Centre for Internet and Society

Digital Transition in Newspapers in India: A Pilot Study

zeenab — 2016-07-20T11:43:53Z

Introduction

This pilot study situates itself at the intersection of global trends in news and journalism, and emergent practises of legacy print media in India. Our aim is to explore how legacy print newspapers are transitioning to the online space. The study will address questions in two thematic clusters: 1) the work of journalism, and 2) how the emergence of the digital, both as a source of news, and the medium of distribution, is shaping the work of newspaper journalists, which has expanded to include various functions particular to the digital environment. And two, newsroom practices, which focus on the different modalities of convergence emerging in Indian newsrooms, and the organisational re-engineering that is being attempted in order to do journalism in a space where professional editors and journalists no longer have dominance with respect to the production and distribution of content.

News Culture in Transition

The influx of digital technology combined with advancements in the field of telecommunications has had a disruptive effect on the global news industry. This year’s World Press Trends survey, released last month, reports that at least 40 per cent of global internet users read newspapers online and that in most developed countries, readership on digital platforms has surpassed that in print(WAN-INFRA, 2016). However, while revenue from print is said to be declining, it still makes up for more than 92 per cent of all newspapers revenues. At the same time, circulation increased by 4.9 per cent globally, mostly owing to the 7.8 per cent growth in numbers from India, China and other parts of Asia which made up 62% of the global average daily print unit circulation in 2015. This growth, the report suggests, is a function of low prices and expanding literacy in these markets.

While newspapers are a thriving industry in India, newspaper organisations and journalists are adopting new technology in order to remain relevant in a fast changing environment (Chattopadhyay 2012, Panda 2014). One one hand, they are swept up in the disruptive shifts in the global media economy, while on the other, they are in a unique position to convert this disruption into an opportunity.

The WPT report also notes, perhaps to the relief of those struggling to find a sustainable revenue model for digital news, that revenue from paid digital circulation has increased 30 per cent in 2015 and that one in five readers from the countries studied are willing to pay for online news. Revenue from digital advertising on the other hand, is growing at the slower pace of 7.3 per cent.

The report points out that there is a huge opportunity in mobile growth, with more than 70 per cent of readers in countries like USA, UK, Australia and Canada reading newspapers via a mobile device. Similar trends can be seen in India, as internet usage here is increasingly shaped by mobile growth (Google India Report, 2015). The fact that many digital-born news sites are adopting a mobile-first strategy (Sen and Nielsen, 2016) reflects this. More recently, Hindustan Times has hired a mobile editor to build a team of over 700 journalists specialising in mobile journalism.

Earlier this year the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism released a report on digital news start-ups in India (Sen and Nielsen, 2016), which explores how digital-born news start-ups are developing new editorial priorities, funding models and distribution strategies for news in the Indian digital media market. The study, which included observing the practices of The Quint, Scroll, The Wire, Khabar Lahariya, Daily Hunt and InShorts, concluded that India was not short of noteworthy experiments in journalism and online news. It also found that more news publishers are adopting mobile-first approaches, given that internet use in India is increasingly through mobile devices. More relevant to this study, the report established that social media has emerged as a tool for distribution and also stated that digital news start-ups are turning their focus to Hindi and local language content, in order to serve new audiences.

Studying the Effects of Convergence

Their digital transition can be witnessed on two counts: publishing with digital and publishing for digital. The first involves a shift towards using the digital in the process of sourcing and publishing news. Workflow is managed by advanced content management systems, news articles contain multimedia and interactivity that require technical expertise, and the web and social media are increasingly becoming a reliable source of primary and secondary information for journalists. Second, publishing for the highly competitive comes with it’s own challenges. Distribution and consumption of news is increasingly being carried out on digital platforms, fostering a culture of interdependence that impacts news providers in previously unforeseen ways. As the decision to prioritise their digital products take hold, newsrooms themselves evolve to contain a diverse range of skill and expertise.

According to the 2015 Trends in Newsroom report, editors and senior reporters in newsrooms across the globe are experimenting with new ways of storytelling using podcasts, chat apps, automation, virtual reality and gamification, as well as dealing with new challenges with respect to source protection in the face of increased surveillance and intermediaries like Facebook and Google and reporting on culturally sensitive subjects(World Editors Forum, 2015).

The dynamics of these shifts in different countries may be shaped by several factors including the availability of human and financial resources, and pace of adoption of new technologies by the readers. In markets like Japan, complexities of the existing newspaper trade in the country act as a deterrent to technological change (Villi and Hayashi, 2014). Given the pace at which the media ecology of the web evolves; this transition is an ongoing process characterised by experiments in business, marketing and editorial strategies. A good example of such an experiment is last week’s decision by leading Indian newspapers, to make their content unavailable to those consumers who had ad-blocking software installed.

Such a shift also demands that we ask new questions of news in journalism. In his paper on studying computational and algorithmic journalism, C. W. Anderson tackles how sociologists and media scholars can frame inquiries related to journalism, given its computational turn (Anderson, 2012). He suggests using the added lens of ‘technology’ and ‘institutions and fields’ to Michael Schudson’s (Schudson, 2010) typology on the sociology of news which approaches the study of news from economic, political, cultural and organisational approaches. While most of these are self-explanatory, by institutions and fields, he refers to the ‘field of journalism’ as a whole and the different actors that shape it. This frame will examine the cultural power struggles that occur within the field and the way these struggles shape newsroom practises and news content (Anderson, 2012). Anderson adds that it is imperative to understand that the dynamics of the field of journalism are closely connected to nearby fields which now include computer science, web development and digital advertising.

We adopted a similar approach for our study. We began our inquiry by asking questions about how the emergence of digital technologies and the Internet are changing the process of producing news and how news organisations are rising up to the challenges posed by the digital space: what technologies and software are being used in the production and distribution of news in India, how are these technologies and softwares influencing the process of news production and distribution, how are the everyday practices and roles with respect to journalistic and editorial work transforming with their transition to digital, how do media agencies conceptualise and measure online viewership, and how do these metrics impact journalistic and editorial practices.

These questions led us to explore how leading legacy print newspapers across three language markets - English, Hindi and Malayalam - are making the transition from producing news stories exclusively for print to producing multimedia stories for the highly competitive and and diverse media ecology of the web.

Research Plan

As already mentioned, the study is divided into two thematic clusters: work of journalism and newsroom practises.

The former will include asking questions related to strategies and skills of information gathering and validation, methods and tools of communicating a news story in an online-first (or simultaneously print and online) environment, personal engagements with audiences via social media websites, new methods of performance assessment and sources and practices of learning and capacity building.

The latter will explore how choice/emphasis of content and reportage is being re-shaped by the digital environment by inquiring into changes in editorial responsibilities, dynamics of decision making, news-making workflows, technical diversity of the work force, and interaction between news producers within an increasingly convergent newsroom.

This being a pilot study, we will conduct intensive interviews with journalists, editors, and management personnel associated with one newspaper in each language market: 1) Hindustan Times in English, 2) Dainik Jagran in Hindi, and 3) Malayala Manorama in Malayalam. We selected these three languages due to their large market sizes and geographic distribution, and selected the newspapers for either their pioneering efforts in adopting digital technologies, or their dominant position in terms of circulation.

The research team includes Zeenab Aneez and Sumandro Chattapadhyay from CIS, and RISJ Director of Research Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. Vibodh Parthasarathi from CCMG, Jamia Millia Islamia, will contribute to the study as an advisor.

References

Anderson, Christopher W. 2013. ‘Towards a Sociology of Computational and Algorithmic Journalism’. New Media & Society 15 (7): 1005-1021.

Bajaj, Ambrish. 2016. “Indian news sites lost 100 million page views and $500K in three weeks - and had no clue why” http://factordaily.com/indian-news-sites-lost-100-million-page-views-500k-three-weeks-no-clue/.

Chattopadhyay, Saayan. 2012. ‘Online Journalism and Election Reporting in India’. Journalism Practice 6 (3): 337-48. doi:10.1080/17512786.2012.663596.

Coddington, Mark. 2014. ‘Defending Judgment and Context in “original Reporting”: Journalists’ Construction of Newswork in a Networked Age’. Journalism 15 (6): 678–95.

– 2015. ‘The Wall Becomes a Curtain: Revisiting Journalism’s News–business Boundary’. Boundaries of Journalism: Professionalism, Practices, and Participation. New York: Routledge. [forthcoming]. Accessed from http://markcoddington.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/CoddingtonFINAL.NewReferences.docx.

Diakopoulos, Nicholas, and Mor Naaman. 2011. ‘Towards Quality Discourse in Online News Comments’. In Proceedings of the ACM 2011 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 133–42. ACM. http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1958844.

Diakopoulos, Nicholas, Mor Naaman, and Funda Kivran-Swaine. 2010. ‘Diamonds in the Rough: Social Media Visual Analytics for Journalistic Inquiry’. In Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST), 2010 IEEE Symposium on, 115–22. IEEE. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5652922.

Hermida, Alfred. 2010. ‘Twittering the News: The Emergence of Ambient Journalism.’ Journalism Practice. Special Issue on the Future of Journalism. 4 (3): 297-308. doi:10.1080/17512781003640703.

Jalarajan, Sony, Rohini Sreekumar, and Nithin Kalorth. 2014. ‘“Tweeting” the News: Twitter Journalism as a New Age Crowd News Disseminator in India’. http://euacademic.org/UploadArticle/317.pdf.

Kilman, Larry. 2015. ‘World Press Trends: Newspaper Revenues Shift To New Sources - WAN-IFRA’. World Press Trends. June 1. http://www.wan-ifra.org/press-releases/2015/06/01/world-press-trends-newspaper-revenues-shift-to-new-sources.

K. J., Shashidar. 2016. ‘Hindustan Times has appointed a Mobile Editor’. Published online on Medianama.com. http://www.medianama.com/2016/07/223-hindustan-times-has-appointed-a-mobile-editor/.

Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis, Frank Esser, and David Levy. 2013. ‘Comparative Perspectives on the Changing Business of Journalism and Its Implications for Democracy’. The International Journal of Press/Politics 18 (4): 383-91. doi:10.1177/1940161213497130.

Örnebring, Henrik. 2010. ‘Technology and Journalism-as-Labour: Historical Perspectives.’ Journalism. February. 11 (1): 57-74. doi: 10.1177/1464884909350644.

Panda, Jayanta K. 2014. ‘Impact of Media Convergence on Journalism: A Theoretical Perspective’. Pragyaan, 14.

Paulussen, Steve and Pieter Ugille. 2008. ‘User Generated Content in the Newsroom: Professional and Organisational Constraints on Participatory Journalism.’ Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture. 5(2): 24-41.

Royal, Cindy. 2010. ‘The Journalist as Programmer: A Case Study of The New York Times Interactive News Technology Department.’ Presented at the International Symposium in Online Journalism, The University of Texas at Austin, April 20. Accessed from https://online.journalism.utexas.edu/2010/papers/Royal10.pdf.

Schudson, Michael. 2010. ‘Political Observatories, Databases * News in the Emerging Ecology of Public Information’. Daedalus. 139(2): 100–109. doi:10.1162/daed.2010.139.2.100.

Scott, Ben. 2005. ‘A Contemporary History of Digital Journalism.’ Television & New Media. February. 6(1): 89-126. doi: 10.1177/1527476403255824.

Sen, Arijit and Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis. 2016. Digital Journalism Start-Ups in India. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Accessed from: http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital%20Journalism%20Start-ups%20in%20India_0.pdf.

‘Nine top #TrendsinNewsrooms’. 2015. WAN-IFRA blog. http://blog.wan-ifra.org/2015/06/02/nine-top-trendsinnewsrooms-of-2015.

Villi, M., and K. Hayashi. 2014. ‘“The Mission Is to Keep This Industry Intact”: Digital Transition in the Japanese Newspaper Industry’. In 64th Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference, Seattle, WA, 22-26 May.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-transition-in-newspapers-in-india-pilot-study

Deployment of Digital Health Policies and Technologies: During Covid-19

pallavi — 2022-07-21T14:49:56Z

In the last twenty years or so, the Indian government has adopted several digital mechanisms to deliver services to its citizens.

Digitisation of public services in India began with taxation, land record keeping, and passport details recording, but it was soon extended to cover most governmental services - with the latest being public health. The digitisation of healthcare system in India had begun prior to the pandemic. However, given the push digital health has received in recent years especially with an increase in the intensity of activity during the pandemic, we thought it is important to undertake a comprehensive study of India's digital health policies and implementation. The project report comprises a desk-based research review of the existing literature on digital health technologies in India and interviews with on-field healthcare professionals who are responsible for implementing technologies on the ground.

The report by Privacy International and the Centre for Internet & Society can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/deployment-of-digital-health-policies-and-technologies-during-covid-19

Corporate push to Modi’s Rs.4.5-billion digital dream

praskrishna — 2015-07-16T02:26:24Z

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Rs. 4.5-billion digital dream seems to find favour with the corporate world, which calls it a “very progressive step” and “massive tech push”.

The article by Rakesh Kumar was published in the Statesman on July 13, 2015. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was quoted.

Modi shared his dreams at the recent Digital India Week in the capital and the event saw big names from the business world—Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani, Tata group chairman Cyrus Mistry, Wipro Ltd chairman Azim Premji, among others—supporting the initiative.

Showing its faith in Modi’s dream, Reliance Industries is all set to invest over Rs.2.5 lakh crore in the initiative that would focus on cloud computing and mobile applications, empowering every citizen with access to digital services, knowledge and information.

The initiative could boost the IT sector, which according to NASSCOM witnesses a robust growth in 2015, with the calculated revenue for FY 2015 at $147 billion, and a growth of 13 per cent from the corresponding period 2014.

“From an IT perspective, this is a sincere approach to problem solving with growth, realism and long-term transformation at the core,” said Manish Sharma, president, Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association (CEAMA) and managing director, Panasonic India, in an exclusive interview to thestatesman.com.

“Empowering citizens with the use of IT, we believe Digital India is a massive tech push to provide electronic governance and universal phone connectivity across the country,” he added.

CEAMA and Panasonic are willing to contribute to Digital India through technological expertise and commitment.

The Indian information Technology (IT) industry is reportedly pegged at $118-billion and DS Rawat, secretary general, ASSOCHAM, feels the Digital India initiative could be a “game-changer”.

Commenting on PM’s pledge to bring Internet connectivity to all Indians, Rawat told thestatesman.com: “The initiative is possible, provided the implementation of the schemes is done in a mission mode.”

“The business and industry will be the major beneficiary in terms of quality of governance, which is possible through digital initiative. Besides, the industry itself has to prepare to deal with new emerging business models such as e-commerce,” he added.

Modi, at the Digital India launch, said that “e-governance will be quickly changed into m-governance, and ‘M’ does not mean Modi governance, it means mobile governance.”

Both, big corporate houses and small players hailed the PM’s remark.

“It is good initiative for the railway sector in terms of passenger amenities, online procurement and technological up gradation,” said Amit Goel of Aggarwal Engineers in an interview to thestatesman.com.

The company is active in the railway sector.

When asked how Digital India initiative would help small companies, Goel said: “It will help us in many ways. By adopting e-governance, small companies can check and bid for the online procurement and will be able to interact with the concerned department through digital technology.”

Anil Valluri of NetApp India said: “Digital India is one of the most significant transformations the country will witness by eventually connecting over a billion people of India, with technology as its focal point.”

When it comes to IT transformation, cyber security emerges as a vital issue.

Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), described the issue of digital security as the key to the “operationalisation and sustainability of the Digital India initiative”. “We expect the government not only to build administrative structures for ensuring cyber-security of the information systems, but also enable legal frameworks for protecting citizens from unlawful and unforeseen abuses of their digital identities as well as their digital assets.” Having said that, he praised the PM’s move, saying it will bring together various existing and new initiatives for building “network infrastructures for expanded public access, electronic governance systems for effective delivery of services, under the national policy umbrella of 'Digital India’”.

Rajiv Kapur, managing director, Broadcom India, pointed out another benefit of the ubiquitous broadband sector, which according to a report, faces certain challenges such as low rural penetration, stagnant data usage over the years and limited broadband services.

“It will help bring parity between the rural and urban India,” he said and added: “Today, we need solutions that allow the majority of rural Indian population to continue to stay at their homes, and not migrate to cities.”

In a knowledge economy, the biggest difference that will make an impact is education.

"Healthcare is another area where having connectivity can make big difference in quality of life," he said.

“E-delivery of governance and services is important for the efficient use of government resources, and allows for collaborative, transparent and more efficient governance," the Broadcom managing director added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-statesman-rakesh-kumar-july-13-2015-corporate-push-modis-billion-digital-dream

Comments to the proposed amendments to The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021

Divyansha Sehgal and Torsha Sarkar — 2023-02-07T15:21:47Z

This note presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India, on the proposed amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (“proposed amendments”). We thank Isha Suri for her review of this submission.

Preliminary

In these comments, we examine the constitutional validity of the proposed amendments, as well as whether the language of the amendments provide sufficient clarity for its intended recipients. This commentary is in-line with CIS’ previous engagement with other iterations of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

General Comments

Ultra vires the parent act

Section 79(1) of the Information Technology (IT) Act states that the intermediary will not be held liable for any third-party information if the intermediary complies with the conditions laid out in Section 79(2). One of these conditions is that the intermediary observe “due diligence while discharging his duties under this Act and also observe such other guidelines as the Central Government may prescribe in this behalf.” Further, Section 87(2)(zg) empowers the central government to prescribe “guidelines to be observed by the intermediaries under sub-section (2) of section 79.”

A combined reading of Section 79(2) read with Section 89(2)(zg) makes it clear that the power of the Central Government is limited to prescribing guidelines related to the due diligence to be observed by the intermediaries while discharging its duties under the IT Act. However, the proposed amendments extend the original scope of the provisions within the IT Act.

In particular, the IT Act does not prescribe for any classification of intermediaries. Section 2(1) (w) of the Act defines intermediaries as “with respect to any particular electronic records, means any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that record or provides any service with respect to that record and includes telecom service providers, network service providers, internet service providers, web-hosting service providers, search engines, online payment sites, online-auction sites, online-market places and cyber cafes”. Intermediaries are treated and regarded as a single monolithic entity with the same responsibilities and obligations.

The proposed amendments have now established a new category of intermediaries, namely online gaming intermediary. This classification comes with additional obligations, codified within Rule 4A of the proposed amendments, including enabling the verification of user-identity and setting up grievance redressal mechanisms. The additional obligations placed on online gaming intermediaries find no basis in the IT Act, which does not specify or demarcate between different categories of intermediaries.

The 2021 Rules have been prescribed under Section 87(1) and Section 87(2)(z) and (zg) of the IT Act. These provisions do not empower the Central Government to make any amendment to Section 2(w) or create any classification of intermediaries. As has been held by the Supreme Court in State of Karnataka and Another v. Ganesh Kamath & Ors that: “It is a well settled principle of interpretation of statutes that conferment of rule making power by an Act does not enable the rule making authority to make a rule which travels beyond the scope of the enabling Act or which is inconsistent therewith or repugnant thereto.” In this light, we argue that the proposed amendment cannot go beyond the parent act or prescribe policies in the absence of any law/regulation authorising them to do so.

Recommendation

We recommend that a regulatory intervention seeking to classify intermediaries and prescribe regulations specific to the unique nature of specific intermediaries should happen through an amendment to the parent act. The amendment should prescribe additional responsibilities and obligations of online gaming intermediaries.

A note on the following sections

Since the legality of classifying intermediaries into further categories is under question, our subsequent discussions on the language of the provisions related to online gaming intermediary are recommended to be taken into account for formulating any new legislations relating to these entities.

Specific comments

Fact checking amendment

Amendment to Rule 3(1)(b)(v) states that intermediaries are obligated to ask their users to not host any content that is, inter alia, “identified as fake or false by the fact check unit at the Press Information Bureau of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting or other agency authorised by the Central Government for fact checking”.

Read together with Rule 3(1)(c), which gives intermediaries the prerogative to terminate user access to their resources on non-compliance with their rules and regulations, Rule 3(1)(b)(v) essentially affirms the intermediary’s right to remove content that the Central government deems to be ‘fake’. However, in the larger context of the intermediary liability framework of India, where intermediaries found to be not complying with the legal framework of section 79 lose their immunity, provisions such as Rule 3(1)(b)(v) compel intermediaries to actively censor content, on the apprehension of legal sanctions.

In this light, we argue that Rule 3(1)(b)(v) is constitutionally invalid, inasmuch that Article 19(2), which prescribes grounds under which the government restrict the right to free speech, does not permit restricting speech on the ground that it is ostensibly “fake or false”. In addition, the net effect of this rule would be that the government would be the ultimate arbiter of what is considered ‘truth’, and every contradictions to this narrative would be deemed to be false. In a democratic system like India’s, this cannot be a tenable position, and would go against a rich jurisprudence of constitutional history on the need for plurality.

For instance, in Indian Express Newspapers v Union of India, the Supreme Court had held that ‘the freedom of the press rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.’ Applying this interpretation to the present case, it could be said that the government’s monopoly on directing what constitutes “fake or false” in the online space would prevent citizens from accessing dissenting voices and counterpoints to government policies .

This is problematic when one considers that in the Indian context, freedom of speech and expression has always been valued for its instrumental role in ensuring a healthy democracy, and its power to influence public opinion. In the present case, the government, far from facilitating any such condition, is instead actively indulging in guardianship of the public mind (Sarkar et al, 2019).

Other provisions in the IT Act which permit for censorship of content, including section 69A, permit the government to only do so when content is relatable to grounds enumerated in Article 19(2) of the Constitution. In addition, in the case of Shreya Singhal vs Union of India, where, the constitutionality of section 69A was challenged, the Supreme Court upheld the provision because of the legal safeguards inherent in the provision, including offering a hearing to the originator of the impugned content and reasons for censoring content to be recorded in writing.

In contrast, a fact check by the Press Information Bureau or by another authorised agency provides no such safeguards, and does not relate to any constitutionally recognized ground for restricting speech.

Recommendation

The proposed amendment to Rule 3(1)(b)(v) is unconstitutional, and should be removed from the final draft of the law.

Clarifications are needed for online games rules definitions

The definitions of an "online game" and "online gaming intermediary" are currently extremely unclear and require further clarification.

As the proposed amendments stand, online games are characterised by the user's “deposit with the expectation of earning winnings”. Both deposit and winnings can be “cash” or “in kind", which does not adequately draw a boundary on the type of games this amendment seeks to cover. Can the time invested by the player in playing a game be answered under the “in kind” definition of deposit? If the game provides a virtual in-game currency that can be exchanged for internal power ups, even if there are no cash or gift cards used as payout, is that considered to be an “in kind” winnings? The rules, as currently drafted, are vague in their reference towards “in kind” deposits and payouts.

This definition of online games also does not differentiate between single or multiplayer games, and traditional games like chess which have found an audience online such as Candy Crush (single player), Minecraft (multiplayer collaborative) or chess (traditional). It is unclear whether these games were intended to fall within the purview of these amendments to the rules, and if they are all subjected to the same due diligence requirements as pay-to-play games. This, in conjunction with the proposed rule 6A which allows the Ministry to term any other game as an online game for the purposes of the rules, also provides them with broad, unpredictable powers . This ambiguity hinders clear comprehension of the expectations among the target stakeholders, thus affecting the consistency and predictability of the implementation of the rules.

Similarly, "online gaming intermediaries" are also defined very broadly as "intermediary that offers one or more than one online game". As defined, any intermediary that even hosts a link to a game is classified as an online gaming intermediary since the game is now "offered" through the intermediary. As drafted, there does not seem to be a material distinction between an "intermediary" as defined by the act and "online gaming intermediary" as specified by these rules.

Recommendation

We recommend further clarification on the definitions of these terms, especially for “in kind” and “offers” which are currently extremely vague terms that provide overbroad powers to the Ministry.

Intermediaries and Games

"Online gaming intermediaries" are defined very broadly as "intermediary that offers one or more than one online game". Intermediaries are defined in the Act as "any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that message or provides any service with respect to that message".

According to the media coverage (Barik, 2023) around these amendments, it seems that there is an effort to classify gaming companies as "online gaming intermediaries" but the language of the drafted amendments do not support this. An “intermediary” status is given to a company due to its functional role in primarily offering third party content. It is not a classification for different types of internet companies that exist and thus must not be used to make rules for entities that do not perform this function.

Not all gaming companies present a collection of games for their users to play. According to the drafted definition multiple platforms where games might be present like, an app stores where multiple game developers can publish their games for access by users, a website that lists links to online games, a social media platform that acts as an intermediary between two users exchanging links to games, as well as websites that host games for users to directly access may all be classified as an "online gaming intermediary" since they "offer" games to users. These are a rather broad range of companies and functions to be singularly classified an "online gaming intermediary".

Recommendation

We recommend a thoroughly researched legislative solution to regulating gaming companies that operate online rather than through amendments to intermediary rules. If some companies are indeed to be classified as “online gaming intermediaries”, there is a need for further reasoning on which type of gaming companies and their functions are intermediary functions for the purposes of these Rules.

Comments can be downloaded here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-to-proposed-amendments-to-it-intermediary-guidelines-and-digital-media-ethics-code-rules

Comments to the Draft Digital Competition Bill, 2024

Abhineet Nayyar, Isha Suri, and Pallavi Bedi (in alphabetical order) — 2024-06-11T10:13:22Z

This submission is a response by researchers at the Centre for Internet and Society India (CIS) to the draft Digital Competition Bill, 2024, published by the Committee on Digital Competition Law (CDCL), Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), (hereafter “draft DCB” or “draft Bill”).

We would like to thank the Ministry of Corporate Affairs for soliciting public comments on this important legislation and are grateful for this opportunity.

At the outset, CIS affirms the Committee’s approach to transition from a predominantly ex-post to an ex-ante approach for regulating competition in digital markets. The Committee’s assessment of the ex-post regime being too time-consuming for the digital domain has been substantiated by frequent and expensive delays in antitrust disputes, a fact that has also recently drawn the attention of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. And not just in India, the ex-post regime has been found to be too time-consuming in other jurisdictions as well, as a consequence of which many other countries are also moving towards an ex-post regime for digital markets. This also allows India to be in harmony with both developing and developed countries, which makes regulating global competition more consistent and efficient. In fact, “international cooperation between competition authorities” and “greater coherence between regulatory frameworks” are key in facilitating global investigations and lowering the cost of doing business.

Moreover, by adopting a principles-based approach to designing the law’s obligations, the draft Bill also addresses the concern that ex-ante regulations, due to their prescriptive nature, tend to be sector-agnostic. The fact that these principles are based on the findings of the Parliamentary Standing Committee’s (PSC) Report on ‘Anti-Competitive Practices by Big Tech Companies’ only lends them more evidence. The draft DCB empowers the Commission to clarify the Obligations for different services, and also provides CCI with the flexibility to undertake independent consultations to accommodate varying contexts and the needs of different core digital services. We do, however, have specific comments regarding implementing some of these provisions, which are elaborated in the accompanying document.

We would also like to emphasise that adequate enforcement of an ex-ante approach requires bolstering and strengthening regulatory capacity. Therefore, to minimise risks relating to underenforcement as well as overenforcement, CCI, its Digital Markets and Data Unit (DMDU), and the Director General’s (DG) office will have to substantially increase their technical capacity. A comparison of CCI’s current strength with its global counterparts that have adopted or are in the process of adopting an ex-ante approach to competition regulation reveals a stark picture. For example, the European Union (EU) had over 870 people in its DG COMP unit in 2022, and its DG CONNECT unit is expected to hire another 100 people in 2024 alone. Similarly, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has a permanent staff of 800+, the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JTFC) has about 400 officials just for regulating anti-competitive conduct, and South Korea’s KFTC has about 600 employees. In contrast, CCI and DG, combined, have a sanctioned strength of only 195 posts, out of which 71 remain vacant. Bridging this capacity gap through frequent and high-quality recruitment is, therefore, the need of the hour. Most importantly, there is a need to create a culture of interdisciplinary coordination among legal, technical, and economic domains.

Moreover, as we come to rely on an increasingly digitised economy, most technology companies will work with critical technology components such as key infrastructure, algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence to business models that are based on data collection and processing practices. Consequently, there will be a need to bolster CCI’s capacity in the technical domain by hiring and integrating new roles including technologists, software and hardware engineers, product managers, UX designers, data scientists, investigative researchers, and subject matter experts dealing with new and emerging areas of technology.21 Therefore, we recommend CCI to ensure that the proposed DMDU has the requisite diversity of skills to effectively use existing tools for enforcement and is also able to keep pace with new and emerging technological developments.

Along with this overall observation of CCI's capacity, we have also submitted detailed comments on specific clauses of the draft DCB. These submissions are structured across the following six categories: i) Classification of Core Digital Services; ii) Designation of a Systemically Significant Digital Enterprise (SSDE) and Associate Digital Enterprise (ADE); iii) Obligations on SSDEs and ADEs; iv) Powers of the Commission to Conduct an Inquiry; v) Penalties and Appeals; and vi) Powers of the Central Government. In addition to these suggestions, the detailed comments and their summarised version focus on three important gaps in the draft DCB – limited representation from workers’ groups and MSMEs, exclusion of merger and acquisition (M&A) from the discussions, and lack of a formalised framework for interregulatory coordination.

For our full comments, click here

For a detailed summary of our comments, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-to-the-draft-digital-competition-bill

Comments to the draft amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021

Anamika Kundu, Digvijay Chaudhary, Divyansha Sehgal, Isha Suri and Torsha Sarkar — 2022-07-07T02:39:28Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) presented its comments on the draft amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (‘the rules’), which were released on 6 June, 2022 for public comments.

These comments examine whether the proposed amendments are in adherence to established principles of constitutional law, intermediary liability and other relevant legal doctrines. We thank the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) for allowing us this opportunity. Our comments are divided into two parts. In the first part, we reiterate some of our comments to the existing version of the rules, which we believe holds relevance for the proposed amendments as well. And in the second part, we provide issue-wise comments that we believe need to be addressed prior to finalising the amendments to the rules.

To access the full text of the Comments to the draft amendments to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-to-draft-amendments-to-the-it-rules-2021

'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube

Ipsita Sengupta — 2016-07-07T02:18:12Z

This post by Ipsita Sengupta is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. In this essay, she explores the responses to various renditions of songs composed by Rabindranath Tagore available on YouTube and the questions they raise regarding online listening cultures and ideas of authorship of music.

Introduction

On typing “Rabindra Sangeet” on YouTube, one finds videos of the concerned Bengali songs in diverse visual and aural compositions. Just like for every other type of video that is put up on the site, as interesting as the videos may be, is the feedback they receive.

At the centre of this essay are such videos found on the social media platform YouTube, ones that play Rabindra Sangeet. Literally, “Songs of Rabindra(nath)”, this is a term used to identify poetic and musical pieces penned and composed in the late 19th- early 20th centuries by the Bengali writer and artist Rabindranath Tagore. The body of work has today become a genre among Indian music.

User-generated expression of YouTube makes it a medium with simultaneous individual and group dynamics. Apart from feedback as quantitative data through “Views”, “Likes” and “Dislikes”, the opinions of many users can be found in the “Comments” section.

Visuals of YouTube song videos of Rabindra Sangeet are diverse. So are renditions, with solitary or duet or band performances, and with varying rhythm and instrumental accompaniment. The set of comments below each video sometimes take the form of a conversation. Between applause and criticism, the latter is of special interest here.

Content of specific kinds seem to face disapproval: visual montages and stills from contemporary cinema, like images of urban youth, romance, longing. Some have shots of band performers and some, album cover images. Some of these renditions can be categorized as remixes because of their fast pace, bouncy vocals and electronic melody. The comments in question reflect and reveal hurt sentiments of people trying to preserve some kind of sanctity and authenticity of Rabindra Sangeet.

They state in different ways that the ethics of presenting the genre have been violated, via their notation and design; either by either makers of the film in the song’s incorporation, or by the way young pop stars have been placed in particular montages.

Here are some comments below to illustrate what audiences find wrong. The video is embedded below, followed by the comments posted on the video page.

What a rubbish song! Just remember please that Rabindra sangeet is not for Band musicians ! Please do not distort Rabindra sangeet. Only idiots will try to do so. Shame on you lot !
Unfortunately these band party can never be anything like that great man....hence they should stop making fun of his creation....
This song is from Shyama and I think that the innocent beauty of a young boy falling in love with a court dancer. The arrangement does not suit the lyrics.

Who has sung this? Started well, but after a while it changed the melody on its own. Only Bengalis are so indecent to change the work of the composer while performing. But otherwise, the voice is promising.

Robindra shongoter ijjot nosto kore dise... super dislike... (“They have destroyed the dignity of Rabindra Sangeet... super dislike...”)
Henshit! rock does not suit to melody and classics. Don't fusion "Sangeet"/ folk/patriotic songs.

Rabindra sangeet is usually better off with minimum instrumental accompaniment. That is why the Kishore Kumar version is more appealing. And the maestro Hemanta Mukherji used only a harmonium and tabla for most of his superb renditions.
Simply bogus. In Bengali... Shreya r nyaka voice just intolerable (“Shreya's coquettish voice just intolerable”).

some confused experiments with a song rendered by many exponents. This singer in his misguided modernism mostly misses the target.
bhalo lagche na shunte...Rabindra Nath er gaan er opor please bekar improvisation ta korben na...onar opor churi kachi ta nai ba chalalen... (“I am not enjoying listening to this... please do not do useless improvisations on Rabindranath's songs... do not use knives and scissors on him...)
… Tomra please originality maintain kore experiment koro … (...Could you please maintain originality while experimenting...)

...Go listen to the original tagore score and then come here with some innovative posts, k?
Absolutely bogus. Very badly sung. Who the hell is the singer? It has Jhankar beats too!!! Who the hell is the music director? Shame that people of such low taste and caliber are directing Bengali movies nowadays. Maobadi der diye petano uchit eder (“They should be beaten up by the Maoists)!!!!!

THere should be a self imposing limit of Screwing rabindra sangeet.
F...king Indian Hindi speaking bas....ds

This is not to say that these voices reign supreme. The listeners who enjoy the works leave great appreciation and also debate with the naysayers. But here I am taking into account the criticism that the videos receive. They have turned out to be more descriptive than the appreciation, and because of this they open up a lot of questions. We observe them in the light of both the medium as well as some understanding of the artistic ideals Tagore aspired to in his lifetime. The complete list of URLs of videos with their comments is given in the bibliography.

The Poetic/Musical Works of Tagore and Technologies of Access

Tagore was born in 1858 in a wealthy landowning household in Bengal. In his growing up years, the household Jorasanko was a space where Western and Indian lifestyles and artistic developments coexisted. Besides his own training in musical performance, and education and cultural exposure abroad, he also grew up amidst the rich musical, literary and theatrical talent of his family members.

Tagore was impressed and inspired by all kinds of artists and musical styles, and traces of these are found in his compositions and lyrics- whether folk, the ritualistic Kirtan, the mystic Bauls of rural Bengal, or even songs native to the West. For example the Scottish song ‘Auld Lang Syne’ influenced ‘purano shei diner kotha’ and ‘Ye banks and braes’ inspired ‘phule phule dhole dhole’ (Som, 2009).

From a young age itself, the poet was uncomfortable with strict boundaries and rules, one of them being the tight-rope walk over Raaga-based notations and rhythm structures of Indian classical music. He did believe in the power of Raagas to evoke the emotion they were said to be designed for, and while placing his poetry in musical compositions, he based his tunes on Raagas depending on the mood of his verse. However, he would combine melodic characteristics of established Raagas very often- a common practice with artists resulting in “mishra”, or mixed Raagas. He even combined rhythms or Taalas, and designed new ones for his songs. He found the classical genre embellishments of Taan and Aalaap unnecessary and left them out. “He declared his songs to be his unabashed expression of modernity because in them he could escape adhering to any expected literary standard” (Som, 2009).

Tagore lived in an era when Indian classical music was being written down with notations which were intelligible to Western audiences. Though he put on paper notations for his own songs, it so happened sometimes that when he was asked to sing in a public gathering, he could not remember the exact composition he’d first created. He would improvise immediately and complete the performance successfully. There were also times when his students or family members would sing their own interpretation of his tunes. Though his contemplation on it was based on a personal judgment of how well they adapted what he'd taught and how talented they were, he realised that the other singer was “not a gramophone” and he’d have to “grant that artistic independence” (Som, 2009).

“The art with which he matched melody with each nuanced lyric or combined ragas and improvised novel musical expressions, made each song a gem to be discovered anew everytime it is sung” (ibid, 2009). We may admit this but through this thought we may also understand that every live vocal rendition is intangible, however much we stick to notations.

In the electronic age, however much we record a rendition on devices, it is stored as data taking up space. Data is a common form that text, visuals, and audio all take. Though some recordings of Tagore's voice can be found online, they are digital versions that have been converted from the analog. Besides the technical transition, today's listener is also accessing it through a device and not listening to him performing. Two dynamics could happen here: either his performances are immortalised by the technology which has collected the sound of his voice in the exact way he has performed them and audiences will form an idea of “authentic” or “original”. And the other is that the audience will understand that in his time, when his voice was recorded, effects like electronic disco beats had not been invented.

That way, the performances of Tagore's verses that we are witnessing on YouTube today are the tangible notations combining with fresh new thought processes and constantly changing music performance styles, and manifesting on a contemporary media space. It is beyond just a copy, as we will see later, and to put it in Tagore's own words, it is “not a gramophone”.

Perhaps the accompanying instruments that were recommended for the verses have been replaced in a particular video with other and/or newer sources of musical sound- like digital sound. And the visuals in the video were probably not what the author was familiar with in his lifetime- body language of human actors, their clothes, the cityscape, and the like. In the film clips and non-cinematic material of Rabindra Sangeet videos, contemporary visuals include digital copies of photographs of Tagore and his contemporaries that help us make sense of his era.

“Adapting Chion’s theorisation of Dolby sound, the aesthetics of the remix may be thought of not as a consequence of technical changes but rather as the way in which technology combines with different musics to create the remix” (Duggal, 2010). It's not that new technology like electronic beats happens to an old composition when time passes and corrupts it like fungus or dust, it is that one one applies new aesthetics to an older text to innovate.

Describing the prime place of music in the hierarchy of sound in the cultural history of the West, Kahn discussed the phobia of sound that was not “significant” (Kahn, 2003). For a long time, sounds that reproduced the world for us- such as ambient sounds or noise- and which came via machines instead of established musical instruments were not considered valid within music. His stand in this context was that “it would make more sense to experience artistic works in their own right, not how they might conform to gross categorical distinctions”.

Given the artistic spontaneity which Tagore believed in, and the changing technology, what do we mean when we say that Rabindra Sangeet is being “distorted”, or its dignity (“ijjot”) or “innocence” threatened? What is the misunderstood modern? What is this “original” missing from “experimentation”? Especially when the composer himself is not witness to the forms his songs are taking today, what is this imagination of the ideal performance that leads to the judgment that another type of performance is not acceptable?

Perhaps at this point we can also shine a tiny light on Tagore's beliefs in other spheres. “Nationalism” is a compilation of a series of lectures given around the world, which Tagore gave in the 1916-‘17. In the introduction to this compilation, Guha illustrates Tagore’s realisation that mindless boycotting of everything that the West introduced in India in the name of Swadeshi (which he used to support) was to throw out the baby with the bath water. Quoting a letter Tagore wrote to a friend in 1908, he writes, “ ‘I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live” ’ (Guha, 2009).

Soon after delivering these lectures in US and Japan, the Visva Bharati University was founded in December 1918. Tagore envisioned “a synthesis of the East and the West through a healthy intellectual and cultural interaction” (Som, 2009). Ironically, Visva Bharati, for over six decades after his death, held a copyright on Tagore’s work and assumed exclusive right of approval over song recordings of how notations were to be followed.

Surely it is not only due to a lack of understanding of Tagore's ideals that some renditions are marked as wrong? Many who don't appreciate the new versions may actually be well aware of his life story or beliefs. At various instances, the beats, the voice, the performers are targeted. Can we put a finger on the problem? Does it have something to do with the means of interaction of the medium? What is this search for the authentic or the correct? Is there a xenophobia of generational shifts in lifestyle - the opposition to a lifestyle because that is the “other” of a fantasy of tradition, it is not “high culture”? Because internet access transcends boundaries of class, education, and generation?

Mechanical Reproduction and Digital Media

In the early 20th century, when Tagore was writing his songs, in another part of the world political thinker Benjamin wrote in his timeless essay that when a work of art is mechanically reproduced, when there are only copies and the “original” in a particular place and space in history loses significance, its distribution boosts its “exhibition value” (Benjamin, 1936). “The work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental.” The “social significance” (ibid.) of an art work increases with multiple reproductions of it reaching the masses because the ritual value of it goes down, and it becomes open to as much criticism as enjoyment or reverence.

On social media spaces this democracy is visible on the same page- such as the “Comments” discussion. The “aura” (ibid.) of the “original” Tagore cannot exist in the flux of digital reproductions and uploads of individual creations- how valid then is the fight over it? Or is it in fact a fear of losing in this flux a memory of something revered? Does that imagined revered have something to do with defining and maintaining a community identity in this passageway of a multitude of identities that is the internet?

One of the integral features of a social media space is the option of “sharing” the content, i.e., individuals transmit it further to other users. While YouTube’s Likes and Comments give the content a boost and analytics from YouTube automatically circulate this more “popular” content, individual users have a major role in the circulation of online content.

Besides directly sharing, they can take either the audio or visual aspects of a video piece, restructure or redesign the piece, creating as a result an all new video and circulating that. Through “appropriation and reproduction”, “the web in general, and the web video in particular intensify the culture of the copy, for it provides its users free access to an immense database of ready-to-use information” (Vanderbeeken, 2011).

Someone may download from elsewhere an audio composition used earlier in a video of “concentration music”, attach it to different visuals, and upload it back on YouTube under “relaxation music”. After all, as studies have found, the response to one’s online content through mechanisms such as “likes” give the author a sense of gratification and encourages him/her to keep checking notifications every few minutes- on various social media platforms.

In such a situation, “the original creator suddenly occupies the position of yet another spectator. Within this process, the role of transmitters is so important that they assume a vague position of authority over the works” (Menotti, 2011). Through its one on one connection with the spectator, each individual video exists as an independent entity subject to active, on the spot feedback as well as manipulation by every individual who watches it. And of course, circulation is in the hands of each viewer resulting in content originating as altogether new information.

At this juncture I would like to make an intervention using a formulation by Frith, about the fluid, transitional nature of identity. “It is in deciding- playing and hearing what sounds right- that we both express ourselves, our own sense of rightness, and suborn ourselves, lose ourselves, in an act of participation” (Frith, 1996).

Let us take for example, another type of video found on YouTube. Instrumental pieces of music with descriptions such as “music for concentration”, “study music”, and even “brain music”. If we break down the description along these lines, we have firstly, tunes of any kind and varying pace on string and wind instruments. Then colourful visuals of mostly natural landscapes, the human body, or graphical representations of the “mind”. The written word accompanies the frame, and each aspect combines to add meaning to the other two.

Just because the label says that the music will enhance concentration, does it always have that effect? Our everyday experiences with the audio-visual would have surely shown us that the design of a composition- both musical and cinematic- does not necessarily make everyone feel the same way. Moreover, the credibility of video descriptions is always subject to doubt, as discussed above.

We see thus that in case of online media, it holds true all the more that one acquires or asserts an identity in playing/listening to a performance of some sort of music and adding opinions below, as much as the performance or presentation itself. We can actually trace this to a perspective that a remixed video is a form of feedback too- to an earlier understanding of Rabindra-Sangeet by the maker who thought that the genre could be expressed this way as well. “The intrinsic relationship of ‘original’ to ‘imitation’ is weakened” (Vanderbeeken, 2011), and this is where digital media picks up from where analog technology left off.

In such an interaction, between human beings exchanging data with equal authorship over it, could YouTube be playing a role in the “production of the rhetoric of the classical and canonical” (Duggal, 2010) around a historical figure from eastern India, where some audio-visual images are acceptable to his definition and others not?

An older and a newer understanding of the same cultural object co-exist on one space such as the standardised video frames of YouTube. Alongside Tagore's voice are those of Kishore Kumar, Hemant Kumar, Jayati Chakraborty, Shreya Ghoshal, and many others. A sense of the “original” exists beyond Tagore's voice because everybody has not sung it fast- if its rules were to go slow. And if somebody wants to give a tribute to Rabindra Sangeet by pepping it up, he/she obviously must not have meant to “ruin” it.

Is it the anonymity of the Comments space which makes the discussions the way they are? Because one cannot see the person who has uploaded it and is confident that what they were taught was the only truth- the uploader/ content creator probably comes across as an imposter.

But maybe this search for the “correct” rendition is a search for political correctness in a world densely connected through information technology, where one's identity through a databank of online searches does not belong just to oneself but to corporations and advertisers too. Could there also be people who believe that the very act of having Rabindra Sangeet online is a mismatch of the authentic Tagore experience- because the internet is not from his time or geographical location?

Conclusion

As described earlier, when Tagore composed his music largely based on the notational arrangements prescribed by Raagas, he removed what he determined were complications of the indigenous classical music system. What he retained were what he comprehended as the moods evoked by particular Raagas, and engineered several songs on selected rules of different Raagas. In the process, he created a genre which those who were not fortunate enough to get formal training in the classical grammar of music could sing and engage in.

From the point of view of pure classical renditions being “high art”, Rabindra Sangeet thus could not fit into that umbrella. But it was popular and regarded because it spoke to the people, as a result of which it is still given a special place in collective memory after 100 years. Thus we see that “in terms of aesthetic process there is no real difference between high and low music” (Frith, 1996).

Social media exposes today that musical spontaneity has constraints in the collective memory of forms. Proving at the same time that music truly cannot be contained- since it has such diverse imaginations of the “real” at a time when the author is not alive any more. Tagore was “comfortable in the knowledge that his songs were like wild flowers” (Som, 2009), drawing from natural landscapes and human emotions. Is YouTube telling us that in this century, some consumers of his music might be narrowing down definitions of “significant sound” to identity politics around a literary figure and his homeland? Or simply trying to hold on to something familiar in an ever changing zone, resisting- perhaps unconsciously- an attempt by others to reinterpret it through their reality or sense of beauty?

Bibliography

Benjamin, Walter. 1936. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Trans. Harry Zohn. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Schocken/Random House, 2005. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Duggal, Vebhuti. The Hindi Film Song Remix: Memory, History, Affect. Diss. Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2010.

Frith, Simon. “Music and Identity”. Questions of Cultural Identity. Eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. Sage Publications, 1996.

Guha, Ramachandra. Introduction. Nationalism. Rabindranath Tagore. Penguin Books, 2009.

Kahn, Douglas. “The Sound of Music”. The Auditory Culture Reader. Eds. Michael Bull and Les Black. Berg Publishers, 2003.

Menotti, Gabriel. “Objets Propages: The Internet Video as an Audiovisual Format”. Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube. Eds. Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles. INC Reader #6, 2011.

Som, Reba. Rabindranath Tagore: The Singer and his Song. Penguin Books India, 2009.

Tagore, Rabindranath. Nationalism. Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1918.

Vanderbeeken, Robrecht. “Web Video and the Screen as a Mediator and Generator of Reality”. Video Vortex Reader II: Moving Images Beyond YouTube. Eds. Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles. INC Reader #6, 2011.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/blog_understanding-tagores-music-on-youtube