Centre for Internet and Society

The Write Stuff

praskrishna — 2011-11-14T03:32:00Z

“Digital natives are no longer those youngsters who fit in the bracket of a Harvard return professional, glued to their PC all day,” says Nishant Shah, director of research, Centre for Internet and Society, a Bengaluru-based organisation. For Nishant, and many youngsters across the globe, digital natives are not any of those secluded geeks who spend hours on the Internet. “I am a homemaker, yet I am a digital native,” says Nilofer Ansher, a community manager who manages members from across three continents.

A housewife, a young college graduate, a freelance writer, an NGO professional and many other individuals are behind the Internet activist flurry. Digital Natives, Fair Observer, PC Tech Magazine are just a few of the newsletters and forums that are connecting youngsters from across the globe and are mobilising them to do something beyond information gathering.

Youth-related discussions, inventions in make-shift laboratories from the backyards of homes in Nigeria and action against corruption across the globe; these are just some of the activities that these netizens are involved in. “The idea was to build a network of people from across the globe who are passionate about what they do. We are not talking countries, it is all to do with people with similar interests,” says Shah, who collaborated with Hivos to create the online platform called Digital Natives.

The members collaborate online to write about various issues. But these online movements can have serious repercussions, “In fact, Alaa Abdel-Fattah, one of Egypt’s most vocal activists and bloggers, has been detained. He is our team member. We are now running a campaign supporting his early release,” says Ansher who doubles up as a co-editor of one of these newsletters. Various discussions have led to solutions. “My first challenge was to create a communication system for illiterate farmers. But I wanted a definite solution. So another member from mobile active community sent a message and it worked and we are following the same system,” says Ajay Kumar, manager, ICT operations.

This article was published in the Deccan Chronicle on 14 November 2011. It can be read here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/write-stuff

January 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-06-11T11:56:35Z

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) wish you all a great year ahead and welcome you to the first issue of our newsletter for the year 2013. This issue brings you an overview of our research programs, events organised and participated, news and media coverage, and videos of recent events.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications for the posts of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge — Indic Language Initiatives), Developer (NVDA Project), Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge and Openness), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org. For our Privacy project, we are seeking applications for the post of Researcher, Technology/Security Expert, Graphic Designer as well as for internships. To apply for these posts, please send in your resume to Elonnai Hickok (elonnai@cis-india.org).

Accessibility

CIS is carrying out two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. The first one is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and the second one is for developing a screen reader and text to speech synthesizer for Indian languages. We are also working with the World Blind Union to develop the Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons, and assisting in the negotiations at WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities

Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Shruti Ramakrishnan has left the project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapter on Haryana:

The Haryana Chapter (by Anandi Viswanathan, January 31, 2012): The state implements the provisions under the central laws, particularly the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995 and the National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act 1999.

Submission / Notification

Making Public Libraries Accessible to People with Disabilities (by Rahul Cherian, January 23, 2013): CIS was one of the 20 disability rights groups that wrote to the Ministry of Culture.
Government of Madhya Pradesh initiates ICT Accessibility in Public Communication (by Nirmita Narasimhan, January 31, 2013): CIS with Daisy Forum of India member Arushi in Bhopal submitted a request for a notification mandating that all communication by the Government of Madhya Pradesh should be accessible to persons with disabilities.

Report

Accessible Broadcasting in India (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, January 11, 2013): The abridged version of ITU’s report "Making Television Accessible" which was initially put up for comments last year has been updated once again.

Blog Entry

Linking Commercial Availability and Exceptions in the Treaty for Visually Impaired/Persons with Disabilities (by Rahul Cherian, January 23, 2013).

Access to Knowledge

In partnership with the International Development Research Centre we are doing a project on Pervasive Technologies examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. The Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program to support and develop free knowledge in India is now being executed by us. We are also supporting the Iraq government in developing an eGovernment Interoperability Framework:

Wikipedia

Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation has awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon, Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval.

New Project Director

T. Vishnu Vardhan is the new Programme Director-Access to Knowledge at CIS. Vishnu has over the last 11 years worked in various capacities as researcher, grant manager, teacher, project consultant, information architect and translator. Vishnu managed the Art, Crafts and Culture portfolio of Sir Ratan Tata Trust and also worked as Research Coordinator at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society.

New Distinguished Fellow at CIS

Tejaswini Niranjana, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore, and Visiting Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai is joining our team as an Adviser to the 'Access to Knowledge' project. She will guide the A2K team in expanding the Indian language Wikipedias and in increasing the number of active editors through strategic partnerships with Higher Education institutions across India.

Reports

Access to Knowledge Report — September to December 2012 (by Noopur Raval, January 31, 2013): The report covers an overview of the activities done by the Access to Knowledge team under the grant provided by the Wikimedia Foundation from September 2012 to December 2012.
Indic Language Wikipedias — Statistical Report — 2012 (by Shiju Alex, January 21, 2013): A statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias for the year 2012 providing perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias.

Wiki Event Reports
CIS organised a series of Wiki workshops in Goa in the month of December 2012, we bring you the reports from those events.

Note: The workshops were held in the month of December 2012 but the reports were published only in the month of January.

Two-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction (by Nitika Tandon, January 15, 2013).
Wikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa (by Nitika Tandon, January 19, 2013).
Bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in Public Domain (by Nitika Tandon, January 22, 2013).
Promoting GLAM in Goa (by Nitika Tandon, January 24, 2013).
Konkani in Wikipedia Incubator — Taking it to the Next Level (by Nitika Tandon, January 25, 2013).

CIS also organised a Wiki workshop in Ghaziabad:

A Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad (RKGIT, Ghaziabad, January 17, 2013).

Wiki Event Participated

Celebrating the success of Wikipedia in Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013 (organized by Wikipedia Club, Pune, January 12 – 13, 2013). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Wikipedia News Coverage

First Odia Wikipedia Education Program concludes at IIMC, Dhenkanal (Odisha Diary Bureau, Dhenkanal, January 27, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia's 9th Anniversary and Workshop on Application of Odia in Media (Sambad, January 30, 2013).

Wiki Events Organised

Odia Education Program (Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal, Orissa, January 26, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia 9th Anniversary Celebration (Academy of Media Learning, Samantha Vihar, Bhubaneswar, Orissa, January 29, 2013).

Pervasive Technologies

The Pervasive Technologies project carries out research on the intellectual property implicated in the hardware, software and content available in low-cost mobile devices.The long-term outcome of this project is to create a legitimate, legal space for these technologies to exist on the Indian market.

Events Participated

Pervasive Technologies: Access to Knowledge in the Market Place — A Presentation by Sunil Abraham (FGV Law School, Rio de Janeiro, December 15, 2012).
Fifth International IPR Conference (GIPC 2013) (organised by ITAG Business Solutions, Hotel Lalit Ashok, Bangalore, January 30, 2013): Snehashish Ghosh made a presentation on the Pervasive Technologies Project.

Other Openness Updates

Blog Posts / Columns

The Violence of Knowledge Cartels (by Nishant Shah, Hybrid Publishing Lab, January 17, 2013).
Remembering Aaron Swartz, Taking Up the Fight (by Nishant Shah, DML Central, January 24, 2013).

Interview

Aaron Swartz: The First Martyr of the Free Information Movement: Prabir Purkayastha interviewed Lawrence Liang on Newsclick, January 19, 2013. The video is published.

Media Coverage

Bangalore hackers write code as tribute to Aaron Swartz (by Deepa Kurup, Hindu, January 21, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

HasGeek
HasGeek creates discussion spaces for geeks and has organised conferences like the Fifth Elephant, Droidcon India 2011, Android Camp, etc. HasGeek is supported by CIS and works out from CIS office in Bengaluru.
Event Organized Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight (CIS, Bangalore, January 19 – 20, 2013): Aaron’s collaborators such as Anand Chitipothu and A S L Devi participated in the event.

Internet Governance

With Privacy International, London we signed an agreement to facilitate the implementation of activities related to surveillance and freedom of speech and expression. In this month we have blog posts on data retention, international principles of surveillance and human rights and comparitive analysis of Indian legislation vis-à-vis draft of the International Principles on Surveillance of Communications by Ellonai Hickok, and columns by Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah:

Privacy Research

Data Retention in India (by Elonnai Hickok, January 30, 2013): The post provides an insight into the data retention mandates from the Government of India and data retention practices by service providers.
Draft International Principles on Communications Surveillance and Human Rights (by Elonnai Hickok, January 16, 2013): These principles were developed by Privacy International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and seek to define an international standard for the surveillance of communications.
A Comparison of Indian Legislation to Draft International Principles on Surveillance of Communications (by Elonnai Hickok, January 31, 2013): The principles, first drafted in October 2012 and developed subsequently seek to establish an international standard for surveillance of communications in the context of human rights. CIS is contributing feedback to the drafting of the principles.

Columns/Op-eds

Web of Sameness (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, January 18, 2013).
TV versus Social Media: The Rights and Wrongs (by Sunil Abraham, The Tribune, January 20, 2013).

Statement

Statement of Solidarity on Freedom of Expression and Safety of Internet Users in Bangladesh (by Pranesh Prakash, January 15, 2013): This is a statement on the violent attack on blogger Asif Mohiuddin by the participants to the Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression.

Blog Entries

No Civil Society Members in the Cyber Regulations Advisory Committee (by Pranesh Prakash, January 10, 2013).
Five Frequently Asked Questions about the Amended ITRs (by Chinmayi Arun, January 28, 2013): The author discusses the five major questions that have been the subject of debate after the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 (WCIT).

Upcoming Event

DML Conference 2013 (co-organised by CIS and Digital Media & Learning Research Hub Central, Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers - Chicago, Illinois, March 14 – 16, 2013).

Event Organized

An Introduction to Bitfilm and Bitcoin – A Discussion by Aaron Koenig (CIS, Bangalore, January 23, 2013): Aaron Koenig, Managing Director, Bitfilm Networks of Hamburg, Germany gave a talk.

Events Participated

Panel Discussion on E-Commerce at NLSIU (organised by National Law School of India University, Bangalore, January 7, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
Mobile Broadband: Leveraging for Business Transformation (Chancery Pavilion, Bangalore, January 9, 2013): Sunil Abraham was a panelist in this event.
Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression (organized by Internet Democracy Project, Voices for Interactive Choice & Empowerment and Global Partners & Associates, Dhaka, January 14 – 15, 2013): Pranesh Prakash moderated the session on "Understanding cyber security and surveillance in South Asia”.
Is Freedom of Expression under Threat in the Digital Age? (organized by Editors Guild of India, Index on Censorship and Sage, India International Centre, New Delhi, January 15, 2013): Sunil Abraham was a panelist at this event.
7th India Digital Summit 2013 (organised by Internet and Mobile Association of India, Lalit Hotel, New Delhi, January 16 – 17, 2013): Sunil Abraham was the moderator for Plenary Session 3: Discussion on Social Media – Freedom, Moderation or Regulation.

Upcoming Event

9th International Asian Conference (organised by ITechLaw, February 14 – 15, 2013): Sunil Abraham will be participating as a panelist in the session on “Censorship of Online Content”.

Media Coverage

2012 in Review: Biometric ID Systems Grew Internationally...and So Did Concerns about Privacy (by Rebecca Bowe, Right Side News, January 1, 2013)
Cool Jobs | Parmesh Shahani, Head, Godrej India Culture Lab (LiveMint, January 4, 2013).
Clash of the cyberworlds (by Latha Jishnu, Dinsa Sachan and Moyna, Down to Earth, January 15, 2013 issue). Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Is freedom of expression under threat in digital age? (originally published by Indo Asian News Service, January 16, 2013 and also covered in the Business Standard, Vancouver Desi, DNA, and Tech2). Sunil Abraham is quoted.
Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age? (by Mahima Kaul, Index on Censorship, January 18, 2013).
Internet Freedom in India – Open to Debate (by Kirsty Hughes, Index on Censorship, January 22, 2013). CIS research on censorship is quoted.
Cyber security, surveillance and the right to privacy: country perspectives (by Richa Kaul Padte, Internet Democracy Project).
Surveillance Camp: Privatized State Surveillance (by Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 28, 2013). Elonnai Hickok is quoted.
An innovative concept comes to the fore (Deccan Herald, January 29, 2013).

Internet Access – Knowledge Repository
In partnership with Ford Foundation, CIS was tasked to produce and disseminate modules on various aspects of telecommunications including policy, regulations, infrastructure and market. However, as on November 9, 2012 there was a change in the mandate of the project. Currently, we are working on building a knowledge repository on “Internet Access”. This new repository will cover the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access. It will also touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for such policy formulation. For this purpose we will be hosting a new website: www.internet-institute.in.
We are also organizing an “Institute on Internet and Society” in collaboration with the Ford Foundation India, which is to be held from June 8, 2013 to June 14, 2013. Call for registrations and relevant details will be soon announced on our website.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum.:

Column by Shyam Ponappa

What's Needed Is User-Centric Design, Not Good Intentions (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, January 3, 2013 and Organizing India Blogpost, January 6, 2013).

Event(s) Participated

21^st Convergence Conference Conference India 2013 (organized by Exhibitions India Group, January 16 – 17, 2013, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi). Snehashish Ghosh participated in the event.

Digital Humanities

From 2012 to 2015, the Researchers At Work series is focusing on building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. We organised the first Habits of Living workshops in Bangalore last year. The next workshop is being held in Brown University:

Habits of Living Workshop

Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects (organised by CIS and Brown University, March 21 – 23, 2013, Brown University, Rhode Island). Nishant Shah will be speaking at this event.

About CIS
CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. The policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos, etc. We have conducted policy research for the Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc.
CIS is accredited as an observer at WIPO. CIS staff participates in the Standing Committee for Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) meetings regularly held in Geneva, and participate in the discussions and comments on them from a public interest perspective. Our Policy Director, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us elsewhere

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

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

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/january-2013-bulletin

D:Coding Digital Natives

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T12:30:14Z

Nishant Shah was invited for a public talk at the University of California, Los Angeles. He presented the work done on Digital Natives and spoke about questions of participation and resistance. The talk has been featured in the YouTube channel.

Nishant spoke about the ways by which technology revolution and change has been characterised through the question of voice (how technology has enabled for alternative voices to emerge as ways by which they can be heard), question of amplification (what 10 years ago might have been local phenomena are becoming global spectacles) and the question of power (what really happens when voice and amplification comes to an end).

Nishant said that in the last three years of revolutions we have also now witnessed this extraordinary thing where lot of promises were made of different kinds of revolution but which never materialised in terms of what they intended to. Citizen action happens but it doesn’t lead into anything concrete. One of the examples from India was the Anna Hazare’s campaign or India’s fight against corruption. There was this immense amount of campaign on the corruption in Indian bureaucracy and political society... the only instance of mass mobilisation that we saw in India in recent times apart from the cricket series...and how the campaign in seven short months has totally disappeared from public discourse.

For more, watch the video now:

Date: March 9, 2012
Time: 12 to 1 p.m.
Venue: Library Conference Center Presentation Room, University of California

Follow the video on YouTube

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/d-coding-digital-natives

Digital Native: Double Speak

nishant — 2018-09-04T15:22:59Z

Aadhaar’s danger has always been that it opens up individuals to high levels of vulnerability without providing safeguards.

The article was published in Indian Express on August 12, 2018.

This has been a month of Twitter drama. In the latest episode, Twitter exploded once again with RS Sharma, the chief of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Sharma revealed his Aadhaar number on Twitter and challenged the world (#facepalm) to do their worst. The Twitterati moved quickly and decided to go 50 Shades of Grey on Sharma.

In less than 24 hours, French security researcher Elliot Alderson, who has been systematically showing vulnerabilities in Aadhaar’s technical infrastructure, fished out Sharma’s personal address, birth date, email, alternate phone number, and PAN number. A few other ethical hackers got hold of his bank account details and used Paytm apps to transfer money to one of his bank accounts. Sharma made a grandstand of how this information is not “state secret” and that this was already peppered across the internet for anybody to find. The UIDAI, while calling his tactics a cheap hack, announced that the Aadhaar database was not “hacked” to retrieve this information and that our precious private data is safe in those hands.

What remains really bizarre, in both the responses from Sharma and the UIDAI, however, is their willing blindness to what networked information systems do and look like. There are three main points to consider here. Sharma, marked by privilege, protected by power, and confident in his ability to protect himself in case of threat, might dismiss this private information as non-critical. However, what he fails to realise is that the same data, for somebody in a precarious condition might be sensitive enough to have their life collapse on them. On the nefarious digital worlds of the Indian web, where women are regularly threatened with rape and death as a form of silencing them, where queer people are stalked and followed in real life for blackmail and abuse, where resistant actors find their families threatened, this information in the public domain could literally be a matter of life and death. In the past, with much less information available, we have seen how specific communities could be targeted in times of communal tension and violence. The fact that the head of TRAI cannot look beyond his gilded privilege to the conditions of precariousness that data leaks like these could lead to is shameful.

Perhaps, even more alarming is the UIDAI’s consistent myopic focus on what constitutes safe data. While I have no doubt that the incredible engineers and security experts are working hard to keep the Aadhaar data secure, the Twitter ethical hackers were not making claims of hacking a database at all. They were merely demonstrating why centralised unique ids, which perform acts of causative correlation, have the capacity to build surveillance states without even meaning to. Their data exposure is indicative of the fact that while Aadhaar itself does not carry much information, the linkages it makes with multiple other databases — tax offices, bank accounts, public services, emails, phone numbers, etc. — can expose information profiles without our consent. In fact, the danger of Aadhaar has never been that as a technical system it doesn’t work. The threat that it posits is that as a social and a cultural transaction system it opens up individuals to high levels of precariousness without building privacy safeguards for those who might fall through the cracks.

What remains the most disappointing in this entire piece of melodrama is that the conversations keep on unfolding at two different registers. The Aadhaar activists have been asking not for a dismantling of the system but to build ethical, compassionate, flexible and constitutional checks and balances at the core of the system. Ever since its inception, the demand has been clear: build privacy, security, safety, and human care into the DNA of the system, and not in its afterthought. The UIDAI has persistently neglected and willfully dismissed these demands, thus privileging the security of their infrastructure and data over the safety of their citizens.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-august-12-2018-nishant-shah-digital-native-double-speak

Digital Native: #MemeToo

nishant — 2018-10-02T06:20:15Z

An old meme shows the need for emotional literacy in our digitally saturated age. Memes, like regrettable exes, have the habit of resurfacing at regular periods.

The article was published in Indian Express on September 9, 2018.

Memes, like regrettable exes, have the habit of resurfacing at regular periods. This week saw the return of the “Qajar Princess” meme across social media and institutional news media outlets as well. For those late to the viral party, Princess Qajar first made its appearance towards the end of 2017, when the world was riding high on its pop-feminist assertions and the revelations of the #MeToo movements — a photograph of a person dressed in a gown with dark long hair, thick eyebrows and a moustache, as she gets her portrait shot. The caption identified this person as Princess Qajar who was a “symbol of beauty in Persia” (now Iran), and also stated how “13 young men killed themselves” because she rejected their advances.

Everything about the meme was click-bait worthy — from the defiance of feminine standards to the possibility of a woman scripting her own narrative of beauty and empowerment. It fed perfectly into our female emancipation narratives.

There was only one problem with this meme — it was completely made up. There was quick debunking of all its claims. Excellent websites like Abitofhistory and many investigators on Reddit showed that everything about the meme was a fabrication. While it did seem to respond to the political zeitgeist and celebrate women’s bodies and desire — also giving us a non-Western narrative of beauty — it was all just #FakeNews. The meme had more or less died its timely death by the time 2018 rolled in, but, surprisingly, it has come back again on Instagram and Facebook news where equal parts admiration and ridicule are expressed at the cost of the person in that image.

The meme does not have any immediate problematic actions associated with it, though it carries both the oriental prejudices of framing the Persian region as “freaky”, and the misogynist framing of a woman’s body as something that is available for shameless analysing and commenting. This obvious piece of disinformation does belie the volatile nature of news and information circulation that we live in, in the age of information overload. I was in Jakarta in late August, sitting with 30 news media professionals, information activists, and policy actors from Asia, where we were discussing the surfeit of such disinformation, and our apparent incapacity to engage with it.

As we went through various workshops and talks curated by the Digital Asia Hub, one thing was increasingly becoming clear. People do not have a rational relationship with information. In fact, historically, the regulation of news media has been focused on how to create a rational, evidence-based narrative so that information consumers can be trained into developing a rational relationship with the information that comes to them. However, as information production and consumption patterns change, with the proliferation of new info sources and authorship, these old regulations are collapsing. We have tried very hard, even in artistic platforms like cinema, to distinguish between factual information and emotional information.

Especially in countries like India, where such disinformation has resulted in vigilante justice and lynch-mob violence, the question of how we manage the emotional tenor of our information consumption is critical. Information management giants like Facebook and its messaging service WhatsApp have come under severe scrutiny because they have become platforms of unfettered disinformation. Especially with newly-literate digital users engaging with this information on sites which are not informational but social, the viral trigger and emotional responses has been quick and uncontrolled. The tech companies have started introducing a variety of solutions — limiting the number of people a message can be forwarded to, establishing filters that mark messages as possibly suspicious, restricting the powers of group broadcasting to moderators and introducing forward marks to signal authorship.

These technical solutions are only going so far in tackling the fundamental question of emotional information. Technical solutions fall back on the management of factual information. It can provide a series of safeguards that could insert a pause between the first delivery and immediate action, but this presumes that the person receiving and sharing the information is interested in that pause. What we need, and haven’t paid enough attention to, is how we can train people into developing an emotional literacy for the age of information overload. While the technology development has to continue its filtering and managing, what we perhaps need is a people’s movement that focuses on how to give voice to and recognise the emotional expression and manipulation that these new information regimes are ushering in.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-september-9-2018-digital-native-meme-too

The Right Words for Love

nishant — 2018-10-02T06:23:58Z

Queer love is legal. Which means that all of us are finally free to find a language that can match our desires.

The article was published in Indian Express on September 23, 2018.

I don’t think, in all my years of growing up, I ever had my parents say “I love you” to me. Not because they did not love me, but because in Gujarati, the language we predominantly use at home, there is no possibility of saying it. Any attempt — ‘Hoon tane prem karu chu’, or ‘Mane tara par prem che’, would sound bookish, and thus, empty. But Gujarati has lots of words for love. The love between father and son is pitrutva, that of a mother towards her child is mamta, and of the child for its parents is vatsalya; the sister’s preet finds a brother’s whal, and siblings are bound in sneh. But these words have no translation outside the rich tapestry of sociality they exist in, and this is the same for almost all of our Indian languages.

These are words that are nouns and it is difficult to use their verb forms. They remain ideal types of feeling rather than descriptions of action. So, it wasn’t a surprise to me that our parents didn’t — not till long after we left home and English entered our family spaces — ever tell us that they love us. We did not have the vocabulary for the precise sentiment, and so we never said it. Instead, it manifested in the touch, the embrace, the smile and the active intimacy of actions which stood as testimony of the love that we could not define.

The lexicon of touching — the natural expression of love for me — was the vocabulary of intimacy, trust, affection and acceptance in my sociality. The clap on the back between friends, the hand on the shoulder or the exuberant hug were manifestations of love. Who you can and cannot touch was linked closely to who you can and cannot love, and how. While the expression “I love you” waited for a reciprocal response, the hand held in silence demanded no answer. Love in India, be it social, familial or romantic, has always had that sense of the tactile. Perhaps, that is the reason why kissing came to Bollywood so late, because to kiss was to also claim and express love. To kiss without love was obscene. Love, in India, is a physical verb.

Queer love, then, is no exception. It also did not have a local vocabulary or language to express itself in. Our myths, legends, fables, and epics are filled with queer practices — male gods taking female forms, consummating their desire with same-sex persons, changing their sexuality and genders in a fluid allegory of social intimacy. These were not merely practices. They were the physical verbal languages, signposts and registers of desire and love.

In implementing Section 377, the British ensured that they colonised not only our country but also our bodies. They imported shame and put it on practices and desires, which were accepted and celebrated in the country. They insisted that the only acceptable love is one of penile transaction that essentially leads to procreation — a violent law that not only denied the actions of love between consenting adults of same and different sexes, it alsoactively disallowed any local grammar of love to emerge in the country.

The judgment decriminalising consensual sex between adults, irrespective of their orientation or sex, is momentous because it doesn’t just condone an action. It suggests that we are finally free to locate and celebrate a language that can match our desires. The British law criminalised our many ways of claiming love. This judgment elevates our right to love as a fundamental right, and continues our Swaraj movements by decolonising our intimacies.

Decriminalisation of homosexuality, then, is not about queer love. It is about all love. It is about recognising that as a society we can only grow strong if we learn to love at intersections. In our increasingly polarised times when actions of hate — lynching, murdering, intimidation, bullying, trolling, and abuse — are on the rise, this judgment reminds us that the only counter to such violence is going to be in our right to love without fear, and, in any form that brings happiness in our lives.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-september-23-2018-the-right-words-for-love

Digital Native: Hardly Friends Like That

nishant — 2018-10-02T06:28:10Z

Individual effort is far from enough to fool Facebook’s grouping algorithm.

The article was published in the Indian Express on September 30, 2018

Lately, my Facebook timeline is flooded with people who are trying to “hack” Facebook’s friendship algorithm. Ever since Facebook took away the option from its users, to view their posts in reverse chronology, and made us slaves to its algorithms that pick and choose, based on opaque rules, what we see on our timeline, people have been frustrated with it. When your newsfeed is compiled by an algorithm that selects and decides what is good for you to see and what will be your interest, it doesn’t just mean that you have lost control, but that you are being manipulated without even noticing it, responding to only certain kinds of information that triggers specific responses from you.

This has led to a lot of people trying to “fool” the Facebook algorithm and taking their agency back. One of the most popular version of this is a meme that announces that Facebook algorithms only show us particular kinds of information from a certain kind of people, thus creating an echo chamber where all we do is see pictures of cute cats, dancing babies and holidays. The post suggests that if we all just talk to each other more, then we will have meaningful conversations — like, you know, about dancing cats, cute babies and where we wish to go on a holiday.

It is true that based on the nature of interaction, Facebook seems to designate some connections as strong connections. So, if we are chatting on Messenger, liking each others’s posts a lot, have many friends in common, are tagged together in the same pictures, Facebook makes a logical deduction that we have a lot in common in real life, and that we would be interested in each other more than other low-traffic connections. The meme asks people to leave a message on the post, start a conversation, and with this clever ploy, upset the Facebook algorithm. Now that we have chatted once, it suggests, Facebook is going to think we are the best of friends and is going to show us more diverse sources on the timeline.

This meme, and many like it, are attempts at taking agency in how we curate and consume our social media. Both of them are romantic, human, and absolutely flawed. They seem to think that Facebook’s algorithms follow human logic, and that they work on simple principles which we can counteract with simple actions. What they fail to take into account is that in the world of big data connections, Facebook’s algorithms draw their causal and correlative powers from more than a 100 data points which create a unique profile for each of its users. They fail to recognise that this message of resistance is still subject to the same principles of “traffic generating capacity”, and will be showed more often only for a temporary period until people stop interacting on that thread. With time and waning interest, it will die and people will be distracted by other information. They also don’t recognise that Facebook is still going to show your post largely to the same people that it has been showing your pictures to, and even if new people show engagement with it, it is not going to radically change your timeline.

While these posts are fun conversation starters, they cannot possibly be taken seriously. If Facebook’s algorithms were this easy to fool, every advertiser worth their salt would be busy manipulating the stream without spending any money on the platform. More importantly, individual actions are not going to circumvent the automation of our digital collective behaviour. To pretend that there is scope for such actions in the age of extreme customisation and profiling is a fool’s paradise. It also deflects our attention from the fact that if these are critical concerns, the responsibility of changing these conditions is not on the users but on companies like Facebooks and the governments that have to hold them accountable.

You and I, with all our good intentions, are not going to be able to “hack” Facebook’s algorithms or “fool” them into giving us results that we want. The only thing that can produce this change is strong regulation, robust policy, and taking the social media behemoth to task about how it addresses the questions of human agency and choice. So, the next time you want to produce real change, join the campaigns and ask our government to do something so that we can control our social media life.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-september-30-2018-digital-native-hardly-friends-like-that

Video Proposals: Top 14

praskrishna — 2013-09-09T01:11:40Z

Here are the ideas from our 14 digital native video contest finalists. Videos will soon be online! Voting begins from 10 March.

Joseph Francis

A young man gets ready to start his day: switching on his cable box, checking his Blackberry, listening to music, and microwaving his food. As he leaves, he turns on his iPod and sends a text message via his cell phone. Waiting for the train, he responds to emails and posts to Facebook. He sends a tweet and then gets to work. All day answering emails and phone calls while staring at a computer screen. Finally he ends his work day only to stare at a digital screen for train arrivals. Inside the train, he once again begins sending messages and tweets. Once he gets to his destination, he is told by an attractive woman to “unplug” and be with her. The End. Credits roll.

Marie Jude Bendiola

I come from a third world country where technology seemed to be hard to reach back in the 90s; especially by the not-so-privileged. As we progressed, technology has not only become ubiquitous (in malls, various institutions and technological hubs) but also, it has come to be used by the common man. My video will answer how technology bridges the gap between dreams and reality. It will be a fusion of documentary and re-enactment of real life events and dramas.

Cijo Abraham Mani

I want to convey the power of digital media by showcasing the reach of social media with specific examples from a tweet-a-thon panel discussion and #bloodaid tweets.

TJ K.M.

My video explores the spiritual aspect of digital technology and how rather than getting in the way of our spiritual expression, it is actually bringing us face to face with it, if only we choose to look. The video will be a mixture of live action and stop motion animation/puppetry where digital devices take on a transcendent character similar to nature spirits in various cultures. I plan to investigate the tendency to exclude digital devices and technology from being categorized alongside nature as if it is somehow exempt from or superior to this category. Using symbolism and motifs from various cultures such as the Native American Hopi, Balinese Hinduism and Japanese Shintoism, my video will create a world where the technology we use daily is viewed not just as a means for socio-cultural exchange and communication but is available for the nurturing of our souls if we so choose.

Mike Hickey

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

Thomas Burks

We have a small production company in Birmingham, Alabama. I was hired on a year ago to do film and commercials for them as they expand into advertising and video coverage of events. We only have about 3 employees including myself, working out of our homes. We recently acquired a space to open a studio and retail location downtown where we live. We use Facebook, blogs, and viral marketing all the time to get our name out there. Our account executive is constantly monitoring our Facebook for client orders and bookings. We are beginning to use twitter to provide information more fluidly to people. We believe this might be a year of growth for our small company, as we are becoming able to provide much higher quality content. We're fully digital; constantly updating our websites and blogs, and I believe we would be able to tell a great digital story. We submit numerous small films and skits; we cover awesome concerts, and rely so heavily on the digital world to show our content. That will be the gist of our video.

John Musila

Map Kibera Trust is an organization based in Kenya’s Kibera slums. Using digital gadgets and technology, they have transformed the community by placing it on the map as it was only seen as forest when viewed on a map. They also film stories around the community and share them with the world on their YouTube channel and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Through this they have been able to highlight and raise awareness about the challenges the community faces. Our video would show Kibera’s role in bringing about change.

Andrés Felipe Arias Palma

I think many people are digital natives unknowingly. Being a digital native is a relationship with activism and society, not as they initially thought. It was a condition of being born in specific times and external factors. In the video, I will interview people about who and what is a digital native? How to use the Internet? What are the advantages and disadvantages for society where everything is run with the power of the Internet?

Joseph Gathecha

Black and White is a colour combination for the layman, but intensely they may be used in multiple ways or forms: as signs and symbols, as animations, decorations, and to convey myths, beliefs, taboos and many other concepts. Kibera’s slum, in the surburb of Nairobi, Kenya, is the perfect place to showcase this contrast of extremes and how digital technology is a thread connecting what I want to convey.

Martin Potter

Over a period of nearly four years, moving across small towns in Australia and South East Asia, I have seen the most extraordinary innovations at a local community level. My video will focus on these local stories with global impact. I am pursuing a PhD in participatory media and this will lend a uniquely academic perspective on the concept of collaboration, community life and innovation.

E. James Rajasekaran

I live in the temple town of Madurai in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. I am a social worker and the plight of people living in slims is something that my NGO is closely associated with. My video will bring out the efforts of the people who live in the slums of Madurai.

Anand Jha

Bangalore is home to a lot of technology start-ups. A lot of geeks, who find it limiting to work for corporations, are driving a very open source-oriented, frugally-built and extremely demanding culture. While their products are standing at the bleeding edge of technology, their personal lives too are constantly driven on the edge, every launch being a make or break day for them. The project would aim at capturing their stories, their frustration and motivation, looking at the possibilities of Indian software scene moving beyond the services and back-end office culture into a more risk prone but more passionate business of technology.

MJ

As a digital native living in a developing country l have carried out a series of both online and offline projects which have always strived to benefit Zimbabweans in a number of ways since 2000. These projects have increased my interactions with computers. I got married to the computer in 2000 when I bought my first PC; in a way, my relationship with a computer is now intimate. Even though this computer I bought was an old 386 machine made obsolete by faster Pentium III models, this did not affect my love for this computer. My video will focus on a dream-waking reality moment of my digital life.

Test User

I am a test user from the future

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

DN Episode Podcast

praskrishna — 2012-02-15T04:15:07Z

A podcast from the Digital Natives

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/dn-episode-podcast

Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies

nishant — 2015-04-24T11:51:06Z

Nishant Shah was invited to do a book review of a new anthology 'Deconstructing Digital Natives', edited by Michael Thomas. The review was published in Routledge's Journal of Children and Media on July 18, 2012.

Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies is an anthology that revisits the debates and scholarship that have arisen around youth and technology in the last decade or so. It is a timely intervention that invites some of the most influential scholars who have contributed to and shaped the discourse around “digital natives” to come and revisit their original ideas from the last decade. The term “digital native” probably bears witness to the strident discourses that, more often than not, fall into the trap of exotically glorifying or despairingly vilifying young peoples’ engagement with digital technologies. As Buckingham points out in his foreword to the book, these conversations either take up the language of a “generation gap [that] entails a narrative of transformation and even of rupture, in which fundamental continuities between the past and the future have been destroyed” or they guise themselves in an “almost utopian view of technology—a fabulous story about technology liberating and empowering young people, enabling them to become global citizens, and to learn and communicate and create in free and unfettered ways” (p. ix). The essays seek a point of departure from these tried and tested arguments in order to provide a “balanced view” on the topic. And so we have a distinguished author list from the world of digital natives scholarship, coming together not only to ponder on their own contributions to the field and how those ideas need to be upgraded, but also to provide new contexts, concepts, and frameworks to understand who, or indeed, what, is a “digital native,” often in tension with their earlier work.

In its ambition of revisiting existing debates and providing a “research-based approach by presenting empirical evidence and argument from international researchers in the field,” the book succeeds unevenly (p. xi). Despite its efforts to chart a point of departure, some of the essays end up falling into some usual traps. For example, despite the fact that the oldest digital natives are probably in their thirties, they are thought of as being young. They are defined only as “students” within formal learning institutions without looking at the radical potential of learning outside organized education, embedded in their everyday practices. The digital natives remain an object of research and the peer-to-peer structures that are supposed to shape them, but do not feature in the methodologies of researching them. This notwithstanding, the essays still offer a historical and social perspective on the debates around digital natives in certain developed pockets of the world.

In the first section, “Reflecting on the Myth,” Thomas’ essay “Technology, Education and the Discourse of the Digital Native” introduces a tension between the techno-euphorists and the “digital luddites,” which replays itself through the rest of the contributions. While Thomas places himself between “technoevangelism” and “technoskepticism,” Prensky, who coined the term “Digital Natives” in 2001, then introduces to us a new binary of “digitally wise” and “digitally dumb” (p. 4). Prensky reviews the responses that his opposition of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” have produced over the last decade and emphasizes that his coinage was at the level of a metaphor, and was not to be taken seriously. Prensky agrees that the earlier opposition might be discarded because it evokes too many simple responses based on skills with technology. Digital wisdom, for Prensky, is in the ways in which digital technologies enhance the human brain “to anticipate second- and third-order effects to which the unaided mind may be blind” as the world becomes too complex for the “unenhanced human brain” to cope with it (p. 23). Typically, Prensky’s argument creates a dichotomy of those who can (and will) and those who will be outside of this web of digital enhancements. His analysis tries to complicate the idea of human wisdom by looking at questions of ethics and agency, but the final formulations appear cliche´d, merely re-creating the older tensions rather than thinking through them. Jones’ following essay on the “Net Generation” is more persuasive, where he argues for dismissing the idea that “nature of certain technologies . . . has affected the outlook of an entire age cohort in advanced economies” and instead should unpack how “new technologies emerging with this generation have particular characteristics that afford certain types of social engagement” (p.42).

In the second section, titled “Perspectives,” the essays take up two different tones.The first is about looking at digital literacy, skill, and fluency in everyday practices of digital natives, and how they shape our contemporary and future sociopolitical and cultural landscapes. Banaji, in exploring the EU Civic Web Project, echoes Jones’ ideas. The presumptions within education about an entire generation as “born with technologies” has consequences in the field of civic action, where programs for citizen action are designed with expectations that the young people will have core digital competencies and literacy. She does not push that argument further, but in her study of the two Scottish e-initiatives, one can see the promise of a radical reconstruction of civic engagement movements, where the young participants are not going to be satisfied as mere participators, and will demand a space for their voice to be heard.

Takahashi’s essay on the oyaubibunka (“thumb culture”) mobile generations in Japan stands alone in its analysis of an Asian context—though many might argue that Japan, with its developed economy, can hardly be counted as a typically “Asian” perspective. Takahashi is rooted, both in practice and discourse, in youth and technology in Japan, where the youth often experience close-knit community experiences through mobile interfaces, in their otherwise alienated modern habitats. Almost as a response to Turkle’s Alone Together (2011), Takahashi shows how collaborative and cocreation cultures ranging from the mobile novels on Mixi to everyday interaction on Social Networking Systems is bringing in new kinds of social spaces of belonging. The essay, however, resists simply celebrating this space and works in complex ideas of freedom, control, risks, and the tensions between traditionalization and modernity in Japan.

Zimic and Dalin, writing from a similar heavily connected Nordic region, pose a different set of questions in their essay, “Actual and Perceived Online Participation Among Young People in Sweden.” For Zimic and Dalin, in a space where connectivity can be taken for granted, the further question to ask is not whether digital natives participate online or not, but whether they participate in ways that are expected of “a digital citizen in the information age” (p. 137). Through empirical data and case studies, the essay shows the different kinds of activities that youth engage with and also concludes that though engaging in civic issues is important to the young people’s sense of belonging to participatory cultures, using the Internet does not provide an “automatic guarantee” toward participation, and “assistance is required in order to engage them in relevant activities” (p. 148).

The second set of essays in this section all cluster around the digital native as a student. Locating the digital native within educational institutions, they look at the ways in which the ideas of learning, pedagogy and engagement with the text are changing with the rise of digital technologies. Levy and Michael look at two case studies involving students in Australian high schools, to “facilitate a deeper understanding of products and processes in multimodal text construction,” which they think is core to interactive communication technology literacy skills (p. 85). The data is rigorous and rich, but the conclusions are a bit of a disappointment: digital natives need to better manage their time and resources and they need to learn traditional skills in order to cope with their educational environment.

The trend of an exciting hypothesis and conclusion, which do not necessarily leave you with anything more than what you already knew, continues in this section. Erstad sets out on a journey to see how digital literacy posits challenges to educating the digital generation and ends by suggesting that the digital divide should address questions of “how to navigate in the information jungle on the Internet, to create, to communicate, and so forth” (p. 114). Similarly, Kennedy and Judd want to unravel the mystery of why “students, who are so clearly familiar and apparently adept with Internet tools, are at times so poor at using the Internet academically” (p. 119). Through empirical research and interaction with students, they end up making an argument against the Googlization of everything (Vaidhyanathan, 2011), suggesting that “satisficing strategies” of information search, defined by a need for instant gratification and not looking beyond the first information sets, has produced “a generation of students that has grown up with Google [who] may over-value expediency when locating and selecting appropriate scholarly information” (p. 132). On similar trends, Levy proposes to question the assumption of whether all “young children are inherently ‘native’ users of digital technology” for implications on our future pedagogy within the new textual landscape (p. 152). The case studies and the frameworks built are interesting, but they reveal nothing more than the claim that the essay begins with by Marsh et al. (2005) and Bearne et al. (2007) that “young children are immersed in ‘digital practices’ from an early age and that they often develop skills in handling screen texts even when they are not exposed directly to computers at their own homes” (Levy, 2011, p. 163). The implication is clear: change our schools to accommodate for these new textual practices and help children capitalize on their digital competence and develop “digital wisdom.” But it is a recommendation that has been around for at least a decade, if not more.

The third and concluding section of the book, “Beyond Digital Natives,” is possibly the most promising part of the book. Bennett and Maton seek to look beyond “nuanced versions of the idea” and move the debate on to firmer grounds of how the rise of the digital natives is going to affect the policies around educational technology” (p. 169). They engage with a body of work that is specifically oriented toward building empirical evidence-based frameworks for understanding the potential role of technology in education. With a fine conceptual tool that makes distinctions between access and usage, they systemically dismiss the “academic moral panic” that characterizes conversations around youth-technology-change.

For Bennett and Maton, the object of inquiry is not the digital native but the body of discourse that surrounds this particular entity—and they make a plea for research rather than imaginings, showing how the influential work in the area has been plagued by unsupported claims, unevidenced observations, and futuristic imaginations, which paint a poetic picture of digital natives but offer very little in terms of furthering the argument. It is also noteworthy that they do not flinch from critiquing the colleagues who also feature in the same book, as an idealizing and homogenizing group that has shown “diversity rather than conformity” (p. 181).

Palfrey and Gasser, whose Born Digital (2008) has been the guide for lay readers to understand the nuances and complexities of the area, in their essay, begin by acknowledging that “digital natives” is an awkward term. However, they argue, it is still a term that resonates deeply with parents and educators, and that this resonance should not be taken lightly by researchers. Their decision was to use this term, albeit with caution and discretion, strategically to refer to a small subset of young people and the gamut of relationships and engagements they have with digital technologies. The suggestion is to use the term and in every usage, look at the unevennesses and awkwardness it creates, thus actually unpacking an otherwise opaque relationship which is reduced to “usage” or “access.” Their concerns are more about the quality of information and access, infrastructure for critical literacy and digital fluency, and making legible these everyday practices to larger implications for a future that they posit is bright and hopeful.

Deconstructing Digital Natives is an interesting revisit of a term that has grown in different ways through the first decade of the new millennium. However, the book still remains located in the same geopolitics in which the early discourse of digital natives were grounded—developed, privileged locations where connectivity, affordability, and ubiquitous digital literacy are taken for granted—reminiscent of the frantic cries one hears in piracy markets in Bangkok, “same, same, but different.” The revisiting does not seem to feel the need to explore other contexts. A few essays talk about factoring in local and contextual information in understanding digital natives, but the scholarship reinforces the idea of how technologies shape and are shaped by identities in some parts of the world, and that these identities can be heralded as universally viable, with a little nuancing.

The questions that have emerged in this discourse in the recent years, remain ignored. What does a digital native look like in the Global South? Can we have new concepts and frameworks which emerge from these contexts? Is it possible to produce accounts in languages and ideas that are embedded in everyday practices rather than forcing them to become legible in existing vocabularies? One would hope that the next book that deconstructs digital natives would also deconstruct the prejudices, presumptions, and methodological processes that are embedded in this field.

References

Bearne, E., Clark, C., Johnson, A., Manford, P., Motteram, M., & Wolsencroft, H. (2007). Reading on screen. Leicester: UKLA.
Marsh, J., Brookes, G., Hughes, J., Ritchie, L, Roberts, S., & Wright, K. (2005). Digital beginnings: Young children’s use of popular culture, media and new technologies. Sheffield: Literacy Research Centre, University of Sheffield.
Palfrey, J., & Gasser, U. (2008). Born digital. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other, NY. New York: Basic Books.
Vaidhyanthan, S. (2011). The Googlization of everything: (And why we should worry). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Nishant Shah is the Director-Research at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. He is the principal researcher for a Global South inquiry into digital natives and sociopolitical change, and recently edited four-volume book, Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?, which is available as a free download at http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook. Correspondence to: Nishant Shah, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India. E-mail: nishant@cis-india.org

Download the file (originally published by Taylor & Francis) here [PDF, 66 Kb]

Read the original published by Taylor & Francis here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/young-people-technology-new-literacies

October 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-25T04:53:06Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet and Society newsletter! In this issue we bring you the updates of our research, events, media coverage and videos of some past events organized by us during October 2011.

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:

Key Research

On Fooling Around: Digital Natives and Politics in Asia
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Youths are not only actively participating in the politics of its times but also changing the way in which we understand the political processes of mobilisation, participation and transformation, writes Nishant. The paper was presented at the Digital Cultures in Asia conference at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.

Links in the Chain

Analog Relics in the Digital Age, volume 8, issue 4
Guest Editor: Nilofar Ansher
“The scale of inventions has not really leaped, so much as mutated. We had Twitter and Facebook ... (remember notice boards, community centers and pamphlets); they just weren’t so instant, hyperlinked and global in scale. We still use the medium of a mouthpiece and speaker to talk to each other long distance, the difference is in the changed aesthetics of the 21st century – it’s all squarish curves and scratch-proof glass that are more appealing today. Blackboards, writing material, listening devices and memory aids have undergone unprecedented transformations of function and usage, but it’s still about having a blank canvas to write upon with a chalk, pen, paper or iClick”, writes Nilofar in this issue of the Digital Natives newsletter.

Articles/Columns

In Search of the Other: Decoding Digital Natives: Nishant Shah charts the trajectories of our research at the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) and Hivos (The Hague, The Netherlands) to see how alternative models of understanding these relationships can be built. This blog post by Nishant Shah was published in DML central on 24 October 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

The Write Stuff , Deccan Chronicle, 14 November 2011. Nishant Shah has been quoted in this article.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:

Publication

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (Russian Version)
Edited by Nirmita Narasimhan
The e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities is now available in Russian. The handbook is a joint publication of ITU, G3ict and the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union wrote the preface, Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D wrote the introduction and Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict wrote the foreword.

Blog Entry

The case for Accessible Banking by Dinesh Kaushal.

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

Key Research

Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society
The idea of a single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube, writes Nishant in this essay published in the Journal of Moving Images.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Featured Research

Know Your Users, Match their Needs!
As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. This blog post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society. Rebecca Schild and Prashant Iyengar from CIS were part of the research team.

Event Organised

Open Access to Academic Knowledge, organised by the Indian Institute of Science and CIS at National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on 2 November 2011. Tom Dane participated in this event.

Event Participated

3rd Canadian Science Policy Conference, organised by Canadian Science Policy Conference from16 to 18 November 2011 at the Ottawa Convention Centre. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Global Implications of Open and Inclusive Innovation.

Announcement

The Wikimedia India Program Trust. A new entity, the “Wikimedia India Program Trust”, has been registered in Delhi. Sunil is a trustee.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:

Comments / Submissions

CIS Comments on Finance Committee Statements to Open Letters on Unique Identity: The Parliamentary Finance Committee responded to the six open letters sent by CIS through an email on 12 October 2011. CIS has commented on the points raised by the Committee.
Comments on the National Policy of Information Technology: The NPIT 2011 has the laudable goal of making India a ‘knowledge economy with a global role’ by developing and deploying ICT solutions in all sectors to foster development within India and at a global level. CIS appreciates this initiative of the Department of Information Technology and offers brief comments to strengthen the draft.
CIS Comments on the Draft National Policy on Electronics: CIS submitted its comments to the request for comments put out by the Department of Information Technology on its draft 'National Policy on Electronics'.

Statement

India's Statement Proposing UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy: India made its statement at the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, its proposal for the UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy was presented.

Podcast

Professor Balaram talks Open Access : Tom Dane spoke with Professor P Balaram, Director of the Indian Institute of Science about the Open Access movement. A podcast of the interview is available for download.

Event Report

The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series — A Post-event Report : The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series was organised by the Indian Journal of Law and Technology and CIS on the 21st and 22nd of May 2011 at the National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore. The main theme for this year was Emerging Issues in Privacy Law: Law, Policy and Practice.

Peer Review

Material Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Nishant explores the possibility of formulating the cyborg as an author or translator who is able to navigate between the different binaries of ‘meat–machine’, ‘digital–physical’, and ‘body–self’, using the abilities and the capabilities learnt in one system in an efficient and effective understanding of the other. The essay was published in the European Journal of English Studies, Volume 12, Issue 2.

Articles / Columns

What is Dilligaf? On the web, time moves at the speed of thought: Groups emerge, proliferate and are abandoned as new trends and fads take precedence. Nowhere else is this dramatic flux as apparent as in the language that evolves online. While SMS lingo – like TTYL (Talk To You Later) and LOL (Laughing Out Loud)– has endured and become a part of everyday language, new forms of speech are taking over. This article by Nishant Shah was published in GQ India.
The Book of Jobs The man who made the computer personal, who changed the face of the digital media industry, who was inspired by Zen philosophy to create an eight-billion-dollar empire, Steve Jobs, died last month. Just a few weeks before his death, in the midst of his painful illness, he told Walter Isaacson, the man chosen to write his authorised biography, “I really want to believe that something survives”. And Isaacson wrote him a fairy tale which will make sure that Jobs will be remembered beyond the gizmos and gimmicks, writes Nishant Shah in this article published in the Indian Express on 12 November 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

Is Facebook tracking your virtual footprints? by Sheetal Sukhija in MidDay, 22 November 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article.
M-governance gains momentum by Vasudha Venugopal in the Hindu, 20 November 2011.
Learn it Yourself: The peer-to-peer world of online learning encourages conversations and reciprocal learning, writes Nishant Shah. The article was published by the Indian Express on 30 October 2011. Nishant Shah is quoted in this article.
SOPA: The bill that could kill the Internet by Suw Charman-Anderson in Firstpost.Technology, 16 November 2011.
Broadband user base still has a long way to go, by Leslie D’Monte & Deepti Chaudhary in Livemint, 15 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
Not mandatory’ but maids, guards get fingerprinted by Hemanth Kashyap in Bangalore Mirror, 9 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
Netizen Report: Transparency Edition by Rebecca MacKinnon in Global Voices Online, 7 November 2011.
Blocking online content: Google gets more requests than govt by Pallavi Polanki in Firstpost.com, 2 November 2011. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted in this article.

Blog Entries

Sources of CIS Funding by Pranesh Prakash on 9 November 2011.

TRAI urged to take action against P2P throttling and DNS hijacking by Anand on 9 November 2011.

Events Organised

Exposing Data: Art Slash Activism organised by Tactical Tech and CIS at CIS office in Bangalore on 28 November 2011. Ward Smith and Stephanie Hankey (Co-founders of TTC), Ayisha Abraham (Filmmaker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, CIS) gave a lecture.
Droidcon India, first Android Conference in Bangalore, organised by CIS in collaboration with Droidcon.com, Bangalore Android User Group, MobileMonday Bangalore and Android Advices on 18 and 19 November 2011 at the MLR Convention Centre, Bangalore.

Events Participated

Western Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics organised by the Western Ghats Portal team at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, 25 November 2011. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Scientific Commons and Policy.
Names Not Numbers Mumbai, 26 November 2011. Nishant Shah spoke in a panel on “The New Digital Individual: Is New Technology Liberating or Enslaving?”. The event was organised by Editorial Intelligence and partners which included the British Council and Financial Times, BBC World News, Mumbai first, Vodafone, Trident and Godrej India Cultural Lab.

Video

Facebook Resistance Workshop at CIS. This was a workshop for people to learn on how to think beyond the rules and limitations of Facebook, to tweak and play around the features and design to generate useful, creative, and funny concepts and explore how this creative intervention can be turned into a real software developed by the Facebook Resistance.

Telecom

Article / Column

Telecom Path-Breaker?
Does the draft National Telecom Policy-2011 reflect true brilliance or smoke-and-mirrors? It will be a game-changer if a shared network is implemented effectively, writes Shyam Ponappa in this article published in the Business Standard on 3 November 2011.

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit our website here

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2011-bulletin

May 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:23:01Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage.

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and 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 want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entry:

What Scare a Digital Native Blogathon?

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

New Blog Entry

Universal Service — An Instrument for Accessibility

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

Column in Indian Express

Nishant Shah, Director-Research will be writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues. His first column on transparency, technology and NGOs in India came out on Sunday:

Power to the People [Indian Express, May 15, 2011]

New Blog Entries

Killing the Internet Softly with Its Rules [By Pranesh Prakash in Indian Express, May 9, 2011]
Rebuttal of DIT's Misleading Statements on New Internet Rules
CDT Provides Answers to Questions on Internet Neutrality

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Featured Research

Limits to Privacy

Conference Report

Privacy By Design — Conference Report

Workshop

Second IJLT-CIS Lecture Series, National Law School [National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore, May 21-22, 2011]

Upcoming Conferences

Panel Discussion on UID – Its Feasibility, Utility and Legality [May 26, 2011]
Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad [The English and Foreign Languages University (TBC), Hyderabad, June 18, 2011]

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Spectrum reforms - Good & Bad news [published in the Business Standard on May 5, 2011]

Miscellaneous

Public Lecture

The Task of the Translator after Google [CIS, April 30, 2011]

News & Media Coverage

Sunil Abraham, CIS : "Avec l’e-G8, Nicolas Sarkozy veut promouvoir de nouvelles restrictions à la liberté d’expression" [LE MAG IT, May 24, 2011]
As Simple as a Tweet [Deccan Chronicle, May 24, 2011]
A Network of Chains [Outlook, Issue of May 30, 2011]
Bangalore-based NGO files RTI query asking list of websites blocked by Indian govt [Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2011]
IT Act if enforced will leave internet use in India no freer than in China [Daily News & Analysis, May 15, 2011]
Your Privacy is Public Property [Mail Today, May 15, 2011]
Point By Point Rebuttal Of Indian Government’s Statement On Internet Control Rules [Medianama, May 13, 2011]
New rules to ensure due diligence: IT dept [Times of India, May 11, 2011]
Indian civil liberties groups are now geared to fight the draconian IT Rules [Weekend Leader.com, Vol 2 Issue 18, 6 - 12 May, 2011]
New Internet rule: 'Objectionable' content can be removed without notifying users [dailybhaskar.com, May 11, 2011]
India Chills Online Speech [digitalcommunities, May 3, 2011]
Consumers International World Congress - Day 3 roundup [Consumer's International Blog, May 5, 2011]
Digerati See Censorship in New Web Rules [Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2011]
Free expression [Watertown Daily Times, May 2, 2011]
India curbs on Bloggers and Internet [TruthDrive, April 29, 2011]
Bright lights, geek city [Hindu, April 28, 2011]
India Cracks Down on Internet Free Speech [April 28, 2011]
India's cyber cafes going porn-free [msnbc.com, April 28, 2011]
Thousands queue for iPad 2 across Asia [AFP, April 28, 2011] [News hosted by Google]
New internet rules open to arbitrary interpretation [Times of India, April 27, 2011]
India Puts Tight Leash on Internet Free Speech [New York Times, April 27, 2011]
India Can Restrict 'Objectionable' Web Content under New Rules [TMCnet Legal, April 27, 2011]
Iraqi Minister meets Secretary, Indian Ministry of Panchayat Raj [Karnataka News Network, April 27, 2011]
The world is your oyster, by invitation only [Livemint, April 26, 2011]
No access to pornography in cyber cafes, declare new rules [Times of India, April 26, 2011]
India Proposes Restrictions on Tapping Telephone Calls [PC World, TechWorld and CIO, April 26, 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/may-2011-bulletin

November 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-07T11:46:10Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society!

News Updates

The internet’s new billion: New web users — in countries like Brazil and China — are changing the culture of the internet.
http://bit.ly/hKUb5n

‘Piracy is now a mainstream political phenomenon': “Piracy has become a mainstream political phenomenon,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society in the city. The piracy that he was referring to was not the piracy of the high seas but the piracy of intellectual property.
http://bit.ly/gMC1Br

Open standards policy in India: A long, but successful journey: Last week, India became another major country to join the growing, global open standards movement. After three years of intense debate and discussion, India's Department of IT in India finalized its Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance, joining the ranks of emerging economies like Brazil, South Africa and others. This is a historic moment and India's Department of Information Technology (DIT) deserves congratulations for approving a policy that will ensure the long-term preservation of India's e-government data.
http://bit.ly/dGo6Qo

Information, the world's new capital - Digital Natives: Information is the new capital and currency of the world, Nishant Shah, of the India-based Digital Natives with a Cause, told Bizcommunity.com yesterday, 10 November 2010, as the three-day workshop on digital and internet technologies that brought together young delegates from nine African countries ended in Johannesburg, South Africa. "If the 20th century was the age of the industrial revolution, the 21st century is now actually the age of the knowledge information," Shah said.
http://bit.ly/dpXIKY

What it means to be a child today: They move seamlessly between reality and virtual reality. The digital landscape they inhabit comprises generations — not of family — but of technology such as Web 2.0, 3G, PS4 and iPhone5. Their world has moved beyond their neighbourhood, school and childhood friends to encompass a 500-channel television universe, the global gaming village, the endless internet. These are the children born in the last decade and half — possibly the first generation that has never known a world without hi-tech.
http://bit.ly/cz3nBJ

Report: Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum, 23 Oct 2010, Doha, Qatar: A summary of the event "Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum" held in Doha.
http://bit.ly/catHoi

DOC 2.0: A Resources Sharing Mela by NGO Documentation Centres: A Resource Sharing Mela and Meet of DCM (Document Centres Meet) at the Centre for Education & Documentation in Domlur, Bangalore.
http://bit.ly/dnwQMf

Wi-Fi Direct promises range, bandwidth higher than Bluetooth: Sharing, printing and connecting for Wi-Fi devices is going to be more convenient than ever with soon-to-be-launched technology Wi-Fi Direct, which enables devices to connect to each other without a conventional Wi-Fi hub. This article by Ramkumar Iyer was published in the Hindu on 31 October 2010.
http://bit.ly/aUul9f
Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property: Access to Knowledge in the Age of Intellectual Property charts the rise of the access to knowledge movement, a movement in which Open Society Foundations have played a key role. It maps the vast terrain of legal, cultural, and technical issues that activists and thinkers aligned to the movement negotiate every day.
http://bit.ly/9nkQFM

Social Mashup!: Save the Date Join us to meet India’s most passionate, innovative, and curious start-up social entrepreneurs for two groundbreaking days of conversations, connections and inspiration. This event will be held on 2-3 December 2010 at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.
http://bit.ly/bKKcar

Digitally Open: Innovation and Open Access Forum: Promoting Openness in Today's Digital World
http://bit.ly/961Ieg

Crisis for identity or identity crisis?: The hurry with which the government is pushing its most ambitious project to assign a number (UID) to every citizen without any feasibility study or public debate has raised many questions. http://bit.ly/8Zt9mf

Upcoming Event

Identity, Identification and Media Representation in Video Game Play: An Audience Reception Study: Adrienne Shaw from the Annenberg School of communications, who is a visiting fellow at MICA is giving a public talk on research on representation in video games on 27 November 2010 at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore.
http://bit.ly/909xkU

Research

My Bubble, My Space, My Voice Workshop - Perspective and Future
The second workshop for the “Digital Natives with a Cause?” research project named “My Bubble, My Space, My Voice” took place at the Link Center of Wits University, in Johannesburg, South Africa from 6 November 2010 to 9 November 2010. Samuel Tettner, Digital Natives Co-cordinator shares his perspective on the workshop.
http://bit.ly/bPX6Xd

Archive and Access: Call for Review
The Archive and Access research project by Rochelle Pinto, Aparna Balachandran and Abhijit Bhattacharya is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. The project that attempts to look at the ways in which the notion of the archive, the role of the archivist and the relationship between the state and private archives that has undergone a transition with the emergence of Internet technologies in India has been put up for public review. http://bit.ly/d4o809

Just Where We Like It
The micro space for status updates might become the new public space for discussion. Nishant Shah's column on Digital Natives was published in the Sunday Eye of the Indian Express on 21 November 2010.
http://bit.ly/96cK8q

Taking It to the Streets
The previous posts in the Beyond the Digital series have discussed the distinct ways in which young people today are thinking about their activism. The fourth post elaborates further on how this is translated into practice by sharing the experience of a Blank Noise street intervention: Y ARE U LOOKING AT ME?
http://bit.ly/ciyiiR

Talking Back without "Talking Back"
The activism of digital natives is often considered different from previous generations because of the methods and tools they use. However, reflecting on my conversations with The Blank Noise Project and my experience in the ‘Digital Natives Talking Back’ workshop in Taipei, the difference goes beyond the method and can be spotted at the analytical level – how young people today are thinking about their activism.
http://bit.ly/bHAvDE

The 'Beyond the Digital' Directory
For the past few months, Maesy Angelina has been sharing the insights gained from her research with Blank Noise on the activism of digital natives. The ‘Beyond the Digital’ directory offers a list of the posts on the research based on the order of its publication.
http://bit.ly/b3TK3C

First Thing First
Studies often focus on how digital natives do their activism in identifying the characteristics of youth digital activism and dedicate little attention to what the activism is about. The second blog post in the Beyond the Digital series reverses this trend and explores how the Blank Noise Project articulates the issue it addresses: street sexual harassment.
http://bit.ly/cM1HFf

Change has come to all of us
The general focus on a digital generational divide makes us believe that generations are separated by the digital axis, and that the gap is widening. There is a growing anxiety voiced by an older generation that the digital natives they encounter — in their homes, schools and universities and at workplaces — are a new breed with an entirely different set of vocabularies and lifestyles which are unintelligible and inaccessible. It is time we started pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a digital native.
http://bit.ly/9J82YY

Accessibility

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities
The Centre for Internet and Society is proud to announce the launch of its first publication, the “e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities" in collaboration with the G3ict (Global Initiative for Inclusive Information Communication Technologies) and ITU (International Telecommunications Union), and sponsored by the Hans Foundation. The handbook is compiled and edited by Nirmita Narasimhan. Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union has written the preface, Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D has written the introduction and Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict has written the foreword.
http://bit.ly/gfKNYO

Intellectual Property

Statement of CIS on the Work of the Committee in the 21st SCCR
The twenty-first session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights was held in Geneva from 8 to 12 November 2010. Nirmita Narasimhan attended the conference and represented the Centre for Internet and Society.
http://bit.ly/fJVNPI

We’ve All Got Some Baggage
America’s newest trade agreement is not going to kill only iPods. The article appeared in the Tehelka Magazine Vol 7, Issue 45, Dated November 13, 2010
http://bit.ly/cVrpWd

Internet Governance

Consumer Privacy - How to Enforce an Effective Protective Regime?
In a typical sense, when people think of themselves as consumers, they just think about what they purchase, how they purchase and how they use their purchase. But while doing this exercise we are always exchanging personally identifiable information, and thus our privacy is always at risk. In this blog post, Elonnai Hickok and Prashant Iyengar through a series of questions look through the whole concept of consumer privacy at the national and international levels. By placing a special emphasis on Indian context, this post details the potential avenues of consumer privacy in India and states the important elements that should be kept in mind when trying to find at an effective protective regime for consumer privacy.
http://bit.ly/eEs5Qx

CIS Responds to Privacy Approach Paper
A group of officers was created to develop a framework for a privacy legislation that would balance the need for privacy protection, security, sectoral interests, and respond to the domain legislation on the subject. Shri Rahul Matthan of Tri Legal Services prepared an approach paper for the legal framework for a proposed legislation on privacy. The approach paper is now being circulated for seeking opinions of the group of officers and is also being placed on the website of the Department of Personnel and Training for seeking public views on the subject. The Privacy India team at CIS responded to the approach paper and has called for the need for a more detailed study of statutory enforcement models and mechanisms in the creation of privacy legislation.
http://bit.ly/eVTwVC
Privacy and Banking: Do Indian Banking Standards Provide Enough Privacy Protection
Banking is one of the most risky sectors as far as privacy is concerned due to the highly sensitive and personal nature of information which is often exchanged, recorded and retained. Although India has RBI guidelines and legislations to protect data, this blog post looks at the extent of those protections, and what are the areas that still need to be addressed.
http://bit.ly/flq09V

Privacy and Telecommunications: Do We Have the Safeguards?
All of you often come across unsolicited and annoying telemarketing calls/ SMS's, prank calls, pestering calls for payment, etc. Do we have any safeguards against them? This blog post takes a look at the various rules and regulations under Indian law to guard our privacy and confidentiality.
http://bit.ly/hnTwKp

Privacy, Free/Open Source, and the Cloud
A look into the questions that arise in concern to privacy and cloud computing, and how open source plays into the picture.
http://bit.ly/awpCyF

Privacy Concerns in Whole Body Imaging: A Few Questions
Security versus Privacy...it is a question that the world is facing today when it comes to using the Whole Body Imaging technology to screen a traveller visually in airports and other places. By giving real life examples from different parts of the world Elonnai Hickok points out that even if the Government of India eventually decides to advocate the tight security measures with some restrictions then such measures need to balanced against concerns raised for personal freedom. She further argues that privacy is not just data protection but something which must be viewed holistically and contextually when assessing new policies.
http://bit.ly/9rvQPt

American Bar Association Online Privacy Conference: A Report
On 10 November 2010, I attended an American Bar Association online conference on 'Regulating Privacy Across Borders in the Digital Age: An Emerging Global Consensus or Vive la Difference'. The panelists addressed many important global privacy challenges and spoke about the changes the EU directive is looking to take.
http://bit.ly/dy41zc

Telecom

3G Life
You can video chat, stream music and watch TV on your phone. Offering high-speed internet access, 3G would change the world of mobile computing. Nishant Shah's article was published in the Indian Express on 14 November 2010.
http://bit.ly/gyxaW2

Ideology and ICT Policies
For better policies, decision-makers need to know their own and others’ biases, and consider what others are doing, writes Shyam Ponappa in an article published in the Business Standard on 4 November 2010.
http://bit.ly/dbl3Ai

Looking forward to your feedback. Please feel free to write to us for any queries or details required. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please do write to us and we will unsubscribe your mail ID from the mailing list.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/november-2010-bulletin

October 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-07T12:02:11Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society!

News Updates

Internet, szabadon
A polgárjogi aktivisták konfrontálódtak és panaszkodtak, a Google és a Facebook hárított és panaszkodott az Internet at Liberty konferencián, amelyet kedden és szerdán rendezett a Google és a CEU Budapesten.
http://bit.ly/dwNhRw
Hogyan szűrik a kormányok az internetes tartalmakat?
Az internet szabadságáról tartanak háromnapos konferenciát Budapesten a Google és a Közép-Európai Egyetem (CEU) szervezésében. Kedden az internetes tartalmak szűrése volt a legfontosabb téma a rendezvényen.
http://bit.ly/aFApER
Konferencia az internetes szólásszabadságról Budapesten
Az internet és szólásszabadság viszonyát vitatják meg Budapesten, a Közép-Európai Egyetem és a Google szervezte, háromnapos konferencián
http://bit.ly/9evwE4
How the UID project can be a cause for concern
The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), headed by Nandan Nilekani, is the UPA government's most ambitious project, where one billion Indians are branded with a unique identity number.
http://bit.ly/bl7INY
In new Facebook features, a comeback for community
Nearly 750 tweets bombard the web every second. Internet traffic is growing by 40 per cent a year. People post 2.5 billion photos on Facebook every month. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded on YouTube. But who owns all that data? Until now, big business was in complete control and used the data to monetise operations. But all that is set to change. With Facebook launching two new features, ‘Groups' and a ‘Download your information,' the community is making a comeback.
http://bit.ly/arEi4V
Stiff Resistance Dogs India's ID Plan
An article about the UID project by Indrajit Basu in Asia Times Online.
http://bit.ly/bMcOSs
Data Activism and Grassroots Empowerment in India
Glover Wright of the Center for Internet and Society talks about Data Activism and Grassroots Empowerment in India at the Innovate/Activate Unconference in New York Law School on 24 September 2010.
http://bit.ly/alnjsn

Upcoming Events

Enabling Access to Education through ICT
ICT workshop in Delhi....Registrations open!
http://bit.ly/9flyEK

Network Culture: Archaeological and Artistic Interventions Public Seminar – Talk by Kristoffer Gansing and Linda Hilfing
Kristoffer Gansing and Linda Hilfling will give a talk on Network Culture on 8 November 2010 in the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.
http://bit.ly/cEmOZw

Research

City in the Internet 1: Geography Imagined (Part 1)
“The estuaries that flirt with the land mass before they finally perish in the vast deep blue ocean beyond were perfect in their shape and grace. And you know what; from top it appears like a surreal landscape that is so restive and peaceful, almost heaven. The countryside is actually very beautiful”, says Pratyush Shankar in his latest blog post. A random conversation between two persons discovering the joys of seeing our existence through Google Earth!
http://bit.ly/9klUn1

A Digital Native coordinating Digital Natives
Samuel Tettner, joined CIS as a Research Coordinator for the Digital Natives project. He has written a blog entry about his experiences in the project.
http://bit.ly/cpJMQq
You Are Here
Geo-tagging applications are creating new and impromptu communities of true, says Nishant Shah in his column on Digital Natives in the Indian Express.
http://bit.ly/a64kj7
નિશાંત શાહ: ડિજિટલ પેઢીનો ઉદય
‘ડિજિટલ નાગરિક’ તેમને કહેવામાં આવે છે જેણે સામાન્ય જનજીવનમાં ડિજિટલ ટેક્નોલોજીના પ્રવેશ થઈ ગયા બાદ જન્મ લીધો છે. ડિજિટલ નાગરિકો દરેક જગ્યાએ છે. હવે સમય આવી ગયો છે કે આપણે એ જાણવાનો પ્રયાસ કરીએ કે આ લોકો કોણ છે, તેઓ શું કરી રહ્યા છે, તેઓ પોતાના અંગે શું વિચારે છે અને કેવી રીતે તેઓ કશું પણ જાણ્યા વગર આપણા ભવિષ્યને નવો આકાર આપવાનું કામ કરી રહ્યા છે. (A column by Nishant Shah in the Gujarati newspaper Divya Bhaskar)
http://bit.ly/9HnyBa

Digital Natives with a Cause?— Workshop in South Africa—FAQs
The second international Digital Natives Workshop "My Bubble, My Space, My Voice" will be held in Johannesburg from 7 to 9 November 2010. Some frequently asked questions regarding the upcoming workshop are answered in this blog entry.
http://bit.ly/c1XJHO

The silent rise of the Digital Native
In late August, this year, the world shook for many when they went online (on their computers, PDAs, iPads, laptops) and realised that the comfortable zone of talking, chatting, sharing and doing just about everything else, had suddenly, without a warning, changed overnight (or afternoon, or morning, depending upon the time-zone they lived in). With a single change in its privacy and location settings, Facebook, home to billions of internet hours consisting of relationships, friendships, professional networks, social gaming, entertainment trivia, memories and exchanges, allowed its users to geo-tag themselves when on-the-move.
http://bit.ly/bHY72Y

The geek shall inherit the earth
Demystifying the mysterious -agents changing the world around you...A column on Digital Natives by Nishant Shah in the Indian Express.
http://bit.ly/aq2BqY

Digital Natives Workshop in South Africa - Call for Participation
The African Commons Project, Hivos and the Centre for Internet and Society have joined hands for organising the second international workshop "My Bubble, My Space, My Voice" in Johannesburg from 07 to 09 November 2010. Send in your applications now!
http://bit.ly/d0rl7E

Telecom

Broad-basing Broadband
Education and training through the Internet need Commonwealth Games-like crisis management, says Shyam Ponappa in an article on broadband for education and training published in the Business Standard on 7 October 2010.
http://bit.ly/dnMtpU

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2010-bulletin

August 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-10T10:40:34Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society. We bring you news and media coverage, research and event updates for the month of August 2010

News Updates

RIM Offered Security Fixes
In India Talks, BlackBerry Maker Said It Could Share Metadata, Notes Show
http://bit.ly/ahT7jD

New Project to Assess Potential of Creating Open Government Data Initiatives in Chile, Ghana and Turkey
Steve Bratt, CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation (founded in 2009 by Tim Berners-Lee) has made an announcement on moving forward with a project to assess the potential of creating open government data
initiatives in Chile, Ghana, and Turkey - the first step of what we hope to be a global initiative focusing on low- and middle-income countries.
http://bit.ly/d337Ex

Govt and BlackBerry firm wait for the other to hang up
Sunil Abraham speaks to Archna Shukla on the stand-off between the Government of India and RIM. The news was published in expressindia.com.
http://bit.ly/cGeipL

Call, text, email complaint against rogue auto driver
Harassed by an auto driver? Helplines give you no relief? Here's the people's way to help you out. Just report your issue online, call or even SMS sitting in a noisy restaurant, and be heard.
http://bit.ly/atiiGW

Call to increase awareness of intellectual property rights
We need more knowledge on IPR itself, says IT Secretary
http://bit.ly/avxY16

Civil Society groups urge State Judicial Academy to restructure agenda for Judges' Roundtable meet
Some of the Civil Society groups in the country have urged the Maharashtra State Judicial Academy to restructure the agenda for the 'Judges Roundtable on Intellectual Property Rights Adjudication' being held in Mumbai on July 24 and 25 to promote public interest and a deeper understanding of intellectual property amongst judicial officers. FICCI is the joint organiser of the event.
http://bit.ly/dCDZl0

More Debate on UID Project Needed
A press conference on UID was held at the Press Club in Bangalore on 26 July, 2010. It was co-organised by Citizen's Action Forum, Alternate Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society. Mathew Thomas and Vinay Baindur spoke about the UID. Proceedings from the conference was covered in the Hindu on 27 July, 2010.
http://bit.ly/cSEsaP

UID coverage in Udayavani
A press conference was held at the Press Club in Bangalore on 26 July, 2010. It was co-organised by Citizen's Action Forum, Alternate Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society. Mathew Thomas and Vinay Baindur were the speakers. Leading Kannada newspaper Udayavani covered this event.
http://bit.ly/c3AU5s

Open is the Future
The third Open World Forum will gather together decision-makers from the open digital world, in Paris. 1,500 participants from 40 countries will come together to analyze the technological, economic and social impact of Open Source, the invisible engine behind the digital revolution. The aim: to interpret future trends and cross-fertilize initiatives.
http://bit.ly/amY9Qc

Upcoming Events

No UID till Complete Transparency, Accountability and People's Participation: A Public Campaign
An interactive meeting on UID's lack of a feasibility study, cost involved and dangers of abuse is being held in New Delhi at the Constitution Club Auditorium, Rafi Marg on 25 August, 2010. The meeting is jointly organised by INSAF, PEACE, Citizens' Action Forum, People's Union for Civil Liberties - Karnataka, Slum Janandolana - Karnataka, Alternate Law Forum, The Centre for Internet and Society and concerned individuals.
http://bit.ly/8YsBIJ

Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment
Leading up to the 2010 IGF, The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Global Partners, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles are hosting, on 13 September 2010 in Vilnius, an event on 'Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment'.
http://bit.ly/aoOkPR

Freedom of Expression or Access to Knowledge: Are We Taking the Necessary Steps Towards an Open and Inclusive Internet?
The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Freedom of Expression or Access to Knowledge: Are We Taking the Necessary Steps towards an Open and Inclusive Internet? at the Internet
Governance Forum on 14 September, 2010.
http://bit.ly/dl1WRL

Sexual Rights, Openness and Regulatory Systems
The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Sexual Rights, Openness and Regulatory Systems at the Internet Governance Forum on 14 September, 2010.
http://bit.ly/dl1WRL

Data in the Cloud: Where Do Open Standards Fit In?
The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising a workshop on Data in the Cloud: Where do Open Standards Fit In? on 16 September, 2010 at the Internet Governance Forum.
http://bit.ly/94AF4h

International Conference on Enabling Access to Education through ICT
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore in cooperation with the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT (G3ICT), a flagship advocacy organization of the UN Global Alliance on ICT and Development (UN-GAID), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), UNESCO, Digital Empowerment Foundation, Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment and the Deafway Foundation is organizing an international conference, Enabling Access to Education through ICT in New Delhi from
27th to 29th October, 2010....Registrations to begin soon!
http://bit.ly/9flyEK

Research

Political is as Political does
The Talking Back workshop has been an extraordinary experience for me. The questions that I posed for others attending the workshop have hounded me as they went through the course of discussion, analysis and dissection. Strange nuances have emerged, certain presumptions have been questioned, new legacies have been discovered, novel ideas are still playing ping-pong in my mind, and a strange restless excitement – the kind that keeps me awake till dawning morn – has taken over me, as I try and figure out the wherefore and howfore of things. I began the research project on Digital Natives in a condition of not knowing, almost two years ago. Since then, I have taken many detours, rambled on strange paths, discovered unknown territories and reached a mile-stone where I still don’t know, but don’t know what I don’t know, and that is a good beginning.
http://bit.ly/9hY9sR

Digital Natives: Talking Back
One of the most significant transitions in the landscape of social and political movements, is how younger users of technology, in their interaction with new and innovative technologised platforms have taken up responsibility to respond to crises in their local and immediate environments, relying upon their digital networks, virtual communities and platforms. In the last decade or so, the digital natives, in universities as well as in work spaces, as they experimented with the potentials of internet technologies, have launched successful socio-political campaigns which have worked unexpectedly and often without precedent, in the way they mobilised local contexts and global outreach to address issues of deep political and social concern. But what do we really know about this Digital Natives revolution?
http://bit.ly/bZNoSX

Beyond the Digital: Understanding Digital Natives with a Cause
Digital Natives with a cause: the future of activism or slacktivism? Maesy Angelina argues that the debate is premature given the obscured understanding on youth digital activism and contends that an effort to
understand this from the contextualized perspectives of the digital natives themselves is a crucial first step to make. This is the first out of a series of posts on her journey to explore new insights to understand youth digital activism through a research with The Blank Noise Project under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme.
http://bit.ly/b1GS7F

Accessibility

Access to Knowledge: Barriers and Solutions for Persons with Disabilities in India
Consumers International, Kuala Lumpur and Consumers Association of India in association with Madras Library Association organised a seminar on Access to Knowledge on 31st July, 2010 at the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Auditorium in Guindy, Chennai. The Principal Secretary to the Government of Tamil Nadu Department of Information Technology was the chief guest. Former Central Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal gave the keynote address. Prof Subbiah Arunachalam, Nirmita Narasimhan and Pranesh Prakash participated in the seminar. Nirmita and Pranesh made presentations on access to knowledge.
http://bit.ly/cJXSX8

Intellectual Property

Privacy and the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as Amended in 2010
In this post the author examines the issue of privacy in light of the Indian Copyright Act, 1857 as amended by the Copyright Amendment Bill in 2010. Four key questions are examined in detail and the author gives
suitable recommendations for each of the questions that arise.
http://bit.ly/cJXSX8

Internet Governance

Does the Government want to enter our homes?
When rogue politicians and bureaucrats are granted unrestricted access to information then the very future of democracy and free media will be in jeopardy. In an article published in the Pune Mirror on 10 August,
2010, Sunil Abraham examines this in light of the BlackBerry-to-BlackBerry messenger service that the Government of India plans to block if its makers do not allow the monitoring of messages. He says that civil society should rather resist and insist on suitable checks and balances like governmental transparency and a fair judicial oversight instead of allowing the government to intrude into the privacy
and civil liberties of its citizens.
http://bit.ly/dkVHoS

UID Project in India - Some Possible Ramifications
Having a standard for decentralized ID verification rather than a centralized database that would more often than not be misused by various authorities will solve ID problems, writes Liliyan in this blog entry. These blog posts to be published in a series will voice the expert opinions of researchers and critics on the UID project and present its unique shortcomings to the reader.
http://bit.ly/bOyBS8

Civil Liberties and the amended Information Technology Act, 2000
This post examines certain limitations of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (as amended in 2008). Malavika Jayaram points out the fact that when most countries of the world are adopting plain English instead of the conventional legal terminology for better understanding, India seems to be stuck in the old-fashioned method thereby, struggling to maintain a balance between clarity and flexibility in drafting its laws. The present Act, she says, is although an improvement over the old Act and seeks to address and improve on certain areas in the right direction but still comes up short in making necessary changes when it comes to fundamental rights and personal liberties. The new Act retains elements from the previous one making it an abnormal document and this could have been averted if there had been some attention to detail.
http://bit.ly/croc9T

Feedback to the NIA Bill
Malavika Jayaram and Elonnai Hickok introduce the formal submission of CIS to the proposed National Identification Authority of India (NIA) Bill, 2010, which would give every resident a unique identity. The submissions contain the detailed comments on the draft bill and the high level summary of concerns with the NIA Bill submitted to the UIDAI on 13 July, 2010.
http://bit.ly/bhinUB

Openness

Open Access to Science and Scholarship - Why and What Should We Do? The National Institute of Advanced Studies held the eighth NIAS-DST training programme on “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Science, Technology and Society” from 26 July to 7 August, 2010. The theme of the project was ‘Knowledge Management’. Dr. MG Narasimhan and Dr. Sharada Srinivasan were the coordinators for the event. Professor Subbiah Arunachalam made a presentation on Open Access to Science and Scholarship.
http://bit.ly/ciohYy

Civic Hacking Workshop
CIS, with the UK Government's Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement, and Google India, is organizing a workshop on open data (or the lack thereof) and 'civic hacking'.
http://bit.ly/c3TF2t

Telecom

'Containing Inflation' - A myth
We need problem-solving, not confused rhetoric or misguided action, says Shyam Ponappa. The article was published in Business Standard on 7 August, 2008.
http://bit.ly/9frC8q

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2010-bulletin

Centre for Internet and Society

The Write Stuff

January 2013 Bulletin

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities

Pervasive Technologies

Other Openness Updates

HasGeek

Internet Access – Knowledge Repository

Follow us elsewhere

Support Us

Request for Collaboration

D:Coding Digital Natives

Digital Native: Double Speak

Digital Native: #MemeToo

The Right Words for Love

Digital Native: Hardly Friends Like That

Video Proposals: Top 14

Joseph Francis

Marie Jude Bendiola

Cijo Abraham Mani

TJ K.M.

Mike Hickey

Thomas Burks

John Musila

Andrés Felipe Arias Palma

Joseph Gathecha

Martin Potter

E. James Rajasekaran

Anand Jha

MJ

DN Episode Podcast

Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies

October 2011 Bulletin

Key Research

Links in the Chain

Articles/Columns

Staff Quoted in the Media

Publication

Blog Entry

Key Research

Featured Research

Event Organised

Event Participated

Announcement

Comments / Submissions

Statement

Podcast

Event Report

Peer Review

Articles / Columns

Staff Quoted in the Media

Blog Entries

Events Organised

Events Participated

Video

Article / Column

Follow us elsewhere

May 2011 Bulletin

Digital Natives with a Cause?

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Accessibility

New Blog Entry

Openness

Featured Research

Comments

Interview

Internet Governance

Column in Indian Express

New Blog Entries

Featured Research

Conference Report

Workshop

Upcoming Conferences

Telecom

Column

Miscellaneous

News & Media Coverage

Follow us elsewhere

November 2010 Bulletin

News Updates