts”, Planned Obsolescence – Publishing, Technology and Future of the Academy, New York and London: New York University Press, 2011. pp.89 – 119.
Kirschenbaum, M.G, “The Remaking of Reading: Data Mining and the Digital Humanities”, Conference proceedings; National Science Foundation Symposium on Next Generation of Data Mining and Cyber-Enabled Discovery for Innovation, Balitmore, October 10-12, 2007, http://www. cs. umbc. edu/hillol/NGDM07/abstracts/talks/MKirschenbaum. pdf.
Landow, George. P, Hypertext: The Convergence of Critical Theory and Technology, Balitmore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992 pp 2-12
Moretti, Franco, Graphs, Maps and Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History, Verso: London and New York, 2005. p.1
Whitmore, Michael , “Text: A Massively Addressable Object”, Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Mathew K. Gold, University of Minnesota Press: 2012 pp 324 – 327 http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/24
Wilkens, Mathew, “Canons,Close Reading and the Evolution of Method” Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Mathew K. Gold, University of Minnesota Press: 2012 pp 324 – 327 http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/24

[1] For more on cluster analysis and algorithms see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis

[2] See Witmore, 2012. pp 324 - 327

[3] A term coined by Theodor H. Nelson, which he describes as “a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways” ( As quoted in Landow, 1991. pp 2-12)

[4] Barthes, 1977. pp 155 - 164

[5] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data

[6] See Wilkens (2012). pp 249-252

[7] See Fitzpatrick (2011), pp 89 -119

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/reading-from-a-distance

Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore

nishant — 2015-04-14T12:47:38Z

The Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School is a Biennial event that invites Masters and PhD students from around Asia to participate in conversations around developing and building an Inter-Asia Cultural Studies thought process. Hosted by the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society along with the Consortium of universities and research centres that constitute it, the Summer School is committed to bringing together a wide discourse that spans geography, disciplines, political affiliations and cultural practices for and from researchers who are interested in developing Inter-Asia as a mode of developing local, contextual and relevant knowledge practices.

This is the narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” which was hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012. The peer reviewed article was published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, on July 3, 2014. Click to download the file. (PDF, 95 Kb)

At the heart of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (IACS) project has been a pedagogic impulse that seeks to train young students and scholars in critical ways of thinking about questions of the contemporary. The ambition of developing an “Asian way of thinking” is not merely a response to the hegemony of North-Western theory in thought and research, especially in Social Sciences and Humanities. It is also a way by which new knowledge is developed and shared between different locations in Asia, to get a more embedded sense of the social, the political and the cultural in the region. Apart from building a widespread network of researchers, activists, academics and artists who have generated the most comprehensive and critical insights into developing ontological and teleological relationships with Asia, there have always been attempts made to integrate students into the network’s activities. From student pre-conferences that invited students to build intellectual dialogues, to subsidies and fellowships offered to allow students to travel from their different institutions across Asia, various initiatives have inspired and facilitated the first encounter with Asia for a number of young researchers who might have lived in Asian countries but not been trained to understand the context of what it means to be in Asia. Over time, through different structures, such as the institutionalisation of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal and the growth of the eponymous conference, the IACS has already expanded the scope of its activities, involving new interlocutors and locations in which to grow the environment of critical academic and research discourse.

Building upon the expertise and networks of scholarship developed for over a decade, the IACS Society initiated the biennial Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School, in order to engage younger scholars and students with some of the key questions that have been discussed and contested in the cultural studies discourse in Asia. The IACS Summer School that began in 2010 in Seoul, is a travelling school that moves to different countries, drawing upon local energies, resources and debates to acquaint students with the critical discourse as well as the experience of difference that marks Asia as a continent. The summer school in 2012 was hosted jointly by the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Studies at the Indian Institute of Sciences.[1]

For a snapshot of the Summer School, see Table 1 below:

Table 1. The 2012 Inter-Asia cultural studies summer school: a snapshot

The Asian Edge

Core course: Methodologies for Cultural Studies in Asia (2–11 August, 2012)
Optional courses
The Digital Subject / Technology, Culture and the Body (13–16 August, 2012)
Language of Instruction: EnglishHomepage: http://culturalstudies.asia/?page_id=86
Organisers: Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore
Host: Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore
Co-organisers: Consortium of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Consortium Institutions; Institute of East Asian Studies, Sungkonghoe University, Korea
Course Coordinators: Nitya Vasudevan & Nishant Shah
Number of Students: 35 students from 12 Asian countries
Number of Faculty: 17 from 5 Asian countries[2]

Plotting Edges: The Rationale

The second summer school, hosted in August 2012, with the support of the Inter Asia Cultural Studies Consortium and the Institute of East Asian Studies, was entitled “The Asian Edge.” We decided to stay with the metaphor of the Edge because it allowed us to experiment, both conceptually and in process, with new modes of engagement, interaction, knowledge production and pedagogy. The idea of an Asian Edge was interesting because it signalled a de-bordering of Asia. The Edge is also an inroad into that which might have remained invisible or inscrutable to those outside of it. The imagination of an Asian Edge brings in both the imaginations of geography as well as the notion of extensions, where Asia, especially in this hyper-real and geo-territorial age does not remain contained within the national boundaries. Within the Inter-Asia discourse, there has been a rich theorisation around what constitutes Asia and what are the ways in which we can reconstruct our Asianness that do not fall in the easy “Asian Studies” mode of being defined by the West as the ontological reference point. Chen Kuan-Hsing’s (2010) argument in Asia as Method, where he argues that Asia is a construct that emerged out of the Cold War and needs to be deconstructed and unpacked in order to understand the different instances and manifestations of India, have captured these dialogues quite comprehensively. Similarly, Ashish Rajadhyaksha’s (2009) landmark work Indian Cinema in the time of Celluloid marks how questions of nationalism, modernity, governance and technology have been peculiarly and particularly tied to cultural objects and industries such as cinema, not only in negotiations with the post-colonial encounters of India with its erstwhile colonial masters but also with the different locations and imaginations of India. Chua Beng-Huat (2000) in Consumption in Asia similarly points at the ways in which Asia works at different levels of materiality and symbolism, creating communities, connections and commerce in unprecedented ways, not only within Orientalist imagination but in Asia’s own imagination of itself. The Asian Edge was also a way of introducing new thematic interventions in the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies discourse. While the IACS project has invited and initiated some of the most diverse and rich conversations around cultural production—ranging from creative industries to cultural politics; from cultural objects to flows of consumption and distribution—we haven’t yet managed to shift the debates into the realm of the digital. The emergence of digital technologies has transformed a lot of our vocabulary and conceptual framework, but we haven’t been able to translate all our concerns into the fast-paced changes that the digital ICTs are ushering into Asia.

With this summer school, we wanted to introduce the digital and the technological as a central trope of understanding our existing and emerging research within inter-Asia cultural studies. And the edge, borrowing from the Network theories that have their grounds in Computing, Actor-Network modelling and ICT4D discourse, gives us another way of thinking about Asia. As the computing theorist Duncan Watts (1999) points out in his model of our universe as a “small world”, the edge, within networks is not merely the containing limit. It is not the boundary or the end but actually the space of interaction, communication and exchange. An edge is the route that traffic takes as it moves from one node to another. Edges are hence tenuous, they emerge and, with repetition, become stronger, but they also die and extend, morph and mutate, thus constantly changing the contours of the network. The ambition was to refuse the separation of technology from the Cultural Studies discourse, introducing what Tejaswini Niranjana in her work on Indian Language education and pedagogy calls “Integration” (Niranjana et al. 2010) rather than “interdisciplinarity”. It was also to provide a different historical trajectory to technology studies, what science and technology historians Kavita Philip, Lily Irani, and P. Dourish (2010) call “Postcolonial Computing.”

The Asian Edge then became a space where we could consolidate the knowledge and key insights from the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies discourse, but could also open it up to new research, new modes of engagement, and new questions that need the historicity and also the points of departure. These ambitions had a direct impact on both the structure of the Summer School as well as the processes that were subsequently designed
to implement it.

The core course: methodologies for cultural studies in Asia

The Inter-Asia Summer School in Bangalore thus had some distinct ambitions, which were reflected in its structure. While it wanted to reflect the rich heritage of scholarship that has been produced through the decade-long interventions, and give the participating students a chance to engage with these intellectual stalwarts of Asia, it also wanted to reflect some of the more cuttingedge and future-looking work that is also a part of the movement’s younger scholars. Hence, instead of going with the traditional model where the pedagogues teach their own text, explaining the nuances and intricacies of their work, we decided to stage a dialogue between the existing scholarship and emerging work. The curriculum for the summer school was designed by Dr Tejaswini Niranjana, Dr Wang Xiaoming and Nitya Vasudevan, to form the first Inter- Asia Cultural studies reader, reflecting the various trends and debates around different themes that have occurred in the movement. The reader, which served as a basic textbook for the summer school, and has plans to be bilingual (English and Mandarin Chinese), introduced historical thought, critical interventions and conceptual frameworks drawn from different locations within Asia. The reader not only incorporated the scholars whose work has shaped the Inter-Asia cultural studies movement but also the formative modern thought that has been central to the social, cultural and political theorisation in Asia.

However, instead of inviting the scholars whose work has been central to the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies thought, the instructors for the courses were younger critical scholars who are building upon, responding to and entering into a dialogue with the work prescribed in the curriculum. The pedagogy, hence, instead of becoming a “lecture” that synthesises earlier work, became a threeway dialogue, where the students and the instructors were responding to common texts, not only in trying to understand them but also in the context of their own work and interests. Moreover, each session was co-taught, by instructors from different disciplines, locations and geographies, to show how the same body of work can be approached through different entry points and pushed into different directions. The classroom hours, thus became a “workshop” space where the students and the faculty were engaging in a dialogue that sought to make the historical debates relevant to the discussions in the contemporary world. They also showed how the older questions persist across time and space, and that they need to be engaged with in order to make sense of the world around us.

Additionally, the Summer School classroom was designed as a space for collaborative pedagogy. The morning discussions around texts from the readers were followed by students presenting their work as a response to the texts prescribed for the day. Taking up a pecha-kucha format, it invited students to introduce themselves, their work, their context and their interventions and to open everything up for response and dialogue. The ambition was to build a community of intellectual support and interest, so that the students not only forge an affective bond but also a sense of collaboration and commonality in the work that they are already pushing in their existing research initiatives. The faculty for the day, along with some of the senior scholars also attended these presentations and helped tie in some of the earlier questions that might have emerged in the class, to the new material that was being introduced in the space.

While this dialogue around new research was fruitful, we also were aware that there is a huge value in getting the students to interact with some of the more formative scholars whose work was prescribed in the curriculum. Hence, alongside the classrooms, we also hosted three salons that brought some of the significant scholars from the Inter-Asia movement into a dialogue with each other, as well as into a conversation with local intellectuals and activists. The first salon, organised at the artist collaborator 1 Shanthi Road, saw Chen Kuan-Hsing and Tejaswini Niranjana, discussing the impulse of the Inter-Asia movement. Charting the history, the different trajectories and the ways in which it has grown, both through friendships and networks, and intellectual interventions and collaborations, the conversation gave an entrypoint to younger scholars in understanding the politics and the motivation of this thought journey. The second salon, organised at the Alternative Law Forum, had Ding Naifei (Taiwan) and Firdaus Azim (Bangladesh) in conversation with legal sexuality and human rights activists Siddharth Narrain and Arvind Narrain (India) to unpack the politics of rights, sexuality, modernity and identity in different parts of Asia. The third salon, hosted at the Centre for Internet & Society, saw Ashish Rajadhyaksha (India) in conversation with Stephen Chan (Hong Kong) looking at questions of infrastructure, sustainability and the new role that research has to play in non-university and non-academic spaces and networks. The salons were designed to be informal settings for conversations and socialising, giving the summer school students access to the senior faculty outside of the classroom setting.

The summer school also wanted to ensure that the students were introduced to the materiality and the texture of the local, to understand the different layers of modernity and habitation that the IT City of Bangalore has to offer. Hence a local tour, charting the growth of Bangalore from a sleepy education centre to the burgeoning IT City that it has become, guided by curator and artist Suresh Jairam, was included as a part of the teaching. The four-hour walking tour laid bare the different contestations and layers of an IT city in India, showing the liminal markets, local cultures of production, and the ways in which they need to be factored into our images and imaginations of modernity and the IT City. Along with these, there were student parties arranged in different local clubs and institutions of Bangalore, to offer informal spaces of socialising for the students but also to give them a glimpse of what public spaces and cultures of being social might look like in a city such as Bangalore.

The summer school found a new richness because two of the days were twinned with a workshop on Culture Industries, supported by the Japan Foundation, which became a pedagogic space for the summer school participants. The students had a new focus introduced to their work and a chance to meet other scholars and activists in the field from Asia, who presented their work as part of the Summer School. The creative industries workshop also afforded a chance for students to form new connections and collaborations with projects and research initiatives that were being discussed in that forum.

These different components were thus designed and put together as a part of the core course for the Inter-Asia Summer School in Bangalore. Each component had a specific vision and was designed to offer different spaces of learning, pedagogy and interaction for everybody included. The core course was an overview of the diversity and exchange that are parts of the Inter-Asia movement. The course ended with a “booksprint” model where the students, inspired by the conversations at the summer school, were given a day to submit written work that would capture their own learning and growth in the process. The submissions could take the form of an academic essay, a sketch towards a research essay, a blog entry summarising key events from a particular conversation, or a narrative summary of the key points in their own research and how it relates to the conversations at the Summer School. While the core course was compulsory for all the participants, the Summer School also offered two optional elective courses, which the students could opt for after the core course was concluded. The optional courses were designed to introduce students to work and debates that had not yet emerged centrally in the Inter-Asia debates, but were part of their current conversations.

New nodes: Optional courses: the digital subject/technology, culture and the body

The optional courses, which lasted for four days, were a way of introducing the students to some new core debates that are emerging in the Cultural Studies discourse. The courses were designed to specifically concentrate on how the older questions and frameworks are being reworked with the emergence of digital technologies, thus helping students to consolidate their own work and also engage with research initiatives across different parts of Asia.

The first optional course, entitled “The Digital Subject,” was coordinated by Nishant Shah and had lectures by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Lawrence Liang. It proposed to account for the drastic changes in the relationships between the State, the Citizen and the Markets with the rise of digital technologies in the twenty-first century. The course proposed that as globalisation consolidates itself in Asia, we see changes in the patterns of governance, of state operation, of citizen engagement and civic action. We are in the midst of major revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, powered by digital social change, some headed by cyber-utopians specialising in Web 2.0 and Social media. Phrases such as “Twitter Revolutions” and “Facebook Protests” have become very common.

Instead of concentrating only on the newness of technology-mediated change, there is a need to engage with the changing landscape of political subjectivity and engagement through a reintegration of science and technology studies with cultural studies and social sciences. The course thus posited certain questions that need to be addressed, within the domain of cultural studies, around the digital: what does a digital subject look like? What are the futures of existing socio-cultural rights based movements? How do digital technologies produce new interfaces for interaction and mobilisation? How do we develop integrated science-technologysociety approaches to understand our technology-mediated contemporary and futures?

Through a series of seminars, workshops, film screening, lectures, and fieldtrips, the course challenged the students not only to look at new objects of the digital but also to ask new questions of the old, inspired by the new methods and frameworks that the digital technologies are opening up for us.

The second optional course entitled “Technology, Culture and the Body” was coordinated by Nita Vasudevan and had Audrey Yue, Ding Naifei, Tejaswini Niranjana, Wing-Kwong Wong, and Hsing-Wen Chang as instructors. The course began with a hypothesis that, at this moment in history, we seem to be embedded in what Heidegger calls “the frenziedness of technology.” Hence, now more than ever, it is important that we try to understand how the gendered body relates to technology, and what this means for the domain of the cultural. For instance, what are the freedoms that technology is said to offer this body? What are these freedoms posed in opposition to? How do we understand technological practice contextually, both historically and in the contemporary? Is it possible to have a notion of the body that is outside technology, and a notion of technology that is outside cultural practice?

The course called for a move away from the idea of technology as a tool used by the human body, or the idea of technology as mere prosthesis or extension, to map the different ways of understanding the relationship
between culture, technology and the body, specifically in the Asian context. It will involve examining practices, cultural formations and understandings that have emerged within various locations in Asia. The course engaged the students in closereadings of key events and texts, hosted workshops to present and critique their own work, and think of collaborative pathways towards future distributed research and pedagogic initiatives that can emerge within the Inter-Asia space.

Both courses had additional assignments that included close-reading of texts, practical field work, critical reflection and collaborative projects completed during the span of the course.

Tying things up: key learnings

The Second Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School was an ambitious structure, and while there were logistical hiccups in the implementation, there were some key learning aspects that need to be highlighted.

Working with tensions. Asia is not a homogeneous unified entity. There are several geo-political tensions that mark the relationships between different countries in Asia. While the academic protocol and individual interest in learning more can help negotiate these tensions, these tensions do play out in different linguistic, cultural and emotional unintelligibility, which becomes part of the pedagogic moment in the Inter-Asia classroom. Orienting the instructors to these tensions, and trying to build a collaborative environment where the students appreciate these tensions and learn to communicate with each other and engage with the different contexts is extremely valuable. In the summer school, we had students helping each other with translation, providing new contexts and critiques for each other’s work, and learning how to engage with the palpable difference of somebody from a different country. These tensions can sometimes slow the content and discussions in the classrooms, but taking it up as a collective challenge (rather than just thinking of it as a logistical problem where students not fluent in English need to be given tools of translation) made for a productive and rich learning environment.
Ownership of community structures. When young scholars from different parts of the world are thrown together for such an intense period of time, it is inevitable that there will be bonds of friendship and belonging that grow. We had debated about whether we should invest in doing online community building by creating platforms, discussion boards and other structures that accompany digital outreach and coordination. However, apart from the initial centralization for applications and programming, we eventually decided to make the participants owners of these activities.’ to give a better sense of the ‘digital structures of community building’. And it was fascinating to see how they formed social networks, blogs, Tumblrs and other spaces of conversation among themselves, making these spaces more vibrant and diverse, thus leading to conversations beyond the summer school.
Infrastructure of participation. The Summer School was an extremely subsidised event thanks to the generous support of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Consortium, the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Indian Institute of Sciences, who helped in significantly reducing the costs of registration. The availability of travel fellowships, subsidies, scholarships, and an infrastructure of access cannot be emphasised enough in our experience. Owing to the subsidised costs, the living conditions and the logistics were not optimal. And while the students were extremely cooperative and accommodating with the glitches, we realised that better living conditions and amenities, especially for young students who are travelling to a different country for the first time, are as important as the classroom and the intellectual thought and design. Finding more resources to ease the conditions of travel and living will help build richer conversations inside and outside the classrooms. Sustained efforts to find more funding for a space for the IACS summer school need to be continued.
Selection processes. It was wanted to promote the Inter-Asia movement and hence a first preference was given to students who applied for the summer school through an open call for application. The students were asked to have references from people who have been a part of the movement, and also to send in a brief essay describing their expectations from the summer school. We were scouting for students—given that the numbers we could accept were limited—who were involved in not only learning but also in contributing to the social and political thought of the Inter-Asia movement. We also encouraged students who might not have been a part of a formal education system but are considering further education. Instead of building a homogeneous student base, there was an attempt made to find different kinds of students, from different locations, at different places in their own research work, and with different disciplines and modes of engagement. Scholarships and travel aid were offered to students who we thought deserved to be a part of the summer school but did not have access to university resources for participation. The diversity helped bring a more comprehensive compendium of skills and methods to the table.
Integration and relevance. Younger students often find it difficult to deal with historically formative texts from other contexts because they do not see how this responds to their context or is relevant to their work in contemporary times. Efforts at integrating the different cultures, showing the different trajectories of thought and research within Asia, and at locating the older texts in the context of modern-day research were hugely rewarding and more attempts need to be made to continue this process of making the historical archive of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Movement relevant and critical in new research.
Planning the futures. The participants had all indicated that post the Summer School, they would be excited to see what future avenues for participation there could be. With this summer school, we hadn’t looked at modes of sustained engagement with the participants. While they did take the initiative to communicate with each other, the momentum that was generated because of these discussions could not be captured in its entirety because we did not have any formal structures and processes to continue the engagement. Especially if the IACS summer schools are some sort of an orientation into the IACS movement, then there should be more systemic thought given to how those interested in engaging with the questions can do so, through their own academic and institutional locations, but also through different kinds of support structures that continue the conversations and exchange that begin at the Summer School.
Synergy with the local. For us, as well as for the students, the synergy with the local movements, activists, artists and research was fruitful and productive. One of the values of a travelling summer school is that every summer school can take up a particular theme that is locally relevant and weave it into the summer school. For Bangalore, it made logical sense for us to bring questions of Digital Technologies and Identity/Bodies into the course. Even within the core course, there was an effort to integrate these as key questions that open up new terrains of thought and research within Inter-Asia cultural studies. The optional courses, which were introduced for the first time, were exciting and generated a lot of interest and engagement from the participants. Attempts at creating these kinds of synergies need to be supported along with new and experimental modes of pedagogy and learning.

The Second Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School was a great opportunity to harness the potentials of the incredibly rich and diverse network that the IACS movement has built up over more than a decade. For us, it also became a playground where, inspired by the hacker culture and DIY movements that dot the landscape of Bangalore, we experimented with different forms of learning and knowledge production. Involving the students as stakeholders in the process, engaging with them as peers, making them responsible for collaborative learning, and creating spaces of participation and socialisation helped us circumvent many of the problems of language and cultural diversity that might have otherwise crippled the entire process. Pushing these modes of interaction and integration, while also creating an environment of trust, reciprocity and goodwill, is probably even more important than the curriculum and teaching, because these interactions create new nodes and connections, with each student and his/her interaction creating new edges that will hopefully shape and contribute to the contours of critical thought and intervention in Asia.

References

Chen, Kuan-Hsing. 2010. Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Chua, Beng-Huat, ed. 2000. Consumption in Asia: Lifestyle and Identities. London: Routledge.
Philip, Kavita, Lily Irani, and P. Dourish. 2010. “Postcolonial Computing: A Tactical Survey.” Science Technology Human Values 37 (1): 3–29.
Rajadhyaksha, Ashish. 2009. Indian Cinema in the time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency. New Delhi: Combined Academic Publications.
Niranjana, Tejaswini, et al. 2010. Strengthening Community Engagement of Higher Education Institutions. Bangalore: Centre for the Study of Culture and Society.
Watts, Duncan. 1999. “Networks, Dynamics, and the Small-World Phenomenon.” AJS 105 (2): 493–527.

Author's Biography

Nishant Shah is the Director of Research at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, an International Tandem Partner at the Hybrid Publishing Lab, Leuphana University, and a Knowledge Partner with Hivos, in The Hague. He is the editor of the four-volume anthology Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? and writes regularly for the Indian newspaper The Indian Express and for the Digital Media and Learning Hub at dmlcentral.net. His current areas of interest are Digital Humanities, Digital Activism and Digital Subjectivity.

[1]. A mammoth project such as the Inter-Asia Summer School requires resources, support and generosity from family, friends, and colleagues that can never be measured or cited in a note. However, there are a few people who need to be mentioned for their incredible spirits and the resources that they extended to us. Dr Raghavendra Gaddakar at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute of Sciences and his entire staff were patient and hospitable hosts, housing the entire summer school for over a fortnight. The faculty, students and staff at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) Bangalore helped in designing courses, finding venues and organising events that added to the richness of the summer school. Raghu Tankayala and Radhika P, both at CSCS were our rocks through this process, taking up a lion’s share of logistical arrangements. The help of the entire staff at the Centre for Internet and Society, who were there every step, helping with every last detail, and the Executive Director Sunil Abraham who lent us infrastructure and financial support to organise various events and salons, is unparalleled and I know I would have found it impossible to work without the knowledge that they would always be there to watch my back. All the instructors who agreed to join the teaching crew made this summer school what it became (a full list can be found at http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/iacs-summer-school-2012). Both Nitya Vausdevan and I owe a huge amount of gratitude to the IACS society and the Consortium, as well as the stalwarts of the IACS movement who put faith in our vision, and pushed us, supported us, inspired us and helped us to carry out the different things we had planned. The local partners who make our life worth living—friends and colleagues at 1 Shanthi Road and The Alternative Law Forum—have been our rocks and we cannot thank them enough for their support and encouragement. A special thanks to Daniel Goh, who apart from being a faculty member, also helped us put together the website to manage the workflow for the entire project.

[2]. A full list of instructors and the prescribed curriculum can be found at http://cis-india.org/internet-overnance/iacs-summer-school-2012.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/routledge-inter-asia-cultural-studies-volume-15-issue-2-nishant-shah-asia-in-the-edges

Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities

Pratyush Shankar — 2016-06-29T09:41:25Z

The monograph on Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities, by Pratyush Shankar, is an entry into debates around making of IT Cities and public planning policies that regulate and restructure the city spaces in India with the emergence of Internet technologies. Going beyond the regular debates on the modern urban, the monograph deploys a team of students from the field of architecture and urban design to investigate how city spaces – the material as well as the experiential – are changing under the rubric of digital globalisation. Placing his inquiry in the built form, Shankar manoeuvres discourse from architecture, design, cultural studies and urban geography to look at the notions of cyber-publics, digital spaces, and planning policy in India. The findings show that the relationship between cities and cyberspaces need to be seen as located in a dynamic set of negotiations and not as a mere infrastructure question. It dismantles the presumptions that have informed public and city planning in the country by producing alternative futures of users’ interaction and mapping of the emerging city spaces.

Chapter 1 (City, Technology and Cyberspace) talks about the presence of a new technology of information communication in the society and how it can possibly impact cities in terms of their material production and other cultures. Does the rush of Information Technology in our society and space mark a radical shift in a manner in which cities will develop or is it a part of a larger continuous process that started with the Industrial revolution and reorganization of cities?

Chapter 2 (The Idea of Space) examines that cities not only provide the necessary environment for such a change but also readjust their own spatial configurations. It aims to understand the nature of such transformation both from the perspective of the change in material culture and in imagination of cities due to the advent of Internet related technologies.

Chapter 3 (The Imagination) looks at the fact that city is not only lived in but also imagined. Representation of the city and its part play an important role in shaping the imagination. The imagination is one that often collapses the past with present and future. The perception of the city is as much mediated by the collective imagination (as well as individual interpretation of the same) as by our experience of the space itself.

Chapter 4 (The Transformation) examines the city restructuring process. Cities like nations are now competing for investments from private corporate. The networked cities of India, Bangalore and Gurgaon have been studied further to understand the phenomenon of this IT related restructuring from the point of view of its transformed physical morphology and its repercussion on the nature of its public places.

Pratyush concludes by saying that cities seem to derive their identities with two kinds of imagination structures when it comes to space. First and foremost is the imagination resulting from the meta narratives of mythology, religious belief structure, position of humans in this world. The other imagination structure is the one, which engages with the land, folk and the immediate cultural practices of the community group. He further elaborates that the city restructuring process in India is supposed to symbolize the existence of the information technology but it is really real estate and economic opportunism more than anything else.

Download the monograph: PDF (9.8 MB)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/internet-society-space

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

Figures of Learning: The Conditional Artist

Tara Kelton — 2015-11-13T05:42:25Z

As part of its Making Methods for Digital Humanities project, CIS-RAW organized two consultations on new figures of learning in the digital context. For a proposed journal issue on the theme of ‘bodies of knowledge’ which draws upon these conversations, participants were invited to write short sketches on these figures of learning. This abstract by Tara Kelton explores the conditional artist, and the outcomes of inserting chance in the realization of art work through the use of new multimedia and digital technologies.

For five weeks George Korsmit and his assistants worked from a platform on a mobile scaffold to create this largescale mural. The corner points of each quadrilateral and the colors used to fill it in were determined within specific parameters by throwing dice.

This annotated visual essay presents the strategy in which artists provide instructions/parameters for the creation of artworks, to be executed by hired labour / users and describes how contemporary practitioners have employed this strategy across new technologies and webbased services such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turks, YouTube and Facebook.

By inserting chance into the realization of artworks, a distance is created between the artist and the product, and the artist cannot predict a precise outcome this results in new, unexpected visual forms and potentially infinite variation. The relationship between human gesture and interface is inverted rather than using a mouse to command software interfaces, instead, computational parameters direct human gestures. The essay will also demonstrate how instructional art strategies are used as tools for critiquing systems of power, both on and offline, drawing attention to the invisible labor that powers these systems, using their own mechanisms.

Visual examples include both the historical and contemporary, from the work of early conceptual and computer artists (Sol Lewitt, John Baldessari) to present day art and design practitioners (Studio Moniker, IOCOSE).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/the-conditional-artist

Studying Internet in India: Selected Abstracts

sumandro — 2015-08-28T06:53:33Z

We received thirty five engaging abstracts in response to the call for essays on 'Studying Internet in India.' Here are the ten selected abstracts. The final essays will be published from June onwards.

Deva Prasad M - 'Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights'

Exploring Internet from the perspective of human rights gives rise to the multitude of issues such as right to privacy, freedom of expression, accessibility. Pertinent socio-political and legal issues related to Internet which was widely debated upon in the past one year in India includes lack of freedom of expression on Internet and Section 66A of Information Technology Act, 2000. The recent net neutrality debate in India has also evoked deliberation about the right of equal accessibility to Internet and to maintain Internet as a democratic space. The repercussions of ‘Right to be Forgotten’ law of European Union also had led to debate of similar rights in Indian context. Interestingly all these issues have an underlying thread of human right perspective connecting them and need pertinent deliberation from human rights perspective.

This paper is an attempt to understand and analyze theses issues from the human rights angle and also how they have contributed in evolving an understanding and perspective amongst the digitally conscious Indian’s to ensure the democratic nature of “Internet” is perceived. Moreover, analysis of these three issues would also help in emphasizing upon the need for a right-based approach in studying Internet in India.

Dibyajyoti Ghosh - 'Indic Scripts and the Internet'

Whereas the status of the internet in India is similar to the status of the internet in similar economies with low-penetration and a primarily mobile-based future, an alphabetically diverse nation such as India has its added worries. Whereas the 1990s saw an overdomination of English given the linguistic communities which were developing the world of computers and the world of the internet, by 2015, some of the disparity with offline linguistic patterns has been reduced. However, for Indic scripts, much less development has taken place. If one is studying the internet in India, chances are one is studying it in English.

What does this hold for the future of these Indic scripts? Given the multilingual skills of Indian school-goers and the increasing amount of daily reading time of those connected to the internet (which is somewhere between 12% and 20% of the population) being devoted to reading on the internet, chances are reading is increasingly in English. In this essay, I shall attempt to study the effects this has on the internet population of India, some of which are as follows.

The kind of mimetic desire it causes
The degneration in spelling skills caused due to transliteration
The effacement of non-digitised Indic verbal texts

Divij Joshi - 'The Internet in the Indian Judicial Imagination'

The first mention of the 'Internet' in the vocabulary of Indian judicial system was a fleeting reference to its radical capability to allow access to knowledge. In one of its most recent references, it expounded upon and upheld the idea of the Internet as a radical tool for free expression, announcing its constitutional significance for free speech.

The judicial imagination of the Internet – the understanding of its capabilities and limitations, its actors and constituents, as reflected in the judgements of Indian courts – plays a major role in shaping the Internet in India, both reflecting and defining conceptions of the Internet and its relationship with society, law, and public policy.

This essay is an attempt to use legal and literary theory to study the archives of judicial decisions, tracing the history of the Internet in India through the lens of judicial trends, and also to look at how the judiciary has defined its own role in relation to the Internet. It attempts a vital study of how courts in India have conceptualized and understood the Internet, and how these conceptions have, in turn, impacted the influence of the Internet on Indian society.

Ipsita Sengupta

The proposed essay will make observations of a specific kind of conversation that takes place on the social media platform of YouTube. The conclusive argument is imagined along questions of high versus low culture, as described below.

Under study are two objects- one, particular YouTube videos which play Rabindra-Sangeet, i.e. songs penned and composed in the late 19- early 20th centuries by the Bengali writer and artist Rabindranath Tagore, the body of work which today has become a genre of Indian music; and the second, comments that these videos receive from users of the site.

Visuals of YouTube song videos of Rabindra-Sangeet are of many kinds. So are renditions, with solitary or duet or band performances, and with varying pace and instrumental accompaniment.

The videos which have visuals from contemporary cinema, like images of urban youth, and the remixed renditions have often been found to receive comments which reflect/ reveal hurt sentiments of people trying to preserve some kind of sanctity of Rabindra-Sangeet, comments which state how the ethics of presenting the genre have been violated, via their notation and design, by either makers of the film in the song’s incorporation, or by the way young pop stars have been placed in particular montages.

Some examples:

In such a scenario, YouTube as medium of user-generated expression becomes interesting to analyse individual and group dynamics- given the space for commenting (below the video), and statistical data such as “Likes”, “Dislikes”, and “Views”. The debate here is that in Tagore’s “Nationalism”, when he himself is seen to have an imagination of the human race beyond patriotic groupings and consequent othering, does this apparent need to avoid “insulting” his compositions by preserving an intangible art form in a particular way, become then a type of jingoism of region or identity? And what is this Benjaminian “aura” of the “original” that listeners look for in their experience of these videos?

Laird Brown - 'Dharamsala Networked'

Three hours after regulations governing public access to WiFi in India were changed in 2005 the first router went up in Dharamsala. It was homemade, open source, and eventually, “monkey proof.” Something unimaginable had happened: high-speed Internet access in one of India’s most difficult physical geographies. Dharamsala has also become one of India's interesting information networks and has a burgeoning, unlikely 'tech scene’. But is it so unlikely?

Since 1959 Dharamsala has been home to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan people and, government in exile. This single, significant incident possibly set in motion a number of factors that made it possible for the mountain-town to become a political, global, communications. However, much like the rest of India, the region struggles for human and environmental rights against fractured ideas of 'development'. This essay will draw on archives and interviews to unpack this microcosmic tale of Internet access, its histories and economics and the factors at play in shaping it - mundane and maverick, familiar and outlier.

Maitrayee Deka - 'WhatsApp Economy'

Everyone around us is connected to the Internet through some or other electronic devices, phones, laptops, and tablets. However, not everyone use Internet for the same purpose. Through an ethnographic account of the usage of WhatsApp messages by the traders in three electronic bazaars in Delhi, Palika Bazaar, Nehru Place and Lajpat Rai Market, we see how Internet on the phone is used predominantly for business purpose. The paper seeks to examine how Whatsapp messages, which are for most of the users a medium for social communication, for the traders in Delhi, become a mode to establish business contact with their counterparts in China. From sharing of pictures of new tools to quoting prices of different products, Whatsapp messages become the lifeline of what many has termed as ‘globalization from below’. This paper argues what has started as economic exchanges through Whatsapp messages may start a new political alliance of similar mass markets in Asia. With the electronic bazaars in Delhi facing stiff competition from formal business actors both online and offline, the WhatsApp messages that is a space of new innovations and trade alliances could sustain the mass markets in India.

Purbasha Auddy - 'Citizens and their Internet'

Suddenly it seems internet data package on mobile phones is the reply to the problems in India. As mobile phones remain with us most of the time, it is as if we are ready to face the world if our mobile phones have a data package. Yes, several television commercials in India are gleefully harping on the notes of knowledge, empowerment and freedom. Moreover, internet is being identified as a virtual institution.

The essay proposes to look into those advertisements which talk about the internet to promote data packages, mobile phones or apps. Through this, the essay firstly, would like to construct the idea of the internet using the Indian citizen who is depicted as smart and almost infallible. Secondly, on the other hand, the essay would analyse how an affirmative and constructive view of using the internet in the minds of citizens has been generated by these advertisements, like the virtual world of the internet can save you from any drastic situation.

Advertisements are creative constructs, which have a strong aptitude to entice target consumers. While studying the internet in India, studying the ‘texts’ of Indian advertisements which refer to the act of ‘consuming’ the internet could result in an interesting study.

Sailen Routray - 'The Many Lives and Sites of Internet in Bhubaneswar'

Those of us who have jumped or meandered across to the wrong (or perhaps the right) side of thirty by now, first came to consume internet in what were called, and are still called, cyber cafes or internet cafes. Their numbers in big Indian cities is dwindling because of the increasing ubiquity of smartphone, and netbooks and data cards. The cyber café seems to be inexorably headed the way of the STD booth in the geography of large Indian cities. The present paper is a preliminary step towards capturing some of the experience of running and using internet cafes. With ethnographic fieldwork with cyber café owners and internet users in these cafes in the Chandrasekharpur area of Bhubaneswar (where the largest section of the computer industry in the state of Odisha is located), this paper tries to capture experiences that lie at the interstices of ‘objects’ and spaces - experiences that are at the same time a history of the internet as well as a personal history of the city.

Sarah McKeever - 'Quantity over Quality: Social Media and the New Class System in India'

From the humblest mobile phones to the most sophisticated computers, the Internet is everywhere and nowhere in India. The boundaries, the contours of the space remain nebulous and opaque. When engaging with social media in urban India in particular, we are bound to the conventions of corporations which demand quantity over quality creating a new class system of the Internet: those who are “active” – and therefore a “better” user – and those who have seemingly failed to keep up with the demands of the medium, buried in the ever‐growing noise and chaos. The creation of a new class system on the Internet, based on Western corporate desire for data, has shaped who is seen and heard on the Internet in India.

Based on fieldwork in New Delhi which examines the impact of the Internet on offline social movements – including the anti corruption movement in 2011 and the Delhi Rape Case in 2012 – I will argue that the study of the Internet in India can reinforce Western corporate conceptions of how to use the Internet properly among various users involved in the movements. By challenging these preconceptions, this essay will engage with issues of Western corporate notions of Internet use and how we engage with and find participants, how we evaluate what is “good” use of the Internet, and the creation of a new class system on the Internet in India.

Smarika Kumar - 'Governing Speech on the Internet: Transforming the Public Sphere through Policymaking'

In the privatised spaces of the World Wide Web and the internet, how does one make sense of speech? Should speech in such a space be understood as the product of a marketplace of ideas? Or should its role in democratic participation be recognised by contextualising the internet as part of the Habermasian public sphere? These questions have interesting implications for the regulation of speech on the internet, as they employ different principles in understanding speech. Recent scholarship has argued for the benefits of employing the public sphere approach to the internet and thus recognising its democratic potential. But taking into account that all speech is inherently made in private spaces on the internet, the application of this approach is far from simple.

This creates a tension between the marketplace of ideas and the public sphere approaches to speech on the internet in policymaking. I propose to explore how legal and regulatory mechanisms manage these tensions by creating governance frameworks for the internet: I argue that through the use of policy and regulation, the private marketplace of the internet is sought to be reined in and reconciled to the public sphere, which is mostly represented through legislations governing the internet. I propose that this less-than-perfect reconciliation then manages to modify the very idea of the public sphere itself in the Indian context, by infusing participation of the "other" on the internet through indirect means.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/studying-internet-in-india-selected-abstracts