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Information Design - Visualizing Action (TTC)
This is the second part of the Making Change analysis on information activism. It explores the role of the presentation and design of information to translate information into action.
Information Activism - Tactics for Empowerment (TTC)
This is the first of a two-part analysis of information activism for the Making Change project. This post looks at the benefits and limitations of increasing access to information to enable citizenship and political participation.
Digital Native
The end of the year is supposed to be a happy, feel-good space for families, friends, societies and communities to come together and count our blessings. It is the time to look at things that have gone by and look forward to what the New Year will bring.
Methods for Social Change
On this brief introduction, I outline the main targets of my research project for CIS and the HIVOS Knowledge Program. As a response to the thought piece ‘Whose Change is it Anyway’ I will explore civic engagement among middle class youth over the course of the next 9 months by interviewing change makers and collectives that are part of multi-stakeholder projects in Bangalore.
Public Art, Technology and Citizenship - Blank Noise Project
Jasmeen Patheja speaks about the active citizen in the digital age, its challenges in the public and private spheres and interdisciplinary methods to overcome them.
Digitally Enhanced Civil Resistance
This reflection looks at how civil disobedience unfolds in network societies. It explores the origins of nonviolence, describes digital and non-digital tactics of non-violent protest and participation and finally comments on the possibilities of this form of civil resistance to foster individual and collective civic engagement.
Bangalore + Sustainability Summit
The power of technology to create youth engagement and positive social change were discussed at the Bangalore + Sustainability Summit on September 21, 2013 at the Centre for Internet and Society(CIS) , Bangalore. The event, in conjunction with the Social Good Summit that took place in New York during the same weekend, explored creative and tech-based avenues to solve sustainability challenges and promote social good.
Revealing Protesters on the Fringe: Crucifixion Protest in Paraguay
An analysis of the crucifix protest in Paraguay in the light of Nishant Shah’s piece: Whose Change is it Anyway? The blog post looks at the physical and symbolic spaces in which narratives of change were conceived and the extent to which information circulating within activates citizen action.
Whose Change is it Anyway?
This thought piece is an attempt to reflect critically on existing practices of “making change” and its implications for the future of citizen action in information and network societies. It observes that change is constantly and explicitly invoked at different stages in research, practice, and policy in relation to digital technologies, citizen action, and network societies.
The Stranger with Candy
Beware of online threats, as the distinction between friends and foes is false on the internet.
Not Just Fancy Television
Nishant Shah reviews Ben Hammersley's book "64 Things You Need to Know for Then: How to Face the Digital Future Without Fear ", published by Hodder & Stoughton
Whose Change Is It Anyway? | DML2013
As a preparation for the DML conference, Nishant Shah had an interview with Howard Rheingold, a cyberculture pioneer, social media innovator, and author of "Smart Mobs. Nishant Shah is chair of 'Whose Change Is It Anyway? Futures, Youth, Technology And Citizen Action In The Global South (And The Rest Of The World)' track at DML2013. Here, he talks about shifts in citizen engagement in Indian politics and civics, and the underlying significance of these changes.
The Rules of Engagement
Why the have-nots of the digital world can sometimes be mistaken as trolls. I am not sure if you have noticed, but lately, the people populating our social networks have started to be more diverse than before.
One. Zero.
The digital world is the world of twos. All our complex interactions, emotional negotiations, business transactions, social communication and political subscriptions online can be reduced to a string of 1s and 0s, as machines create the networks for the human beings to speak. So sophisticated is this network of digital infrastructure that we forget how our languages of connection are constantly being transcribed in binary code, allowing for the information to be transmitted across the web.
Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies
Nishant Shah was invited to do a book review of a new anthology 'Deconstructing Digital Natives', edited by Michael Thomas. The review was published in Routledge's Journal of Children and Media on July 18, 2012.
Citizen Activism the Past Decade
Call for Contributions to the ‘Digital Natives with a Cause?’ newsletter, ‘Citizen Activism the Past Decade’. Deadline: August 15, 2012.
Revisiting Techno-euphoria
In my last post, I talked about techno-euphoria as a condition that seems to mark much of our discourse around digital technologies and the promise of the future. The euphoria, as I had suggested, manifests itself either as a utopian view of how digital technologies are going to change the future that we inhabit, or woes of despair about how the overdetermination of the digital is killing the very fibre of our social fabric.
Across Borders
A friend and I were at a cafe in Bangalore the other day, when an acquaintance walked in. After the initial niceties, and invitation to join us for coffee, the new person looked at us and asked a question that sounded so archaic and so unexpected that we had no answers for it: How do you two know each other? This innocuous question threw us both off the loop because we didn’t have an immediate answer.
The Bots That Got Some Votes Home
Nilofar Ansher gives us some startling updates on the "Digital Natives Video Contest" voting results declared in May 2012, in this blog post.
Hyper-connected, Hyper-lonely?
The Digital Natives newsletter, part of the 'Digital Natives with a Cause?' project, invites contributions to its April-May 2012 double issue.
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