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Digital Activism in Asia Reader
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader
<b>The digital turn might as well be marked as an Asian turn. From flash-mobs in Taiwan to feminist mobilisations in India, from hybrid media strategies of Syrian activists to cultural protests in Thailand, we see the emergence of political acts that transform the citizen from being a beneficiary of change to becoming an agent of change. In co-shaping these changes, what the digital shall be used for, and what its consequences will be, are both up for speculation and negotiation. Digital Activism in Asia marks a particular shift where these questions are no longer being refracted through the ICT4D logic, or the West’s attempts to save Asia from itself, but shaped by multiplicity, unevenness, and urgencies of digital sites and users in Asia. It is our great pleasure to present the Digital Activism in Asia Reader.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>The Book</h2>
<p>The Reader took shape over two workshops with a diverse range of participants, including activists, change-makers, and scholars, organised by the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme in June 2014 and March 2015. During the first workshop, the participants identified the authors, topics, and writings that should be included/featured in the reader, based upon their relevance in the grounded practices of the participants, who came from various Asian countries. The second workshop involved open discussions regarding how the selected readings should be annotated, from key further questions to strategies of introducing them, followed by development of the annotations by the participants of the workshop. The full list of contributors, annotators, and editors is mentioned at the end of the book.</p>
<p>We are grateful to the <a href="http://meson.press/about/" target="_blank">Meson Press</a> for its generous and patience support throughout the development process of the book.</p>
<p><strong>Please download, read, and share this open-access book from the Meson Press <a href="http://meson.press/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/9783957960511-Digital-Activism-Asia-Reader.pdf" target="_blank">website</a>.</strong></p>
<p>The Reader has been edited by Nishant Shah, P.P. Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with support from Anirudh Sridhar, Denisse Albornoz, and Verena Getahun.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Excerpt from the Foreword</h2>
<p>Compiling this Reader on Digital Activism in Asia is fraught with compelling challenges, because each of the key terms in the formulation of the title is sub-ject to multiple interpretations and fierce contestations. The construction of ‘Asia’ as a region, has its historical roots in processes of colonial technologies of cartography and navigation. Asia was both, a measured entity, mapped for resources to be exploited, and also a measure of the world, promising anorientation to the Western World’s own turbulent encounters. As Chen Kuan-Hsing points out in his definitive history of the region, Asia gets re-imagined as a ‘method’ in cold-war conflicts, becoming the territory to be assimilated through exports of different ideologies and cultural purports. Asia does not have its own sense of being aregion. The transactions, interactions, flows and exchanges between different countries and regions in Asia have been so entirely mediated by powers of colonisation that the region remains divided and reticent in its imagination of itself. However, by the turn of the 21st century, Asia has seen a new awakening. It finds a regional identity, which, surprisingly did not emerge from its consolidating presence in global economics or in globalised structures of trade and commerce. Instead, it finds a presence, for itself, through a series of crises of governance, of social order, of political rights, and of cultural productions, that binds it together in unprecedented ways.</p>
<p>The digital turn might as well be marked as an Asian turn, because with the new networks of connectivity, with Asian countries marking themselves as informatics hubs, working through a circulated logic of migrant labour and dis-tributed resources, there came a sense of immediacy, proximity, and urgencythat continues to shape the Asian imagination in a new way. In the last decade or so, the rapid changes that have emerged, creating multiple registers of modernity, identity, and community in different parts of Asia, accelerated by a seamless exchange of ideas, commodities, cultures, and people have created a new sense of the region as emerging through co-presence rather than competition and conflict. Simultaneously, the emergence of global capitals of information, labour and cultural export, have created new reference points by which the region creates its identities and networks that are no longer subject to the tyranny of Western hegemony...</p>
<p>While the digital remains crucial to this shaping of contemporary Asia, both in sustaining the developmental agenda that most of the countries espouse, and in opening up an inward looking gaze of statecraft and social organisation, the digital itself remains an ineffable concept. Largely because the digital is like a blackbox that conflates multiple registers of meaning and layers of life, it becomes important to unengineer it and see what it enables and hides. The economic presence of the digital is perhaps the most visible in telling the story of Asia in the now. Beginning with the dramatic development of Singapore as the centre of informatics governance and the emergence of a range of cities from Shanghai to Manilla and Bangalore to Tehran, there has been an accelerated narrative of economic growth and accumulation of capital that is often the global face of the Asian turn. However, this economic reordering is not a practice in isolation. It brings with it, a range of social stirrings that seek to overthrow traditional structures of oppression, corruption, control, and injustice that have often remained hidden in the closed borders of Asian countries. However, the digital marks a particular shift where these questions are no longer being excavated by the ICT4D logic, of the West’s attempts to save Asia from itself. These are questions that emerge from the ground, as more people interact with progressive and liberal politics and aspire not only for higher purchase powers but a better quality of rights. The digital turn has opened up a range of social and political rights based discourses, practices, and movements, where populations are holding their governments and countries responsible, accountable, and culpable in the face of personal and collective loss and injustice...</p>
<p>In the face of this multiplicity of digital sites and usages that are reconfiguring Asia, it is obvious then, that the very nature of what constitutes activism is changing as well. Organised civil society presence in Asia has often had a strong role in shaping modern nation states, but more often than not these processes were defined in the same vocabulary as that of the powers that they were fighting against. Marked by a strong sense of developmentalism and often working in complement to the state rather than keeping a check on the state’s activities, traditional activism in Asia has often suffered from the incapacity to scale and the inability to find alternatives to the state-defined scripts of development, growth and progress. In countries where literacy rates have been low, these movements also suffer from being conceived in philosophical and linguistic sophistry that escapes the common citizen and remains the playground of the few who have privileges afforded to them by class and region. Digital Activism, however, seems to have broken this language barrier, both internally and externally, allowing for new visualities enabled by ubiquitous computing to bring various stakeholders into the fray... At the same time, the digital itself has introduced new problems and concerns that are often glossed over, in the enthralling tale of progress. Concerns around digital divide, invasive practices of personal data gathering, the nexus of markets and governments that install the citizen/consumer in precarious conditions, and the re-emergence of organised conservative politics are also a part of the digital turn. Activism has had to focus not only on digital as a tool, but digital also as a site of protest and resistance...</p>
<p>The Reader does not offer an index of the momentous emergence with the growth of the digital or a chronological account of how digital activism in Asia has grown and shaped the region. Instead, the Reader attempts a crowd-sourced compilation that presents critical tools, organisations, theoretical concepts, political analyses, illustrative case-studies and annotations, that an emerging network of changemakers in Asia have identified as important in their own practices within their own contexts.</p>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroDigital ActivismDigital Activism in Asia ReaderFeaturedResearchNet CulturesPublicationsResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:36:44ZBlog EntryDigital Activism in Asia Reader: Announcement
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader-announcement
<b>The CIS-RAW programme organized an editorial workshop on March 6-7, 2015, as part of its project on a Digital Activism in Asia Reader. The project is a collaborative effort of the Centre for Internet and Society and the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University, Germany, which aims to bring together local knowledge, debates and conversations around Digital Activism in Asia.</b>
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<p>The proposed reader on Digital Activism in Asia will combine stories in multiple forms, including academic essays, case-studies to grey literature from public discourse that reveals and points to the debates around digital activism that have emerged in this particular context. Most of the audience will consist of academics, practitioners and policy actors internationally.</p>
<p>One of the main goals of this reader will be to challenge the prevalent notion in the discourse of Digital Activism of universality and uniformity across contexts and cultures. The focus is on new actors (like digital natives), processes, movements, and networks that such digital activism has engendered.</p>
<p>The editorial workshop was conducted towards completion of the Reader, to better contextualize the material through peer annotations and supporting information. Over the course of two days, a total of six participants worked on two articles each, which had been circulated beforehand, to annotate those using different kinds of material and close reading the texts.</p>
<p>The workshop was structured in the form of presentations and discussion sessions in the morning, followed by a writing sprint in the afternoon. Apart from a larger discussion around digital activism itself, its modes, approaches and forms, the materials were also categorized along four axes – activists using digital tools, activism around the digital, digital shaping activism and activism shaping the digital – which helped structure the discussions and the process of writing. The suggested annotations took different forms – from introductory paragraphs to references for further reading. Participants were also expected to bring in and build on their own practices, experiences and contexts in discussing the articles.</p>
<p>The Digital Activism in Asia Reader is expected to be published by the <a href="http://cdc.leuphana.com/structure/hybrid-publishing-lab/" target="_blank">Hybrid Publishing Lab</a> in mid-2015.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader-announcement'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-activism-in-asia-reader-announcement</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppDigital ActivismDigital Activism in Asia ReaderResearchNet CulturesResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:22:39ZBlog EntryThe Spaces of Digital
https://cis-india.org/raw/the-spaces-of-digital
<b>'The Spaces of Digital’ continues from the work done on the CIS-RAW monograph on the Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities, by Pratyush Shankar at Center for Environmental Planning and Technology University, Ahmedabad. The premise of this monograph was the debates around making of IT Cities and public planning policies that regulate and restructure the city spaces in India with the emergence of internet technologies. </b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Spaces of Digital begins from here to further explore the city as a unit of global development. The rise of digital technologies and the ways in which they produce new metaphors for the domains of life, labour and language, result in the city being reconfigured, reimagined and remapped through the techno-spatial narratives produced by information and network webs. The project will explore this in four stages, namely:</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Stage 1: Knowledge Maps</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The first phase of the project seeks to build a knowledge network that maps the different actors interested in questions of techno-social cities, generating a dialogue between them and building a knowledge repository that brings in different modes, formats and forms of knowledge to intersect with each other.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Stage 2: Spatial Patterns - Digital Project</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The monograph “Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities” refers to the spatial reconfiguration of many Indian cities that has occurred in the past two decades. An exercise to extract the key spatial patterns will be carried out in form of graphical representation using existing information from the monograph.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Stage 3: Knowledge Networking Building</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The mapping and demonstration project will be followed by a curated workshop that invites a dialogue between the identified knowledge partners.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Stage 4: Knowledge Exhibition / Publication</h3>
<p>The Knowledge Exhibition will be a hybrid space of online and offline curation and knowledge consolidation, and will be the final product of the project.</p>
<p>Some of the updates on this project may be <a class="external-link" href="http://spacesofdigital.wordpress.com/">accessed here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/the-spaces-of-digital'>https://cis-india.org/raw/the-spaces-of-digital</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppThe Spaces of DigitalNet CulturesResearchers at WorkResearch2015-10-24T13:41:25ZBlog EntryProduction Sprint — A Public Exhibition at CIS
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/events/production-sprint-public-exhibition-at-cis
<b>The Making Change project invites you for a public exhibition of stories of change from all over Asia, where the first of its Production Sprints will take place. The exhibition will be held at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) office in Bangalore on June 7, 2014 between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.</b>
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<p><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/mc-flyer.pdf" class="internal-link">Download the event flier</a> [PDF, 402 Kb]</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">What does 'Making Change' mean to you? What are the processes of change? The infrastructure of change? The actors of change? A round-table discussion and exhibition by 23 change makers from 15 countries in Asia, at the Centre for Internet & Society, Saturday, 7th June, 5 - 7 p.m. Please do come.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Making Change project questions traditional understandings of change –where change is employed in the name of power, reduced to a ‘spectacle’ by global media and goes largely unquestioned in the public discourse- and aims to build more adequate frameworks to address the idea of change in the context of common knowledge, networked media and information societies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Making Change is hosting focused, intensive, and production-oriented workshops called <strong>Production Sprints</strong> to facilitate the convergence of actors and ideas.These will be spaces of knowledge exchange between change-makers around processes, narratives and experiences of change and of experimentation with multi-modal forms and formats of knowledge production (text, image, sound, etc). Participants will be asked to group around four topics: concepts, crises ecologies and networks of change. These visions and practices, we hope will produce new ways of thinking about change.</p>
<p>During the Bangalore production sprint, we will document the various knowledges acquired through the pre-production stage and the 5 day intensive sessions on formats, storytelling and visual presentation modes; and we will close with an exhibition of the resulting narratives of change. We invite you to come and participate in the exhibition.</p>
<p>Date: June 7th, 2014<br /> Time: 5pm- 7pm<br /> Location: The Center for Internet and Society</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/events/production-sprint-public-exhibition-at-cis'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/events/production-sprint-public-exhibition-at-cis</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaRAW EventsMaking ChangeNet CulturesResearchers at WorkEvent2015-10-24T14:23:30ZEventReaping the Benefits of Gamification
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/reaping-the-benefits-of-gamification
<b>As a part of the Making Change blog-post series, in this post we will identify a new technique: gamification. This technique is being used for sustainable environment conservation by modern day change-makers. We interview two out of three co-founders of Reap benefit- Kamal Raj and Gautam Prakash who believe in the adoption of more sustained environmental practices that induce social change towards conserving the environment.</b>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<div align="left">
<pre style="text-align: justify;"><strong>CHANGE-MAKER:</strong> Kamal Raj,Gautam Prakash and Kuldeep Dantewadia
<strong>ORGANISATION:</strong> Reap Benefit
<strong>METHOD OF CHANGE: </strong>Gamification and Human centric systems for consistent behavior change towards better waste-water-energy management.
<strong>STRATEGY OF CHANGE:</strong> Building a new era of environmentally conscious youth in India through technology and an interdisciplinary approach to change.</pre>
</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We depend on the environment and the resources that it provides us, but surprisingly we are unaware of the effects of its depletion and the need to save these resources. A few of the problems that people now face are with resources like- water,waste and energy because we do not acknowledge the fact that we are wasting them unconsciously. This only triggers the need for more and more solutions which would change the way people perceive the resources and realize the need to conserve. While trying to start an initiative to come up with some solutions to manage these resources, we are approached by the question of the <strong>accessibility, affordability and sustainability</strong> of those solutions. The solutions and the practice of that solution is a two-way process for any sustainable making-change initiative.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;">In this post I will be introducing to you Reap Benefit and the technique of Gamification. I will bring out a comparative analysis of the various definitions by renowned gaming authorities across the world who are involved in the process of using games in non-game contexts to bring out change in the offline space. Only after this, will I be acknowledging the importance of the strategies used by Reap Benefit for making these solutions sustainable. The strategies will be- human centric solutions and gamification. Then, I will bring out the connection between these two strategies to provide you an inter-disciplinary understanding of the making change process. Next, these strategies will be coupled with the discussion on the use of technology to speed-up the process. Also, throughout this post we will be referring to the blog-<strong> Methods of Social Change</strong> written by Denisse Albornoz and we will also make an attempt to answer the questions- 'Who,Where,How' of this making change project in relation to Reap Benefit. The blog post can be accessed <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/methods-for-social-change/">here. </a></p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;">Before the journey of the post, I would like you to read this little success story narrated by Kamal Raj in the interview that led Reap benefit a step higher in its aim for making change:</p>
<p class="callout">Reap benefit went to a school which received only 400 litres of water supply a day resulting in poor health and care conditions. This water would be used for washing their plates after the mid-day meal and also for sanitation systems. This would only make the place a platform for water, food and breeding mosquitoes all together. Since the students usually consumed food with their right hand, while taking the plate to wash it, they would leave the plates at one side; they would open the tap with their left hand, would take their plates again and start washing them. During this time interval, they would waste a lot of water. <br /><br />As, a solution to this, Reap Benefit changed the taps which would discharge 60% less of water. They also created a clean water purification system. Now, with the same 400 litres of water, students washed their plates and adopted better sanitation practices. The challenges that they faced actually made them innovate better systems for remarkable change.</p>
<p align="left"><strong> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/tapswithoutaerators.jpg/image_preview" title="taps without aerators" height="157" width="159" alt="taps without aerators" class="image-inline image-inline" /> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/tapswithaerators.jpg/image_preview" title="taps with aerators" height="157" width="160" alt="taps with aerators" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /></strong></p>
<p align="left"><strong>Think about these questions for a minute..<br /></strong></p>
<div align="left">
<ul>
<li>Does this story relate to <strong>physical needs?</strong></li>
<li>Does this story relate to <strong>creative problem solving?</strong></li>
<li>Is it a story that brings out<strong> better affordable solutions?</strong></li>
<li>With this solution were the <strong>students benefited</strong>?</li>
<li>Was this a <strong>successful idea?</strong></li></ul>
</div>
<h2>Reap Benefit</h2>
<p>First of all, take a look at a brief introduction of Reap Benefit given by Kamal Raj:</p>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout"><strong>Kamal: </strong><em>"Reap Benefit works to implement affordable solutions, enabling quantifiable waste-water-energy management systems, as a way to facilitate behavioural change by engaging the head, hand and heart of the user. Having worked with many people, we have realized that behaviour modification allows for more sustained adoption of environment sustainability practices. We take them through a 4-stage behavioural change process – <strong>‘Unconsciously Wrong’, ‘Consciously Wrong’, ‘Consciously Right’ and ‘Unconsciously Right’ </strong>(we will understand this process later in the post). A link to the website is here- <a href="http://reapbenefit.org/">Reap Benefit</a>."</em></p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;">Reap Benefit is bound together by the deep concern for the environment they have and the dead-lock issues that it faces. They aim for affordable solutions with maximum impact in the least time. Kamal marks that they work only with the students within the age group 10-16, because the use gamification is most effective in this age group. Also, he makes an addition to that by saying the rewards the older age groups demand are not as easy-to-meet as those of the age group they work with. It also aims to co-create experiences by working hands on with the youth: their target audience for creating change.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_reapbenefit.jpg/image_preview" title="Reap benefit" height="175" width="234" alt="Reap benefit" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It is said that the more you practice the better you get. By this, I would like to introduce you to the concept of<strong> quotidian activism</strong>. Reap Benefit deeply believes in this concept. But, what does quotidian activism mean? A working definition is: <em>the form of activism occurring everyday.</em> This form of activism may lead to people making actions sustainable and achieve consistent behavioural change, supported by products and innovations provided by Reap Benefit (later in this post, I will introduce you to some of these innovations).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Finally, Reap Benefit highly focuses on the need to answer the <em>‘</em><strong>why’</strong> behind the problem. This answer would provide a more personal understanding of the problem for creating change. By engaging the participant with the 'why', he will also be able to evaluate the impact and the benefits of his actions, take ownership of the problem and comprehend the need for innovation.</p>
<h3 align="left">What is 'change' for Reap Benefit?</h3>
<p align="left">Presuming every organization has its own design to making change, Reap Benefit's understands it in the following way:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout"><strong>Gautam: </strong><em>“Change for us is a very sub-conscious part of your life. (It is also a) two stage process- <strong>knowledge:</strong> which will tell us we need solution and the<strong> solution.</strong> The knowledge will tell you that you are <em>unconsciously </em>doing the wrong thing. Then when you realize it, you go to a stage of consciously wrong. When you keep doing this you reach a stage when you know that you are consciously doing right, and soon, you are doing it every single day and then you unconsciously do it.”</em> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I will attempt to understand their process of change by adding that this 'to be good' drive in the individual or the need for public approval is what makes them do <em>unconsciously right </em>everyday, and then it is only the last stage what makes it a habit. Gautam also mentions that each of these stages has an impact of its own and altogether, they become more powerful. This change process will lead to sustainable change according to him.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;">We have seen the change agents that are vital to create change, but how is this change executed? In the next section we will look at two strategies used for making change: <em>gamification</em> and <em>human-centred design</em> and later, we will only try to produce a connection between them.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<h2>Discovering Gamification</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In this section, we will unpack the first part of the<strong> 'how' </strong>question. First of all, we will compare the various definitions of the technique given by people involved in understanding the use of game elements in the non-game contexts, to create change in the emotional and social behaviour of people. The definitions of these three people in the big list of so-called gamification authorities will be used provides us with keywords for a comparative understanding of what the technique means. These three people are:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>JANE McGONIGAL: </strong>She is an American game designer and author who advocates the use of mobile and digital technology to channel positive attitudes and collaboration in a real world context.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>GABE ZICHERMANN:</strong><em><strong> </strong></em>He is an author, public speaker, and self-described "serial entrepreneur." He has worked as a proponent of leveraging <a title="Game mechanics" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_mechanics">game mechanics</a> in business, education, and other non-entertainment platforms to increase user engagement through gamification.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em><strong>JESSE SCHELL</strong>:</em> He is an American video game designer an acclaimed author, CEO of Schell Games and a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of <a title="Entertainment Technology" class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Technology">Entertainment Technology</a>.</p>
<h3>Definitions</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>JANE McCONIGAL</strong><br /></td>
<td><strong>GABE ZICHERMANN</strong><br /></td>
<td><strong>JESSE SCHELL</strong><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: justify;">
<td>“It is a blissful <strong>productivity</strong> acquired by the flourishing feeling,<br />that is, accomplishments in a game but only with a <strong>volunteering<br />attribute </strong>of the participant.” </td>
<td>“Games are the only<br /><strong>force</strong> in the universe<br />that can get people to take actions <strong>against their self-interest</strong> in a <br /><strong>predictable</strong> way without using force.” </td>
<td>“It is a <strong>problem solving situation</strong><br />that you enter into because <strong>you want to</strong>.” </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="left">I would be like to bring points of intersections between these three definitions.</p>
<div align="left">
<ol>
<li>
<div align="left">
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>VOLUNTEERING ATTRIBUTE VS. USE OF FORCE</strong>: The volunteering attribute is an efficient way to foster sustainable participation, as opposed to the use of force which makes a campaign less appealing.</div>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS</strong>: Games are a very responsive way of trying to accomplish problem solving as the person is engaged with the problem and willing to solve it.</div>
</div>
</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><strong>PRODUCTIVITY</strong>: There problem solving skills leads the participant to a desired outcome. </li></ol>
These points also give you a clear understanding of Reap Benefit who works along the same lines with the volunteer or participant to solve the problem of conservation.<br />But, does the usage of games actually produce behavioral change? If so, how do games provide this function? These are some of the questions we will try and attempt to answer in the next section.</div>
<h3 align="left"></h3>
<h3 align="left">Games as a Tool to Influence Behaviour</h3>
<p id="docs-internal-guid-9cb641a5-daab-08be-6d01-b8f612949133" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Playing games results in obtaining rewards in some form of the other. These rewards psychologically induce a positive emotional feeling in the participant. When the participant learns something through games and when that emotional feeling arises, he tries and incorporates the same solutions in the games to solving the real life problems. This brings out an improved result and problem solving ability. But what about the affordability of that solution? We need to understand ways to make it affordable because any task once done will not induce consistency in the behavior change. But the task repeated many times will improve or change the behavior over a long period of time. So, when the question of affordability (financial fear) is answered then the emotional feeling primarily can bring out change in the behavior of the individual. (Yongwen Xu, 2011).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">There are also some game mechanics that are to be kept in mind to change behavior while designing games apart from just the element of fun and affordability. So, we will now look at another authority involved in gamification in the upcoming section to explore these mechanics. We will also try and understand these mechanics in relation to Reap Benefit.</p>
<h3>Game Mechanics</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Seth Priebatsch is the creator of <a title="SCVNGR" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCVNGR">SCVNGR</a> and <a title="LevelUp" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LevelUp">LevelUp</a> social gaming sites. He has provided a list of game mechanics which could be necessary to understand games and why they produce particular changes for a better environment. These are:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><em><strong>Appointment Dynamics</strong></em>: to bring players to do something at a pre-defined time and place.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>Influence and status</em></strong>: any participant or group that is involved in the change-making process, is influenced by the presence of others because of the competition and the envy that leads them to carry forward the task</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>Progression Dynamics:</em></strong> the success of the student is measured through the tasks by giving rewards. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"> <strong><em>Communal Discovery</em></strong>: the entire group or community works towards making change. </li></ul>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Seth's model could be applied to the process of creating change that Reap Benefit uses, and this is illustrated through their experience of a student-run energy audit in the field. A set of students were assigned the task of doing an audit for the energy conservation and the energy usage of a Puma store. They were just given the base for the audit but the criteria for the audit was planned by them. The students were encouraged by the thought of <strong>getting rewards </strong>for the task. Kamal recalls that they had used games to make the children understand it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Relating this to Seth's Model, the children were given a <strong>pre-defined time and place</strong> for doing the task and were influenced both, by the element of<strong> competition</strong> between the students and also the idea of receiving a reward once the task is completed. The task only ends by obtaining a sense of <strong>communal discovery</strong> that, all together they can make change on a personal and team level. We understood Seth's model but we will try and comprehend deeper, the use of rewards for inducing behavioral change in the next section.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Rewards Mechanism</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Kamal commented on Reap Benefit's 2-3 months periodic reward mechanism. He believes that this makes students equal in position before starting every task.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout"><strong>Kamal:</strong> <em>"We use a lot of things like rewards to motivate them to play a game (with us) and we personalize all these rewards based on the questionnaire that we do at the beginning where we subtly understand what they like." </em></p>
<p>This information which gives ideas of how to encourage each student to get the best performance out of them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>a) Extrinsic rewards: </strong>The extrinsic reward here, for example would be allotting points to various participants/ teams. Michael Wu, a chief scientist in subjects like digital technologies, says extrinsic rewards are like a jump start to intrinsic rewards.Once the student acknowledges them, they acquire a sense of ownership and innovation and are empowered to create new solutions. Hence, awareness is not created before the task but an output from the task.</p>
<p>Refer to Gabe Zichermann's video for more on the importance of gamification and the rewards mechanism.</p>
<p>.<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SwkbuSjZdXI" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">b) Intrinsic rewards: Apart from producing behavior change, gamification's can also indicate learning. One of the elements that facilitates learning would be:</p>
<dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Player Control</strong><em>: </em>A participant will have certain amount of control while gaming which would lead to a sense of responsibility and accomplishment. Learning could be intrinsic only if there is responsibility of gaining a reward through a task.</p>
</dl>
<p>There are many other elements that produce learning and they could be accessed <a href="http://www.yukaichou.com/">here.</a></p>
<h2>Human-Centric Model</h2>
<div class="pullquote">Human-centred systems aim to preserve or enhance human skills, in both manual and office work, in environments in which technology tends to undermine the skills that people use in their work<em>.</em></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We will now answer the second part of the 'how' question and show another strategy for making change. Human centric systems do not use machines to create solutions to the problems but rather design the game with the importance of the 'user-friendly' element. This has been explored in a past post by Denisse. Access it <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology" class="internal-link">here.</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Reap Benefit's ‘transparent dustbin’ is a great model to illustrate this. The dustbin is transparent for people to see and then throw the waste in according to different types of waste. It is kept at an eye-level so that the waste already thrown inside can help the person perceive and throw his waste in the exact dustbin and to make it easily accessible for the public.</p>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/dustbin.jpg/image_preview" alt="transparent dustbin" class="image-inline image-inline" title="transparent dustbin" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">These human-centric approaches provide a consistent change in the behaviour of the individual because the method is user-friendly and make segregation easy. The objectives is to engage in unconscious behavioural change. The transparent dustbin is better explained by this audio byte of Kamal Raj:</p>
<p><br /><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/147205714&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>Another innovation of Reap Benefit, is the compose mixture</p>
<p class="callout">Kamal says: <em><strong>"The idea was to throw something with it, like the degrade compost product we innovated and the waste would compost, without smell, without taking 3 months." </strong></em></p>
<p>This mix, by giving visual feedback could be accessible by anyone due to its low cost and easy-to-use method. So, these innovations justify and explain the benefits of human centric models and also produce many new ideas in the minds of the students( James,2010). I would like to explain this by a chain of ideas that arise while segregating plastic and non-plastic waste.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">The participation in the structure (waste segregation model)</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_arrowdown.jpe/image_preview" title="arrow" height="28" width="33" alt="arrow" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /> The negatives of the model (harmful effects of mixing plastic in the model)</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_arrowdown.jpe/image_preview" title="arrow" height="28" width="33" alt="arrow" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /> Realizing the need for another mechanism (dustbins for different types of waste)</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_arrowdown.jpe/image_preview" title="arrow" height="28" width="33" alt="arrow" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /> Another idea to support the new mechanism (dustbins should be transparent and named)<br /> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_arrowdown.jpe/image_preview" title="arrow" height="35" width="33" alt="arrow" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /> The need to spread this (start campaigning for the system)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Explaining this model in brief: the waste segregation model is the segregation of plastic and other waste. During this process the three ideas that arise are: a) the harmful effects of plastic, b) the need for a plastic waste dustbin and a non-plastic waste dustbin, and the last one, b) the transparency of the dustbin. Then the major question of <strong>spreading the model by using technology</strong> arises. This would be the model thought by the participant during the discussion of the usage of technology for sustainability.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">But what is <strong>sustainability</strong> and how is it important? Complementing the technique of gamification and the human- centric approaches with technology to make it a sustainable solution is a challenge. This system may be adopted by all. But the aftermath of implementing this apparatus is a challenging question. In the next section we will comprehend the role of technology adding a more positive result to Reap benefit.</p>
<h2>The Role of Technology and Media</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This section will look at how Reap Benefit uses technology and media and then try and understand how the use of technology can make these solutions sustainable.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout"><strong>Kamal:</strong> <em>"There are two aspects that are already existing- knowledge and the products. So, when someone starts the journey, technology enables us to be with them in this journey without us being there. Without the sharing of photos through digital media like facebook, keeping track of the journey would not be possible. We need technology to bridge the gap."<strong> </strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Information access is facilitated by the use of technology and digital media or social networking, as they share the systems with their online community. But, when this access is denied the only solution is to be a part of the in-tutor system and realize the positives of the same through experience. Technology takes Reap Benefit a step higher in its aim to make sustainable change by targeting youth, the main users of social network platforms.</p>
<h2>Making Change</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We started this post with an introduction to a very strong initiative- Reap Benefit. Techniques such as gamification and human-centric systems are used effectively by this organization to create maximum benefits. It focuses highly on the use of these strategies to induce behaviour modification in youth. We attempted to build a relationship between these techniques to answer whether they are sustainable, intelligible and accessible solutions to making change.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Summing up the 'WHO,WHERE AND HOW' question- We have only understood that, to use the opportunity and take charge before others do so, we need a 3-stage plan. We understood that the WHO means the target, the change agents who will lead the initiative and comprehend the need for change by themselves. The question of WHERE focuses on the idea of making change in the public space rather than in the private sphere which limits the extent of the change. We have summarized this only by bringing out the importance of technology to make change the largest priority of youth. The question of HOW is understood in this post by the use to affordable solutions.</p>
<p id="docs-internal-guid-9cb641a5-daab-ddf5-183f-233098a5b65d" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The problems faced by the environment call for solutions that are affordable and accessible. These two qualities of the solution would only make it sustainable.These solutions are met by various game elements in a game and the human centric approaches that engage the individual in problem solving by disseminating knowledge to them and informing them about the problems. This makes those solutions to problem-solving evaluatable through quantity and the quality of the result of the problem. Behavior change will be only possible by solutions that break the existing schemas in the society and create new innovations. (James,2010). Now, through sustainable, innovative solutions through these techniques we can make the dream of a clear and clean environment a reality.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While this blog may help you gain a positive understanding about gamification it would certainly lead you to many more questions. In this digital age, we would surely have to ‘re-game-think’ the methodologies for change again and agai,n not only in terms of using unique techniques such as gamification but also in terms of accessibility of such techniques for change in the structural divisions in society.</p>
<h3>Footnotes</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Reward is one of the elements that drives the individual to adopt the gamification technique- the reward/feedback mechanism. You can acquire a profound reading on more of these elements that leads to further making-change here- http://www.yukaichou.com/.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">A few more elements like the player control and communal discovery that indicates learning through Gamification could be found here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">More information on persuasive messages, strategies for changing behavior, rules for effective delivery, and how to manage the participants/audience in the making change initiative can be found-http://sustainability.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Promoting_Sustain_Behavior_Primer.pdf</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">To hear a talk show of Yukaichou on TEDx about Gamification- check it here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Qjuegtiyc</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">To hear another talk show of Gabe Zichermann on TEDx about Gamification- check here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2N-5maKZ9Q</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The process of creating sustainability through gamification and technology, according to Rachel James, goes as follows: </li></ol>
<ol></ol>
<ul>
<li>Attracting attention by breaking the existing schemas (mental structures of preconceived idea, Jean Piaget,1926) This can be done by creating a mystery for them and then involving the individual in complex thought processing to change the schema. Story-telling could also induce emotional reactions to inspire or simulate them.</li>
<li>Persuade them through gamification </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Make the strategies for change very rigid which cannot be changed often and acknowledge what you deliver to your audience. </li></ul>
<h3>Sources</h3>
<ol>
<li>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">James, Rachel. “Promoting Sustainable Behavior- a guide to successful communication”. Web. August 2010. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Xu, Yongwen. ” literature review on web application Gamification and analytics”. Web. August 2011. </li>
<li>http://www.yukaichou.com</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Albornoz, Denisse. 'Methods for Social Change'. Web. February 2014. The link for the same is here- http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/methods-for-social-change. </li></ol>
<p>*******************************************</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">About Dipali Sheth:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Studying in my 3rd year at Christ University gave me the opportunity to intern at Centre for Internet and Society. This post has been a result of my internship for a month under the Making Change program at CIS. My interest in Research and New Media started the journey here and has only added to making Research my zeal in the near future.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/reaping-the-benefits-of-gamification'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/reaping-the-benefits-of-gamification</a>
</p>
No publisherdipaliResearchers at WorkNet CulturesMaking ChangeResearch2015-10-24T14:24:55ZBlog EntryFrom Taboo to Beautiful - Menstrupedia
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful
<b>On this post, we take a look at 'menstrual activism' -a movement that despite its trajectory in feminism, remains unnoticed in most accounts of traditional and digital activism. We interview Tuhin Paul, the artist and storyteller behind Menstrupedia, an India-based social venture creating comics to shatter the myths and misunderstandings surrounding menstruation around the world. </b>
<p> </p>
<pre><strong>CHANGE-MAKER:</strong> Tuhin Paul, Aditi Gupta<em> </em>and Rajat Mittal<em>
</em><strong>ORGANIZATION:</strong> Menstrupedia
<strong>METHOD OF CHANGE:</strong> Storytelling and comics
<strong>STRATEGY OF CHANGE:</strong> To shatter the myths and misunderstandings surrounding
menstruation, by delivering accessible, informative and entertaining
content about menstruation through different media.</pre>
<p align="justify">Most of us think we know what menstruation is; except...we don’t. Many of my male friends still cringe at the mention of the phrase “I’m on my period”, or use it as a derogatory justification for my occasional cranky mood at the office: “It’s that time of the month, isn’t it?” Poor menstruation has been the culprit of femininity; always bashful, tiptoeing for five days straight, trying its best to remain incognito. The social venture Menstrupedia is committed to change this. Aditi, Tuhin and Rajat want to shift how we look at menstruation and remove the stigma that haunts the natural, self-regulation process women undergo to keep their bodies healthy and strong to sustain life in the future.</p>
<p align="justify">Now, if you are already wondering what menstruation has to do with internet and society, just wait for it. This post manages to bring art, punk, menstruation <em>and</em> technology together, all within the scope of the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/whose-change-is-it-anyway.pdf">Making Change</a> project! Before though, we shall start with some definitions. Let us first lay conceptual grounds about menstruation and Menstrupedia, to then locate and unpack their theory of change.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>What is menstruation?</h2>
<p>It can be defined as:</p>
<blockquote><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstruation">Menstruation</a></strong> is the periodic discharge of blood and mucosal tissue (the endometrium) from the uterus and vagina. It starts at menarche at or before sexual maturity (maturation), in females of certain mammalian species, and ceases at or near menopause (commonly considered the end of a female's reproductive life).</blockquote>
<p>And it looks something like this:</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/physiologymenstruation.jpg/image_preview" title="Cycle" height="243" width="292" alt="Cycle" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p>But, I believe, most women will agree the following are much more accurate depictions of the spectrum of thoughts, emotions and sensations that menstruation spurs:</p>
<h3>The Beauty of RED</h3>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qf4TulXdNXY" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<h3>My Periods: A Blessing or a Curse</h3>
<p><strong>By Naina Jha</strong></p>
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<td>My periods<br /> Are a dreadful experience<br /> Because of all the pain.<br /> Myths and secrets make it a mystery<br /> What worsens it most though, are members of my family<br /> Especially my mother, who always make it a big deal<br /> They never try to understand what I truly feel<br /> I face all those cramps and cry the whole night long<br /> None of which is seen or heard or felt by anyone.</td>
<td>
<p>Instead of telling me, what it is,<br /> They ask me to behave maturely instead.<br /> Can somebody tell me how I am supposed to<br /> Naturally accept it?<br /> My mother asks me to stay away from men<br /> And a few days later, she asks me to marry one!<br /> When I ask her to furnish<br /> the reason behind her haste<br /> She told me that now that I was menstruating,<br /> I was grown up and ready to give birth to another.</p>
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<p>I don’t know whether to feel blessed about it<br /> Or consider it to be my curse.<br /> For these periods are the only reason for me to be disposed.<br /> Since my childhood, I felt rather blessed to be born as a girl<br /> But after getting my periods now,<br /> I’m convinced that it’s a curse...</p>
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<p>Find it in <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/blog/my-periods-a-blessing-or-a-curse/">Menstrupedia's blog</a>.</p>
<p align="justify">Despite all this, it is still perceived as a social stigma in society. There is clearly a dissonance between the definition, experience and perceptions around menstruation, that calls for a reconfiguration of the information we are using to define it.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Stigma as a Crisis</h2>
<p align="justify">However, re-defining 'menstruation' is no popular or easy task. The word belongs to a group of contested terminology around womanhood and is the protagonist of its own breed of feminist activism: <strong>menstrual activism</strong>. <a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a> Although I would consider many of the stigmas surrounding menstruation to be quite self-explanatory (we've all experienced and perpetuated them in one way or another -and if they are not, then you are the product of an obscenely progressive upbringing for which I congratulate your parents, teachers and all parties involved), I will still outline the main reasons why menstruation is a source of social stigma for women, and refer to scholarly authority on the subject to legitimize my rant.</p>
<p align="justify">Ingrid Johnston-Robledo and Joan Chrisler use Goffman's definition of stigma <a name="fr2" href="#fn2">[2]</a> on their paper: <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-0052-z#page-1">The Menstrual Mark: Menstruation as a Social Stigma</a> to explain the misadventures of menstruation:</p>
<pre><strong>Stigma: </strong>
stain or mark setting people apart from others. it conveys the information
that those people have a defect of body or of character that spoils their
appearance or identity</pre>
<p align="justify">Among the various negative social constructs deeming menstruation a dirty and repulsive state, this one made a particular echo:<em> “[menstruation is] a tribal identity of femaleness”.</em> Menstruation is the equivalent of a <em>rite of passage</em> marking the lives of girls with a 'before' and an 'after' on how the world sees them and how they see themselves. From the dreaded stain on the skirt and the 5-day mission to keep its poignant color and smell on the down low, to having to justify mood and body swings to the overly inquisitive; menstruation is imagined as inconvenient, unpleasant and unwelcome. As Johnston-Robledo and Chrisler point out: the menstrual cycle, coupled with stigmas, pushes women to adopt the role of the<em> “physically or mentally disordered”</em> and reinforce it through their communication, secrecy, embarrassment and silence (Kissling, 1996).</p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Why does it matter?</h2>
<p align="justify">Besides from strengthening attitudes that underpin gender discrimination and attempting against girls' self-identity and sense of worth, there are other tangible consequences for their development and education. I'm going to throw some facts and figures at you, to back this up with the case of India.</p>
<p align="justify">An <a href="http://www.wsscc.org/resources/resource-news-archive/menstruation-taboo-puts-300-mln-women-india-risk-experts-0">article</a> published by the WSSCC, the Geneva based Water supply and Sanitation Council, shows the Menstruation taboo, consequence of a<em> “patriarchal, hierarchical society”</em>, puts 300 million women at risk in India. They do not have access to menstrual hygiene products, which has an effect on their health, education (23% of girls in India leave school when they start menstruating and the remaining 77% miss 5 days of school a month) and their livelihoods.</p>
<p align="justify">In terms of awareness and information about the issue, WSSCC found that 90% didn't know what a menstrual period was until they got it. Aru Bhartiya's research on <a href="http://www.ijssh.org/papers/296-B00016.pdf">Menstruation, Religion and Society</a>, shows the main sources of information about menstruation come from beliefs and norms grounded on culture and religion. Some of the related restrictions (that stem from Hinduism, among others) include isolation, exclusion from religious activities, and restraint from intercourse. She coupled this with a survey where she found: 63% of her sample turned to online sites over their mothers for information, 62% did not feel comfortable talking about the subject with males and 70% giggled upon reading the topic of the survey. All in all, a pretty gruesome scenario</p>
<h2>Here's where Menstrupedia comes in</h2>
<p align="justify">The research ground work attempted above was done in depth by Menstrupedia back in 2009 when the project started taking shape. They conducted research for one year while in NID and did not only find that awareness about menstruation was very low, but that parents and teachers did not know how to talk about the subject.</p>
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<td>Facts about menstruation awareness in India. Video courtesy of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/menstrupedia">Menstru pedia</a> Youtube channel.</td>
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<p align="justify">Their proposed intervention: distribute an education visual guide and a comic to explain the topic. They tested out the prototype among 500 girls in 5 different states in Northern India and the results were astonishing.</p>
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<td style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/194053_426937890752368_1403341955_o.jpg/image_preview" title="workshop 1" height="267" width="177" alt="workshop 1" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/1102736_426937754085715_534486559_o.jpg/image_preview" title="workshop 2" height="266" width="402" alt="workshop 1" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
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<p><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">A workshop conducted by MJB smriti sansthan to spread awareness about mensuration. <br />Find full album of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.538044002975089.1073741837.277577839021708&type=3">Menstrupedia Comic being used around India</a> on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Menstrupedia">Menstrupedia's Facebook page.</a><br /></span></span></p>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"><em>"To my surprise, they [the nuns] all agreed that until they read the information given in the Menstrupedia comic,</em><em> even they were of the opinion that Menstruation was a ‘dirty’ and 'abominable' thing and they wondered 'why</em><em> women suffered from it in the first place'?</em><em> But after reading the comic book, their view had changed…now they felt that this was a 'vital' part of</em><em> womanhood and there's nothing to feel ashamed about it!</em><em> The best part was while this exercise clarified their ideas, beliefs, concepts about menstruation, it also</em><em> helped me to get over my innate hesitancy to approach such a sensitive issue in ‘public’ and boosted</em><em> my confidence for taking this up as a 'mission' to reach out to the maximum possible girls across the</em><em> country." </em><br />
<div align="right"><strong>Ina Mondkar,</strong><br /> on her experience of educating young nuns about menstruation.</div>
</blockquote>
<p align="center">Testimonial after a workshop held in two Buddhist monasteries in Ladakh.</p>
<p align="justify">Their mandate today reads:<strong> ‘Menstrupedia is a guide to explain menstruation and all issues surrounding it in the most friendly manner.’ </strong>They currently host a <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/">website</a> with information about puberty, menstruation, hygiene and myths, along with illustrations that turn explaining the process of growing up into a much friendlier endeavour than its stigma-ladden alternatives.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Comic.jpg/image_preview" alt="Comic" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Comic" /></p>
<p align="center">Snipbit of the first chapter. Read it for free <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/comic/">here</a>.</p>
<p align="justify">Through the comic and the interactions around it, Menstrupedia strives to create a) <strong>content </strong>that frame menstruation as a natural process that is inconvenient, yes; but that should have no negative effects on their self-esteem and development; and b) <strong>an environment</strong> where girls can talk about it openly and clarify their doubts.</p>
<h3>Technology's role in the mix</h3>
<div class="pullquote"><strong>"</strong>We want to reach out to as many girls as possible”. Tuhin, Menstrupedia</div>
<p align="justify">The role of digital technologies basically comes down to <strong>scalability</strong>. Opposite to <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user742107957/scalingup">The Kahani Project's views</a> on scaling up, Menstrupedia makes emphasis on using technology<strong> to reach a larger audience</strong>. Currently they have a series of communication channels enabled by technology that include: a visual <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/quickguide">quick guide</a>, a <a href="http://questions.menstrupedia.com/">Q&A forum</a> (for both men and women), a <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/blog">blog</a> (a platform of self-expression on menstruation), a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/menstrupedia">you tube channel</a> (where they provide updates on their progress) and the upcoming comic.</p>
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<p align="justify">Upon the question of the digital divide and whether this expands the divide between have and have nots, Tuhin was very set on the idea of producing the same content in both its digital and print form. <em>“parents or schools should be able to buy the comic and give it to their daughters, so whenever they feel like it, they can refer to it”</em>. The focus is on making this material as readily available as possible, in order to overcome the tension between new and old information: <em>“workshops are conducted but the moment they go back home, their mothers impose certain restrictions. It becomes a dilemma. But if you provide [The girl] with a comic book, she has something she can take home and educate her mother with”</em></p>
<h2>And here's why it works</h2>
<p align="justify">More than the comic book itself, what is truly remarkable about Menstrupedia is Tuhin, Rajat and Aditi’s guts to pick up such a problematic theme in the Indian social imaginary and challenge the entrenched, stubborn beliefs surrounding the issue. The comic book, asides from being appealing to the eye and an accessible format of storytelling (a method we have unpacked in <a href="https://cis-india.org/@@search?SearchableText=storytelling">previous posts</a>), fits right into the movement of menstrual activism and what it stands for.</p>
<div align="justify" class="pullquote">“We thought of creating something: a tool that can help girls understand menstruation without having to rely on anybody else”. Tuhin, Menstrupedia</div>
<p align="justify">First, it is a <strong>self-reliant resource.</strong> Once the comic book leaves Menstrupedia's hands and lands on those of kids and adults, it takes its own journey. The format of the comic is accessible enough for someone to pick it up and learn about menstruation without the intervention or the support of a third party. This makes Menstrupedia's comic <strong>highly flexible and mobile</strong>. It can be shared from teacher to child, from mom to daughter, from peer to peer: “[it should teach] <em>how to help your friends when they get their period”</em> (Tuhin) However, it has the autonomy to also take roads less travelled: from mom to dad, from child to teacher, from boy to girl. The goal at the end of the day: a self-reliant, solidarity-based community where information circulating about menstruation highlights its capacity to give life and overshadows its traditional stigmatized identity.</p>
<p align="justify">This self-reliance is characteristic of previous manifestations of menstrual activism. Back in the 80s, the feminist movement, tightly linked to punk culture, embraced the<strong> do it yourself movement,</strong><a name="fr3" href="#fn3">[3]</a> that enabled women to materialize personalized forms of resistance. They published <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org.advanc.io/wiki/Zine">zines</a> promoting<em> “dirty self-awareness, body and menstrual consciousness and unlearning shame” t</em>hrough <em>“raw stories and personal narratives” </em>(Bobel, 2006). According to Bobel using the<strong> self as an example</strong> is a core element in the “history of self-help” within the DIY movement. The role of the Menstrupedia blog is then crucial to sustain the exposure and production of “raw narratives”. Tuhin adds: <em>“We don't write articles on the blog. It is a platform where people from different backgrounds write about their experiences with menstruation and bring in a different perspective”:</em> For example,<em><br /></em></p>
<p><strong>Red is my colour</strong> by Umang Saigal</p>
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<p>Red is my colour,<br /> To make you understand, I endeavour,<br /> Try to analyse and try to favour.<br /> It is not just a thought, but an attempt,<br /> To treat ill minds that are curable.</p>
<p>When I was born, I was put in a red cradle,<br /> I grew up watching the red faces for a girl-children in anger,<br /> Red became my favourite,<br /> But I never knew,<br /> That someday I would be cadged in my own red world.</p>
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<td>Red lover I was,<br /> All Love I lost,<br /> When I got my first red spots,<br /> What pain it caused only I know,<br /> When I realized, Red determined my ‘class’
<p>I grew up then, ignoring red,<br /> At night when I found my bedsheet wet,<br /> All day it ached,<br /> All day it stained,<br /> And in agony I would, turn insane.</p>
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<p>At times I would think,<br /> Does red symbolize beauty or pain?<br /> But when I got tied, in the sacred knot,<br /> I found transposition of my whole process of thought,<br /> When from dirty to gold, Red crowned my bridal course.</p>
<p>As I grew old,<br /> All my desires vanished and got cold,<br /> My mind still in a dilemma,<br /> What more than colour in itself could it unfold?<br /> What was the secret behind its truth untold?</p>
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<p>Is Red for beauty, or is it for beast?<br /> It interests me now to know the least,<br /> All I know is that Red is a Transition,<br /> From anguish to pride<br /> Red is a sensation.</p>
<p>Red is my colour, as it is meant to be,<br /> No matter what the world thinks it to be,<br /> No love lost, one Love found,<br /> Red symbolizes life and also our wounds,<br /> I speak it aloud with life profound,<br /> That red is my colour, and this is what I’ve found.</p>
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<p align="center">Submission to the <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/blog/red-is-my-colour/">Menstrupedia blog</a></p>
<p align="justify">'Self-expression' is not a concept we usually find side by side with 'menstruation'; however, if we look at what has been done in the past, we find that Menstrupedia is actually contributing to a much larger tradition of resistance. For instance, <a href="http://menstrala.blogspot.in/">Menstrala</a>, by the American artist Vanessa Tiegs. Menstrala is the name of a collection of 88 paintings <em>“affirming the hidden forbidden bright red cycle of renewal”.</em></p>
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<p align="justify">Another interesting example is American feminist Gloria Steinem's<a name="fr4" href="#fn4">[4]</a> text <a href="http://www.mylittleredbook.net/imcm_orig.pdf">If Men Could Menstruate</a>.</p>
<blockquote>“What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not? <br />The answer is clear:<br /> Menstruation would become an enviable, boast worthy, masculine event: <br />Men would brag about how long and how much. <br />Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed- for proof of manhood,with religious and stag parties.”<br />
<div align="right"><strong>Gloria Steinem</strong><br />[excerpt]</div>
</blockquote>
<p align="justify">Opportunities like these, enable Menstrupedia's community to actively participate in the reconfiguration of 'menstruation' as a concept and as an experience. By exposing new narratives and perspectives on the issue and by disseminating menstrual health information, the community is able to crowd source resistance and dismantle the stigma together.</p>
<h2>Making Change through Menstrupedia</h2>
<p align="justify">The case of Menstrupedia reminds us of <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/blank-noise-citizenship">Blank Noise</a> because of its approach to change. Both locate their crises at<strong> the discursive level</strong> and seek to resolve them by creating new forms of meaning-making. They advocate for a reconsideration of 'givens', for a self-reflection on our role perpetuating these notions and for resistance against conceptual status quos: be it socially accepted culprits like 'eve-teasing', or more discrete rejects like 'menstruation'. Both seek to dismantle power structures that give one discourse preference over others, and both count with a strong gender dynamic dominating the context where these narratives unfold. They are producing a revolution in our system of meaning making, yet only producing resistance in the larger societal context they inhabit.</p>
<p align="justify">On the question of where is Menstrupedia's action located, Tuhin replied by pinning it at the<strong> individual level</strong><em><strong>: </strong>“if a person is aware of menstruation and they know the facts, they are more likely to resist restrictions and spread awareness”. </em>However, they still acknowledge the historicity behind menstrual awareness (as knowledge passed down from generation to generation) that precedes the project. While the introduction of Menstrupedia, to an extent, does shake up household dynamics in terms of content, it also provides tools and resources to sustain the traditional model of oral tradition and knowledge sharing within the community.</p>
<p align="justify">In terms of their role as change-makers ,Tuhin stated that the possibility to intervene was a result of their socio-economic status and the resources they had at hand as “<em>educated members of the middle class with access to information and communication technologies”</em>. Is this the role the middle class should play? I asked. To which he gave a two fold answer: First, in terms of <strong>responsibility of action</strong>:<em> “it is a role that anyone can play depending on what kind of expertise they have. It comes to a point where [intents of change] cannot be sustained by activism if you want to achieve long term impact” </em>And second, in terms of setting up a <strong>resilient infrastructure: </strong><em>“I believe we can create an infrastructure people can use and create models that can help low income groups overcome their challenges and become self-sustainable.” </em>Both answers highlight the need for sustainability in social impact projects, hinting a retreat from wishful thinking upon the presence of technology and a more strategic allocation of skills and resources by middle class and for-profit interventions.</p>
<p align="justify">As far the relationship between art, punk, menstruation and technology goes; that was just a hook to get you through the unreasonable length of my blog post, but if anything, it represents an effort to portray the importance of <strong>contextuality and interdisciplinary</strong> we have been exploring throughout the series. Identifying the use of various mediums and language systems, such as different art forms and modes of self-expression, as well the acknowledgement of the theoretical and social contexts preceding and framing the project, as is feminist activism and the cultural and religious backdrop in India, contribute immensely to fill gaps in the stories of how we imagine change making today; especially at the nascence of new narratives, as we hope is the case for menstruation in a post-Menstrupedia era.</p>
<h2 align="JUSTIFY">Sources:</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Bhartiya, Aru: “<em>Menstruation</em>, <em>Religion and Society”</em> IJSSH: International Journal of Social Science and Humanity. Volume: Vol.3, No.6.</p>
<div id="gs_cit2" style="text-align: justify;" class="gs_citr">Bobel, Chris. "“Our Revolution Has Style”: Contemporary Menstrual Product Activists “Doing Feminism” in the Third Wave." <em>Sex Roles</em> 54, no. 5-6 (2006): 331-345.<br /><br />Johnston-Robledo, Ingrid, and Joan C. Chrisler. "The menstrual mark: Menstruation as social stigma." <em>Sex roles</em> 68, no. 1-2 (2013): 9-18.</div>
<h2>Footnotes</h2>
<p>[<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>] Refer to Chris Bobel's work including New Blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation. Access it <a href="http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/New-Blood,113.aspx">here</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>] Johnston Robledo and Chrisler made reference to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org.advanc.io/wiki/Erving_Goffman">Erving Goffman</a>'s 1963 work:<strong> Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity<em>. </em></strong><em>"According to Goffman (1963), the word stigma refers to any stain or mark that sets some people apart from others; it conveys the information that those people have a defect of body or of character that spoils their appearance or identity Goffman (1963, p. 4) categorized stigmas into three types: "abominations of the body” (e.g., burns, scars, deformities), “ blemishes of individual character” (e.g., criminality, addictions), and “tribal” identities or social markers associated with marginalized groups (e.g., gender,race, sexual orientation, nationality)".</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>] For a short run through on DIY as part of the Punk Subculture, refer to Ian P. Moran's paper: Punk - The Do-it-Yourself culture."Punk as a subculture goes much further than rebellion and fashion as punks generally seek an alternative lifestyle divergent from the norms of society. The do-it-yourself, or D.I.Y. aspect of punk is one of the most important factors fueling the subculture." Access it <a href="http://repository.wcsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&context=ssj">here</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful#fr4" name="fn4">4</a>] Gloria Steimen is a journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970. Visit her official website <a href="http://www.gloriasteinem.com/">here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseMaking ChangeNet CulturesResearchFeaturedResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:25:59ZBlog EntryMultimedia Storytellers: Panel Discussion
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/multimedia-storytellers
<b>This post brings three storytellers together to find points of intersection between their methods. The format will be that of a panel discussion and it features: Arjun Srivathsa from Pocket Science India, Ameen Haque from the Storywallahs, and Ajay Dasgupta from The Kahani Project. They discuss technology, interpretation and action in storytelling. </b>
<pre>CHANGE-MAKERS: Arjun Srivathsa, Ameen Haque and Ajay Dasgupta
ORGANIZATIONS:Pocket Science India, The Storywallahs and The Kahani Project
METHOD OF CHANGE: Storytelling</pre>
<p align="justify">Over the last couple of weeks, I had the privilege of interviewing three storytellers. What struck me the most, besides from their fascinating ideas about storytelling, was how many of their ideas overlapped. As much as I would love to sit all of them in the same room and enjoy the fireworks, there are a number of logistical constraints that shut my storyteller reunion daydreams down; so for this post, I decided to be a self-appointed liaison between you and them. I will mimic this discussion by putting my conversations with them side by side, in the format of a panel discussion. Their interaction will have to happen in the realm of your imagination.</p>
<p align="justify">The questionnaire I used for my interviews was open-ended. I was curious to hear what they wanted to share about their work, as opposed to filtering and steering the conversation in a certain direction; so I let them take their own turn. While I clearly inquired about the relationship between storytelling and making change, it was fascinating to see each storyteller reach the question of ‘social impact' through different channels; testimony of the influence of their education and professional backgrounds in their work.</p>
<p align="justify">If I were to bring them together, the topic of the discussion would be: '<strong>Technology, Interpretation and Action in Storytelling</strong>'. We briefly discussed mediation and semiotics<strong><a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a></strong> in the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance#pre-production">Pre-Production</a> section of the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance">Storytelling as Performance</a> post. We mentioned then:</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout"><em>"mediums are combined to enhance the visibility of the message and the power of the experience of stories. [...] Each medium: video, audio, text, music, etc.- becomes “a new literate space” or “symbolic tool” storytellers use to portray narratives about the self, community and society (Hull, 2006)”</em></p>
<em>
</em>
<p align="justify">These thoughts were triggered by the work of the French philosopher, <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/">Paul Ricoeur</a>, who considers our self-identity a result of sign mediation and interpretation. Other themes in his work include: discourse and action, temporality, narrative and identity; also useful and relevant when exploring how storytelling and reality intersect. For example, how does building a narrative develop into a discourse that mirrors our context and existence? How does the medium chosen to carry this narrative define the language system of our discourse? Finally, let’s not forget this discussion is happening amid the digital question: how does the mediation of digital technologies enable or constrain our narratives of change?</p>
<p align="justify">Against this background, I would like to propose a discussion around five points of intersection that came up organically* during my conversations with them.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a)<strong> The power of storytelling</strong>: <br />What makes it a powerful vehicle of communication? How does this practice break from more traditional strategies of information dissemination?</p>
<p>b) <strong>Storytelling as a vehicle to make change: <br /></strong>How does the practice of storytelling intervene in the social imagination of its audience? Is it the experience or the content of stories what drives the message of change forward? Where does change happen: at the value, behavioral, community or macro level?</p>
<p>c)<strong> The role of technology in storytelling:</strong> <br />What is the part technology plays in storytelling vis-a-vis traditional storytelling? Is it a static infrastructure or does it shape the force and direction of the story? How does technology influence and impact their work</p>
<p>d) <strong>Translating awareness to action through stories: </strong><br />Can you guarantee the ideas and values imbued by the story will translate into action in the public space?</p>
<p>e)<strong> Influence of stories on citizenship and political participation:</strong> <br />Can the power of stories be leveraged to instill a sense of responsibility in the audience?</p>
<p align="justify" class="discreet">* With the exception of Arjun Srivathsa, who addressed these points in a conference I attended. He later responded to a questionnaire in which I inquired about the intersections specifically.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 align="justify">Introductions<br /></h2>
<p align="justify">We first have <strong>Arjun Srivathsa</strong>. He has a Masters in Wildlife Biology and Conservation and currently works as a Research Associate for the Centre for Wildlife Studies (CWS India). In tandem, he started Pocket Science India, an initiative that combines wildlife science with art and cartoons to promote conservation in India and disseminate information from scientific journal articles. He aims to bridge the gap between the work of scientists and people using art and humour.</p>
<p class="callout">
<strong>Arjun:</strong> I find the world of science and scientists very cool. Finding new things, discovering and inventing ways to understand the world better is an awesome way of life. I chose a career in science for this reason, second only to my love for nature and wildlife. But the essence of science, according to me, is not just to discover, but also to communicate. Even though wildlife research in India has progressed massively in the past few decades, the only notion people have is that of exaggerated scenes from television documentaries. When I discovered that most of the work by Indian scientists on wildlife and conservation of India is making no difference to people (mostly because they are unaware), I decided to use the easiest way to bridge the gap: through humour and art.</p>
<p align="justify">Second speaker<strong> </strong>is<strong> Ameen Haque</strong> from <a href="http://www.thestorywallahs.com/">The Storywallahs</a>. In what he calls his past life, he worked for 18 years in Advertising and Brand Strategy Consulting. Ameen also has a background in theatre and now works as as storyteller for The Storywallahs.</p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/F8U5HAI-0TI" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420">&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/center&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;</iframe></p>
<p align="justify">Finally, we have <strong>Ajay Dasgupta</strong>, the founder of <a href="http://thekahaniproject.org/">The Kahani Project</a>, who also has a background in theatre and believes listening to stories is a fundamental right of children. His team works to capture stories in audio format and make them accessible.</p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633144&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<p>I will now invite them to share their thoughts on the points described above. Each panelist will respond to the questions using<strong> a different medium</strong>: Arjun will comment with text and images, Ameen will comment with video and Ajay will comment using audiobytes. The idea is for each storyteller to use the medium and language they use for their own storytelling: cartoons, body language and audio respectively, as we explore how this choice mediates how they conceptualize change. I will act as a moderator and comment on common themes in the light of Paul Ricoeur’s characteristics of narratives.</p>
<h2>1. The Power of Storytelling<br /></h2>
<h3>What makes it a powerful vehicle of communication?</h3>
<p> </p>
<h2></h2>
<div class="pullquote"><span id="docs-internal-guid-10dcb36e-642b-76be-1e09-54a2a3103a5c">“narrative attains full significance when it becomes a condition of temporal existence” Time and Narrative<br /></span></div>
<div><span id="docs-internal-guid-10dcb36e-642b-76be-1e09-54a2a3103a5c"></span></div>
<p align="justify">The first characteristic of narratives according to Ricoeur is:<strong> the ability to bring independent elements and episodes together into a plot within a specific context and time</strong>. The relationship between time and narrative is addressed by the philosopher in his work <em>'Oneself as Another</em>,' in which he frames narratives as the most 'faithful articulations of human time'. This leads to an understanding of time as a framework where we can locate unique events and patterns, trajectories and sequences. Our three storytellers comment on how stories are an effective mean to communicate information, and how this information resonates because it can be located in the frame of our human existence.</p>
<p class="callout">
<strong>Arjun:</strong> Storytelling really is the nascence of any communication technique. As kids we were all told stories with bees and birds, which spoke and thought. The moral life lessons and similar “information” were served to us on these fascinating platters.</p>
<div align="center"> <img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/1524964_614398581930298_1037858013_n.jpg/image_preview" alt="Pocket Science 1" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pocket Science 1" /></div>
<div align="center">
<div align="center"><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption"><em>Dugongs are closely related to whales and dolphins. They are peaceful mammals that swim around gracefully and feed on sea grass. <br />They are categorized as “VULNERABLE” because there are not too many of them left in the world. </em>
</span></span></div>
<span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">
<p align="center">Find full cartoon <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=614398581930298&set=a.614397888597034.1073741836.609687355734754&type=1&theater">here</a></p>
</span></span></div>
<p class="callout">At some point in life, we all seem to stop appreciating the power of storytelling. Plain reporting of information has been done to death. Even an amazing discovery written as a formal report will fail to excite audience. It is time we all get back to appreciating stories. They sell. Movies generally do better than documentaries don’t they?</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ameen:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Q5fphRoT-2k" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p align="justify"> </p>
<p><strong>Ajay:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633135&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<h2>2. Storytelling as a vehicle to make change</h2>
<h3> How and where does change happen?</h3>
<p> </p>
<div class="pullquote">“All action is in principle interaction [...] change happens through interaction, as others are also encouraged to change” From Text to Action</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The second characteristic of narratives is how the <strong>episodes in our narratives involve contingencies that will be shaped and reformulated through the development of the story</strong>. The narratives are constructed in such a way that induce us to imagine possible events in the future and how we would act in said circumstances. This characteristic is supported by Ricoeur's understanding of the <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/#3.2">'self' as an 'agent'</a>, who can act and influence causation by taking initiative or interfering<strong><a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[2]</a></strong> in the story. Even if the listener cannot necessarily influence the outcome of the story (unless it is participatory storytelling), it triggers thoughts about its capability to act and its ability to change future realities, as he imagines himself n the situation of its characters. This out-of-body experience is what turns story into experience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Our storytellers comment on how stories can influence and activate our agency and enable listeners to act towards creating change.</p>
<p class="callout"><strong>Arjun: </strong>Of course! Like I said, it is easier to influence people when you are not being preachy. Storytelling sidesteps the moral high ground that change makers are often blamed to occupy and takes a pleasantly shrewd path, as silly as it may sound.</p>
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<em> </em><em><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">#2:
Increase in wildlife tourism has been brought about by the increasing
population of the ‘Tourist’. This species is easy to recognize (see
figure). The species has created an ecosystem of its own. It eats any
kind of high or low profile food. Lives in resorts. Seeks charismatic
animals like the tiger. Its daily activity involves excessive use of its
camera. This species facilitates wildlife tourism </span></span></em></td>
<td><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption"></span></span><em>#9: Wildlife tourism is an excellent way to
expose people of India and abroad to its rich natural heritage [...] We
definitely need to regulate the number of tourists to avoid crowding in
the forests, but we also need to educate tourists, especially the
first-timers, about wildlife and its conservation. The tourist can be an important tool in conservation –
let’s not let it go waste!</em>"<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="center">Find full cartoon <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=609780439058779&set=pb.609687355734754.-2207520000.1396426793.&type=3&theater">here</a>.</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout">To the question of where we locate change, it depends on what this change is. Through my work, I often target <strong>individuals and smaller communities</strong> (say students, villagers etc.). I don't necessarily grab my paintbrush and declare that I will change the world. My idea of change is a tailored, targeted and therefore an efficient influence on individuals.</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ameen:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GJpeQMltaT4" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ajay:</strong></p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633137&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2>3. The role of technology in storytelling</h2>
<h3>How does technology influence and impact your work?</h3>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Ricoeur’s thoughts on the relationship between text and action, makes us reconsider how we think about ‘<em>text</em>’ and how this reading can be applied to technology. According to him, the distinction between text and action is not at the linguistic, but at the discursive level. This is how he differentiates language from discourse:</p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th><br /></th>
<th>Language<br /></th>
<th>Discourse<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Structure</td>
<td>A system: timeless and static<br /></td>
<td>Located at a given time and moment<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Composition</td>
<td>A sequence of signs<br /></td>
<td>A sequence of events that describe, claim and represent the world<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Meaning</td>
<td>Refers to signs<br /></td>
<td>Refers to the world<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Communication</td>
<td>Provides codes for communication. <br />Necessary but not sufficient<br /></td>
<td>Communicates</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">Using these working definitions, we can understand the medium as <strong>a language:</strong> a system that provides us with signs and codes for communication. A creative use of language and mediums will hence, enable us to create narratives and produce meaning (which will be generated and negotiated by the audience). Technology is in this case our language, and how each storyteller uses it determines new ways to create meaning: experiences, connections and associations with and within their stories. We now ask them if/how the use of this 'language' mediates and impacts their work.</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout"><strong>Arjun:</strong> Technology is the best facilitator in the realm of my science-art-communication. I depend on it extensively, to first educate myself. Then to create artwork (computer, tablet, smartphone). And then eventually I depend heavily on social media to broadcast my work. I will definitely credit the power of technology for fostering and enabling effective communication.</p>
<div align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/PSI3.jpg/image_preview" alt="PSI3" class="image-inline image-inline" title="PSI3" /></div>
<p align="center"><em># 11: The story of Ajoba was carried far and wide in newspapers, television news and the internet</em>. Find full cartoon <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=610114332358723&set=pb.609687355734754.-2207520000.1396426793.&type=3&theater">here</a>.</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout">In my capacity, I feel most confident targeting students and urban youth. But thanks to the power of social media, putting my work out there has grabbed the attention of change-makers who are capable of things that is beyond my scope. This has led to collaborations through which the reach has become wider. Teachers use my art work in their classes, some organisations are using it in forest department buildings to educate visitors, some local groups have translated my work into regional languages.</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ameen:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/25EAnt1yi94" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ajay:</strong></p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633141&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2>4. Translating awareness into action through stories<br /></h2>
<h3>Can you guarantee the ideas and values imbued by the story translate into action in the public space?</h3>
<p> </p>
<div class="pullquote"> “what must be the nature of action...if it is to be read in terms of change in the world?” From Text to Action</div>
<p id="docs-internal-guid-10dcb36e-6935-a65e-1136-120c46ff2174" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">So far they have told us about the power and content of stories. However, we have yet to find out what is it in stories that make listeners translate fiction into real life action. Ricoeur's final characteristic of narratives points us in the direction of empathy and interpretation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Like discourse, action is open to interpretation. He posits t<strong>hat characters of our stories rise to the status of ‘persons’ when we evaluate their actions, including their doings and sufferings</strong>. This ethical verdict determines the identity of the character in the eyes of the audience (above any other physical or emotional characteristics) and this is what ultimately adds meaning to the events of the story, as it inspires the audience to emulate or reject this behavior through their actions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We asked our storytellers their thoughts on how to translate stories' messages into meaningful action, or if it was even possible to guarantee this transition to begin with:</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout"><strong>Arjun:</strong> I don’t [know]. One never does, I feel. But a lot of good awareness programs have made me change little things in my life. The people or groups who initiated those campaigns don't know of this, do they? This is somewhat similar. I believe that even if ONE person in the thousand who view my work gets influenced into making little changes, then it was worth my time and effort.</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ameen:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/neFe7kj8dIc" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p align="left"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p align="left"><strong>Ajay: </strong>(Ajay commented on the impact of stories while we were discussing how to gauge the impact of his work. In our first conversation he said:<em> "Change is happening but there are no tests that can measure it and quantify it.</em>" and he elaborates on this idea below:)</p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633138&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h2 align="left">5. Influence of stories on citizenship and political participation<br /></h2>
<h3>Can the power of stories be leveraged to instill a sense of responsibility in the audience?</h3>
<div class="pullquote"><br />"You can only achieve power in common by including the opinions of as many people as possible in the discourse"</div>
<p align="justify"> </p>
<p align="justify">Finally, as stated in the brief of the project on methods for change, we are also interested in defining how political participation should be manifested in the public space. Ricoeur frames political action as a result of discourse and political deliberation.For a brief discussion of the relationship between storytelling and our political identity visit <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2">Part 2 of Storytelling as Performance</a>.)</p>
<p align="justify">This last section captures the storytellers' point of view on how stories may affect our sense of citizenship and political responsibility.</p>
<p align="left" class="callout"><strong>Arjun</strong>: We are living in a society which is becoming increasingly insensitive and arrogant. There seems to be no time to stop and see the big picture: what are we doing? are our demands and lifestyles sustainable? Is the future generation secure? Impacts of our actions on the natural world.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/1511040_609776472392509_490391694_n.jpg/image_preview" alt="Pocket Science 2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pocket Science 2" /></td>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_1533944_609777242392432_1081033930_n.jpg/image_preview" alt="Pocket Science 3" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pocket Science 3" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">#1: Most of us love seafood. And why shouldn't we? It tops the charts as some of the most delicious delicacies in the world! It so happens that we rarely think about what goes on
“behind-the-scenes” and take many things for granted. The story behind
how food reaches your plate is quite a scary one!</span></span></td>
<td> <span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">#12: So next time you feel like a getting a seafood dinner, do it with some perspective.</span></span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<div align="center">Find full cartoon <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.609776052392551.1073741831.609687355734754&type=1">here</a></div>
<strong>Ameen:</strong>
<p> </p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/lO0y0QZ3vhQ" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Ajay</strong>:</p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633136&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<p> </p>
<h2>Closing Remarks</h2>
<p align="justify">I hope you enjoyed reading, watching and listening these three wonderful storytellers share their ideas on technology, interpretation and action. The question that remains unresolved is whether the effect of the story is shaped by the use of technology or not. At the end of the day it is the interpretation of stories -more than what it is said and how it is being said- what will determine the sustainability of these intents for change. The answers of our storytellers reinforce the notion that technology is a system, a language, a medium that transports our messages and intentions, but that inherently lacks the ability to provide guarantees for action and sway users into a lifestyle of responsible citizenship the second they pull out from their cartoon, screen or mp3.</p>
<p> The box below includes a quick run through the main ideas discussed throughout the post:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>1. <strong>On the power of storytelling: </strong></p>
<ul><li>Arjun argues that storytelling is the origin of all communication techniques, and this makes it extremely attractive for the public. <br /></li><li>Both Ajay and Ameen bring up the ability to influence behavior, shape the minds of people and transmit experiences, values and beliefs.</li><li>Both also brought up how dominant religions, ideologies, markets governments use storytelling to build movements and sustain their support</li><li>Finally Ajay comments on the issue of access: stories are powerful yet only a small share of stories are being told Hence, the need for this method to become more pervasive.</li></ul>
<br />
<p>2. <strong>Storytelling as a vehicle for change:</strong><br />Each storyteller locates change in different yet complementary spaces:</p>
<ul><li>Arjun believes it must occur at the community level and hence the approach (stories) must be tailored and targeted in order to achieve an effective influence. His approach to change is very contextual.</li><li>Ameen locates it at the behavioral level; in our ability to make decisions and choices. His approach to change is based on how we use information from stories to interact with our surroundings.</li><li>Ajay locates it at the value level: He believes stories should influence us to adjust our values and only then, we will shape our behavior accordingly.</li></ul>
<br />
<p><strong>3. Role of technology:<br /></strong>We approached technology as a 'text' and as a 'language' that creates new possibilities for meaning and interpretation.</p>
<ul><li>For Arjun and Ajay, technology enabled them to connect with other organizations and increased possibilities for partnerships and collaborations. </li></ul>
<ul><li>The three of them believe technology is an accelerator of the journey of stories and that it enables them to reach a larger audience.</li><li>Ameen argued that each medium requires different fluencies, and that the language of each medium should be adapted for the story. For example, a story will be told in different ways if using body language, video, audio, etc. He uses the example of the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/Twitter">Twitter adaption of the Mahabharata.</a><br /></li><li>Ajay closes by noting that although technology enables, it cannot replace the storyteller. <br /></li></ul>
<br />
<p><strong>4. Translating awareness into action</strong></p>
<ul><li>Arjun and Ameen comment on the power of effectively and positively influencing <em>one</em> person. They believe the impact will exponentially spread and grow through that person's network or community.</li><li>Arjun believes you can guarantee it will turn into action.</li><li>Ameen believes you need to move them and inspire them through your characters to the point they feel they can be the hero of that story and act accordingly.</li><li>Ajay takes a more pragmatic approach towards action and shares some of the activities The Kahani Project uses to complement his storytelling sessions, such as: story-thons, story-booths and interactive storytelling, where they engage the audience in the production of their own stories.</li></ul>
<br />
<p><strong>5. Impact of storytelling on citizenship and political participation</strong></p>
<ul><li>Arun and Ajay believe this will come as a result of self-reflection and an evaluation of our impact in the world.</li><li>Ameen believes effective stories transmit the 'responsibility of action' through rhetoric. He uses the example of the popularity of India Against Corruption movement.</li><li>Ajay believes storytelling is a humanizing force that has the power of healing. He recommends institutions should utilize this method to spread confidence and inclusion among society and particularly with excluded groups. <br /></li></ul>
</blockquote>
<h2>Footnotes</h2>
<p align="justify">[<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/multimedia-storytellers#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>] Semiotics is defined as the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. It is the study of making meaning and is essential to understand communication processes. While we will not look at any specific semiotics theory, we will focus on how stories create meaning through different signs and mediums, and how this meaning can be leveraged for making change.<br /><br />[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">2</a>] Refer to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/">page on Paul Ricoeur</a> and the section on ‘Selves and Agents’ to learn more about how action is mediated by causation, interference and intervention. Some interesting thoughts that inspired the above post</p>
<p dir="ltr">“What must be the nature of the world … if human beings are able to introduce changes into it?. Ricoeur adopts the analysis of interference or intervention that G. H. von Wright gives in Explanation and Understanding, and shows that for there to be interference, there must be both: an ongoing anterior established order or course of things and a human doing that somehow intervenes in and disturbs that order. Moreover, interference is always purposeful. Hence an interference is not merely ascribable to an agent. It is also imputable to the agent as the one whose purpose motivates the interference.”</p>
<p>
“The second crucial question about action is “What must be the nature of action … if it is to be read in terms of a change in the world?” Ricoeur argues that every action involves initiative, i.e., “an intervention of the agent of action into the course of the world, an intervention that effectively causes changes in the world” (Oneself as Another, 109, translation modified). Initiative requires a bodily agent possessing specific capabilities and vulnerabilities who inhabits some concrete worldly situation.”</p>
<h2>Sources:</h2>
<p> </p>
<p>Dauenhauer, Bernard and Pellauer, David, "Paul Ricoeur", <em>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy </em> (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/ricoeur/>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/multimedia-storytellers'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/multimedia-storytellers</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseMaking ChangeNet CulturesResearchFeaturedResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:26:51ZBlog EntryBridging the Information Divide - Political Quotient
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient
<b>On this post, we will unpack 'information poverty'- a problem lying at the very foundation of the crises that inspired this project and a barrier impacting political action. We interview Surabhi HR, the founder director of the political consulting firm Political Quotient, an initiative that seeks to change how youth interacts with politics in India</b>
<pre><strong>CHANGE-MAKER</strong>: Surabhi H R
<strong>ORGANIZATION</strong>: Political Quotient
<strong>METHOD OF CHANGE</strong>: Building an information service for citizen grievances, designed to keep elected representatives accountable for what happens in their constituency.
<strong>STRATEGY OF CHANGE</strong>: Building a new breed of politically conscious youth in India through technology and an interdisciplinary approach to change.</pre>
<p align="justify">The deeper we delve into this project, the more the ‘information question’ rises to the surface as the decisive factor shaping political participation in democracies. Most of the initiatives we have learned about are focused on providing spaces, resources and opportunities to enable voices, participation and richer exchanges of information and knowledge. Yet, framing these as ‘empowering’ overlooks citizens who are trapped in an information gap or suffocated by an information overflow. People who find themselves in either side of the spectrum, are for the most part discouraged from engaging with this information, participating in public discussions (Jaeger, 2005), and do not have the same political opportunities as people with wider and freer access to information.</p>
<p align="justify">As we continue to explore how youth is redefining civic action in digital and information societies, we must thoroughly understand the different ways in which information barriers are affecting political action. On this post, we will go over a short glossary of terms that will help us understand <strong>information poverty</strong> better- a problem lying at the very foundation of the crises that inspired this project. These terms will be somewhat similar to each other, but will be unpacked from three different points of view, describing the implications of information poverty for social justice, technology disparity and democracy. The glossary will be coupled by our conversation with Surabhi HR, the founder director of the political consulting firm <a href="http://politicalquotient.in/">Political Quotient</a>, an initiative that seeks to change how youth interacts with politics in India. Her background in Economics added new nuances to our analysis, as we explore the workings of political action through the lenses of economic theory.</p>
<h3>Political Quotient</h3>
<p align="justify">Political Quotient wants to “<em>build a new breed of politically conscious youth that engages with the political system and equips them with the necessary skills to do so”. </em>They have been running two programs: the <strong>‘Political Internship Programme’</strong> where young people have the opportunity to join party lines and support with legislative research, performance auditing, media management and event organization. And the second program is <strong>‘Politicking’</strong>, in which they organize Google hangouts and panels between student leaders, political commentators, and party heads to debate and discuss policy-making and politics.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Politicking.jpg/image_preview" alt="Politicking" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Politicking" /></p>
<p align="justify">Now PQ is moving on to a new phase, in which they recognize it is not only youth who must be empowered. Similarly to <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-structures-janaagraha">Janaagraha</a>, they also believe there must be an information structure in place to support elected representatives, who have been chosen to govern without the resources to effectively do so. <em>“Things are changing, elected representatives are being held accountable, asked to be more transparent and to be more active, but the honest truth is they don’t have the necessary support to do this” </em>comments Surabhi on the situation that led her and her team to develop a set of services and products to engage people in direct conversation with their elected representatives. These including the following:</p>
<p align="justify">a) A <strong>grievance addressing service:</strong> designed to keep elected representatives accountable for what happens in their constituency. Citizen grievances can be sent by e-mail, smartphone, sms, etc. to the elected representative’s office, where it will reach a multi-platform software that redresses the grievance to the right department; (for example, if the grievance is related to a tree fall, it will be redressed to the forestry department as opposed to staying in the MLA office). The whole process will be transparent, as both the citizen and the MLA will be able to track the status of the complaint, from the day it was issued to the day it was implemented, using technology.</p>
<p align="justify">b) A <strong>government schemes and subsidies information service: </strong>Citizens will have access to information about schemes through digital technologies, and find out if it is reaching the right beneficiaries.</p>
<h2>Glossary:</h2>
<p align="justify">
(or crash course on concepts we should be familiar with when discussing making change in information societies)</p>
<p align="justify">To understand what information poverty is and how Political Quotient’s intervention in the information landscape will impact political action, will refer to the work of Johannes Britz, Doctor in Information Science and that of Anthony Downs, Economist specialist in public policy and public administration. This choice is inspired by a natural tension in our research as we continue to negotiate: what change ‘should’ look like from the lens of social justice and sustainable development, and what the ecosystem of change actually looks like when we deconstruct the political and economic structures enabling and constraining intents of change.</p>
<pre>
<div style="text-align: center;">1.<strong>Information poverty:</strong></div>
According to Johannes Britz, : “the situation in which individuals and communities do not have the skills, abilities or material means to obtain efficient access to information, interpret it and apply it.”</pre>
<p align="justify">Britz believes that information poverty must be addressed from a social justice perspective that considers the social, political and economic consequences of lack of information for our ability to fulfill our capabilities and freedoms. He posits a 'fair information society' as an ideal, in which social institutions work towards eradicating the four main characteristics of information- poor societies (See box below)<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient#fn1" name="fr1"></a><a name="fr1"></a></p>
<blockquote style="float: right;">
<p align="center"><strong>Characteristics of information-poor societies</strong></p>
<p>
1. Lack of essential information<br />2. Lack of financial capital to access information<br />3. Lack of technical infrastructure to access information<br />4. Lack of intellectual capacity to filter and evaluate<br /><strong> </strong>the benefits of information</p>
</blockquote>
<p align="justify">The third characteristic: <strong>'inefficient information infrastructures'</strong> is the main gap, both Janaagraha and Political Quotient, are addressing in urban India. They are both providing services to connect the citizen with their elected representatives; establishing a reliable exchange of information between parties, and as a consequence, more autonomy, transparency and accountability in the governance process.</p>
<p align="justify">How does Political Quotient brings us closer to a fairer information landscape in governance? Surabhi responds: <em>“The [grievance addressing] system is using the benefits of filling the information gap to create tangible assets: greater accountability, interaction, participation in the citizen-elected representative relationship and thereby fundamentally changing the way they interact.” </em></p>
<p align="justify">Following Britz's reading of John Rawls' categories of justice<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a>. PQ’s work addresses social justice in the following ways:</p>
<ul><li>
<strong>Recognition and participation:</strong> Enhancing the citizen’s ability to file a complaint is in itself an act of recognition of the citizen’s power to affect its own environment and his possibility to participate in the governance process. <br /></li><li><strong>Reciprocity: </strong>The system enables interaction between the elected representative and the citizen, setting forth reciprocity, transparency and a horizontal platform for exchanges where both parties manage the same information. <br /></li><li><strong>Development of capabilities: </strong>Assuming a successful implementation, grievances addressed imply the realization of the power of the citizen and a more functional infrastructure that enables their development as individuals. <br /></li><li><strong>Distribution and enablement: </strong>Assuming all citizens in Karnataka have access to ICTs, this service distributes power and bridges the distance between them and the government.</li></ul>
<div align="justify" class="pullquote"><br />"In a society where we depend on the creation, access and manipulation
of information, [lack of information] questions the fundamental freedoms
of people”. Britz, 2004</div>
<p> </p>
<p align="justify">While all these are highly idealistic assumptions, the last one is the most problematic (in a country where the Internet and mobile penetration rate remain as low as <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/With-243-million-users-by-2014-India-to-beat-US-in-internet-reach-Study/articleshow/25719512.cms">16%</a> and <a href="http://www.iamwire.com/2013/06/indian-mobile-landscape-2013/#_am76us06">26%</a> respectively). While information and communication technologies do play an important role in bridging the gap between those who have access and produce information and those who don’t, as Britz outlines, the growth of ICT’s takes information poverty to a <em>“whole new dimension”</em>; in most cases dividing the info-haves and the info-have nots even further. Britz ideal of an fair information society is what we aspire to, yet there are structural limitations in place which might prevent information-based initiatives, such as Political Quotient, from achieving its social justice objectives.</p>
<pre>
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>2.Information Poverty</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Information poverty can also be thought of as ‘information inequity’, which for the last 20 years has been strongly correlated to the digital divide. From this perspective, we can define it as the “economic inequality between groups in terms of access to and use of knowledge and ICTs.” </div>
</pre>
<p align="justify">Analyzing information precariousness from the technology perspective brings us to the elements contributing to the digital divide and how they are affecting our ability to be informed by and of digital technologies. According to Britz, the three main elements contributing to the divide are the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<div align="center"><strong>Factors Contributing to Digital Divide</strong><br /><br /></div>
a) <strong>Connectivity: </strong>Lack of infrastructure and material access to ICTs
<br />b) <strong>Content:</strong> Inability to access content because it is unaffordable, unavailable or unsuitable.<br />c) <strong>Human approach:</strong> Lack of education and digital literacy to understand and use information and data as knowledge.<br /></blockquote>
<p align="justify">This is a paramount consideration for Political Quotient if they aspire to reach all the constituencies in Karnataka; both rural and urban. Surabhi recognizes the firm will have to overcome the socioeconomic barriers that impede a pervasive adoption of her product. <em>“When one travels between rural and urban, the differences are many. Nothing has been done on the ground and there is a lot of potential. What is encouraging is that they want to learn.” </em>This limitation is conflicting with the amount of information the stakeholders of this project need to handle in order to successfully bridge the information gap (between the elected representatives and the citizens) and have it be a<em> “mutually beneficial relationship between the voter and the voted” </em>as they envision:</p>
<div align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/Capturadepantalla20140414alas15.jpg/image_preview" alt="Information Gaps" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Information Gaps" /><br />Information stakeholders need in order to use this service<br />Infographic generated using <a href="https://infogr.am/">info.gram</a><br /><br /></div>
<p align="justify">While the service PQ is developing seeks to leverage technology to bridge this gap, digital illiteracy might not only prevent citizens from using the system, but could potentially exclude them further from the democratic process. As Shah posits in the project’s <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/whose-change-is-it-anyway.pdf">thought piece</a> (on increasing the access to ICTS): <em>“the analogue citizen is expected to transition to the emerging new paradigms: earlier categories of discrimination or exclusion are now replaced by technology exclusion.”</em> The team plans to work with their clients (representatives) in digital technologies and organizational skills capacity building, yet an information inequity strategy needs to be put in place in order to guarantee the fulfillment of all the stakeholders’ capabilities -particularly equitable participation from the citizen’s front.</p>
<pre>
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>3. Information Poverty:</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Information poverty can also take the economic avatar of ‘imperfect knowledge’. According to Anthony Downs, “lack of complete information on which to base decisions is a condition so basic to human life that it influences the structure of almost every social institution”.</div>
</pre>
<p align="justify">Downs' perspective is based on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice">public choice theory</a>, which is <em>“the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems in political science”</em>. This is a subset of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_political_theory">positive political theory</a>, that models voters, bureaucrats and politicians as self-interested. He posits in his work <a href="http://www.hec.unil.ch/ocadot/ECOPOdocs/cadot2.pdf">‘Economic Theory for Political Action in a Democracy’</a> that political parties in democracies formulate policy and serve interest groups merely as a means to gaining votes.</p>
<p align="justify">Surabhi and her team align with this thinking: <em>“Politics is not benevolent; ours is a for-profit model that seeks to engage with the elected representative in providing him a mechanism to ensure that he gets more votes. At the same time, we also engage with citizens in ensuring that their interests and issues are looked into. Our basis is that politicians work for votes and the same should be leveraged to solve problems”</em>. Downs’ thesis is that given these assumptions, a democracy –a political system where the parties compete for the control of the government –can only function to its fullest potential when there is perfect information and information is costless. This is what makes democracy the gold standard of governance and the great model on paper that promises to secure our equality and freedoms.</p>
<p align="justify">Yet, democracy does not cease to bring disappointment and a sense of helplessness towards politics amongst youth. The advent of digital technologies has been a glimpse of hope for their political engagement, and this entire research is grounded on the question of how is it they can renew trust and mobilize youth towards civic engagement. A first step towards this direction is assuming the inherent faults in the system, as opposed to focusing on citizen apathy. Democracy has been implemented in a system where there is imperfect knowledge and where there is a high degree of both voluntary and involuntary ignorance <a name="fr2" href="#fn2">[2]</a>,. This, according to Downs, means that:</p>
<blockquote>
<div align="center"><strong>Consequences of imperfect knowledge in governance</strong></div>
<ul><li>Parties do not know what citizens want </li><li>Citizens do not always know what the government is doing or should be doing </li><li>Information to overcome this gap is costly</li></ul>
</blockquote>
<div align="left" class="pullquote"> “Ignorance of politics is not a result of unpatriotic apathy, rather it
is a highly rational response to the fats of political life in a large
democracy” Downs, 1957</div>
If information is costly, so is democracy. The highest risk of deeming citizens apathetic is ignoring the information barriers that prevent them from participating fairly in decision-making processes. Political Quotient cannot intervene by encouraging citizens to be informed, but it can provide them with tools to bring them closer to constituency related information, bringing down the costs of both participation and information. As put by Surabhi: <em>“We want to be an ally of the political system. They need to do good. They are there for 5 years and need to do something.”</em>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Making Change</h2>
<p align="justify">While my glossary of terms may seem repetitive (I did define the same term three times), I want to make an emphasis on how important it is to unpack our concepts through various lens of analysis. We started this project exploring multi-stakeholderism and partnerships on the ground, however we are naturally moving on to spaces of knowledge collaboration where change is conceived through the amalgamation of different disciplines. These convergences do not necessarily happen in the most visible ways though, and one of the project’s objectives is to identify undocumented yet significant interventions to make change in the landscape of information societies.</p>
<p align="justify">Political Quotient’s initiative breaks the following paradigms in the discourse of 'change in the digital era':</p>
<blockquote>
a) It removes the spotlight from the <strong>citizen:</strong> while the focus of the project is to level citizens-citizen and citizen-government power relations (in terms of access to information), the political firm is focusing on improving the efficiency of the government apparatus, which brings new light to how 'citizen action' unfolds in the context of urban governance. <br />
<div> </div>
<div>b) Political Quotient’s <strong>methods</strong> are far from what we see in the ‘spectacle imperative’ where the intent for change is scaled up through visibility in the public sphere. The firm was conceived in the private sector and its work will take place from within the elected representative’s offices. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>c) The firm, in the same way as Vita Beans, applies an i<strong>nterdisciplinary approach </strong>to the design of its technology. (Fun fact: Political Quotient is working alongside Amruth’s team to create mobile applications for the service; which means the infrastructure will include both behavioural science and economic thinking behind its design. Read <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology">one of our previous posts</a>, to learn more about Amruth's approach to change and digital design)</div>
<div> </div>
d) <strong>Technology</strong> is indeed framing their understanding of change, but in this case, the question is how technology can be amplified by human behaviour and education, as opposed to how technology determines or amplifies our ability to make change as it is commonly conceived.<br /></blockquote>
<div> </div>
<p align="justify">Not including an analysis of information poverty, and how it both inspires and limits intents of change, devoids the project from understanding the dynamic nature of information and how it interferes in social justice and political action. Furthermore, info-poverty is not a condition characteristic of digital and information societies. Our ability to access information has always determined our dexterity to navigate institutions and infrastructures; indistinctive of what technologies are available at the time. We hope that Political Quotient’s initiative locates not only the information gaps, but also the inherent obstacles the digital divide might represent for their work, and as stated by Surabhi in their theory of change, take them <em>“as an opportunity for a solution. Going from mere ideas to action”.</em> We wish them the best and will follow up on them after June, once the new elected representatives are in office, to see the extent to which information poverty has been addressed through their service. </p>
<h2 align="justify">Footnotes:</h2>
<p align="justify">[<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>] Britz based his categorization in John Rawls work on principles of
justice. Particularly on 'A Theory of Justice' a work of political
philosophy and ethics where he discusses inequality, distributive
justice and his theory of <a title="Justice as Fairness" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_as_Fairness">Justice as Fairness</a>.
We did not refer to his work for this post, but it is worth a read in
the context of the digital divide and the question of fair
redistribution of digital technologies. </p>
<p align="justify">[<a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>] Read more on voluntary or involuntary lack of knowledge in Downs' work on <a href="http://www.hec.unil.ch/ocadot/ECOPOdocs/cadot2.pdf">economic theory and political action</a>. Particularly his reading on persuasion, ideologies and rational
ignorance -in a context of imperfect knowledge and democracy. Some
interesting ideas on persuasion: "<em>Persuasion can only occur in the
midst of ignorance; reality is: there are votes who are less informed
than others and they need more facts; and we are mostly approached by
biased versions of facts" </em>and on rational ignorance:<em> "when
information is costly, no decision-maker can afford to know everything
[...] ignorance of politics is not a result of unpatriotic apathy;
rather it is a highly rational response to the facts of political life
in a large democracy"</em>.</p>
<h2 align="justify">Sources</h2>
<div id="gs_cit2" class="gs_citr"><br />1. Britz, Johannes J. "To know or not to know: a moral reflection on information poverty." <em>Journal of Information Science</em> 30, no. 3 (2004): 192-204.<br /><br />
<div id="gs_cit2" class="gs_citr">2. Downs, Anthony. "An economic theory of political action in a democracy." <em>The Journal of Political Economy</em> (1957): 135-150.<br /><br />3. Jaeger, Paul T., and Kim
M. Thompson. "Social information behavior and the democratic process:
Information poverty, normative behavior, and electronic government in
the United States." <em>Library & Information Science Research</em> 26, no. 1 (2005): 94-107.</div>
<br />
<div id="gs_cit2" class="gs_citr">4. Norris, Pippa. <em>Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide</em>. Cambridge University Press, 2001.<br /><br />5. <span class="reference-text"><span class="citation journal">Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.</span></span></div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseResearchers at WorkNet CulturesMaking ChangeResearch2015-10-24T14:28:06ZBlog EntryInformation Structures for Citizen Participation - Janaagraha
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-structures-janaagraha
<b>In our efforts to understand how change is conceptualized in the digital era, we find a growing emphasis on the role of effective information structures to empower the citizen and the government. We interview Joylita Saldanha from Janaagraha to answer questions around information, participation and e-governance. </b>
<pre><strong>CHANGE-MAKER:</strong>Interview with Joylita Saldanha
<strong>ORGANIZATION</strong>: Janaagraha - I change my city
<strong>METHOD OF CHANGE: </strong>Online platforms to enable communication between the citizen and the government.
<strong>STRATEGY OF CHANGE:</strong>Empower the government -create resources to help them do what the citizens expect them to do.</pre>
<p align="justify">10 posts into the project, we are identifying the most outstanding patterns between processes of change. One of the themes that comes up often is<strong>: information management.</strong> How do we translate data to information, and information to knowledge? What is the best way to produce, consume and disseminate information? How does visible information lead to better mechanisms of participation in democracy? As the topic recurs in my conversations with change-makers, I have even reflected about the way that I display the research outputs of this project, and have adapted the format of these articles to make them as interactive and accessible as possible. Why? Because we believe this research is an entry point for a wider conversation around different ways to understand ‘making change’, and in order to produce this knowledge we need different actors to take part in the conversation. Hence, the format of our information must be (visually) persuasive enough to sway the readers into at least reading the article, and encourage their engagement, interaction and participation.</p>
<p align="justify">This is also the rationale behind digital information platforms, including <strong>e-governance.</strong> Governments, authorities and organizations are devising new ways of presenting their information and making their services more accessible and interactive for the public. According to the <strong>UNESCO’</strong>s <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=3038&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html">definition</a>, e-governance is the public sector’s use of information and communication technology with the aim of:</p>
<ol><li>Improving information and service delivery</li><li>Encouraging citizen participation in decision-making processes</li><li>Making governments accountable, transparent and effective<br /></li></ol>
<div align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9lk9SDji2kk" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></div>
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">What is e-governance?<br />By the IDRC and IdeaCorp</div>
<p align="justify">India has its own <strong>National e-governance plan</strong> in place. It’s ambitious in scope:</p>
<blockquote>
<h3 align="center">“a massive country-wide infrastructure reaching down to the remotest of villages is evolving, and large-scale digitization of records is taking place to enable easy, reliable access over the internet. The ultimate objective is to bring public services closer home to citizens”. </h3>
</blockquote>
<div align="center"> Read more on the plan <a href="http://india.gov.in/e-governance/national-e-governance-plan">here</a>.</div>
<p align="justify"><br />However most of the online services offered on this platform are focused on tax returns, citizenship/visa/PAN/TAN applications or train bookings. The communication direction remains uni-lateral, going strictly from <strong>government to citizen</strong>. They also host a portal for citizen grievances (link below), in an effort to also tackle<strong> citizen to government </strong>communication. While the portal has some fancy tools like a 4 colour palette to customize the theme of the site; the interface seems outdated and the ‘Guidelines for Redress of Public Grievances’ has not been updated since 2010.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>Communication</strong><br /></td>
<td align="center"><strong>Government to Citizen</strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>Citizen to government<br /></strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>Portal</strong><br /></td>
<td align="center">Aadhar Kiosk<br /></td>
<td align="center">Portal for Public Grievances<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>Link</strong></td>
<td align="center">http://resident.uidai.net.in/</td>
<td align="center">http://pgportal.gov.in/</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>Interface</strong></td>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/AdhaarKiosk2.jpg/image_preview" alt="ak2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="ak2" /></td>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/PublicGrievances2.jpg/image_preview" alt="pg2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="pg2" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">At this point, I should probably add much needed disclaimers: my online search might not have been exhaustive enough. There might be other e-governance services (hosted by the government for citizens) I did not cover in my quick google run, or as a foreigner I might be unaware of the right places to look. Having said that, I have been trying to use my newbie experience throughout these posts, to explore the digital immigrant from a different angle. The digital immigrant is not only who was born before the 1990s, but also includes those of us who are technologically challenged and for whom the more complex sites are still wild, undiscovered territories. If these information structures are not accessible enough for someone who intentionally scouted for them for about an hour, it will not be for the user who does not have the time to spare and needs a more reliable and resilient bridge to connect with the government. This problem is at the core of civic participation and as a result, change actors are devising new modes to interfere, facilitate and engage with government information.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Information and Urban Governance<br /></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="discreet" dir="ltr">(This section will be revised)</p>
<p align="center" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The question on information management is key in the analysis of citizen action in emerging information societies. This project acknowledged from its inception that the information flow of networks is changing and shaping the dynamics of state-citizen-market relationships (Shah, 2014). I will refer to Yochai
Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, to revisit the information economy, as it has been a recurrent reference in my analyses throughout the project, and it will be a useful benchmark to cross-reference findings in the future. On this opportunity, I would like to highlight his views on the role of information flow in democratic societies:</p>
<div align="center">
<blockquote>
<h3 align="center" style="text-align: center;">“The basic claim is that the diversity of ways of organizing information production and use, opens a range of possibilities for pursuing the core political values of liberal societies-individual freedom, a more genuinely participatory political system, a critical culture, and social
justice” Benkler, 2006<br /></h3>
</blockquote>
<p align="left">Enabling
a smoother and more transparent information flow, according to his work,
has the following effects on citizen’s participation:</p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>1. Autonomy:
</strong>Access to information enables citizens to perceive a wider range of
possibilities and options against which they can gauge their choices.
This is particularly important when the citizen participates in
decision-making processes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>2. Democracy</strong>: The
emergence of an information economy, creates information structures
that are not only an alternative to mass media, as Benkler states, but I
would like to add are also alternative to government-run e-governance platforms that cannot fully cater to citizens' need
for participation and debate. Creating an accessible and participatory
information structure also creates a space
that fosters public discussion, and hence, the expression of our
political nature. (Visit <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2">Storytelling as Performance Part 2</a> for a larger exploration of the political in the public space)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>3. Human justice</strong>: The
freedom to access basic resources and services, allows us to fulfil
our capabilities in society, including producing our own information, as
well as improving our well-being by accessing information about health,
education, public infrastructure, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">These three characteristics can be very well tied up with the three objectives of e-governance outlined above: wider information delivery, citizen participation and government accountability. Citizens aspire to access information that
enables them to make good choices and participate in conversations that
affect their livelihoods. For this reason, we find a
common goal among the change actors (interviewed in the series), is
devising new modes to engage with government-related information that complement or replace government-owned platforms.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Civil Society' and E-governance<br /></h2>
<p align="center" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">One
of the best known examples of these initiatives have been spearheaded by the Bangalore-based NGO: <strong><a href="http://www.janaagraha.org/">Janaagraha</a></strong>. the Centre for
Citizenship and Democracy.</p>
<div align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Logohorizontal.png/image_preview" alt="logo h" class="image-inline image-inline" title="logo h" /></div>
<p align="center">Image courtesy of Duke University website</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The organization works to improve the quality
of life in Indian cities and towns, by improving the information around infrastructure and services; and citizenship. We
interviewed Joylita Saldanha, who works for the NGO’s leadership team to
learn more about Janaagraha’s views on the role of information for
urban governance, based on the experience of platforms such as <a href="http://ichangemycity.com/">I change my city</a>. Her perspective c
aught me off guard, as she framed the problem in urban governance from a
somewhat unconventional angle:</p>
<blockquote style="float: right;">
<h3 align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Joylita.jpg/image_preview" style="float: right;" title="Joylita" height="170" width="138" alt="Joylita" class="image-center image-inline" /><strong>Joylita Saldanha</strong></h3>
<div align="center"><strong>Janaagraha's Leadership Team</strong></div>
<br />
<ul><li>Experience conceptualizing and<br /> building Mobile and Web products in Los Angeles and Bangalore<br /></li></ul>
<ul><li>Believes technology is a great lever and enabler.</li><li>Sees potential in technology to drive community action at the ground level</li></ul>
</blockquote>
<p align="justify">Whenever we talk about social change, participation and democracy, we root for the discourse that works to empower the citizen. Janaagraha finds this assumption incomplete. Saldanha suggests it is our role to find <strong>new ways to empower <em>the government </em>and help <em>them </em>do their job:<em> "</em></strong><em>One citizen cannot be always an agent of change so we need communities coming together [...] We want to look at how to get citizens involved, because we can’t keep blaming the government if we don’t participate. We need to help them do what they do".</em></p>
<p align="justify">Read this short interview to get a glimpse of the information structures Janaagraha is building to empower the government.</p>
<h2 align="justify">Interview:<br /></h2>
<p>In order to gauge the extent to which Janaagraha is empowering and enabling the government to make information accessible for the public, we will look at how their <em>online</em> platforms are improving e-governance, based on the three characteristics outlined in the <strong>UNESCO </strong>definition and the three characteristics of effective information economies outlined by Benkler.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy2_of_copy_of_egovernance2.jpg/image_preview" alt="e-gov" class="image-inline image-inline" title="e-gov" /></p>
<h3><strong><span id="docs-internal-guid-f0a0d708-b685-3928-7ef6-460803e1d0da">Stage 1: Improving information delivery</span></strong></h3>
<p class="callout"><strong>How does I change my city tackle this information crisis?
</strong></p>
<p><strong>JS:</strong> Janaagraha wants to improve the quality of life in two ways:</p>
<ul><li>
Improving the quality of infrastructure. <br /></li><li>Improving the quality of citizenship and citizen engagement. <br /><br /></li></ul>
<p>We look at I change my city as something that enables citizens and governments to be more transparent for each other. Janaagraha can’t be everywhere, but technology crosscuts all the programs to allow us to roll it out to other cities.</p>
<p class="callout"><strong> How does Janaagraha know what information people need?
</strong></p>
<p><strong>JS:</strong>We have a<strong> Net Plus Roots</strong> approach:</p>
<table class="plain" align="center">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Stage<br /></th>
<th align="center">Roots: Information transactions at the grassroots level<br /></th>
<th align="center">Net: Information transactions through technology<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Process<br /></td>
<td>
Reach out to communities and engage with them
<ul><li>Community outreach and advocacy teams contacts the government </li><li>Get the government and the citizen connected</li><li>Send out citizen reports to government<br /></li><li>Follow up with the government to get responses</li><li>Share responses with the citizens<br /></li></ul>
</td>
<td>We take all learnings from the grassroots and apply them to technology.<br />
<ul><li>The design/product team in place does customer
research.</li><li>Look at google keywords and try to understand what people are searching for <br /></li><li>Disseminate that content with citizens </li></ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> Example</td>
<td><strong>Crisis:</strong> Low voting turn out.<br /><strong>Roots intervention:<br /></strong>Look at where people go to enroll for voting and how we can clean up the electoral role at the grassroots level.<br /><strong>Net intervention:<br /></strong><a href="http://www.jaagteraho.net/">Jaagte Raho</a>: A portal People can register online to vote.<br /><br /><br /></td>
<td><strong>Crisis: </strong><span id="docs-internal-guid-f0a0d708-b69c-4271-222a-07b477f84d1b">How
to get a driving license in Bangalore.<br /><strong>Roots intervention: <br /></strong>People were not getting them
because they don’t know the correct process or what to do. They don’t
know the hows or the whys. <br />N<strong>et intervention<br /></strong>We created a section called How To and put
the process of<br />a) How to get a driving license<br />b) why do you go and get
a driving license<br />c) what are the documents you need to carry.</span><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Right now we are
playing the role of facilitator, but eventually we don’t want to be
those facilitators. We want these platforms to be bridges between the
citizen and the government.</p>
<p class="callout"><strong>My only problem with this is that an information structure based and reliant on digital technologies will only allow the interests of the middle class to permeate the system. How will information from other groups feed into the structure?</strong></p>
<p align="justify"><strong>JS:</strong> We definitely want to enable access for everyone, but we don’t want a duplication of efforts. If the road is broken; even if one person complains and gets that pothole fixed then the road will be good for everyone to use. At the end of the day what we want people is to participate. From then we can take it to the next level and ask: ok what are we really missing in terms of planning? where are we missing participatory budgeting? where can we involve everybody: not only the urban but everybody. That’s what it takes it to the next level.</p>
<h3>Stage 2: Encouraging citizen participation in decision-making processes</h3>
<p class="callout"><strong>How does access to information improve urban governance?
</strong></p>
<strong>JS: </strong>A very basic important aspect of where you live is to find which is your ward who is your electoral representative and what does he do. People don’t even know which ward they are living in, which is their assembly constituency, etc. Engaging with the electoral representative, then engaging with civic agencies. These are things you need to have in place before we start looking beyond this.
<strong><br /><br /></strong>
<p class="callout"><strong> And you are facilitating this information?</strong></p>
<strong>JS: </strong>Yes, we are trying to map out services in the neighborhood and give more information about this. We have Municipal Commissions in Bangalore, and most people don’t know where these agencies are located, so our survey team went out found the offices and mapped them.
<p> </p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/map2.jpg/image_preview" title="map 2" height="270" width="400" alt="map 2" class="image-inline image-inline" /> </p>
<p>We use maps a lot because we make a lot of emphasis in spatial data. We want people to participate: tell us where their the park or playground is, locate it and then we take this information and find out: what is the budget allocated for this park, when was the last clean up, what is the future of this park, etc. At the same time, we want the citizen to tell us about its state and their wish-lists for this park.</p>
<p class="callout"><strong>You mention spatial data. What is the best way to use it? and who should manage it?</strong></p>
<p align="justify">One thing we see when we interact with civic agencies or electoral, is that most of them don’t have a grasp of the analytics to understand what is the ground level situation, and that is where we come in. We have an information structure in place and we make data accessible. This helps representatives understand what are the patterns: a) what are the trends, b) where are their successes, c) where are their failures. Data needs to play a major role in how we take our decisions. It cannot be intuitively thought out.</p>
<h3>Stage 3: Making governments accountable and transparent</h3>
<p class="callout"><strong>How can these resources make the government more accountable?</strong></p>
<p align="justify">We need more [information] systems in place to identify what is accessible in terms of services and infrastructures. First step is making things transparent; and making elected representatives, civic agencies, citizens -all these people accountable. We believe that accountability and participation goes hand in hand. You need to participate in order to make it accountable. The process of engagement is empowering for the citizen once they realize they can bring about change."</p>
<p align="justify">It takes time to get things done; change happens very slowly. And we can’t keep blaming the government if we don’t participate. We don’t lend them a hand, and let’s be honest, we probably don’t have the resources. So, how do we enable the government? How do we empower them? That’s something Janaagraha works for: helping the government do what they need to do.</p>
<p>***********</p>
<p>The next interview will feature Surabhi HR from <a href="http://politicalquotient.in/">Political Quotient</a>, an organization working to redefine how youth engage with politics in the digital era. We will refer back to the characteristics about information economies and e-governance outlined on this post and use Janaagraha's experience as a backdrop, to explore the work PQ is doing: organizing spatial data, improving information structures for the government and bridging communication between citizens and their elected representatives.</p>
<p><strong>Sources:</strong></p>
<p>Benkler, Yochai. <em>The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom</em>. Yale University Press, 2006.</p>
<p><span class="reference-text"><span class="citation journal">Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.</span></span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-structures-janaagraha'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-structures-janaagraha</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseResearchers at WorkNet CulturesMaking ChangeResearch2015-10-24T14:28:47ZBlog EntryDigital Design: Human Behavior vs. Technology - Vita Beans
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology
<b>What comes first? Understanding human behavior and communication patterns to design digital technologies? Or should our technologies have the innate capacity to adapt to the profiles of all its potential users? This post will look at accessibility challenges for digital immigrants and the importance of behavioral science for the design of digital technologies. We interview Amruth Bagali Ravindranath from Vita Beans. </b>
<pre><strong>CHANGE-MAKER:</strong> Amruth B R
<strong>
PRODUCT</strong>:
Vita Beans and Guru G
<strong><strong>
METHOD OF CHANGE</strong>:
</strong>Borrow elements from behavioral science and social marketing to make technology more intuitive.
<strong>
STRATEGY OF CHANGE:
</strong>Make technology easy to use, fun and effective.</pre>
<div align="center"><embed align="middle" width="400" height="200" src="http://chirptoons.vitabeans.com/chirplet.swf?chirpfile=60" quality="high" name="chirptoons" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" base="http://chirptoons.vitabeans.com/" wmode="transparent"></embed></div>
<div align="center"><strong>Chirptoons: </strong>Create Cartoons in a Jiffy. Designed by <a href="http://www.vitabeans.com/">Vita Beans</a><br />(The animation seems to be skipping a few lines. Check box below for a transcript)<br />Design your own here: <a href="http://chirptoons.vitabeans.com/createchirplet.php">http://bit.ly/1dOEpPo</a>
<br /><br /></div>
<blockquote style="float: right;">
<div align="center"><strong>Transcript of animation:</strong></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Ajoy</strong>: Hi!<br /><strong>Usha</strong>: Hi! What will we talk about today?<br /><strong>Ajoy:</strong> We will learn to design digital stories!<br class="kix-line-break" /><strong>Usha:</strong> What do you mean by digital stories?<br /><strong>Ajoy: </strong>What we are doing right now!.<br /> Telling a story through a digital medium.<br /><strong>Usha: </strong>Oh! But what is so complicated about that?<br />You write a story and then you post it online What’s<br />the big deal?<br /><strong>Ajoy:</strong> This is true. But you want everyone to access <br />your story right?<br /><strong>Usha:</strong> Yes! Of course!<br /><strong>Ajoy:</strong> Then you need to think about your audience! <br />Are you sure they all know how to use this technology?<br class="kix-line-break" /><strong>Usha:</strong> Well...no, not really.<br /><strong>Ajoy:</strong> Do you know what makes it challenging for them? <br />Or how to adapt technology to make it easier?<br /><strong>Usha:</strong> Eh, no...no clue :(<br /><strong>Ajoy: </strong>Then read on.Today we will take a step back.<br />We must think about human behaviour first!<br class="kix-line-break" />and then design our technology accordingly.<br /><strong>Usha: </strong>Sounds good! Let's do it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p align="justify">First off, apologies for such a feeble and sad animation. When I was given access to Chirptoons, I was quite confident I would be able to produce a somewhat interesting introduction to this post and get you excited about our next interview. However, between first-time user friction and a couple of glitches in the program, I found myself -a semi-savvy digital native who has been using technology, almost every day of her life, for the last 15 years- struggling to create the cartoon and clearly failing at it. The biggest challenge was translating what I had in mind into a digital format (The demo was very straightforward. I was just particularly inept), and it was frustrating to the point I decided to drop it, leave it as is, publish my unfinished cartoon and turn this post into a reflection on 'design challenges behind digital storytelling', so I could move on with my life.</p>
<p align="justify">What I experienced with Chirptoons is what many users: both digital natives and immigrants constantly face due to the pace at which new digital technologies are emerging. While the privileged demographic who has physical access to technology has a decent knowledge of basic web browsing and document processing features, there is still a very large gap in accessibility in terms of how to navigate more complex formats. At the end of the day, producers retain the creative power and determine the functions and flexibility of the technologies we use in the day to day. Just think of Facebook and its constant interface updates. We have all felt the wrenching need for that 'dislike' button to make our interactions a tad more honest, yet we have no power to create it or change Facebook's format to one that enables our needs better.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">So far, we have explored information from different angles: as activism, as visual design, as stories; and how digital technologies have been used strategically to disseminate it. However, our analysis is lacking a better understanding of the <em>digital</em>. We have been focusing on citizens as technology 'consumers', and we have not looked at whether digital infrastructures are accessible enough for users to become 'producers'. The question is<em>: how</em> do we do this: how do we engage different users with different digital literacy levels, skills and aptitudes in the production of digital content? With this post we bring a new topic into our series: accessibility and Information infrastructures. This one will focus on design and the role of behavioural science. Our interview with Amruth Bagali Ravindranath, brought a very unique perspective into the conversation, from
which I would like to highlight three points:</p>
<p align="justify">a) The importance of <strong>behavioral science</strong> for
design. Amruth stressed why we need a thorough understanding of
behavioral and cognitive science in the design of digital technologies
and how crucial it is to investigate the decision processes and
communication strategies of humans to make technologies user-friendly
and context appropriate.</p>
<p align="justify">b) How<strong> public relations and social marketing</strong>
concepts can also provide insight on how to target and engage potential
users more effectively. This point starts to answer some of the
questions we raised on the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/tactical-technology-design-activism-1">Information Design post</a>: thinking about the citizen as a consumer. This point also works as
an alternative take on how to target civic engagement through
technology.</p>
c) How to engage<strong> different type of users: </strong>not
only the digital native, but also digital immigrants<a style="text-align: justify;" href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a>
<p> who
still play crucial roles as information gatekeepers in fields such as
education or urban governance.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2 align="justify">Vita Beans<br /></h2>
<h3></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We interviewed <strong>Amruth Bagali Ravindranath</strong>,<strong> </strong>Founder of <a href="http://www.vitabeans.com/">Vita Beans</a> to answer some of these questions. Vita Beans’ mandate is to create inspiring, easy-to-use applications in areas of education and human resources, to share knowledge in innovative, fun an effective ways.
The logic behind their technological framework is trying to mimic the profile of the human brain linked to decision making -including economic, evolutionary, emotional, and psychological elements- and design their applications based on these patterns. Some of the products they offer are cognitive skill development applications, game based learning applications, educational technology research, among others, and their latest educational product: <strong>Guru G</strong> was chosen by the <a href="http://unreasonableatsea.com/overview/">Unreasonable at Sea</a> program (by Unreasonable institute & co-founder of Stanford d.school) as one of the <a href="http://unreasonableatsea.com/companies22/">11 companies changing the world</a>.</p>
<div align="right" style="text-align: left;" class="pullquote" dir="ltr"><strong>"We are trying to adapt to how the user wants to use something, rather than expecting the user to learn. This is essential in the education space to make things work".</strong></div>
<p align="justify"><a href="http://unreasonableatsea.com/vita-beans/">Guru G</a> is a "gamified teaching, teacher training & open certification platform", that aims to democratize access to technology for quality teachers. Rather than focusing on the student as most education technologies do, Guru G believes that teachers are the most important element of the education system. Enabling teachers, means quality education will reach the lives of hundreds of students during their professional life time, and with this in mind, Vita Beans designed a platform that is engaging, easy to use and intuitive, designed specifically with teachers, schools and governments in mind.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/65920949" frameborder="0" height="281" width="500"></iframe></div>
<p align="center"><a href="http://vimeo.com/65920949">Unreasonable Barcelona: Anand Joshi, Guru-G</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/unreasonable">Unreasonable Media</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<h3 align="left">Inspiration <br /></h3>
<div align="right" class="pullquote"><em>"Teachers don't use and don't like to use technology" </em></div>
<p align="justify">The idea came from the products Vita Beans had already developed for the education space, such as their text2animation & text2game prototypes. They had produced over 80 collaborative games teachers were using in the classroom. Students play together in teams and learn about different topics through the process of gaming. However, suddenly they realized teachers had great ideas they didn't know how to translate into a<em> </em>digital form because they did not have the knowledge or the skills to create digital content. This is, according to Amruth, the crisis they are trying to solve in the education space: the quality of teachers, access to good teachers and the difficulty for teachers to adopt new technologies were the biggest challenges.<em> "</em></p>
<h3 align="left">The design challenge<br /></h3>
<p align="justify">Their initial prototypes were designed with assumptions based on their gamification experiments with students. <em>"We miserably failed with teachers and we discovered what a good gamification system for teachers looks like by prototyping with teachers and looking at the small things. It was an interesting learning experience." </em> They identified two common reasons why they hesitated to adopt anything new in the classroom.</p>
<ul><li>Teachers don't want to feel like they can't use something a student can.</li><li>Teachers can't visualize themselves using that tool, this there is an element of uncertainty and lack of confidence. </li></ul>
<p align="justify">It was imperative for Vita Beans to switch focus:<em> "Any tool you design, you expect to train the user to understand your tool, and if they refuse to do that; you blame them." </em>They used their behavioural science background to come up with infrastructural solutions that solve the limitations from the outset. </p>
<h3>The solutions</h3>
<p align="justify">They started prototyping with <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing">natural language processing</a></strong> for their text2animation & text2game projects. NLP is a branch of computer science concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages. Teachers articulated their ideas in simple English and the program used NLP to take what they said, try to understand what they were trying to visualize and convert into programming language to build an animated movie out of it (like what we used to open this article -but with hopefully better results). Amruth was very confident about the potential of this prototype and shared with us that UNICEF might take it up and implement it as an open source animated video and game creation tool in Africa.</p>
They also developed an <strong>adaptive navigation engine</strong> for one of their game based learning platforms; a tool that adapts to what you are trying to do: <em>"There is no fixed way to navigate from one task to another. It tries to learn the closest action that each teacher is trying to do and it executes that. It tries to learn how the teacher wants to use it."' </em>This was a success. They incorporated touch screens to make the product more intuitive and the teachers picked it up quickly.<em> </em>
<p>Amruth claims they are the first in the world to develop a gamification platform specifically for teachers and the reason was their solution to the navigation issue. This experience also indirectly helped in designing Guru-G.</p>
<p> </p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bf_rwl6JTMc" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: center;">"Amruth Bagali Ravindranath talks about text2animation & text2game prototypes"<br />Amruth B R, at TedxMcGill. Courtesy of YouTube</p>
<p align="justify">These design solutions and the learnings from each project inspired the team to come up with products which have been adopted commercially across 10 states in India, reached 4000+ schools & over 3 million kids internationally through partners in India & North America. They have helped education companies build their primary and secondary school education products, (including one of India's top classroom technologies), have been covered by the media and won several entrepreneurship awards. More information <a href="http://unreasonableatsea.com/vita-beans/">here</a> and on <a href="http://www.guru-g.com/">their website.</a> Our question is: what is it about behavioral science that helped Amruth's team arrive to this epiphany in tech design? </p>
<h2 align="justify">Behavioral Science and Social Marketing<br /></h2>
<p align="justify">Comparing marketing to advocacy is bound to be met by resistance and perhaps controversy. I raised this question when we interviewed Maya Ganesh for the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/tactical-technology-design-activism-1">Information Design post</a>, and stated the following in our conclusion: "<em>Our consumption habits in the market are shaping how we process and interact with information in the public space. The possibility of
'consumer behavior' permeating modalities of activism, reinforces the need
to explore more interesting strategies for information
dissemination</em>." Now that we are starting to look closely at the infrastructure supporting information, I will stubbornly return to the same question: to what extent should we borrow tactics for advocacy from marketing? and add: how much of it should permeate the design of digital technologies?</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Amruth made a casual reference during our interview that triggered this thought. We were discussing the importance of understanding behavior patterns, when he brought up <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays">Edward Bernays</a>. </strong>This man used psychoanalysis, psychology and social science to design public
persuasion campaigns and could get masses to choose what he wanted them to without them realizing it. While this sounds awfully dangerous and manipulative, I would like to rescue the idea of understanding human behavior well enough to design technology around it and I will entertain this thought in the context of
social change -please, don't judge.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Pillip Kotler, S. C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, wrote a paper bringing marketing and social change together: <em>“Can social
causes be advanced more successfully through applying principles,
concepts and techniques of marketing?”. </em>He defines marketing as:</p>
<blockquote>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">"a sophisticated technology, that draws heavily on behavioral science for clues to solve communication and persuasion related to influencing accessibility. [...] Most of the effort is spent on discovering the wants of a target audience and creating goods and services to satisfy them" (Kotler, 1971)</h3>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<p align="justify">This definition is a useful bridge to link marketing with accessibility of digital technologies. G.D. Wiebe wrote an influential paper on social marketing, that coined the question: "<em>Why can't you sell brotherhood and rational thinking like you can sell soap?</em>", that later influenced public information campaigns by USAID, the WHO, and the World Bank <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#fn1" name="fr1">[2]</a> . While he recognized how these models can to an extent <em>commodify </em>human behavior and social principles, he stressed that knowledge of behavioral science is a useful framework for product planning, that must be given a socially useful implementation. He developed the following criteria of considerations:</p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th align="center">Criteria<br /></th>
<th align="center">Description<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td> <strong>Force</strong></td>
<td>The intensity of the person's motivation toward the goal -a combination of his predisposition prior to the message and the stimulation of the message<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Direction</strong></td>
<td>Knowledge of how or where the person might go to consummate his motivation.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Mechanism</strong></td>
<td>The existence of an agency that enables the person to translate his motivation into action.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Adequacy</strong></td>
<td>The ability and effectiveness of the agency in performing its task.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Distance</strong></td>
<td>Estimate of the energy and cost required (by the user) to consummate the motivation in relation to the reward<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">Considering this framework is part of recognizing how knowledge circulating market networks affects our behavior. Nishant Shah addressed two ideas along these lines in the thought piece. First, he suggests us to recognize the negotiations that take place in the state-citizen-market ecosystem, and how they affect our rights, demands and responsibilities in society. Second, how this leads to a different understanding of the citizen as an "embodiment of these state-market negotiations". Keeping consumer behavior, and the forces shaping, enabling and constraining it in mind, is an interesting framework when we think of ourselves as information consumers -and as Yochai Benkler posits in The Wealth of Networks- in an ongoing transition to information producers. This also depends on how we think of information. We usually define content as information, but the structure and infrastructure are also pieces of 'information' we continuously shape through our interaction with technology. Hence, when we talk about making information accessible, we are also talking about producing legible and intelligible infrastructures. </p>
<h3>Linking it back to digital technology</h3>
<p align="justify">I am aware that the relationship we are trying to draw seems little far-fetched, but Amruth and the Vita Bean's team experience shows this behavioral-science approach, not only has a lot of potential, but is seldom explored in the education technology market. He told us about his success story with a <strong>behavior simulation engine.</strong> They used neuroscience as a base to build computer based activities and games to predict the behavior of its users on specific situations. They had an accuracy of 86%, which according to Amruth, is larger than every known psychological framework, and according to their <a href="http://www.vitabeans.com/case-studies.php">testimonial</a>, above most behavioral tests in the market (which only yield 20-40% of accuracy). Amruth said: <em>"That
was the first behavior research connection that brought us into the
start-up space. Exploring games, exploring human behavior."</em></p>
<blockquote style="float: left;">
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>Design challenges in<br /></strong><strong><strong>mobile applications**</strong></strong></div>
<li>Make it noticeable </li><li>Make it useless if not shared </li><li>Manufacture peer pressure</li><li>Easy to personalize </li><li>Must evolve constantly </li>(static stories die)</blockquote>
<p align="justify">We can also link these ideas back to storytelling. Amruth and I discussed what is the best way to use technology to engage users with digital stories. He made a good point at pairing up both processes:<em> "What makes a storytelling session effective is how you contextualize a story for the person you are sitting with. As kids we are used to a one way process. As adults, stories are more interactive, so you may bring a new dimension, and the story might go in a very different direction. The technology must enable and reflect that." </em>Compelling narratives must motivate the audience to interact with the stories, and digital devices must perform the same function. The infrastructure and interface of technologies must be intuitive, familiar and persuasive enough to sway users into interacting with it. </p>
<p align="justify">A way to do this is by pairing up technologies with the criterion above. In terms of functionality: provide them with a <strong>mechanism</strong> that translates the users ideas into action, that is <strong>efficient</strong> at enabling them, and that reduces the '<strong>distance </strong>(the<strong> </strong>cost or amount of energy needed) to perform a task -as has been accomplished with Guru G in India. As for the <strong>force </strong>and<strong> direction</strong> of motivation, Amruth brought up some design challenges when discussing adoption of mobile applications [**"<em>by analysing what increases the probability of a solution / campaign
growing organically by word of mouth, going viral, and specifically what make something fashionable</em>". See box on the left]. These challenges may vary from one application to the other but, at the end of day, the analysis and conceptualization of the product must be persuasive and empathetic with its users.</p>
<h3>Making Change</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">To close our interview, Amruth and I talked about what it means to 'make change' through digital design. He believes 'making change' is composed of three elements:</p>
<ul><li><strong>Empathy: </strong>Your attempt to make change will depend on the amount of empathy you feel towards the people you are trying to create change for.<em> "We spend time interacting with teachers, classrooms, just to get an idea of how the teacher thinks, empathize with prospective users".</em></li><li><strong>Imagination:</strong> How you translate this empathy into solutions. <em>"Imagination helps you think of as many solutions as you can to solve the design and adoption challenges"</em></li><li><strong>Action: </strong>The most challenging stage according to Amruth: <em>"If your technology is too hard to use, you will lose audience. If it's not impactful enough, it is trivialized. How do you reach a balance in making it effortless and yet, impactful?"</em></li></ul>
<p align="justify"><br />This post took a step back in our analysis of citizen action, to uncover a less visible space where change is also taking place: the intersection of the user with the machine. We seldom look at the relationship: producer-machine-consumer (and its multiple combinations) and how our behavior is being reconfigured by new digital technologies (in this project). The pace at which we need to upgrade our own operation systems, requires a degree of digital literacy that is not being facilitated by the state, the market or even civil society. Vita Beans, is one of the few examples of market actors working towards cutting the middle-man between users and digital technologies. If widely adopted, this model has the potential of re-organizing the state-citizen-market dynamic: from how citizens interact with the technology market to how new ways of producing and using technology might shape citizens' negotiation with the state.</p>
<div>This was also a set of explorations. It is a fairly new area in our research that will lead to more conversations with people who understand technology as an infrastructure and as material, as opposed to us- who often understand it as a practice, a space or an actor. Our goal is to bring content and infrastructure closer together, and make a stronger emphasis on inter-disciplinarity and multi-stakeholderism as a strategy to leverage change.
<div>
<div> </div>
<h2><strong>Footnotes:</strong></h2>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">[</span><a style="text-align: justify;" href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#fr1" name="fn1">1</a><span style="text-align: justify;">] Refer to Marc Prensky's Digital Native, Digital Immigrant, for more on the limitations of digital immigrants in the education space; "</span>It‟s very serious, because the single biggest problem facing <span style="text-align: justify;">education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated </span><span style="text-align: justify;">language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks </span><span style="text-align: justify;">an entirely new language". Access it here: </span><a href="http://bit.ly/IMBu0j">http://bit.ly/IMBu0j</a> <br /><br />The CIS book : Digital Alternatives with a Cause, is also an interesting and comprehensive read of what comprises a digital native or digital immigrant today: <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook">http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook</a><br /><br /><span style="text-align: justify;">[</span><a style="text-align: justify;" href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#fr1" name="fn1">2</a><span style="text-align: justify;">] </span>The World Bank makes reference to G.D. Wiebe's thinking on their blog: <a href="http://bit.ly/1jNZVZA">http://bit.ly/1jNZVZA</a>. Also refer to: Baker, Michael (2012). The Marketing Book. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. p. 696 and <span class="mw-cite-backlink"><span class="reference-text"><span class="citation book">Lefebvre, R. Craig. Social Marketing and Social Change: Strategies and Tools to Improve Health, Well-Being and the Environment\year=2013. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p. 4. for examples of these interventions. Finally, the Wikipedia page on Social Marketing explains the role of G.D. Wiebe in the field: <a href="http://bit.ly/1lw4jPV">http://bit.ly/1lw4jPV</a></span></span></span></p>
<h2><strong>Sources:</strong></h2>
<div id="gs_cit1" class="gs_citr">Kotler, P., & Zaltman, G. (1971). Social marketing: an approach to planned social change. Journal of marketing, 35(3).</div>
<p><span class="reference-text"><span class="citation journal"><br />Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.</span></span></p>
<p><span class="reference-text"><span class="citation journal">Wiebe, G.D. (1951-1952). "Merchandising Commodities and Citizenship on Television". Public Opinion Quarterly <strong>15</strong> (Winter): 679.</span></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseMaking ChangeNet CulturesResearchFeaturedResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:29:23ZBlog EntryStorytelling as Performance: The Ugly Indian and Blank Noise 2
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2
<b>This post compares the method of storytelling with performances. To illustrate this, we explore the narratives of the Blank Noise project and The Ugly Indian, two civic groups from Bangalore making interventions in the public space. Part 2 looks at the role of actors and the stage in performances to explore the role of agency and the public space in storytelling. </b>
<p align="justify">This is part 2 of our analysis of <a href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/">Blank Noise</a> and <a href="http://www.theuglyindian.com/">The Ugly Indian</a>, two civic groups thriving in Bangalore by making a strategic use of storytelling to intervene in the public space. In the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance">previous post</a>, we explored the mediums and narratives used by these organizations to craft an identity for themselves. This one will look at the impact of this identity on the agency and actions of their volunteers. We will also draw some final conclusions relating the analysis back to the Making Change project.</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>How to navigate this post:</strong></p>
<p align="justify"><strong> </strong></p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Section</th>
<th>Performance<br /></th>
<th>Storytelling<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance#pre-production">Pre-production</a></td>
<td>Preparing all elements involved in a performance including locations, props, costumes, special effects and visual effects.<br /></td>
<td>Preparing all elements needed to convey the message of the story including: spoken word, text, images, audio, video or other artifacts.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance#screenplay">Screenplay</a></td>
<td>A written work narrating the movements, actions, expressions and dialogues of the characters. <br /></td>
<td>Building a narrative in storytelling<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#cast">Actors</a><br /></td>
<td>Actors performing characters in a production.<br /></td>
<td>The relationship between storytelling actors and agency<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#stage">Stage</a><br /></td>
<td>Designated space for the performance of productions<br /></td>
<td>The public space as the stage for storytelling<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#action">Action!</a><br /></td>
<td>Cue signifying the start of a performance<br /></td>
<td>When storytelling leads to action<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><strong> <a name="cast"></a> </strong></p>
<p align="center" class="callout" dir="ltr"><strong><strong>3.actor</strong><br /></strong>ˈaktə/<br />1. a person portraying a character in [a dramatic or comic] production<br />2. a participant in an action or process</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p align="justify">The cast of a production learns the script from beginning to end; rehearses the lines and internalizes the characters they have been chosen to represent. In the same way actors sustain the narrative of the production while they are on stage, we too act upon the identities we have chosen for ourselves in our day to day (Giddens, 1991). Oggs & Capps call this:<strong> constructing agentive identities:</strong> <em>“participants assume agentive stances towards present identities, circumstances and futures” (1996; Hull, 2006). Embracing a set of traits and integrating them to the ‘story of the self’ </em>(Gauntlett, 2002; Giddens 1991). This suggests there is a direct relationship between self-identity and agency, that will influence how we conduct ourselves in the public space.</p>
<p align="justify">As seen in the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance#screenplay">last section</a>, The Ugly Indian’s self-ascribed identity frames their speech and action:</p>
<div align="center">
<pre><strong><a href="http://theuglyindian.com/about_us.html">The Ugly Indian
</a></strong>
We are a group of Ugly Indians who feel strongly about the state of visible filth in our cities.
Our<strong> philosophy </strong>can be described simply as: <strong>Kaam chalu mooh bandh. Stop Talking, Start Doing.
</strong>We believe in direct action, with a common-sense problem-solving approach.
We do not finger-point or blame the system. We aim to make a change from within -
one that sustains because everyone wants it and is comfortable with it.</pre>
</div>
<p align="justify">This means the online identity of the organization (on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/theugl.yindian?fref=ts">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGBoRyfR4t4zyCZYWdPjzAw">Youtube</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/theuglyindian">Twitter</a> and their <a href="http://www.theuglyindian.com/">website</a>) must be consistent with the offline actions of volunteers in clean drives and TUI inspired activities.</p>
<p align="justify"><strong> </strong></p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th><strong>Indira Nagar Rising</strong></th>
<th><strong>Koramangala Rising</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=629410000451592&set=pb.123459791046618.-2207520000.1393395243.&type=3&theater"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/CleanDrive2.jpg/image_preview" title="Clean Drive 1" height="252" width="400" alt="null" class="image-inline image-inline" /></a></p>
</td>
<td>
<div align="center"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=649485601777365&set=pb.123459791046618.-2207520000.1393394885.&type=3&src=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-prn1%2Ft31%2F1960858_649485601777365_1050385055_o.jpg&smallsrc=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-prn2%2Ft1%2F1796618_649485601777365_1050385055_n.jpg&size=1496%2C1088"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/CleandriveTUI.jpg/image_preview" title="Clean Drive 2" height="238" width="462" alt="Clean Drive 2" class="image-inline image-inline" /></a></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p align="center"><strong>TUI Clean Drives </strong>(Click to enlarge<strong>)</strong> <br />Photos courtesy of The Ugly Indian Facebook Album.<br /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/theugl.yindian/photos_stream">Visit the rest of the album here.</a></p>
<div id="docs-internal-guid--5cd61e2-6cd7-d431-93a1-f09c2f3c06f6" style="text-align: justify;" class="pullquote" dir="ltr">"[Join us] if you think like us, and want to achieve something meaningful in your immediate surroundings."<br />
<div align="right">The Ugly Indian</div>
</div>
<p align="justify">Given the anonymity of the voices behind the narrative, the ideas and attitudes endorsed by TUI organizers can only remain at the discursive level, and it is TUI volunteers who collectively translate the set of beliefs into action. In other words, volunteers are the agentive extension of the movement, as they use their agency to execute the plan of action designed by the anonymous TUI organizers. The narrative in this case becomes somewhat of a ‘creed’ for responsible civic action, and while most volunteers choose to “stick to the script”, they are not really given the opportunity to explore their own narrative within.</p>
<p align="justify">In the case of Blank Noise, if we take another look at its mandate, it is collaborative by definition.</p>
<div align="center">
<pre><strong>Blank Noise</strong>
Blank Noise is a public and participatory arts collective that seeks to
explore the range of street interactions and recognize 'eve teasing' as
street sexual harassment/ violence.</pre>
</div>
<p align="justify">The processes to translate the Action Hero identity into action are far more open-ended than in the case of TUI. There is further room for volunteers to interpret what being an Action Hero means to them (as an identity), how they will respond to it (as agents), and how do they fit in the larger context of the Action Hero narrative (in the collective). The role of volunteers is to participate in the construction of a new narrative for the public space, defined by how women feel, what they think and do when they navigate it. It is not conclusive, and each intervention is an invitation for further dialogue.</p>
<div align="left">
<div>
<div align="justify" class="pullquote">"Adding agency to the equation gives the actor a purpose and new -revised- conception of the self and aligns its behavior with who he wants to be. "<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[2]</a></div>
<div align="center">
<p align="justify">Blank Noise volunteers take ownership of who they want to be in the public space. Through their testimonials and actions, they do not only draft an identity for themselves, but they create one -or many- for the streets, for women, for men, for sexy, for safety. Stretching out our 'performance' analogy even further, their type of action is what we would deem improvisational theatre: the improvisation and intuition of BN volunteers takes over the dialogue, action and characters, as these are<em> “created collaboratively by the players as [the play] unfolds in present time”</em><a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><a name="stage"></a></p>
<p align="center" class="callout" dir="ltr"><strong>4. stage</strong><br />steɪdʒ/<br />a raised floor or platform, typically in a theatre, on which actors, entertainers, or speakers perform.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Finally, the stage. This is the space where actors display these learned identities in front of (or with) members of the audience. While stories are not necessarily presented on a conventional ‘raised floor or platform’, stories are meant to permeate "the stage" of the 'public space'. In spite of what Sartaj Anand told us in his <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-sartaj-anand">interview</a>:<em> “stories as increasingly personal and local”,</em> in order for them to trigger imagination and public discussion they must also be public and visible. Hannah Arendt posits in<em> Essays for Understanding</em>, that the task of storytelling is to extend the meaning of the actions, symbols and allegories into the public, making them visible to broader audiences and initiating a process of critical thinking among them (Jackson, 2002; Oni, 2012; Arendt, 1994). Hence, the role of storytelling in the public space has two functions:</p>
<p align="justify">a) <strong>Visibility</strong>:</p>
<p align="justify">Enhanced visibility is an extremely powerful asset. Narratives produced by activist-oriented storytellers do not only reflect greater autonomy of production, but also enjoy a wider rate of consumption<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[3]</a> (Vivienne, 2011). From a tech-optimist perspective, multimedia representations of these stories further this visibility, making it also accessible to broader online audiences.</p>
<p align="justify">The Ugly Indian in particular thrives on visibility, due to its beautification mission. Its highly visible presence online is used to ratify the work they are doing to erradicate "visible" filth:</p>
<blockquote>
<p align="left">"X was a big fan of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory">Broken Windows Theory</a> – which suggested that<span class="visualHighlight"> if a street looked ugly or neglected, it attracted more anti-social behaviour, while a well-maintained and beautiful street discouraged vandalism and often earned respect from passers-by.</span> [...] Could the ugly Indian’s civic behaviour be a function of the environment and the signals it gives him? If so, could changing the environment change behaviour?" <a href="http://theuglyindian.com/books/chapter-7-nudge/">Chapter 7 - Nudge</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p align="justify"><br /> In the case of Blank Noise, they use online visibility to re-introduce the testimonials collected through their interventions and installations, back into the public space.</p>
<div align="center">
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="justify"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Reportingtoremember.png/image_preview" title="Reporting to remember" height="253" width="179" alt="Reporting to remember" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
</td>
<td>
<div><a href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/2009/02/reporting-to-remember_10.html">Reporting to Remember</a> (2009)<br /><br />Triggered by the Mangalore pub attack, the report wants to compile a list of incidents involving attacks on/threats to women under the pretext of culture, tradition and religion.<br /><br /></div>
<ol>
<li><strong>By who: </strong></li></ol>
<ul>
<li>Political parties</li>
<li>Religious groups</li>
<li>Individuals</li></ul>
<br />2. <strong>Nature of attack:</strong>
<ul>
<li> who they attacked</li>
<li>why they attacked</li>
<li>You can also send articles/links explaining that.</li></ul>
<br />3<strong>. When</strong>: Date<br /><br />4. <strong>Location:</strong> Region.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/MakeaSign.jpeg/image_preview" title="Make a Sign" height="158" width="176" alt="Make a Sign" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td><a href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/2009/04/make-sign.html">Make a Sign</a> (2009)<br />Volunteers were welcome to say anything they wanted.<br /><br />What Blank Noise wants to say:<br />We are talking of safer cities not feared cities<br />We are talking of independent women, not paranoid women.<br />We are talking about collective responsibility- don't tell me to be even more 'cautious'.<br />We are talking about eve teasing as street sexual harassment and street sexual violence.<br />We are talking about autonomous women, not just mothers daughters and sisters amidst fathers brothers and sons.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Vocabulary.jpg/image_preview" title="Vocabulary" height="183" width="176" alt="Vocabulary" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td><a href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/2007/08/tales-of-love-and-lust-coming-soon.html#links">Tales of Love and Lust</a><br /><br />The vocabulary project, stems from a need to build a dictionary of 'eve teasing', Blank Noise asked participants to email in to comments and remarks they had heard addressed to them on the street. BN compiled them into an 'eve teasing' vocabulary. <br /><br />The vocabulary was represented in the form of charts, school-style, simple lettering and graphics, in an attempt to desexualise and remove obscene reference from the terms that are used leerily at us on the streets.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">Find the full list of interventions, campaigns and tactics <a href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/2007/09/interventions-and-techniques.html">here</a>.</p>
</div>
<p align="justify">b)<strong> Political:</strong></p>
<div align="justify" class="pullquote"><em>"</em>[Politics is] the space of appearance that comes into being whenever men are together in the manner of speech and action, predating and preceding all formal constitutions of the public realm”<em> <br /></em>
<div align="right">Hannah Arendt (1989) <a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[4]</a></div>
</div>
<p align="justify">This visibility also re-conceptualizes how we do politics by creating <strong>political spaces.</strong><a name="fr1" href="#fn1"> </a>Setting up a ground for public discussion creates the opportunity to flesh out our ability to be political (Rawls 1971 in Sen, 2005). Hence, producing and consuming a story with, for and by the public, should constitute a political experience in itself -especially in the context of civic interventions as is the case of both our productions.</p>
<p align="justify">However, this does not seem to be the case for TUI. The identity of The Ugly Indian focuses on action; on collecting manpower to fill voids left by the state in waste management. In the words of Nishant Shah, they are aligning their work with needs and systems that have <em>already i</em>dentified by the state, as opposed to devising new modes of engagement or participation. Having said that, staying away from politics is an intentional mandate, and their focus today is removing all obstacles that stand between the middle class and their action in the public space; even if that includes extricating the group from its political nature. For now, spreading ‘action’ and its ‘visibility’ in the network is a priority. The bigger their beautification spectacle grows, the better.</p>
<p align="justify">Blank Noise has a different view of how to engage the middle class <a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[5]</a>. The group has identified the need to talk about ‘sexual harassment’ in public; a conversation that has not been addressed and is continually dismissed by the state. This void is hence being filled with stories and articulations of the communities involved <a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[6],</a>as a mean of resisting the stronger dominating narrative of silence around the issue. As opposed to TUI, the priority of Blank Noise is to reassert our ability to perform our role as active, visible and political agents in the public space; initiating a larger process of social critique in their network <a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[7]<br /></a></p>
<div align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/WWA.png/image_preview" alt="Never asked" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Never asked" /></div>
<p align="justify"><a name="fr1" href="#fn1"><br /></a></p>
<p align="justify">(We interviewed Jasmeen Patheja earlier in the project and discussed Blank Noise's political nature. Read the article <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/blank-noise-citizenship">here)</a></p>
<p><a name="action"></a></p>
<p align="center" class="callout" dir="ltr"><strong>5. action!</strong> <strong>(and conclusions)</strong><br />ˈakʃ(ə)n/<br />something done so as to accomplish a purpose.</p>
<p align="justify">As per definition, action must be purpose-driven, and throughout the last two posts, we have unpacked how this sense of purpose can be built using storytelling. We explored this looking at its <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance#pre-production">methods</a>, <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance#screenplay">narrative identities</a>, <a href="#cast">actors</a> and <a href="#stage">spaces of action</a>.</p>
<p align="justify">In the case of both organizations, storytelling was imbued in their organizational identity, the interaction with their volunteers and; the way in which they disseminate information. Expanding on what we said in the <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-sartaj-anand">first installment</a> on storytelling: its interactive nature makes it a tool for empowerment. The identities created by both organizations resonated so much with their audiences, that volunteers adapted their own identities and actions in the public space to align with them and participate in their initiatives.<br /><br />The post also brought attention to the challenges of <strong>locating the ‘political’</strong> within the spectacle. Storytelling as a mode of engagement is effective: it captures people’s attention and participation. However, it becomes problematic when the story becomes a creed adopted without question, as is the case of The Ugly Indian. The lack of opportunities to craft new arguments in public discussion leads to an equally passive participation to the one the group intended to eradicate. Citizens get involved without making critical connections with the material realities they are working to reverse. The citizen is trapped in the performance of citizen awakening and they are ceasing to articulate new ideas. In the case of Blank Noise, the political precedes the spectacle, but at the end of the day, it still relies on a visible and manageable network to disseminate its narrative and attract new story-lines and actors into the discourse.</p>
<p align="justify">On the issue of <strong>visibility: </strong>at the outset of the project we asked the question: what is it about the spectacle that makes it so enticing, and what can we borrow from it to strengthen political participation? <a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[8]</a>. This post visited the three elements that, according to Shah, makes an event visible: legibility, intelligibility and accessibility<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[9]</a>; and started to answer some of these questions.</p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Performance<br /></th>
<th>Storytelling<br /></th>
<th>Visibility<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Pre-production</td>
<td><span id="docs-internal-guid--5cd61e2-6f01-084a-6acd-e45ad9690117">The mediums chosen to tell the story (images, video, text, digital technologies) are used to give clarity to the message.</span></td>
<td>Legible</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Screenplay</td>
<td><span id="docs-internal-guid--5cd61e2-6f01-45c7-d17e-68f73fb0a0ab">Creating (or borrowing narratives) from history and fiction makes stories easy to relate to, better understood and hence, better received by the audience</span></td>
<td>Intelligible</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Actors</td>
<td><span id="docs-internal-guid--5cd61e2-6f01-8071-9fc1-37cb1d164a41">Acting out these identities shows the message was understood and internalized by the audience.</span></td>
<td>Intelligible</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Pre-production</td>
<td><span id="docs-internal-guid--5cd61e2-6f01-9f82-8650-21c6165ebb25">Digital technologies are effective at disseminating the story and making it more accessible in the public online space.</span></td>
<td>Accessible</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Stage</td>
<td><span id="docs-internal-guid--5cd61e2-6f01-b9d1-5c01-33ddfbe1a533">Telling the story in the public (online and offline) space makes participation and interaction more likely. </span></td>
<td>Accessible</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">Finally, the main<strong> role of technology</strong> in storytelling is to provide and enhance visibility for stories (from all three fronts). As much as the thought piece criticizes the spectacle hype and suggests we move beyond it, this research is finding it useful to look further into: why visibility is desirable for advocacy and how it can bring new and different stakeholders into the process. At least, it seems to be working for The Ugly Indian and Blank Noise. Their outreach is for the most part<em> online</em> and digital media continues to be their best friend to scale up their visibility, showcase their actions and/or installations and sustain their narratives. <br /><br />I will not make a conclusive statement on whether we should use storytelling for social change or not. However, understanding the power of stories and learning how to craft consistent narrative structures is -as Ameen Haque, founder of <a href="http://www.thestorywallahs.com/">The Storywallahs</a> told me- as fundamental for storytelling, as it is for activism: At the end of the day, <em>"movements need supporters. Supporters need leaders; and leaders need to be good storytellers".</em></p>
<h2><strong>Footnotes:</strong></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">1</a>] Based on the Wikipedia Definition of Improvisational Theatre. "Improvisational Theatre, often called improv or impro, is a form of theater where most or all of what is performed is created at the moment it is performed. In its purest form, the dialogue, the action, the story and the characters are created collaboratively by the players as the improvisation unfolds in present time, without use of an already prepared, written script." <a href="http://bit.ly/1hnByRp">http://bit.ly/1hnByRp</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a href="http://bit.ly/1hnByRp">[</a><a name="fn1" href="#fr1">2]</a> <span id="docs-internal-guid--5cd61e2-6ceb-8281-8acd-a886b0543322">(Oggs & Capps, 1996; Miller, 1995; Hull, 2006).</span><br /><br />[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">3</a>] Refer to Sonja Vivienne's ethnography: Trans Digital Storytelling: Everyday Activism, Mutable Identity and the Problem of Visibility. She puts forward the experience of activists from the LGBT community who used storytelling to reassert, negotiate and in cases, expose their identities. <br /><br /><a href="http://bit.ly/1hnByRp"> [</a><a name="fn1" href="#fr1">4</a>] Find resources to read more on Hannah Arendt's work on narrative and action here: <a href="http://stanford.io/1ge7JkX">http://stanford.io/1ge7JkX</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><a href="http://bit.ly/1hnByRp">[</a><a href="http://stanford.io/1ge7JkX">5</a>] While the project does seek to collect voices across traditions, cultures, religions, etc; its reliance on digital technologies to crowdsource stories keeps the practice somewhat gentrified and homogenous. Lack of diversity in public discussion is a huge constraint for democracy, but from our conversations with Jasmeen, we understand this is a challenge to be tackled at a later stage of the project</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">6</a>] Refer to Nishant Shah's <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway">Whose Change is it Anyway?</a>. (Page 29): "only certain kinds of discourses are made possible through technology-mediated citizen action. This discourse is often alienated from specific histories, particular contexts, and the affective articulations of the communities involved. It leads to a gentrification of contemporary politics that discounts anything that does not fit into the quantified and enumerated rubric of citizen action in network societies."</p>
<p>[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">7</a>] <span id="docs-internal-guid--5cd61e2-6d08-6429-ef94-e5fb081d50c7">Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator and philosopher, was a strong proponent of using dialectics to question social structures around class, and stories come across as a way to link issues around power back to our personal experiences Refer to: Shor and Freire, 1987 and Williams, 2003.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><br />[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">8</a>] Some of the questions we have been exploring in Methods for Social Change: <a href="http://bit.ly/OCKrgy">http://bit.ly/OCKrgy</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">9</a>] Refer to Nishant Shah's <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway">Whose Change is it Anyway?</a>. (</p>
<h2><strong>Sources:</strong></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Arendt, Hannah (1994) Essays in Understanding Edited with an Introduction by Jerome Kohn. The literary Trust of Hannah Arendt Bluecher.</p>
<p align="left">Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner & Cain, (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</p>
<p align="left">Hull, Glynda A., and M. Katz. (2006) "Crafting an agentive self: Case studies of digital storytelling." Research in the Teaching of English 41, no. 1: 43.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Jackson, Michael. (2002) The politics of storytelling: Violence, transgression, and intersubjectivity. Vol. 3. Museum Tusculanum Press,</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Oni, Peter (2012). "The Cognitive Power of Storytelling: Re-reading Hannah Arendt in a Postmodernist/Africanist Context."</p>
<div id="gs_cit2" class="gs_citr">Sen, Amartya. <em>The argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian history, culture and identity</em>. Macmillan, 2005.<br /><br />Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? <em>Hivos Knowledge Program. </em>April 30, 2013.</div>
<p><br />Shor, I. and Freire, P. (1987) A pedagogy for liberation:dialogues on transforming education. Bergin & Garvey, New York.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Williams, Lewis, Ronald Labonte, and Mike O’Brien. "Empowering social action through narratives of identity and culture." Health Promotion International 18, no. 1 (2003): 33-40.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Vivienne, Sonja (2011). "Trans Digital Storytelling: Everyday Activism, Mutable Identity and the Problem of Visibility” Gay & Lesbian Issues & Psychology Review 7, no. 1.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseMaking ChangeResearchBlank Noise ProjectNet CulturesResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:30:15ZBlog EntryStorytelling as Performance: The Ugly Indian and Blank Noise 1
https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance
<b>This post compares the production behind a performance with the process of storytelling. To illustrate this analogy, we explore the stories of the Blank Noise project and The Ugly Indian- two civic groups from Bangalore making interventions in the public space. This post looks at the stages of pre-production and the screenplay to explore methods and narratives in storytelling. </b>
<pre><strong>spectacle</strong><span class="lr_dct_ph">
ˈspɛktək(ə)l/</span>
a visually striking performance<strong>
performance
</strong>pəˈfɔːm(ə)ns/
an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people: the audience. Sometimes the dividing line between performer and the audience may become blurred, as in the example of "participatory theatre" where audience members get involved in the
production.</pre>
<p align="justify">One of the mandates of <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway">this project</a> is to locate discrepancies between "spectacles"<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a> and realities of change to identify less visible examples of citizen action. However, an alternative route is to identify the characteristics of the spectacle, and learn how they can be used to make activism more visible: that is, more legible, intelligible and accessible. In this context, storytelling comes across as a method that can provide the same experience and benefits of a performance. This potential manifests itself in two ways:</p>
<p align="justify">a) First, in its<strong> infrastructure. </strong>We find that the structure holding stories together plays an important role in their ability to deliver a clear message. By unpacking the process of staging a performance -from what happens in the dressing rooms to what happens on stage- we will identify the building blocks of performances and by default, those comprised in effective storytelling.</p>
<p align="justify"> b) Second manifestation occurs<strong> in the audience.</strong> The dynamic of performances resembles how we behave every day in our "socially and constructed worlds". We are constantly telling stories about ourselves and this 'sense of being' is what determines our actions and behavior (Holland et al, 1998). Furthermore, as social beings, we also build identities as a community and engage in "collective moments of self-enactment" (Urciuoli, 1995).</p>
<p align="justify">Linking this back to our project, understanding the performative potential of storytelling; its infrastructure and how it can touch on issues of identity, agency and collective action, is relevant to tackle challenges in activism and civic engagement -where the collective is very much linked to the political. To illustrate the relationship between storytelling and performance, I will use the example of two civic groups thriving in Bangalore: Blank Noise
(founded by Jasmeen Patheja, who we interviewed back in January) and The
Ugly Indian; and I will ask you to think about them as theatrical productions:</p>
<p align="justify" class="discreet">(The following images are 'Broadway posters' adapted to the identity of these groups. They were created merely for the purpose of this post and do not reflect the views of these organizations).</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/BatmanTheUglyIndian2.jpg/image_preview" alt="The Ugly Indian" class="image-inline image-inline" title="The Ugly Indian" /></p>
<p align="center"><strong>The Ugly Indian</strong><br />stop talking. start doing.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/ChicagoBlankNoise2.jpg/image_preview" title="Blank Noise" height="224" width="299" alt="Blank Noise" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p align="center"><strong>Blank Noise</strong><br />set new rules for street behavior</p>
<p align="justify">These groups were formed (in 2003 and 2010 respectively) to re-conceptualize how we understand our presence in the public space; <a href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/">Blank Noise</a> focusing on sexual harassment and women safety and <a href="http://www.theuglyindian.com/">The Ugly Indian</a> on waste management and civic interventions. On this post, we will look at their campaigns and identify features of the spectacle/performance in the storytelling methods they are using to communicate their mandates and interact with their volunteers. So, without further ado, let's explore this glossary of tweaked theatrical terminology:</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>How to navigate this post:</strong></p>
<p align="justify"><strong>
</strong></p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Section</th>
<th>Performance<br /></th>
<th>Storytelling<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="#pre-production">Pre-production</a></td>
<td>Preparing all elements involved in a performance including locations, props, costumes, special effects and visual effects.<br /></td>
<td>Preparing all elements needed to convey the message of the story including: spoken word, text, images, audio, video or other artifacts.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="#screenplay">Screenplay</a></td>
<td>A written work narrating the movements, actions, expressions and dialogues of the characters. <br /></td>
<td>Building a narrative in storytelling<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#cast">Actors</a><br /></td>
<td>Actors performing characters in a production.<br /></td>
<td>The relationship between storytelling actors and agency<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#stage">Stage</a><br /></td>
<td>Designated space for the performance of productions<br /></td>
<td>The public space as the stage for storytelling<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#action">Action!</a><br /></td>
<td>Cue signifying the start of a performance<br /></td>
<td>When storytelling leads to action<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><a name="pre-production"></a></p>
<p align="center" class="callout"><strong>1. pre-production</strong><br />ˈpri-prəˈdʌkʃ(ə)n/<br />the action of making or manufacturing from components or raw materials prior to the initial performance.</p>
<p align="justify">
The stage of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-production">pre-production</a> is when all the locations, props, cast members, costumes, special effects and visual effects are identified. It works in tandem with <a href="#screenplay">the screenplay</a> to ensure the maximum consistence, coherence and clarity in the story. In the same way, planning storytelling also implies selecting the right elements and materials to hold the story together. Initially, only traditional mediums were available, such as spoken word, text and images; but storytellers today (the directors orchestrating these productions) are experiencing an urgency to re-invent and adapt the language of their stories to make it accessible in the network<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[3]</a> (Hull and Katz, 2006; Urciuoli, 1995) and the practice has evolved into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmedia_storytelling">'trans-media'</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_storytelling">digital storytelling</a>. Formats like audio-bytes, videos, sms, mobile apps are also part of its semiotic makeup and these mediums are mixed and matched to enhance the visibility of the message. As Scott McCloud suggests in ‘Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art’: “we need to invent new ways [and] develop new techniques of showing the same old thing” (1994) to make sure people still listen to what we have to say.</p>
<p>
Both Blank Noise and The Ugly Indian have led highly visual campaigns in the online space, as they combine blogging with videos, audios, images and active community managers that interact with their volunteers. A few examples of the mediums they are using to capture the public's attention:</p>
<p><strong>Video: </strong>Blank Noise did this art intervention, using real rape and sexual harassment reports from 2003 to challenge what we consider 'normal' and 'news'-worthy when it comes to sexual harassment and domestic violence:</p>
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dE6pyVfcwys" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Artifacts</strong>: <a href="http://bit.ly/1mnEhMJ">‘I never ask for it’</a> campaign: Blank Noise asked women to send garments they wore when they experienced ‘eve-teasing’ to challenge the notion “that women ask to be sexually violated”</p>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Ineveraskedforit.jpg/image_preview" alt="I never asked for it 1" class="image-inline image-inline" title="I never asked for it 1" /><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Ineveraskedforit2.jpg/image_preview" alt="I never asked for it 2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="I never asked for it 2" /></p>
<p align="center">I never ask for it. <a href="http://bit.ly/1mnEhMJ">http://bit.ly/1mnEhMJ</a></p>
<p><strong>Audio:</strong> Blank Noise documents and disseminates stories of sexual harassment as told by their Action Heroes' This is: <a href="http://bit.ly/1fK5qUw">Kitab Mahal's story.</a></p>
<p align="justify">The message transmitted by the garments, the video and the audio are based on cultural and social constructions of what ‘sexual harassment’ means. Removing one of the garments from the installation, for instance, removes it from its resistance identity and hence, it can only exist in the narrative context Blank Noise is constructing alongside its volunteers.</p>
<p align="justify">On the other hand, The Ugly Indian's mandate is to change people's "rooted cultural behaviour and attitudes [...] to solve India's civic problems"; starting with the visible filth on the streets. It does not pursue systemic change, but seeks impact at the behavioral level. One of the methods it uses to achieve this, is the dissemination of images and videos showcasing their work. Their publications minimize the use of text in order to drive attention to aesthetics:</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Beforeafter.jpg/image_preview" alt="" class="image-inline image-inline" title="TUI Before After" /></p>
</td>
<td><br /><br /><br /><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/TUIBeforeAfter2.jpg/image_preview" alt="TUI Before After 2" class="image-inline" title="TUI Before After 2" /><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="left">They recently complemented their graphic stories, by starting <a href="http://theuglyindian.com/books/chapter-1/">a blog</a> that documents "the philosophy and the process" that drives The Ugly Indian. This excerpt from Chapter 3 explains their visual strategy and why they have chosen before-after pictures to communicate their work:</p>
<blockquote>
“The citizens of the online world are brutal – they only care for instant gratification and real results. So are citizens in the real world. They too only care for results. [...] V & X know that and have focused all their energies on delivering this dramatic result, this single Before-After image, that is proof of dramatic change. And it has worked – in terms of creating initial positive impact (both on the ground and online). Whether it will survive and change community behavior is another story. But this initial impact is crucial, as we will discover later, in generating respect from the community and the authorities.”<br /></blockquote>
<div class="pullquote"><br />“When pictures carry the weight of clarity in a scene, they free words
to express a wider area. And when words lock in the meaning of a
sequence, pictures can really take off” Scott McCloud on comics</div>
<p align="justify"> </p>
<p align="justify">This is how pre-production is important for storytelling. Planning, designing and choosing the right elements, and how they interact with one another, will determine the level of legibility and meaning we give to the story (McCloud, 1994). Each medium: video, audio, text, music, etc.- becomes “a new literate space” or “symbolic tool” storytellers have on hand to portray narratives about the self, family community and society (Hull, 2006), and the introduction of digital technologies into storytelling space, coupled with the current hype around the method, signals we are moving towards a more strategic use of technology to produce and share knowledge more effectively. In this way, the choice of mediums and technologies will reflect a "conscious construction of identity" and "performances of the self" (Vivienne, 2011); a theme we will explore further in the 'screenplay' section.</p>
<p align="justify"><span id="docs-internal-guid-4138f50b-6259-ec34-716e-d1298c8e0176"></span><span id="docs-internal-guid-4138f50b-6259-ec34-716e-d1298c8e0176"></span></p>
<h3><br /></h3>
<a name="screenplay"></a>
<p align="center" class="callout"><strong>2. screenplay</strong><br />ˈskriːnpleɪ/<br />The script including descriptions of scenes and some camera/set directions.</p>
<p align="justify">The process of writing a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenplay">screenplay</a> is a careful exercise of creation and articulation. The dialogues, expressions and actions of the characters are narrated and located in a specific context that will determine how the events of the play unfold. The ability to build a coherent narrative structure is, in itself, a powerful tool of self-expression that enables the storyteller to a) construct an identity for the story and b) expose it to the public. Let's take a closer look at each stage:</p>
<p align="justify">a)<strong> Self-expression</strong> is directly related to the amount of freedom we experience in our ecosystem. Barriers to expression can come through our political regime or in the form of social norms and taboos, as is the case of conservative pockets in India. In either context, storytelling comes across an alternative outlet to describe ambiguous, unapologetic and personal truths (Vivienne, 2011). It enables less visible voices to claim a space and construct their own narrative within. Blank Noise has been very active on this front, as it creates opportunities for its volunteers, participants (dubbed Action Heroes), and otherwise silent voices to articulate their emotional and physical experiences in the public space. One of the ways they did it was by publishing a step by step guide to unapologetic walking, and then requesting people to participate:</p>
<div align="center"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/stepbystepguidetounapologeticwalkingposter.jpg/image_preview" alt="Step by step" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Step by step" /></div>
<div align="center">step by step guide to unapologetic walking: <a href="http://bit.ly/1bz3MZZ">http://bit.ly/1bz3MZZ</a><br /><em><br /></em></div>
<em>
</em>
<blockquote><em>
</em>
<p align="center"><em><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">" Our street actions over the last few years have been based on emphasizing small simple scenarios- which can be challenging even though they appear 'normal' and everyday. For instance- should it be hard to just 'stand'
on the street as an 'idle' woman?</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"> Would you 'dare' try it?</span></span>"</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><br />The
idea behind this intervention is to re-conceptualize how women navigate
the public space, drawing inspiration, ideas and encouragement from the “personal truths” and stories shared by women who are doing
it. This grants them greater autonomy at representing themselves through
their online and offline presence and the narrative is continuously re-shaped through new submissions and testimonials. </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">b) <strong>Self-representation</strong>
is how you create yourself: who you want to be and how you want others
to see you. Miller’s work on identity and storytelling explores the role
of storytelling in socialization and self-construction: <em>“stories change depending on who is listening”</em>
(1993) as we construct ourselves with and for other people. In the same way a character in the script cannot come to life without an audience, the identities we create for ourselves need a public that recognizes who we are and our role in the world. Anthony Giddens' work on identity also draws a relationship
between our identity and its narrative:<em> “self-identity
is not a set of traits but a person’s reflexive understanding of their
own biography (...) and the capacity to keep a coherent narrative going:
integrating events in the external world and sorting them into the
story of the self”</em>
(Gauntlett, 2002; Giddens 1991).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The Ugly Indian took a solid stance against middle class apathy and idleness in its narrative, and with this premise, it built an identity for the organization that represents the opposite: a selfless, active, responsible middle class citizen. These are some examples:</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>Anonymous identity
</strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>Middle class citizen<br /></strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>How they are different to the common middle class citizen<br /></strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>“They call themselves <span class="visualHighlight">The Ugly Indians and operate anonymously</span> [...]. If you
aren’t aware of The Ugly Indian (TUI), that’s understandable – <span class="visualHighlight">they work
hard to stay anonymous and underground, and want only their work to
speak for itself.”</span> (Chapter 1)</td>
<td>“<span class="visualHighlight">The
more the urban middle-class see ‘people like them’ </span>mucking about in
garbage, the more they will face up to the issue and start thinking
about it [...] This leap from ‘it’s someone else’s job’ to <span class="visualHighlight">‘it’s my duty
to fix this’</span> is what can transform our cities – <span class="visualHighlight">this leap has to be
made in the mind!” </span>(Chapter 6)</td>
<td>“There is a specific purpose to making Amir (the garbage truck driver)
talk. X and V are looking for cues on what really troubles him, what
improvement in his daily working life he will really appreciate. <span class="visualHighlight">Too
often, well-meaning urban middle-class do-gooders think they know what
the working class needs </span>(gloves, better equipment and so on) and <span class="visualHighlight">they
get it so wrong.</span> <span class="visualHighlight">Listening without being judgmental is an art, and X and
V are good at that.</span> (Chapter 8)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
You can read more about TUI’s story <a>here</a>.
<p> </p>
<div class="pullquote">
<div align="left">
“Human lives become more readable and intelligible when they are applied to narrative modes borrowed from history and fiction; and in function of stories people tell about themselves.”</div>
<div align="right">Ricoeur, 1991</div>
</div>
<p align="justify">The set of traits chosen by The Ugly Indian is important. Their initiative is intentionally gentrified as they <em>want </em>it to resonate specifically with the middle class (as they are "people like them"). But at the same time, they integrate a reflexive understanding of their role as citizens by mentioning the need for a personal awakening ("this leap has to be made in the mind!") and further interaction with stakeholders outside of their network ("making the truck driver talk"), that will enable the common middle class citizen transition into the level of 'street and citizenship authority' TUI is at. On top of this, their clean drives back up this discourse, and while their identity remains incognito, the work is widely shared on social media every week -drawing a coherent narrative between their speech and their actions.</p>
<p> c) <strong>Interaction with audience: </strong>Finally, once the storyteller has created a coherent identity, its sense of purpose must also be evident for the audience. The possibilities for this are endless, but I would like to draw attention to the super-hero narrative chosen by both Blank Noise and The Ugly Indian. Both groups are seeking an internal awakening in their volunteers by juxtaposing their experiences with what a 'hero' would do in the same situation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Bangalore Hero video on The Ugly Indian:<br /></strong></p>
<strong>
</strong>
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/627R6TEuol4" frameborder="0" align="middle" height="315" width="420"></iframe>
<p> </p>
<em><span id="docs-internal-guid-1a1a53ce-5e81-f89d-6c02-60fd710855eb">“Our
message to all Bangalore citizens is simple. Go out and be a hero on
your own street.<br />Take charge of it. Don’t be helpless. You have the
power. You just need to go and us</span>e it”</em>
<p> <strong><br />Blank Noise's Action Hero game:</strong></p>
<div align="center">
<div align="left">
<pre>The <span class="il">Action</span> <span class="il">Hero</span> <span class="il">Game</span> is built on a series of personal challenges in the city.
The <span class="il">game</span> is <strong>simple.</strong> Your <span class="il">game</span> partner and opponent is <strong>you.</strong>
There is no one method or quick solution to be an <span class="il">Action</span> <span class="il">Hero</span>.
Each potential Action Hero goes to a new area in his / her city. On arriving there potential Action Heroes receive 'challenges' via phone messages
Action Heroes across locations receive a set of 6 tasks over 4 hours via sms
If you don't wish to do a task (eg task 1a) text us and we will send you another task (eg task 1B)
Are you an<strong> <span class="il">Action</span> <span class="il">Hero</span>? </strong>
Find out! Play this <span class="il">game</span>!<strong>
</strong></pre>
</div>
<p align="center">
<img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/ActionHero1.jpg/image_preview" alt="Action Hero" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Action Hero" /></p>
<p align="center"> <strong>Blank Noise Action Hero</strong> <br /><a href="http://bit.ly/1fld8cV">http://bit.ly/1fld8cV</a></p>
<div align="center">
<blockquote>
<p><em><span id="docs-internal-guid-1a1a53ce-5e84-d66f-0b84-28e1731e7d64">“Share your <strong>Action Hero </strong>experience: </span>An
Action Hero sets new rules for behaviour. She could experience fear and
threat, but devises ways to confront it. Being fearless is a process.
Every person is a unique Action Hero.Tell us how you said NO to sexual
violence. [...] This blog set out to record testimonials of when and how
you became an Action Hero; documents and shares the memory of when you
surprised yourself, did the unexpected. [...] You are an Action Hero not
by the magnitude of
what you did but how it made you feel. You are an Action Hero by the way
you define your own Action Heroism. We don't have a reference for you.]</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p align="justify"><br />They both advance ideals of courage, fearlessness and responsibility in the
public space through their campaigns. These are not only desirable
traits by any citizen -let alone marginalized or silenced voices in the
case of Blank Noise- but the strategy also speaks to a language of hope and
empowerment we can relate to at a human level. It sheds light on our fears, our limits and the extent to
which we are willing to use our power to act.<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[3]</a><strong> </strong>Mediating this message with digital technologies also creates the illusion of an omniscient narrator who is drawing the volunteers' path to heroism and guiding their journey through it. As Ricoeur puts it:<em> "there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols and texts; and self-understanding will coincide with the interpretation given to these mediating terms"</em><span id="docs-internal-guid-4138f50b-6301-8f0c-4456-7cc57c648db2"></span> (1995) It is ultimately the interpretation the volunteers give to this ideal, and the magnitude to which they identify with it, what will determine their eagerness to emulate it and translate it into action. As said in the last post, one of the faculties of good storytelling is turning the experience being told, into the experience of those who are listening (Benjamin, 1955).</p>
<p align="justify">Before moving on to how 'action' unfolds in the performance, it is worth reflecting on the role of narratives, identities and mediation in collective action. Why do we need the hero narrative to mobilize agents? Why is heroic citizenship the gold standard and why does it work as a method for engagement? The topic is unfortunately out of the scope of this post, but the next one will attempt to address how identities as these ones can mediate our agency and action in the public space. <br /><br />******</p>
<p align="justify">Access Part 2 <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2">here</a> to look at the role of actors and the stage in performances to explore the role of agency and the public space in storytelling. We will also draw some final conclusions relating this back to the Making Change project.</p>
<em></em>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Footnotes:
</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">1</a>] Refer to Nishant Shah's <a href="https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway">Whose Change is it Anyway?</a>. He argues that global audiences engage with local causes that embody "spectacles of the rise of the citizen". This is problematic as the more significant -less visible/undocumented- acts remain unnoticed, while they may be central to understand what it means to make change in a networked and information society. He posits we need to move beyond this 'spectacle imperative',recognize the context of these revolutions and re-evaluate how we conceptualize 'action'.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">2</a>] Novelty: Quick exercise: run a quick google search of the
words: <a href="https://www.google.co.in/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=STORYTELLING+%2B+SOCIAL+CHANGE&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gfe_rd=ctrl&ei=rQQLU7SaOciL8Qee44CACQ&gws_rd=cr">‘storytelling + social change’</a>.
You will find stories by influential magazines and publications, including Forbes, the Huffington Post and Open Democracy, all from 2013-2014. ‘Storytelling’ seems to be
the newly (re)discovered tactic to advance business and social impact
objectives, noticed by activists and corporates alike.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">3</a>] For more on our power as agents and the role of narrative and identity, refer to Paul Ricoeur's work on the selves and agents (Oneself as another) and narratives (Time and Narrative). "As the most faithful articulations of human time, narratives present the moments when agents, who are aware of their power to act, actually do so, and patients, those who are subject to being affected by actions, actually are affected." Resources here: <a href="http://stanford.io/1c0pUwQ">http://stanford.io/1c0pUwQ</a></p>
<br />
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Sources:</strong></p>
<p align="left">Benjamin, Walter. (1977): "The storyteller."89.</p>
<p align="left">Gauntlett, David (2002), Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction, Routledge, London and New York.</p>
<p align="left">Giddens, Anthony. "Modernity and self-identity: self and identity in the late modern age." Cambridge: Polity (1991).</p>
<p align="left">Holland,
Lachicotte, Skinner & Cain, (1998). Identity and agency in cultural
worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</p>
<p align="left">Hull, Glynda A., and M. Katz. (2006) "Crafting an agentive self: Case studies of digital storytelling." Research in the Teaching of English 41, no. 1: 43.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">McCloud, Scott. (1993)."Understanding comics: The invisible art." Northampton, Mass</p>
<p align="left">Miller,
P. (1994). Narrative practices: Their role in socialization and
self-construction. In Neisser & Fivush (eds.), The remembering self:
Construction and agency in self narrative (pp. 158-179). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.</p>
<p align="left">Miller,
P. & Goodnow, J. J. (1995). Cultural practices: Toward an
integration of culture and development. New Directions for Child
Development, No. 67 (pp. 5-16). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
Publishers.</p>
<p align="left">Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (1996). Narrating the self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25, 19-43.</p>
<p align="left">Ricoeur, Paul (1991). "Narrative identity." Philosophy today 35, no. 1 : 73-81.</p>
<div align="left" id="gs_cit2" class="gs_citr">Ricoeur, Paul. <em>(1995) Oneself as another</em>. University of Chicago Press,</div>
<p align="left"><br />Urciuoli,
B. (1995). The indexical structure of visibility. In B. Farnell (ed.),
Human action signs in cultural context: The visible and the invisible in
movement and dance (pp. 189-215). Metuchen, NJ & London: The
Scarecrow Press, Inc.</p>
<p align="left">Vivienne, Sonja (2011). "Trans Digital Storytelling: Everyday Activism, Mutable Identity and the Problem of Visibility” Gay & Lesbian Issues & Psychology Review 7, no. 1.</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance'>https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseDigital ActivismMaking ChangeResearchBlank Noise ProjectNet CulturesResearchers at Work2015-10-24T14:31:11ZBlog EntryHabits of Living: Global Networks, Local Affects
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living
<b>“Networks” have become a defining concept of our epoch. From high-speed financial networks that erode national sovereignty to networking sites like Facebook that transform the meaning of the word “friend,” from blogs that foster new political alliances to unprecedented globe-spanning viral vectors that threaten world-wide catastrophe, networks allegedly encapsulate what’s new and different. </b>
<p> </p>
<p>To understand the impact of networks, most analyses—scholarly, popular, and strategic—have focused on mapping networks. Using network tools to describe networks, this move conflates description and explanation (it assumes that simply discovering the existence of networks is enough) and transforms specific persons/things and relations into interchangeable nodes and lines in a diagram. Not surprisingly, most analyses also privilege technology as the unifying power behind networks: the term “twitter revolution,” for instance, widely used to describe events from Moldavia to Egypt, erases local political concerns in favour of an internet application. Although understanding universal characteristics of networks is important, this emphasis also risks making the concept of a “networked society” a banal cliché, incapable of addressing the differences between various “networks,” or the odd transformation of networks from a planning tool—a theoretical diagram, a metaphorical description—into actually existing phenomena, into lived experiences.</p>
<p>To renew the conceptual power of networks, <em>Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects</em>—a global collaborative project of which the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University will be an important locus—concentrates on changing habits of living. Habits are crucial to understanding networks not simply as broad organizational structures, but also as structures created through constant actions that are both voluntary and involuntary. As Pierre Bourdieu has famously argued, “habitus” is a “system of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function … as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends.”<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a>; Habits are things that individuals hold that in turn define and hold individuals: they link the individual to society through repeated actions that also tie a person’s inner state (their mind) to their outward appearance (a habit is traditionally a type of clothing). Habits are ‘man-made nature’: they are automatic seemingly instinctual and at times uncontrollable actions (for instance, drug habits) that are learned. Habits in this sense are closely aligned with “affects”: unconscious emotional responses to environmental stimulants that are central to the formation of individual perception. Thus although habits let us address similarities across human, animal, physical and non-physical realms (the characteristic growth of a crystal is a habit), habits are also uniquely personal and societal, and thus allow us to address important differences usually elided in network analyses. Habits are “glocal”: local actions that spread globally, but not necessarily universally; they spread the effects of local actions elsewhere through specific trajectories.</p>
<p>The point, to be clear, is not to oppose habits to networks, but to understand the subtleties and power of connectivity by bringing these two concepts into dialogue with one another. Habits scale from the individual to the network in a number of ways, from the twitchy 'Lifestream' checking of Twitter enthusiasts, to co-ordination arranged by mobile phone and GPS, to the very conceptual foundation of computer science for which classic problems, such as the Travelling Saleman or Dining Philosophers combine strong technical requirements of resource allocation and network design with fables about everyday life. As the work of Dr. Matthew Fuller (a foundational new media theorist / artist and co-organizer from Goldsmiths) reveals, the cross-over between the technical and the experiential is what produces value and novelty in contemporary computing. The point is also to think through habits of living as possible points of transformation and intervention: as the term habitat makes clear, they also imply a certain sheltering and practice of care, something which the SARAI collective in New Delhi has addressed in their work in new media. This notion of habitat and change has also been further addressed, specifically in terms of “the archive in motion,” by Eivind Rossaak—an international expert in film and media—and his research group at the National Library of Norway, Oslo. Their creative rethinking of the archive and the role of media technologies is crucial to understanding the radical mobilization, perpetuation and preservation of habitual media and memory practices. The work of Nishant Shah—the director of the Bangalore Center for Internet and Society and co-editor of the groundbreaking Digital AlterNatives with a Cause —highlights that, to understand how new media affects habits of living, we need to rethink assumptions about “digital natives” and imaginings of “netizens.” He has also started a far-reaching research program investigating the relationship between affect and participation. Dr. Kelly Dobson’s—chair of Digital + Media at RISD and an innovative and much lauded new media artist—work focuses on the intimate “caring” relationship between machines and humans, which emerges from mainly non-intentional interactions, such as noise and vibrations. Lastly, <em>Habits of Living: Networked Affects, Glocal Effects</em> seeks to change the focus of network analyses away from catastrophic events or their possibility towards generative habitual actions that negotiate and transform the constant stream of information to which we are exposed. (This is the focus of my current book project).</p>
<p>As the above paragraph outlines, this inter-disciplinary project will be a global interdisciplinary collaboration. This project initially emerged from discussions between members of SARAI and myself and quickly expanded to include the Center for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London, the Digital + Media Department at RISD, the Bangalore Center for Internet and Society and the National Library of Norway. In addition, we plan to invite participants from: Amsterdam, Buenos Aries, Sao Paolo, Shanghai, amongst other places. At Brown, in addition to faculty in the Department of Modern Culture and Media, we would like to involve people from the Cogut Center for the Humanities, the Pembroke Center for the Study of Women, and the Watson Institute for International Studies.</p>
<p>The project, will comprise a series of workshops, artist residencies, a large public conference to be held at Brown University, and eventually leading to an edited online and a print publication. Each workshop will be attended by a core group of five scholars/artists who will participate in all the workshops and the conference, as well as group of participants that will vary according to the location. Ideally, this will continue as a three-year project, with each group playing a major role in convening the events for one year.</p>
<p>Collaborators: Wendy Chun (Professor, Brown University), Kelly Dobson, Chair, Digital + Media, RISD, Providence, Matthew Fuller, David Gee Reader in Digital Media, Center for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London, London and Eivind Rossaak, Associate Professor, Department of Research, National Library of Norway, Oslo.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">1</a>].Pierre Bourdieu. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Trans Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977), 72.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/habits-of-living/habits-of-living</a>
</p>
No publisherWendy Chun, Kelly Dobson, Matthew Fuller and Eivind RossaakNet CulturesResearchers at WorkResearch2015-10-24T13:38:42ZBlog EntryInterface Intimacies
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/interface-intimacies/interface-intimacies
<b>Sherry Turkle, in her book Alone Together, talked about how the digital technologies, replacing interface time with face-time, are slowly alienating us from our social networks. There has been an increasing amount of anxiety around how people in immersive and ubiquitous computing and web environments are living lives which are connected online but not connected with their social and political contexts.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>While there are instances and examples of mobilisation, social networking meets, group formations, etc. there is a growing worry that on an everyday basis, we live our lives more in the company of gadgets, ambience technologies and digital platforms than with people.</p>
<p>At the same time, users of technologies often express their engagement with technologies in affective terms, where they seem to form intimate relationships with their technologies. The interfaces that we see all around us, constantly deflect our attention, emotions and desires on to different surfaces, creating flattened universes with the promises of deep immersion. Especially as the internet becomes mobile and digital interfaces become ubiquitous – from large scale billboards to small wearable devices; from sites of work to spaces of pleasure – there is a new form of intimacy which is shaped, designed, experienced, and lived through interfaces.</p>
<p>The digital interfaces become polymorphous sites of affection, love, desire, aspiration, seduction, transgression and stability. The interface is growing so integral to our everyday lives, that we start thinking of them as metaphors through which we understand ourselves and the world that we connect to. We talk about ourselves as systems that need to be ‘upgraded’ or ‘connected’. We think of the world as a network through which we ‘recycle’ our lives and ‘connect’ to our ‘peers’. The interfaces, are simultaneously opaque and transparent – They allow us to connect to the digital other, crossing boundaries of geography and time, and they also deny us access to the actually mechanics which bring the interfaces to life.</p>
<p><em>Interface Intimacies</em> is a research cluster that is interested in digging deep into interfaces, to examine peoples’ relationships with the digital interfaces around them. What are the affective relationships that people have with their interfaces? What goes into anthropomorphising an interface? What are the larger politics of labour, performance and ownership that surround interface design? What are the ways in which people simulate presence and connections through their interfaces? How is the human presumed in Computer-Human interface design? What aesthetic and political moves are we witnessing with the rise of interface mediated publics? What and who is made opaque when interfaces become transparent? When interfaces get distributed, what are the possibilities and potential for art, theory and practice to move into new forms of politics?</p>
<p>These are the kind of questions that this research cluster seeks to address with a special focus on Asia. The intention is to build a knowledge network of researchers from different disciplines – Art, Architecture, Computer Human Interaction Design, Digital Humanities, New Media Theory, Urban Planning, Public Infrastructure Design, Software Studies, Interface Design etc. – to enter into a dialogue around Interfaces and how they define contemporary conditions of life in their contexts.</p>
<p>The project hopes to organise a workshop exploring these ideas leading to an edited anthology and a special journal issue of peer-reviewed academic scholarship. The project hopes to kick off in February 2012 and take about 18 months till completion.</p>
<p>Collaborators: Audrey Yue (Melbourne University), Namita Malhotra (ALF)</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/interface-intimacies/interface-intimacies'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/interface-intimacies/interface-intimacies</a>
</p>
No publisherAudrey Yue and Namita A MalhotraInterface IntimaciesNet CulturesResearchers at WorkResearch2015-10-24T13:40:18ZBlog EntryLocating the Mobile: An Ethnographic Investigation into Locative Media in Melbourne, Bangalore and Shanghai
https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/locating-mobile/locating-the-mobile
<b>From Google maps, geoweb, GPS (Global Positioning System), geotagging, Foursquare and Jie Pang, locative media is becoming an integral part of the smartphone (and shanzhai or copy) phenomenon. For a growing generation of users, locative media is already an everyday practice. </b>
<div id="parent-fieldname-text" class="plain kssattr-atfieldname-text kssattr-templateId-blogentry_view.pt kssattr-macro-text-field-view">
<p>The transition from the analogue to the digital, from dial-up to
broadband internet access was dramatic in how it changed our notions of
space, catalysing new ways of thought and practice. In the case of
locative media the uptake is more accelerated with it already engaging
more than ten times those involved in the analogue-digital transition.
The spread and usage of locative media is fast and promises to produce
an even more dramatic transformation as the net becomes portable and
pervasive.</p>
<p>As yet we know little about the impact locative media is having, and
will have upon people’s livelihoods and identity, or on public policy
around privacy, identity, security and cultural production. Discourse in
the field has opened up questions of art, innovation and
experimentation (de Souza e Silva & Sutko 2009; Hjorth 2010, 2011).
However, there remains a dearth of nuanced research on locative media
that provides in-depth, contextual accounts of its socio-cultural and
political dimensions. Little work has been conducted into locative media
as it migrates from art and into the ‘messy’ (Dourish & Bell 2011)
area of the everyday.</p>
<p><em>Locating the Mobile</em> seeks to address this knowledge gap by
undertaking close studies of locative media in three
locations—Bangalore, Melbourne and Shanghai. We aim to capture and
analyse the multiplicities of locative media practice emerging in both
developed and developing contexts. </p>
<p>These three locations have relatively high smartphones (or copies
like shanzhai) usage and are indicative of twenty-first century
migration, diaspora and transnational practices. As one of the leading
regions for mobile media innovation (Hjorth 2009; Bell 2005; Miller
& Horst 2005), the various contested localities in the Asia-Pacific
provide a rich and complex case study for mobile media as it moves into
locative media. The three locations also show how the presence of
digital and internet technologies is ‘flattening’ the globalised
landscape and bringing about dramatic changes in the ways in which these
cities shape and develop (Shah 2010). We consider how place informs
locative media practices and how, in turn, these practices are shaping
new narratives of place. </p>
<p><em>Locating the Mobile</em> seeks to collect and analyse some of the
emergent, tacit, innovative and ‘making-do’ practices informing the
rise, and resistance to, locative media. Drawing on pertinent issues for
the present and future of locative media, Locating the Mobile aims to:</p>
<ol><li>Pioneer and develop models and templates for comprehending the implications of locative media.</li><li>Develop a nuanced and situated understanding of locative media as part of cultural practice.</li><li>Provide, through multi-site analysis, new insights into the impact of locative media upon narratives of place and belonging.</li><li>Develop socio-cultural understandings of the role locative media plays in notions of intimacy and privacy.</li></ol>
<p>By
bringing together an expert team that represent a commitment to probing
the social, cultural and community dimensions of technological
innovation, Locating the Mobile will develop methodologies that capture
the dynamic and mundane features of this emergent media practice. By
doing so, Locating the Mobile will move beyond binary debates about
surveillance and privacy or ‘parachute’ case studies of locative art
towards <strong>nuanced and complex understandings of locative media and its implication for future cultural practices</strong>.</p>
<h3>Significance and Innovation</h3>
<p>The nascent field of locative media is impacting upon cultural
practice, place-making and policy in ways we can only imagine. While
much analysis has been conducted in mobile media (Goggin & Hjorth
2009) and experimental forms of locative media/art (de Souza e Silva
& Sutko 2009), the increased ubiquity of locative media through
devices such as the smartphone will undoubtedly transform the way in
which place and mobility is articulated. Locating the Mobile seeks to
substantially expand and contextualise upon the burgeoning area of
locative media through a variety of innovative and significant ways.</p>
<p><em>Locating the Mobile</em> is<strong> original </strong>in its <strong>topic</strong>, <strong>method</strong>, <strong>outcomes</strong> and <strong>industry collaboration</strong>. <strong>Firstly</strong>,
it is significant in that it brings depth and innovation to the
emergent area of locative media, and its impact upon discourses around
mobile media in ideas of mobility and place-making. In the face of
parachute nature of many locative art research (de Souza e Silva &
Sutko 2009), Locating the Mobile is one of the first studies
internationally to explore locative media over time in specific
locations. <strong>Secondly</strong>, it deploys a variety of methods
(such as surveys, focus groups, interviews and diaries for scenario of
use, overlaid with data-mining) across different devices (mobile phone,
iPad) and platforms (Foursquare, Jie Pang) to analyse the local and
socio-cultural dimensions of use. With its team of experts in mobile
media (Hjorth, Bell and Horst), communication for development (C4D)
(Tacchi and Shah), gaming (Hjorth), social networking (Shah, Zhou and
Hjorth) as well as a range of methodologies, this three-year study will
investigate and contextualise locative media in Bangalore, Melbourne and
Shanghai. Despite its ubiquity in many locations in the Asia-Pacific
region, much of the locative media literature remains Anglophonic or
Eurocentric in focus.<strong> Thirdly</strong>, through multi-site
analysis of locative media practices we will provide innovative ways in
which to reflect upon narratives of place, belonging and
transnationalism. <strong>Fourthly</strong>, by pioneering the first
multi-site analysis of locative media over time, Locating the Mobile
will develop the much missing socio-cultural understandings of locative
media and how it impacts upon intimacy and privacy upon individual,
group and policy levels. We will now detail these four key areas of
significance and innovation. <strong>We will pioneer and develop models and templates for comprehending the implications of locative media</strong>.
In these models we actively address locative media in the transnational
context of contemporary feelings about belonging, possession, mobility,
migration, and dislocation. As locative media becomes more pervasive,
the power of its banality needs further understanding beyond ‘global’
generalisations (see www.pleaserobme.com). Like the rise of mobile media
that was accompanied by the ‘subversive user’ (Hjorth 2009), we need to
figure out the digital subject who is shaped—both historically and
socio-culturally—through the pervasive spread of locative media. As
Gabriella Coleman (2010) observes in her review of ethnographic
approaches to digital media, there are three main overlapping
categories: research on the relationship between digital media and the
cultural politics of media; the vernacular cultures of digital media;
the prosaics of digital media (and this attention to the commonplace,
the unromantic, the quotidian). In the case of locative media,
ethnographic approaches—emphasising the situated, vernacular and
prosaic—are needed in order to understand the relocations of mobility
across a variety notions: technological, electronic and psychological to
name a few. Moreover, given the relatively high proportion of Indian
and Chinese migrants in Melbourne—and migration in Bangalore and
Shanghai—exploring locative media can <strong>provide new models for conceptualising the impact of migration, diaspora, and transnationalism on place</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>We will develop a nuanced and situated understanding of locative media as part of cultural practice</strong>
through methods that deploy both qualitative (ethnographic) and
quantitative (datamining) approaches such as ‘ethno-mining’ (Anderson et
al. 2009). With the emergence of ethnomining approaches—that is,
data-based mining combined with ethnography—new models for analysing
media and mobility can be found. Locating the Mobile addresses this need
for innovative methodologies that capture the dynamic nature of
locative media by situating it within three legacies: social, cultural
and historical mediatisation. Further, Locating the Mobile seeks to
frame locative media as evolving through the cultural precepts informing
mobile media and urbanity LP120200829 (Submitted to RO) Dr Larissa
Hjorth PDF Created: 16/11/2011 Page 8 of 123 discourses. Drawing upon
case studies from a region renowned for divergent and innovative use of
mobile media (Hjorth 2009) and gaming (Hjorth & Chan 2009)—the
Asia-Pacific—Locating the Mobile seeks to understand the lived and local
dimensions of locative media and how it can inform emergent and older
forms of place-making, belonging and migration. By focusing upon this
nascent but burgeoning area in global mobile media practice—locative
media—Locating the Mobile not only places Australia as a forerunner in
innovative, original, and challenging methodologies for new media, but
also, by bringing together key industry partners, Intel, CIS and Fudan
University,<em><br /></em></p>
<p><em>Locating the Mobile</em> seeks to contextualise the research in
terms of industry and community outcomes. In this sense, Locating the
Mobile clearly addresses the National Priority 3, Frontier Technologies
(see below for more details).</p>
<p><strong>We will provide, through multi-site analysis, new insights
into the impact of locative media upon narratives of place and belonging</strong>
through our three case study locations—Melbourne, Bangalore and
Shanghai. Locative media can provide new models for conceptualising the
impact of migration, diaspora, and transnationalism on place. Although
place has always mattered to mobile media (Ito 2003; Bell 2005; Hjorth
2003), locative media both amplify, redirect and redefine practices
around place, community and a sense of belonging—phenomenon that impacts
upon cultural policy and media regulation (Goggin 2011). Along with the
digital interfaces that overlay our physical experiences as we enter
into a state of augmented reality (AR), the presence of these
cartographic, geospatial locative platforms also changes the ways in
which the cities and how we navigate with them (Shah 2010). With the
rise of locative media like Google maps we are seeing new ways to frame
and narrate a sense of place through various technological lenses
overlaying the social with the informational. This phenomenon is
especially the case with smartphones and their plethora of applications
(apps) drawing heavily upon locative media—even most photo apps come
with locative media. With locative media we see the arrival of increased
accessibility to augmented<br />reality (AR). Instead of replacing the
analogue with the digital, the physical with the virtual, they open up
‘hybrid realities’ (a term used by de Souza e Silva to describe AR
mobile games) that need new conceptual tools and located frameworks to
unravel the dynamics. We are no longer looking at just the technology
mediated hypervisual digitality but also exploring what these locative
media augment and simulate in everyday practices.</p>
<p><strong>We will develop socio-cultural understandings of the role locative media plays in notions of intimacy and privacy</strong>
and how we might comprehend locative media’s implications on individual
and cultural practices, and regulation. In the second generation of
locative media that sees it move increasingly into the mainstream,
questions about security, privacy and identity—and how these are shaped
by the local—come into focus (Dourish & Anderson 2006). For Dourish
and Anderson (2006) locative media can been viewed as a form of
‘Collective Information Practice’ that have social and cultural
implications upon how privacy and security are conceptualised. For
others such as Siva Vaidhyanathan (2011) locative media like Google maps
and street views are about a corporate surveillance. As a burgeoning
field of media practice intersecting daily life, there is a need for
in-depth situated accounts into locative media and their
cultural-economic dimensions to understand the impact they will have on
intimacy, privacy, identity and place-making. In Locating the Mobile, by
developing and implementing new hybrid models for analysing locative
media (Anderson et al. 2009), we consider the role locative media plays
in how place shapes, and is shaped by, these practices and the future
implications around cultural policy. The comparative dimension brings a
rich data-set to bear on our understanding of locative media and the
questions it may pose in the future. The outputs are significant not
only for Australian mobile communication, gaming and internet studies—by
providing a regional context for evaluating the socio-technologies—but
also demonstrates internationally Australia’s lead in ground-breaking
research into locative media (Priority 3, ‘frontier technologies’) in
arguably the most significant sites for global ICTs production and
consumption, the Asia-Pacific.</p>
<p><strong>National Research Priorities</strong>: With the rise of
smartphones becoming ubiquitous, location-based services have burgeoned.
And yet, little is known about this area and its impact upon
individuals, LP120200829 (Submitted to RO) Dr Larissa Hjorth PDF
Created: 16/11/2011 Page 9 of 123 organisations and governments. Given
this phenomenon, a comprehensive understanding of the impact upon
locative media upon notions of privacy, identity and place-making is
needed. In the twenty-first century, locative media will become an
increasingly important part of everyday life—for individuals,
communities, businesses and government agencies. Thus it is imperative
that we have a robust comparative understanding of locative media in
Australia and across the region. By conceptualising this impact within
the context of the region, Locating the Mobile ensures Australia is at
the frontier of new technologies and their impact upon future
technological practices and policies. Such an understanding is
fundamental to Australia’s technology and cultural sectors, thus
contributing to National Research Priority 3 through one of the
strongest currencies in twenty-first century global market, mobile
media, as well as contributing to the broader long-term project of
locating Australia in the region. By drawing on qualitative,
cross-cultural longitudinal research into locative media, Locating the
Mobile will document, analysis and provide future recommendations for
how locative media is impacting upon people’s experience of place and
identity. A study like this is important as it is innovative for not
only pioneering methodologies to evaluate this media phenomenon but also
to understand some of its long-term implications on how mobile media
intervenes and even reconfigures experiences and perceptions of place
which, in turn, impact upon cultural policy.</p>
<p>Collaborators: Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University, Melbourne), Genevieve Bell (Intel, Shanghai)</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/locating-mobile/locating-the-mobile'>https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/locating-mobile/locating-the-mobile</a>
</p>
No publisherLarissa Hjorth and Genevieve BellNet CulturesResearchers at WorkResearch2015-10-24T13:41:47ZBlog Entry