Centre for Internet and Society

Consultation on Gendered Information Disorder in India

Amrita Sengupta and Yesha Tshering Paul — 2024-10-15T10:57:06Z

On 14th and 15th March 2024, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) collaborated with Point of View (POV) to organise a consultation in Mumbai to explore the phenomenon of gendered information disorder in India, spanning various aspects from healthcare and sexuality to financial literacy, and the role of digital mediums, social media platforms and AI in exacerbating these issues.

The event was convened by Amrita Sengupta (Research and Programme Lead, CIS), Yesha Tshering Paul (Researcher, CIS), Bishakha Datta (Programme Lead, POV) and Prarthana Mitra (Project Anchor, POV)..* Download the event report here.

The event brought together experts, researchers and grassroots activists from Maharashtra and across the country to discuss their experiences with information disorder, and the multifaceted challenges posed by misinformation, disinformation and malinformation targeting gender and sexual identities.

Understanding Information Disorders: The consultation commenced with a look at the wide spectrum of information disorder by Yesha Tshering Paul and Amrita Sengupta. Misinformation^{^[1]} was highlighted as false information disseminated unintentionally, such as inaccurate COVID cures that spread rapidly during the pandemic. In contrast, disinformation involves the intentional spread of false information to cause harm, exemplified by instances like deepfake pornography. A less recognized form, malinformation, involves the deliberate misuse of accurate information to cause harm, as seen in the misleading representation of regret rates among trans individuals who have undertaken gender affirming procedures. Yesha highlighted that the definitions of these concepts are often varied, and thus the importance of moving beyond definitions to centre user experiences of this phenomenon.

The central theme of this discussion was the concept of “gendered” information disorder, referring to the targeted dissemination of false or harmful online content based on gender and sexual identity. This form of digital misogyny intersects with other societal marginalizations, disproportionately affecting marginalised genders and sexualities. The session also emphasised the critical link between information disorders and gendered violence (both online and in real life). Such disorders perpetuate stereotypes, gender-based violence, and silences victims, fostering an environment that empowers perpetrators and undermines victims' experiences.

Feminist Digital Infrastructure: Digital infrastructures shape our online spaces. Sneha PP (Senior Researcher, CIS) introduced the concept of feminist infrastructures as a potential solution that helps mediate discourse around gender, sexuality, and feminism in the digital realm. Participant discussions emphasised the need for accessible, inclusive, and design-conscious digital infrastructures that consider the intersectionality and systemic inequalities impacting content creation and dissemination. Strategies were discussed to address online gender-based violence and misinformation, focusing on survivor-centric approaches and leveraging technology for storytelling.

Gendered Financial Mis-/Dis-information: Garima Agrawal (Researcher, CIS) with inputs by Debarati Das (Co-Lead, Capacity Building at PoV) and Chhaya Rajput (Helpline Facilitator, Tech Sakhi) led the session by highlighting gender disparities in digital and financial literacy and access to digital devices and financial services in India, despite women constituting a higher percentage of new internet users. This makes marginalised users more vulnerable to financial scams. Drawing from the ongoing financial harms project at CIS, Garima spoke about the diverse manifestations of financial information disorders arising from misleading information that results in financial harm, ranging from financial influencers (and in some cases deepfakes of celebrities) endorsing platforms they do not use, to fake or unregulated loan and investment services deceiving users. Breakout groups of participants then analysed several case studies of real-life financial frauds that targeted women and the queer community to identify instances of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. Emotional manipulation and the exploitation of trust were identified as key tactics used to deceive victims, with repercussions extending beyond monetary loss to emotional, verbal, and even sexual violence against these individuals.

Fact-Checking Fake News and Stories: The pervasive issue of fake news in India was discussed in depth, especially in the era of widespread social media usage. Only 41% of Indians trust the veracity of the information encountered online. Aishwarya Varma, who works at Webqoof (The Quint’s fact checking initiative) as a Fact Check Correspondent, led an informative session detailing the various accessible tools that can be used to fact-check and debunk false information. Participants engaged in hands-on activities by using their smartphones for reverse image searches, emphasising the importance of verifying images and their sources. Archiving was identified as another crucial aspect to preserve accurate information and debunk misinformation.

Gendered Health Mis-/Dis-information: This participant-led discussion highlighted structural gender biases in healthcare and limited knowledge about mental health and menstrual health as significant concerns, along with the discrimination and social stigma faced by the LGBTQ+ community in healthcare facilities. One participant brought up their difficulty accessing sensitive and non-judgmental healthcare, and the insensitivity and mockery faced by them and other trans individuals in healthcare facilities. Participants suggested the increased need for government-funded campaigns on sexual and reproductive health rights and menstrual health, and the importance of involving marginalised communities in healthcare related decision-making to bring about meaningful change.

Mis-/Dis-information around Sex, Sexuality, and Sexual Orientation: Paromita Vohra, Founder and Creative Director of Agents of Ishq—a multi-media project about sex, love and desire that uses various artistic mediums to create informational material and an inclusive, positive space for different expressions of sex and sexuality—led this session. She started with an examination of the term “disorder” and its historical implications, and highlighted how religion, law, medicine, and psychiatry had previously led to the classification of homosexuality as a “disorder”. The session delved into the misconceptions surrounding sex and sexuality in India, advocating for a broader understanding that goes beyond colonial knowledge systems and standardised sex education. She brought up the role of media in altering perspectives on factual events, and the need for more initiatives like Agents of Ishq to address the need for culturally sensitive and inclusive sexuality language and education that considers diverse experiences, emotions, and identities.

Artificial Intelligence and Mis-/Dis-information: Padmini Ray Murray, Founder of Design Beku—a collective that emerged from a desire to explore how technology and design can be decolonial, local, and ethical— talked about the role of AI in amplifying information disorder and its ethical considerations, stemming from its biases in language representation and content generation. Hindi and regional Indian languages remain significantly under-represented in comparison to English content, leading to skewed AI-generated content. Search results reflect the gendered biases in AI and further perpetuate existing stereotypes and reinforce societal biases. She highlighted the real-world impacts of AI on critical decision-making processes such as loan approvals, and the influence of AI on public opinion via media and social platforms. Participants expressed concerns about the ethical considerations of AI, and emphasised the need for responsible AI development, clear policies, and collaborative efforts between tech experts, policymakers, and the public.

* The Centre for Internet and Society undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. Point of View focuses on sexuality, disability and technology to empower women and other marginalised genders to shape and inhabit digital spaces.

^{^[1]} Claire Wardle, Understanding Information Disorder (2020). https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/understanding-information-disorder/.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/consultation-on-gendered-information-disorder-in-india

Beyond Public Squares, Dumb Conduits, and Gatekeepers: The Need for a New Legal Metaphor for Social Media

amber — 2021-05-31T10:19:33Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/beyond-public-squares-dumb-conduits-and-gatekeepers.pdf

IRC 22 - Proposed Session - #LetsMoveIn

Admin — 2022-05-19T14:54:24Z

Details of a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - # Home - Call for Sessions

Session Type: Workshop/Collaborative Working Session

Session Plan

This is a collaborative session designed in the form of a workshop to understand the implications on social movements because of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Movements of many kinds have moved geographies from public spaces to within the private space of the home. Not only has the nature of movements changed because of this, but we have seen the idea of home being transformed and gaining novel meanings like never before on a global scale. This metamorphosis had to undergo the collapse of inside and outside of home as two separate spaces which we often used to refer to. We were forced to shift most of our ‘outside’ lives to ‘inside’ breakout rooms. We want to collectively understand through this workshop, the different manifestations that movements have taken through digital media devices and its implications on the idea of home. This session seeks to understand the implications of ‘reterritorialized’ home from an entry point of movements through a participatory dialogue which we hope will bring the multifaceted experiences to the forefront of discussion. In doing so, we would like to engage with broader questions of what transformations have happened to movements when we had to navigate ourselves mostly in the digital arena, how people reciprocate to this transformation, how gender, caste, class etc. shape the digital movements landscape, how digital [dis]enable the possibility of protesting in and from home, etc. Some of the concepts that we want to explore through the activities are spaciality, materiality, agency, public/private dichotomy, sociality, mediation, etc. We would like to use storytelling and role playing as activities to engage with these concepts and find more personal meanings to them.

Session Team

Arathy Salimkumar is a research scholar in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Calicut University Campus. She is engaged in a research project mapping the emergence and furtherance of Identity politics in Indian Cinema. She is interested in the questions of political identity and the movements and struggles emerging in association with it in contemporary India.

Faheem Muhammed is a research scholar in the Department of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, Pondicherry University. His work explores the role of digital technologies in resolving as well as exacerbating the status quo. His research interests include critical media studies, techno-culture, and social theories and policies, with an insight into theories of race, gender, colonialism, and social inclusion and exclusion.

Hazeena T is a research scholar in the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad. Her research interests include social change communication and politics of knowledge. She is interested in understanding the dynamics of knowledge politics in grassroots initiatives and its implications for communities involved.

Manisha Madapathi is a research scholar in the department of communication, in the University of Hyderabad. Her thesis project focuses on the phenomenon of internet shutdowns in India and the implications it has on the several stakeholders involved. She is interested in the processes of congregation and assembly during movements, and what channels enable it.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-letsmovein

Programme Associate (Communications)

gurshabad — 2020-08-09T13:51:27Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is seeking applications for the position of Programme Associate (Communications), to support its Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) Programme. In keeping with efforts within the larger Wikimedia movement in encouraging an inclusive workplace and addressing issues of gender disparity This position is presently open only to applicants who identify as women.

Context of the CIS-A2K programme

As an affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia and it’s sister projects, we design and implement different initiatives with an aim to create high-quality content and bring new contributors to Wikimedia projects in Indian languages. The initiatives are premised on various themes and seek to create a multilingual repository of knowledge using Wikimedia projects as a platform. You are encouraged to carefully read through the CIS-A2K work plan before making the application. You will work cohesively with the Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia India communities to meet the specific goals of each language community in India. You will be a part of a small team of 5 to 10 members doing high visibility and high impact work. Please learn more about CIS-A2K here.

Position Summary

As Programme Associate, your job will be to support the Team’s larger goals -- growth of Indian language Wikipedias, other Wikimedia projects and the contributor communities. Your primary responsibility will be to support the Programme Associates -- that spearhead our on-ground programmatic activities -- with regular communication with the community and the outside world.

Responsibilities

Storytelling and all other forms of of communication-related responsibilities are two major focus areas of this job. You will explore conventional to new media to share the stories of the many of volunteers that make Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects such great knowledge repositories
Creating original stories of challenges and success of the Indian language Wikimedia communities, including the ones that we closely work with Being the interface between A2K team and the community and lead different kinds of communications activities
Sharing the work of the community and A2k team in a regular manner through print media, newsletters, social media, mailing list updates, blog posts etc., including timely announcement of programme activities on these platforms
Providing training on effective communications to the communities on a need basis and enabling them to independently tell their own stories in their own languages
Support with writing, review and editing of the annual work plan and reports of the programme
Interviewing Wikimedians under the ambit of the WikipediansSpeak project and beyond, and share the story of the Wikimedia community widely in the media

Required skills

Good communication skill in writing and speaking, which will be required for correspondence, blog, report etc writing
Experience of blog post, report etc writing
Prior experience of working in a collaborative community, preferably online.
Strong understanding of the internet and work of the Wikimedia movement.
Active participation as a Wikimedia volunteer would be an asset, though not a prerequisite. Demonstrated experience working in a global, multi-cultural team environment.
Must be fluent in English and at least one Indian language.
A good understanding of the cultural and knowledge universe of one Indian language will be an added advantage.
Ability to integrate with and understand the complexity of the Indian Wikimedia community.
Prior experience/ knowledge in working with social media for professional communication would be an added advantage.
Prior experience/knowledge in liasioning with conventional print/broadcast media would be an added advantage.

Characteristics of the Programme Associate

High level of commitment: The Programme Associate should believe in the values of CIS and Wikimedia projects, exude enthusiasm for the mission and can powerfully embody and communicate the mission.
Intellectual curiosity and flexibility: Must enjoy tackling difficult, ambiguous problems and able to incorporate new knowledge into how one approaches situations and generates solutions, loves learning from others while expanding intellectual horizons.
Open and transparent: Have a high level of integrity and be comfortable working in a highly transparent fashion, open to input and feedback, a proactive and candid communicator who isn't afraid to bring others in when things are off-track or when they need help and should be able to handle criticism in a mature fashion.
Community builder: It is essential that the Programme Associate sees themself as a partner to and supporter of the Wikimedians who have and will continue to be the leaders in building the Wikimedia projects. The Programme Associate must be willing and able to work with a diverse array of people, many of whom come from non-traditional backgrounds and have a fervent commitment to Wikimedia movement’s community-led nature.
Strong cultural competency: Able to navigate in a global movement and on a global team in addition to navigating the complexity of India.

Location: Candidate willing to work from CIS’s Bangalore office will be preferred. Remote working option may be considered for experienced Wikimedians

Remuneration: Compensation structure will be determined by the level of expertise, experience and current remuneration.

Do not send anymore application now. the last date is over
To apply, please send your resume to Tito Dutta (tito+comm@cis-india.org) and cover letter by 21 May 2020 (applications must be submitted with cover later before 21 May 11:59:00 IST, please ensure to apply through email only).

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/jobs/programme-associate-communications

CIS-A2K Communication Officer position

tito — 2019-06-04T06:45:28Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is seeking applications only from prospective candidates who identify themselves as women, for the position of Programme Officer (Communications, the position is also known as Communication Officer), to support its Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) Programme. The job application is open to women only because we feel that a woman communications person will contribute more towards bridging the gender gap in the Wikimedia movement by emphasising on gender-sensitive communication apart from contributing internally for bringing a gender balance in the team.

Context of the CIS-A2K programme

As an affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia and Wikipedia’s sister project, we design and implement different projects with an aim to create high quality content and cultivate new contributors to Wikimedia projects. The projects will be premised on themes and seek to create a multilingual repository of knowledge using Wikimedia projects as a knowledge platform. You are encouraged to deeply engage with the CIS-A2K work plan before making the application. You will work cohesively with the Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia India Chapter to meet specific goals of each language community in India. You will be a part of a small team of 5 to 10 doing high visibility and high impact work. Please learn more about CIS-A2K here.

Position summary

As a Programme Officer, your job will be to support the Team’s larger goals -- growth of Indian-language Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects (hereinafter Wikimedia projects), and the contributor communities (hereinafter Community). Your primary responsibility will be to support the Programme Associates -- that spearhead our on-ground programmatic activities -- with regular communications with the community and the world outside.

The position is full time and will be based in CIS’ Bengaluru office. Programme Officer will work closely with CIS-A2K Team (hereinafter Team) and would report to the Executive Director/any supervisor in Team.

Characteristics of the Programme Officer

High level of commitment: The Programme Officer should believe in the values of CIS and Wikimedia projects, exude enthusiasm for the mission and can powerfully embody and communicate the mission.
Intellectual curiosity and flexibility: Must enjoy tackling difficult, ambiguous problems and able to incorporate new knowledge into how one approaches situations and generates solutions, loves learning from others while expanding intellectual horizons.
Open and transparent: Have a high level of integrity and be comfortable working in a highly transparent fashion, open to input and feedback, a proactive and candid communicator who wants people to know what s/he is doing and isn't afraid to bring others in when things are off-track or when you need help and should able to handle criticism in a mature fashion.
Community builder: It is essential that the Programme Officer sees herself/himself as a partner to and supporter of the Wikimedians who have and will continue to be the leaders in building the Wikimedia projects. The Programme Officer must be willing and able to work with a diverse array of people, many of whom come from non-traditional backgrounds and have a fervent commitment to Wikimedia movement’s community-led nature.
Strong cultural competency: Able to navigate in a global movement and on a global team in addition to navigating the complexity of India.
Partnership developer: Able to initiate, negotiate and operate partnerships that advance the Wikimedia mission in Indic languages and English (as relevant to India) with a wide range of institutions across the public, NGO, universities, philanthropic and private sector.
Willing to travel: The Programme Officer must regularly travel within India to engage with Wikimedia communities and partner with institutions.

Responsibilities

You will be responsible for the overall communications of Team that include storytelling in the form of interviews, blogs, opinion pieces in newspaper/other platforms, regular coverage in both Indian language and English media, and anything beyond.
You will be exploring widely from conventional to new media to spread the stories of the hundreds and thousands of volunteers that make the Indian-language Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects such great knowledge repositories.
Creating original stories of challenges and learning, and successes of Wikimedia community in general and the ones that we closely work with in particular.
Function as an interface between A2K team and the community, and help the team better work collaboratively with the community.
Sharing the work of the community and A2k team in a regular basis in the monthly newsletters and other places.
Providing training on effective communications to the communities in a need basis, and supporting them to independently tell their own stories in their own languages.
Announcement of programmatic activities in the form of announcements, blogs and reports, and microblogging (social media, etc.).

Interviewing Wikimedians under the ambit of the WikipediansSpeak [1] project and beyond, and share the story of the Wikimedia community widely in the media

Required skills

Graduate with a strong track record of success in high performance organisations, preferably in non-profits.
Experience could be during studies or after, primarily in blogging, writing organisation reports, managing social media for organisations, interviewing and covering people’s stories in mainstream media.
Prior experience of working in a collaborative community, preferably and open one like Wikipedia and in online.
Good understanding of the basics of organisational programme design and management.
Strong understanding of the Internet and the forces that underpin the success of Wikipedia. Active participation as a Wikimedia volunteer would be an asset, though not a prerequisite (must be prepared to demonstrate knowledge of how Wikipedia works in interviews).
Experience working in a global, multicultural and diverse team environment will be preferred.
Must be fluent in English and at least in one Indian language.
A good understanding of the cultural and knowledge universe of the Indian language communities.

Location: The position is based out of the CIS’s Bangalore office.

Remuneration: Compensation structure will be determined by the level of expertise, experience and current remuneration.

To apply, please send your resume to Tito Dutta (tito+po2019@cis-india.org) by 4 June 2019. Please do not miss the +po2019 part in the email, that is an email filter for us)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/cis-a2k-communication-officer-position

IRC19: #List - Conference Programme

sumandro — 2019-01-31T06:33:28Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc19-list-conference-programme

Feminist Methodology in Technology Research

ambika — 2018-12-25T15:17:02Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/feminist-methodoloty-in-technology-research.pdf

IRC19 - Proposed Session - #StoriesRecordsLegendsRituals

sumandro — 2018-11-28T15:55:24Z

Details of a session proposed by Priyanka, Aditya, Bhanu Prakash GS, Aishwarya, and Dinesh for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List.

Internet Researchers' Conference 2019 - #List - Call for Sessions

Session Plan

All our tangible history can be attributed to our records-making going back to when the records were literally set in stone, so to say, archived using human digits (digital heritage!). Oral traditions such as songs, stories and recitals, performative traditions, arts and other cultural expressions that reaffirm of our collective experiences remain intangible. Stories create Legends, Rituals physically embody the legends through performances, Records attempt to freeze time at a moment. Thereby characterizing culture and memories of a community. Our effort here is to visit and discuss who creates the records, discuss the affordance of lists as an information artefact for exchange, facilitating dialogue and collective meaning-making. We peek at the traditional community of Helavaru as map and genealogy tellers, their legends, rituals / performances and the cultural economy involved in making and circulating the archives of cultural memories in contrast with the technology driven formulation of lists that are founding the Internet culture. Allegorically, if the memory of stone as a medium of a message is still alive in us, how are people included and who all are excluded from our “memories”.

Our session would be a performative through experimental list artefacts that intend to make visible the interplay between the form of the information artefact and the content. How do we perceive information when the form of the list changes. The implicit structure of lists is suggestive of a certain order, priority and disconnected connections. We intend to play with those structures, breaking them and making new ones in the process. What do we call a list? and what does it do?

Priyanka and Aditya will bring "poetic" list artefacts that juxtapose traditional aspects of list making and lists as a dynamic phenomenon on the internet (ex. #Metoo).
Bhanu will introduce the traditional storytelling community of Helavaru as list performers.
Aishwarya will bring in the current context of social auditing and the stories from the ground today, from a rural context.
Dinesh will illustrate 3 ways list are formulated today mathematically, socially and technologically.

Session Team

Priyanka is a new media artist-researcher, currently engaged with Microsoft as an interaction designer. While at Microsoft she solves design problems for the browser, her personal inquiries run deep into understanding people’s lives on the internet, nature of the digital-materiality and its affordances for expression and exchange in networked societies.

Aditya is a designer and an entrepreneur always thinking of ways to display information beautifully. Lately he has been working on interfaces for lists to provide a clear stream of reason to anyone through simple model(s) of visualisation of information and, therefore attempt to make knowledge more accessible.

Priyanka and Aditya intends to play with the form of lists to investigate its effect on narrative construction. They will bring in “poetic-lists” - experimental list artefacts that probe into the implicit order and biases that lists bring to the act of meaning making, especially in the context of a collective audience.

Bhanu Prakash GS - As Web application developer at Servelots(.com), he contributes to the open and free software, and has been working on developing tools for delivering visual stories from archives. He has worked with the NCBS@25 project titled “13 Ways” where stories from the history of National Centre for Biological Sciences, Democracy Archives for University of Gottingen, and also on methods to render the folk stories of Vijayadashami rituals into visual stories on the Web.

Bhanu introduces the ways the Helavaru community, in the pre-internet era, created, “circulated” and mutated Lists of names, facts and events forming the information networks of communities, castes, jaatis, clans, tribes. The Helavas are a nomadic community visible around Karnataka and Andhra who deck up their bullocks and carts, set out to the villages of their patrons to sing praises of great deeds of their forefathers and the genealogy of the families with great detail, and end their performance with a ritual Harike - a wish for the well being of their patrons. In return they are paid for their services with grains, clothes, goat, sheep, cow, bullocks and money as much as one can afford.

Their story is an indicator of the cultural economy, of interweaving a web of communities, their systems of socio-political-cultural organisation by developing competence in data indexing, backups and restores, dealing with identity and authentication, conflicts and negotiations and more from generation to generation. The Helavaru claim that each family recorded genealogy of at least 3 lakh families, and passing it on, and also losing in some cases is fascinating.

Aishwarya is a Communication Strategist at the Society for Social Audit, Accountability and Transparency (SSAAT) - Andhra Pradesh, Department of Rural Development, Government of Telangana. SSAAT has been set-up with a vision to uphold the concept of eternal vigilance by the people, facilitated by social activists and Government acting in conjunction.

A social audit is a standardised way of facilitating people to critique the implementation of a welfare scheme, and demand accountability from the government. It is a powerful tool which enables people to come forward, demand information, question officials, and fight for their rightful deliverables of a government scheme. This mechanism ensures transparency in the way a government functions, and has helped recover a lot of money lost to corruption.

In India, a Supreme Court mandate made the social audits of MGNREGS compulsory in all states. However, Social Audit units have been successful in empowering the people only in a few states. While the SAU facilitates an audit, it is conducted by people from the families of the beneficiaries. One social audit is a 15-day process of record verifications, door-to-door verifications, awareness rallies, a Gram Sabha and a Public Hearing. While a social audit ensures accountability, it lacks the guarantee of enforcement. The different layers of bureaucracy often swallows the essence of public participation and grievance redressal does not have follow-ups.

All grievances are recorded in the form of paras in the social audit database. While our on-ground social auditors may be socially and politically aware enough to observe and call out patterns in caste and gender discrimination, the results remain, but in a list on the MIS.

Dinesh is part of Janastu team - a non-profit group. The team is eager to help address Web content accessibility for the low-literate using social semantic web concepts and are also looking at 3D methods for spatial navigation, location interpretation and storytelling. Janastu engages with software commons by developing and supporting open source social platforms.

Dinesh, with a Computer Science background, will bring list comprehension to this platform using map/reduce, monads, and blockchain as the technical formalisms that make the Internet work and how people are made to toe these invisible lines. Then initiate discussions on Machine Learning within the history of page ranking and how the who, where, what of lists manifest. This will be contextualized with the traditional, the social and the new media social networks and processes that nurture community memory by tuning the semantic distance needed for privacy and by making room for forgetting in ways that communities heal from trauma.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc19-proposed-session-storiesrecordslegendsrituals

DCS 2018 Agenda

ambika — 2018-11-07T02:51:36Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/dcs-2018-agenda

Call for Position - Programme Officer (Communication) - Access to Knowledge

tito — 2018-11-02T09:37:09Z

We are inviting applications for the position of a Programme Officer (Communication) to join the Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team at the Centre for Internet and Society. Please find below the description of the position, the eligibility criteria, and the application process.

To contribute to, support, and lead public communication of the work of the CIS-A2K team, we are looking for a creative, dedicated, and enterprising individual to join the team as Programme Officer (Communications). Please note that women and trans candidates, especially those from socio-economically marginalised communities, and women who are returning to work after a hiatus will be given preference.

Project Background

Responsibilities

Competencies

Required Skills and Experience

Desirable Skills and Experience

Location and Remuneration

Application Process

Project Background

The CIS-A2K team is supported by Wikimedia Foundation to work towards catalysing the growth of the open knowledge movement in south Asia and in Indian languages. The current work plan (2018-19) of the CIS-A2K team is focused on working towards creating an inclusive Wiki atmosphere in India, with emphasis on creating safe spaces, and promoting activities to bridge gender gap in Wiki projects across languages. Further, CIS-A2K facilitates exchange and incubation of ideas amongst Indian language Wikimedia communities, which contributes to the growth of these community and enables emergence of community leaders. During the current year, the A2K team is investing resources and energy on 4 programs/ideas that we believe are going to be 'triggers of change': 1) Focus Project Area, 2) MediaWiki Training, 3) Bridging Gender Gap, and 4) Wikisource Conference India. Please find a detailed description of our proposed activities during 2018-19 on our Meta-Wiki page.

Responsibilities

The CIS-A2K team is primarily based in the Bangalore office of CIS, and the Programme Officer (Communication), henceforth POC, will be expected to work out of the same office. Members of this team are also based in Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Hyderabad (Telangana), and Sangli (Maharashtra), and the POC will be expected to work closely with them - generally remotely, and sometimes by travelling to these locations

To support and drive outreach of the work being done by the CIS-A2K team, the POC will be responsible for the following tasks:

Public communication (60% of monthly work): POC will be responsible for the overall public-facing communication of the work and activities of the CIS-A2K team. This includes planning, driving, and carrying out multi-media documentation of ongoing activities of the team; announcement of programmatic activities in terms of authoring press releases, opinion pieces, short updates, and social media posts, including helping CIS-A2K team members with doing the same; co-authoring and editing the major reports prepared by the team, primarily for submission to Wikimedia Foundation; managing and posting on the Twitter account of the CIS-A2K team; and preparing and publishing a monthly newsletter to share the work of Indian Wikimedia communities and the CIS-A2K team. The CIS-A2K team usually conducts 4 events each month on average.
Innovative media projects (25% of monthly work): POC may explore widely from conventional to new media forms to create original stories of experiences, challenges, and learnings of members of Indian Wikimedia communities in general, and communities engaged with by the CIS-A2K team in particular. This may include storytelling in the form of interviews, blogs, audio and video productions including those native to social media platforms, with a focus on producing content in multiple Indian languages, often with support from CIS-A2K team and members of Wikimedia communities. The focus of these media projects will be on the stories of the volunteers who edit and contribute to Indian language Wikimedia projects, as well as gaps and futures thereof. This task includes interviewing Indian Wikimedians under the ambit of the WikipediansSpeak project.
Liasoning and training (15% of monthly work): POC will function as an interface between A2K team and the Indian (and global) Wikimedia communities as the first point of contact for incoming communications, and inform the CIS-A2K about requests and concerns shared by members of these communities. POC may also be invited to provide training on effective communications for members of Indian Wikimedia communities, as needed, and to support them to independently tell their own stories in their languages.

Competencies

Core Competencies

Accountability
Awareness and sensitivity regarding issues of gender and sexuality
Critical appreciation of open knowledge initiatives
Effective communication
Inclusive collaboration
Intellectual curiosity and openness
Respect for diversity
Strong cross-cultural competency

Functional Competencies

Ability to learn-at-work, especially about the Wikimedia ecosystem
Highly organised, motivated, and able to take initiative
Experience of managing public communications and outreach, including managing mailing lists and social media accounts
Experience of producing multimedia content, including writing and web-based content

Required Skills and Experience

Languages

Excellent communication skills (written and oral) in English
Working knowledge (or better) of at least one other Indian language

Professional

Two years of working experience in an Indian/global organisation with diverse members, and in a position that involved managing communication and producing text and media content

Technical

Basic understanding of functioning of Wikipedia, and ideally of other Wikimedia projects too
Basic ability to produce audio/video content, including recording and editing

Desirable Skills and Experience

Active user of free and open source software
Experience of actively contributing to Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia and others
Experience of being a member of an Indian Wikimedia community, or taking part in Wikimedia-related events
Experience of being part of a free and open source software / open knowledge community

Location and Remuneration

The position is based out of the Bangalore office of CIS.

Monthly remuneration for the position will be Rs. 40,000-45,000 (including taxes) based on the level of experience and previous salary.

Application Process

We invite interested (and eligible) candidates to apply for the position by sending us the following documents to tito@cis-india.org, with “Application for Programme Officer (Communication)” as the subject, by Sunday, October 28, 2018:

Cover letter (2 pages): This should introduce your relevant academic, professional, and other experiences, and describe the kind of work you look forward to do as part of the CIS-A2K team. We strongly recommend reading the 2018-19 work plan of the CIS-A2K team while writing this cover letter, as well as for preparation for the interview to follow (if you are shortlisted for interview).
CV: This should provide details of your academic, professional, and other achievements
Work samples: The position will require you to produce effective writing outputs in a regular manner. Please share 2 samples of your writing (published or unpublished). In case you have produced media works (photographs, audio/video interviews, short films, etc.), please share 1 or 2 samples of the same. While sharing media works, please share the URL to the same and not the actual files.

We will prepare a short list of candidates, on the basis of the submitted applications, and inform you of our selection decision by Friday, November 02.

The shortlisted candidates will be interviewed by the CIS team, including members of the CIS-A2K team. If needed, there will be two rounds of interview.

We will take the final hiring decision by early November, inform the shortlisted candidates accordingly, and invite the selected person to join our from December 1, 2018.

Please do not hesitate to write to us at tito@cis-india.org for any clarification regarding this.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/jobs/call-for-position-programme-officer-communication-a2k-2018

Tech transformation: how agriculture is being redefined through digital innovation and startups

Admin — 2018-07-06T15:39:53Z

At a recent YES Bank panel and digital startup competition, it was evident that India’s digital boom was lending the Indian startup ecosystem a distinctly agri-flavour.

The blog post was published in Your Story on June 29, 2018. CIS was mentioned in the report.

The convergence of mobile networks, broadband internet, cloud platforms, IoT, AI and open data is helping transform one of the world’s oldest professions. This is of great significance as agriculture and related sectors like dairy production form the backbone of the Indian workforce. Today, tradition is merging with technology as the IT services sector is helping open up new opportunities for both seasoned and emerging entrepreneurs.

New fronts are opening up across the sector from organic farming and hydroponics to drones and agri apps. Startups are also playing a key role in transforming agriculture, which accounts for half of India’s workforce, but only about 13 percent of its GDP.

Entrepreneurship trends

An interesting trend to watch for is the rise of the number of agri-entrepreneurs, many of whom have no background in agriculture. There is more interest now in this sector compared to even five or ten years ago. Another indicator is the number of agri-tech competitions, awards and investors that are emerging. India’s demographic dividend is also attracting more youth segments to the agricultural sector, with cross-fertilisation across states, economic sectors, and scientific fields.

The challenges seem formidable, but need to be acknowledged and tackled. Thousands of farmers commit suicide each year due to debt problems, as documented by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). This is a sad reality in states such as Maharashtra, Odisha, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and others.

Many issues being tackled by startups relate to productivity and distribution, according to Sahil Kini, Vice President, Aspada Investment. There are large yield gaps in Indian farming as compared to its global counterparts, due to inadequacies in domains ranging from farm inputs and equipment to farming practices and retail connects. Multiple intermediaries, poor refrigeration during transportation, small farm sizes, and lack of fairness in financial stakeholders are other challenges.

Agri-tech startups

Today, the agri-tech sector is witnessing a number of startups in India disrupting everything from organic farming and equipment rentals to connected supply chains and cloud-based analytics. The startups in this report showcase the diversity in the sector, followed by an analysis of the broader ecosystem. Some cover pricing of produce, others include equipment marketplaces; still others cover digital workflow and smart supply chains.

Farms2Fork offers farmers water monitoring solutions that ensure better productivity by reducing water wastage. The solution includes IoT wireless soil sensors, AI support, and real-time analytics. While earlier agri-tech solutions were based on batch processing of data, Farms2Fork operates on real-time data.

Agribolo, founded in 2015, is a farming services platform spanning activities such as information dissemination, quality input procurement, market linkages, irrigation facilities and farming equipment. The franchise network, launched in Rajasthan, uses the aggregator model to connect farmers to experts, development institutions, financial services, and training institutes.

AgroWave, founded by an IIT Delhi alumna in 2017, aims to optimise agriculture supply chain using research, analytics, and technology. Demand and supply analytics connect farmers in Panipat, Sonipat, Harpur, and Rajasthan to caterers, retail shops, restaurants, and canteens.

Truce, founded by an IIT Bombay alumnus, is a B2B web and mobile platform that directly connects farmers and suppliers to wholesalers and retailers. The app is available in Hindi, English, Marathi and Gujarati, and enables tracking quotes and orders.

Farm Again has converted 2,500 acres of land into organic farms, along with tech tools to trace the product’s origin, when sold in outlets such as Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar, and More. IoT devices are used to monitor and record moisture content and soil conditions, with pipes for water and fertiliser inputs.

Crofarm, a Delhi-headquarted agri-supply chain startup founded in 2016, buys fresh produce directly from farmers and supplies them to online and offline retailers. It supplies nearly 8-10 tonnes of fruits and vegetables from its two distribution centres in Delhi NCR, and connects 100 retailers to more than 5,000 farmers.

Aibono improves farm yields by using AI on a cluster of parameters like weather and soil condition. The testing and measurement services indicate parameters such as crop stress, along with recommendations on the right fertiliser mix to be used based on the soil condition.

Gold Farm, founded in 2012, helps farmers book farm equipment such as solar-powered pumps in districts of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Beneficiaries have included over 25,000 farmers on ground, who tap the services of 250 booking agents and over 500 tractor owners connected via a mobile app. The equipment is also tracked with IoT devices, resulting in rich data sets for analysis and forecasting.

Earthy Tales, founded in NCR in 2016, works with farmers across 11 states to provide chemical-free fruits, vegetables, groceries, and dairy products. These include snacks, jams, preserves, and pickles, provided direct to consumers. Other services include mentoring for farmers and farm cooperatives.

ONganic Foods works with small farmers to boost their organic produce. Based on contract farming, it identifies higher-priced grains and spices and gives quality inputs to farmers to increase their yield. It connects farmers to various government schemes as well as e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Spencer’s Retail.

Oxen Farm Solutions offers agricultural equipment on rent using a ‘Farming as a Service’ (FaaS) model. The platform connects farmers, farm equipment manufacturers, and government schemes. Access to such machinery can boost farm productivity in an affordable manner. The company operates in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha, and connects to corporates such as PepsiCo and Yes Bank.

Farmizen is a mobile-based platform that lets users grow vegetables and fruits on mini-farms, and monitor the process of growing food on a real-time basis. Located in the outskirts of Bengaluru, users get pictures and live videos of their farm plots. The startup also provides recommendations based on real-time inputs from the field as well as pre-defined schedules for over 50 different types of crops.

Harvesting, founded by in 2016, has offices in California and Bengaluru, and offers smart farming solutions based on analytics and AI. It also uses farmer profiles to build creditworthiness profiles for financial organisations. The idea is to provide both increased farm productivity and better financial services.

SatSure uses IoT and Big Data to provide financial security to farmers, via its 15-year database of satellite images. It makes recommendations clustering techniques for farmers to get an estimate of the total agriculture production, and provides this data to agri-insurance companies as well.

Organic Thelawala enables a transparent pricing mechanism so that the consumer knows the price of the produce as well as how much of the selling price actually goes to the farmer. It is s assisting 13,000 farmers to switch to organic farming, thereby, creating a positive impact on bio-diversity, soil contamination, water, and air pollution. Further, by providing free thelas (pushcart), the team promotes micro-entrepreneurship among pushcart vendors and farmers.

Earth Food, based in Pune, provides chemical-free produce at market price. It has collaborated with Reliance Fresh and Nature Fresh. It uses a healthy mix of traditional methods and innovation to keep pollution and wastage to a minimum, thereby benefitting both consumers and the environment.

Jayalaxmi Agrotech, founded by alumni of IIMB and VEC helps farmers minimise crop loss and improve productivity via its many crop- specific mobile applications in local languages that provide timely information on agriculture and animal husbandry.

Gramophone, based in Indore, is a platform that combines both advisory and sale of inputs under a single roof. Farmers can access mentors for help with everything from crop selection to land productivity and more.

Triton Foodworks, based in Delhi, is a hydroponics startup growing fruits and vegetables. It has reportedly set up more than 2 lakh sq ft of hydroponic farms across three locations in India, and produces more than 700 tons of fruits and vegetables each year.

vDrone, based in Bengaluru, uses drones and thermal imaging to increase yield. It analyses areas of the farm that need attention, and helps the farmer cater to these needs. Parameters include soil, cropping pattern, and use of fertilisers.

Ninjacart, based in Bengaluru, enables retailers and merchants to source fruits and vegetables directly from farmers without resorting to middlemen. It connects 2,500 farmers and handles 14,000 tons of fruits and vegetables, accounting for revenue of around Rs 4 crore every month.

BigHaat, based in Bengaluru, is an online agro e-store for farmers that lets them buy seeds, crop protection nutrients and solutions, and agro instruments. Last-mile connectivity is enabled via logistics partners like India Post and Ship Rocket. The footprint spans 50,000 farmers across 20 states.

Ravgo is an agri-equipment rental marketplace based on the model of the sharing economy. It is solving the farm mechanisation problem among India farmers who cannot afford to buy the farm machinery. The target market is currently small farmers based in Punjab.

Kisanmade, launched in Moradabad, UP is an e-commerce platform set up in Moradabad to empower farmers by eliminating the intermediary between the farmer and the consumer. It also aims to increase the farmer’s income and decrease the kitchen’s expense by 10-15 percent.

FlyBird Innovations, founded in Bengaluru, uses sensors in the soil to detect moisture content and control irrigation in farms across South India. The information is used to optimise irrigation practices, improve crop yield, and save water, time, and labour. It claims 25-30 percent savings of water and improvement of crop yield by 10-15 percent.

Kamal Kisan reduces labour costs with innovative agri-equipment, with reported savings of up to 50 percent. Tools include sugarcane planters, versatile mulch layers, bed makers, vegetable handy planters, and power weeders.

farMart connects farmers who own machinery with those who need it but don’t have access to it. Large farmers put underutilised agri-machinery up for rent on the farMart platform, and are connected to farmers who need such machinery; they can then book it via app or call centre. The database includes 300 villages and 1,500 farmers.

AgroStar, a Pune-based m-commerce startup, sells agricultural inputs directly to farmers. The platform can be accessed online or giving the company’s 1800 number a missed call. Products are sourced from national and multinational brands, and include seeds and nutrients.

CropIn leverages GIS and data science to deliver a range of services apps to farmers and other players in the agri chain. It feeds real-time data and advice on practices related to a range of crops.

Other notable agri startups are NubeSol (soil fertility maps) and Sree Sai Aerotech Innovations (drones for monitoring crop health). Some industry players are also leveraging the platform model – such as Trringo, launched in 2016 by India’s largest tractor maker company, Mahindra and Mahindra. The franchisee network enables farmers to access tractors at an affordable price. Over 100,000 farmers have signed up, from West and South India.

There are also international players in the Indian agri market, such as PEAT. The German startup is working with 30,000 farmers across India to help mitigate crop damage. It identifies patterns of plant diseases, pests, or nutrient deficiencies via crop images.

Ecosystem

The broader agri startup ecosystem includes a number of think tanks, research labs, incubators and accelerators. For example, ONganic is supported by the Technology Development Board, Government of India and Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprise and incubated at the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata.

Goa has an agri-focused incubator called Centre for Innovation and Business Acceleration (CIBA). TiE Bangalore and NUMA have held startup showcases in collaboration with Villgro, featuring agri-entrepreneurs.

At the recent YES Bank Transformation Series (YBTS) speakers and panelists included Ramanathan Ramanan, Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog; Raju Kapoor, Head, Corporate Affairs, Dow AgroSciences India; Hemendra Mathur, Venture Partner, Bharat Innovations; Nitin Puri, Senior President, Food and Agribusiness Strategic Advisory and Research, YES Bank; and Amardeep Sibia, CEO, SatSure.

At the 2017 edition of YBTS three agri-tech winners were awarded out of 15 finalists. Winners included teams from IIM Shillong (Rs 5 lakh for a smart soil sensor proposal), IIM Bangalore (Rs 3 lakh for a solar-powered drip technology proposal), and ISB Hyderabad (Rs 2 lakh for IoT-based SIM-enabled farm data sensors).

The Government of India is also catalysing agri- entrepreneurship with programmes like the Agri-Udaan Accelerator and the Agri Grand Challenge. Government-backed funding agencies like the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) is incentivising banks to lend at highly affordable rates to startups.

Incubators in this space include Villgro, a-IDEA, ABI-ICRISAT, Startup Oasis, IIMC Innovation Park, IIT Kanpur SIIC, KIIT TBI, and CIIE, IIMA. They provide mentorship and connects to farmer cooperatives, NGOs, channel partners, and individual farmers in some cases.

Indigram Labs Foundation (ILF), supported by Department of Science and Technology via the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, Government of India, is a technology-based incubator founded in 2015 to promote creativity and innovation in agriculture, renewable energy, and rural healthcare industry. Its host organisation is Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP).

ISAP has set up more than 1,800 agri-based ventures through its Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centres (ACABC) programme and has around 50 agri-business experts in various verticals who help in mentoring incubates, according to Manisha Acharya, CEO, Indigram Labs Foundation.

It has graduated 18 startups, such as New Leaf Dynamic Technologies(refrigeration system powered by farm waste), Intello Labs (AI-based deep-tech solution for crop inspection and agricultural products grading), Sainhun Ventures(honey by-products), Nutrelis Agro Foods (organic groceries, beverages), and Innosapiens Agro Technologies (phenomics device for pre-detection of pests).

Indigram takes an equity of up to 5 percent in the startup. In the long run, agri incubators need support in areas like trained manpower, pilot testing costs, rural outreach, and patent advisory services, according to Acharya.

International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) hosted an agri-business investors camp in Hyderabad on June 12. The camp addressed three themes: agri-technology, agri-engineering and food processing.

IIM Ahmedabad’s technology business incubator, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), has launched a food and agri-business accelerator in partnership with a-IDEA, the business incubator at Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s (ICAR) National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM). Top teams are provided seed investment of up to Rs 30 lakhs each. CIIE also has a sustainability focused fund called Infuse Ventures.

Funding

Recent reports have tracked the investment line-up for Agricx Lab (Ankur Capital, CIIE), Agrostar (IDG Ventures, Aavishkaar Venture Management), Agrowave (Daffodil Software), Airwood (StartupXseed Ventures), Arya Collateral (Aspada), Farm Taaza (Epsilon Venture Partners), Farmizen (Venture Highway), FarmLink (Pioneering Ventures, Syngenta), Gobasco (Matrix Partners India), KisanHub (Notion Capital, IQ Capital, Calibrate Management), KrishiHub (INVENT accelerator, Villgro Innovation Fund), NinjaCart (Trifecta Ventures), RML AgTech (IvyCap Ventures), Utkal Tubers (CapAleph Indian Millennium SME Fund, Zephyr Peacock India), and VillFarm (Unitus Seed Fund, Rianta Capital).

Crofarm has received funding from angels such as Rajan Anandan (MD, Google India) and Jitendra Gupta (MD, PayU India). Gold Farm raised funds from Infuse Venture and the Mahindra Group. Truce was funded by 3one4capital, Beenext, FreeCharge founders, Snapdeal founders and Anupam Mittal, CEO, People Group. CropIn, raised funds from Ankur Capital; Agrostar received investments from Aavishkar. Other active agri-focused funds include Omnivore Partners and Rural Agri Ventures; Germany development agency GIZ has also roped in international partners for further cooperation.

Among Indian states, Karnataka formalised an agri-startup fund in 2017 through K-BITS with a corpus of Rs 10 crore, with an additional Rs 8 crore planned for 21 agri-startups this year. A centre of excellence for agriculture is also planned, where startups will work with farmers.

Other government initiatives, according to Sahil Kini of Aspada Investment include Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme, 2008; and Money Lending (Regulation) Act, 2008.

Entrepreneur tips

A number of mentor panels and pitch jurors have offered guidance for agri-entrepreneurs. These include, for example, the importance of customer immersion. Here are some of the tips they have shared.

On-the-ground realities in emerging economies are shifting rapidly, and founders should have a finger on the pulse of effective trends and aspirations.
Disciplines like design thinking offer useful and actionable frameworks.
Metrics should be holistic and include activity, business, and social impacts. There should be one or two key success metrics for primary focus, and the rest should be supporting or complementary metrics. This helps founders monitor their progress and assists investors in assessing the long-term viability of the venture.
Founders should build a well-rounded team, with a mix of engineering, design, and social science backgrounds. Sometimes founders get too carried away with the technology; having a holistic mix in the core team will help contextualise the offerings, use and impact.
India’s social problems call for bold and ambitious innovators who can tackle challenges at scale. The social cost of failure is high for social enterprises (as compared to merely pivoting an app design); hence collaborative partnerships are important.
Social entrepreneurs should learn how to work with partners who are not social enterprises. They should be clear about their offerings, values, and philosophy. Partnerships are an art and a science. Partners should be picked carefully, and the relationship should evolve over time.
Founders will frequently need to pitch to funders, investors, partners, regulators, customers, and employees. The pitch should focus less on product features and more on problem resolution. Techniques like storytelling are effective here.
Founders should enumerate the range of risks involved, eg. regulatory and lack of ecosystem trust. Secondary impacts should also be assessed, since some risks are more indirect than others.

The road ahead

This is a great time to integrate different domains of knowledge and skills in agri-innovation. In addition to fresh farm produce, there are lucrative opportunities in processed products such as pickles, papads, chutneys, and murabbas. This calls for effective post-harvest management infrastructure such as storage, preservation, cold chain and refrigerated transportation.

New models such as the FaaS model can lead to more sustainable paths to profitability. The platform model can leverage data analytics to identify emerging business trends and opportunities and thus attract more venture capital, according to a report published by Bain and Company in partnership with Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Such models are also getting significant corporate backing, such as Trringo by Mahindra and Mahindra for tractor rentals and John Deere (with EM3 Agri Services) for harvester fleets.

Smartphones powered by affordable mobile broadband networks are helping improve workflow of farms and dairies. This opens the door to new pay-per-use business models and innovation stacks, connecting the farm to the fridge and fork. Banks and financial organisations also need to step up to the challenge and offer more creative models of financing for farmers, entrepreneurs, incubators, and accelerators.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a target for farmers’ incomes to be doubled by 2022, India’s 75th year of Independence. Schemes like the government’s Startup Agri India scheme, the Digi Gaon (Digital Village) initiative, and Bharat Net project can all work together towards making this a reality. Initiatives like agri-hackathons can also bring together aspiring entrepreneurs from diverse sectors.

However, there are certain challenges:
Pricing decisions should be made more transparent and less politically driven (particularly before elections), with sufficient market validity and testing. This includes setting the price of onions and sugar, and promising ‘free’ electricity for farmers.
Increased promotion and adoption of open data are other trends to watch for. An open data ecosystem can grow India’s GDP by $22 billion by 2020, according to report by YES Bank and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). India’s Open Government Data (OGD) platform can step up to this challenge.
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is pushing for these initiatives to reach ordinary people and marginalised communities. Other sources of data include rural internet kiosks, community e-centres, and online agricultural systems.
Agri-tech entrepreneurs can go beyond incremental change to truly effect exponential change, and transform the agricultural sector while also giving back to society. Successful agri-preneurs in India can also take their innovations global.

The agricultural sector is now shedding its rustic persona to emerge as a trendy space to be in. Inclusive, sustainable, and scalable solutions are the way ahead.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/your-story-june-29-2018-tech-transformation-agriculture-redefined-digital-innovation-startups

Data Visualization Session

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T02:32:55Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/data-visualization.pdf

Tech Anthropology Today: Collaborate, Rather than Fetishize from Afar

Geert Lovink and Ramesh Srinivasan — 2017-05-16T14:51:09Z

"That is why the 'offline' if you will is so critical to understanding the 'online'—because they do not exist in isolation and what we have constructed is an illusory binary between the two." In this interview, Geert Lovink discusses with Ramesh Srinivasan: “how can we embrace the realities of communities too-often relegated to the margins?”

Cross-posted from nettime.org.

“How can we embrace the realities of communities too-often relegated to the margins?”

In Whose Global Village? (NYUPress, 2017) UCLA scholar Ramesh Srinivasan travels the globe in order to find out much techno-autonomy there’s still left. Now that more than half of the world has moved to urban centres, the rural population is literary a minority and is kindly asked to adjust accordingly. This makes Srinivasan’s work even more urgent when he asks “what the internet, mobile phone or social media platforms may look like when considered from the perspectives of diverse cultures.”

The communities Ramesh Srinivasan visits are on the defensive, in a process of fragmentation. “There is a disconnection not just from one another,” he writes, “but also from the common threads of their history and culture. The tribes and villages experience “placelessness, fragmentation of identity, and dissolution of social bonds.” Throughout the study, which took place between 2004-2013, Srinivasan reports from the rising gap between the proposed technologies (such as videos, websites, databases) and the ‘techno-solutionism’ (as described by Morozov) that he wants to prevent. Ramesh is so honest to present this dilemma as an inner struggle of today’s anthropologist with a technology background. Computers and smart phones are an integral part of the everyday life—no matter where we go—and can no longer be presented as liberating tools. This put the ‘ICT for development’ researcher is an awkward position. Post-colonial theories have widely been read and their influence (from Fanon, Said to Spivak) is having an inevitable impact. This in turn leads to a new attitude that I would describe as ‘radical modesty’ (if not ‘vital pessimism’).

While studying the impact of the Tribal Peace system that he and others installed to connect the different Navajo tribes in San Diego County, Srinivasan realises that he has to work with rather than ignore the networks that exist. “It was neither the technology nor institutions that connected the people I had met. Instead, the very few threads of kinship I noted were related to revered individuals, regarded by most with collective respect and as a source of inspiration.” It is with and through the elders that he starts to draw up information architectures (or ‘ontologies’), listing topics, themes, and values across the native reservations. How can ‘lateral networks’ be supported in a a process of what James Carey calls ‘ritual communication’?

Needless to say this approach takes us light years away from Facebook and other social media. This is only in part a question of translating interfaces to local indigenous languages. The proposed systems require the design of its own visual metaphors, reminding us of 1990s multi-media navigation screens, meant to represent digital storytelling. This is dealt with in closed, or semi-open networks, paying respect to the different experiences of time and space. These ideas are put to the test in the last part of the book that describes the encounter with the Zuni tribe (Arizona/New Mexico), where Ramesh Srinivasan worked together with Robin Boast. It is amongst the Zuni peoples that the researchers encounter the distrust against anthropologists. “Our Zuni friends voiced feelings of misrepresentation and anger at their objectification. They explained that social scientists would visit their community, exoticize their traditions and customs, and extract what they could to benefit their own agendas rather than those of the community.”

The gained detachment aims to put the researcher “at the service of our friends and partners.” Important is no longer the one-way transfer of knowledge but the art of listening. Towards the end of his study Ramesh asks: “What would it mean to step away from top-down understandings of the internet and instead ‘splinter’ the way we think about technologies and the communities they may support?” As an activist in Egypt explained: “We do not need another NGO or a new dialogue.com to solve our problems—we just need you to listen, support our voices, an pay attention to what we we do.” Whose Global Village? adequately describes the moral and methodological crisis in the ‘ICT for Development’ field. The wide condemnation of Facebook’s neo-colonial internet.org balloon campaign to bring access (to Facebook) to hundreds of millions of rural poor in India clearly marks a paradigm shift. Access is no longer a benevolent project. It’s clear that ICT for Development as such does not contribute to a redistribution of wealth and makes global inequality only worse. So much for internet charity.

Ramesh admits: “Trained as a designer and engineer, I recognize my innate tendency to valorize my power to come up with a set of solutions for any challenge at hand. Yet every project I have described illustrates the valuable insights gained when I put aside my own agenda and bias as much as possible to open myself to experiences that could not have been predicted from afar.” This modesty sounds like a new starting point. But is it also resulting into new concepts and narratives? This might be too much to ask of a single publication (in fact, the first book publication of this author). The ‘tactical distance’, created out of respect for the communities-in-defence, results into rather sparse information about the places we visit. There are no interview fragments included in the book, and the few local leaders that we encounter do not speak to the reader in a direct manner. The chosen way to report creates a vague cloud of secrecy around the research itself. What happens when we listen but do not acknowledge the Other? Were more detailed research results published elsewhere or only accessible for donors (a common practice in NGO land)? What happens when we listen but do not acknowledge the Other? Is it too risky to give them a voice? Might their opinions and desires be too ordinary, too radical, or simply not what we want to hear? What if they do not fit our Western expectations? The Others are humans, after all, and, like us, tend not to live up to expectations. These, and more, are some of the questions we encounter once we give up on the development rhetoric.

Geert Lovink: You’ve been in a lucky, privileged position to travel so often and witness events and encounter communities in diverse places such as Cairo during the 2011 uprising, with the Zapatistas Chiapas, doing research in the land of your ancestors, South India and on reservations in the South-West of the United States. The offline encounter in-real-life seems to be constitutional for your theory. In the past scholars travelled through the library and many these days do not leave their screens while processing their ‘big data’. Digital ethnography, on the other hand, seems to require direct exchanges with the Other. This assumption pops in all chapters. Is travelling the new luxury? Or should we say that it is rather dedicated time? Once you arrive elsewhere there is suddenly another time regime.

Ramesh Srinivasan: Indeed, I think all of us as researchers and teachers are nothing if not 'lucky' or 'privileged'. And you're certainly on point to recognize that the root of my scholarship and activism locates technologies within an assemblage of other factors - peoples, places, infrastructures, and environments. Yet it is essential that I do not collaborate with (rather than ‘study of’) any community unless I am invited to do so and where our efforts are focused on initiatives that live and are owned by that group itself.

That is why the 'offline' if you will is so critical to understanding the 'online'—because they do not exist in isolation and what we have constructed is an illusory binary between the two. If we want to be of service and understand the complex relationships between technologies, politics, and cultures—as I attempt to do via the multiple case studies discussed in the book, we need to put our bodies and hearts in places rather than our distant gaze. It's critical for me to not step foot anywhere where I am not invited first, and to critically think about my role and power as I enter different environments. Indeed, the book is full of ethnographies of attempting to listen more than make, and how I eschew the 'study of' any community and instead write about what we create and work on together. My goal is to collaborate rather than study, rather than fetishize from afar.

GL: Whose Global Village? has an unusual time span of 10-14 years. First research goes back to 2003-2004. Some case study closed in 2005 while most literature dates from 2012-2013. In between, the 2008 global financial crisis occurred, the smart phone was launched and apps became mainstream. How did you deal with these constant changes? Are you proposing a ‘longue durée’ in media studies and internet criticism’? What are the benefits of this approach? How do you see ‘grassroots storytelling’ dealing with the relentless changes of platforms, interfaces and protocols? Do remote communities have a different approach to the latest fashion and the famous ‘fear of missing out’?

RS: There are some dynamics that don't change no matter what app, gadget or platform has captured the popular imagination. That is—the realities of power over how technologies are designed, owned, and politically or economically appropriated. The book starts with the simple but surprisingly ignored sociotechnical truism - People and societies shape and are shaped by technologies. Yet such a small percentage of Internet users have any power over the design process let alone any sovereignty over what occurs with their data and identities as they are refracted onto digital networks. Those issues are timeless and all the more urgent today. I focus on the political and cultural flashpoints where by users and communities can reign in their blind trust of new digital platforms and instead take power over these in relation to their local concerns and agendas.

GL: As a media activist you have a background in engineering. However, at UCLA you work inside library science (called ‘information studies’). However, you seem to relate most to the role of anthropologist, in that you deeply desire not make past mistakes in encounters with ‘the Other’. In this context you work with Mary Louise Pratt’s theory of the contact zones and apply this to the design of ‘multiple ontologies’. I never hear IT engineers talking about contact zones. How do you want to carry your insights into the tech world? After all, you live in California. Who else is going to do this? What could be a good strategy? How do you look at the Bay Area and the global geek class they still dominate in terms of its global imaginary?

RS: I see myself as a scholar who can contribute to fields that tend to remain mostly distinct in the academy—design, engineering, cultural studies, media studies are but a few. If I was ever an IT ‘geek’ that was decades ago!

To engage in the charge of the book, of locating our understandings of digital networks and systems in relation to diverse cultures and users worldwide, all of these fields are useful to invoke and bring into dialogue with one another. I'm fortunate to be in a department that supports this interdisciplinarity and indeed as you stated, coming from California and trained in engineering here, I believe it is all the more important to question the black boxes not just of Silicon Valley hardware and software platform design but to push these incredibly powerful technologies to open up to an engaged, conversational social contract with diverse publics.

GL: Over the past 10-15 years we’ve seen the closing down of the possibility space of the Web and the rise of the ‘easy to use’ template culture of social media. The technologies that you’ve proposed and built seem to move away from the consumer culture. In South India you’re spread video cameras, elsewhere you’ve developed a dedicated Tribal Peace system interface (as part of a stand-alone website) while for the Zuni communities you’ve utilized the FileMaker Pro Advanced database software. Not Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube (and no wikis either). Can you elaborate on this?

RS: It's important to not assume that naively putting content online is somehow empowering. Indeed, that which we ‘share’ (eg; sharing economy) asymmetrically builds power and value for the platform holder and all those that can monetize it. As a result, we increasingly know that corporate proprietary platforms such as Facebook or Google are hardly designed to directly support a user's sovereignty or agency. The interest, across each of the book's chapters, is to instead think about how the communities with which I collaborate can have their interests served via technologies either that we design together or appropriate/subvert in various ways. Far too often we see examples where such 'participation' actually does little to shape any cultural or political cause from the grassroots. So we think agnostically and critically about the systems, networks and infrastructures we use in relation to our collaborations.

GL: Can you tell us what you’ve been doing over the past few years? Did you continue to work in the same direction? The book indicates that your collaboration with Robin Boast and the work with the Zuni Native American Reservation seems to continue.

RS: My interests lie in that important space between understanding how technologies may aid and support grassroots political movements and diverse user communities. The Zuni collaboration, described in chapter 4, is interested in that cause in relation to the political and cultural sovereignty of a tribe that was not just historically colonized but still faces the objectification and misrepresentation of new forms of coloniality online.

The cases in the book look at both political movements as well as diverse cultures and communities. Currently, I am collaborating with activists and indigenous Zapotec and Mixtec communities in the Oaxaca Mexico region, one of the most biodiverse and culturally/linguistically diverse parts of our world. In this work, I am writing about the Rhizomatica project (invoking Deleuze/Guarttari's rhizome) where these communities are designing their own collectively-owned cell phone networks in cloud forests all around the region. This has massive political and economic effects. What we see here is a rhizome in the making, a set of networks, systems, and infrastructures shaped and produced from the grassroots, by communities and for communities, and not for the major corporations of our world that tend to on the surface exploit and monitor the activities of these people. More on this amazing project, including some videos at www.rhizomatica.org . I believe that as we start to think about this new effort, that Lisa Parks and I describe as 'network sovereignty', we can start to embark on a path I describe in detail in chapter 5 of the book, of getting back the social contract and communitarian potential of technology to serve democratic agendas located in people's politics and cultures.

I am hopeful we can start that conversation now. I attempt to continue it via my soon to be released second book, After the Internet (with Adam Fish, Polity, end 2017) which looks at examples ranging from Iceland’s Pirate Party, hacktivism, the Silk Road, the Arab Spring, and other activist movements that re-imagine new technologies in relation to grassroots power and voice.

Reference

Ramesh Srinivasan, Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Shapes Our World, New York University Press, New York, 2017.

Profiles

Ramesh Srinivasan is Associate Professor of Information Studies with a courtesy appointment in Design|Media Arts. Srinivasan, who holds M.S and Doctoral degrees, from the MIT Media Laboratory and Harvard's Design School respectively, has focused his research globally on the development of information systems within the context of culturally-differentiated communities. He is interested in how an information system can function as a cultural artifact, as a repository of knowledge that is commensurable with the ontologies of a community. As a complement, he is also interested in how an information system can engage and re-question the notion of diaspora and how ethnicity and culture function across distance. This research allows one to uncover mechanisms by which indigenously-articulated forms of development can begin to occur, as relating to his current work in pastoral and tribal communities in Southern India. His research therefore involves engaging communities to serve as the designers, authors, and librarians/archivists of their own information systems. His research has spanned such bounds as Native Americans, Somali refugees, Indian villages, Aboriginal Australia, and Maori New Zealand.

Geert Lovink is a media theorist, internet critic and author of Dark Fiber (2002), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012) and Social Media Abyss (2016). Since 2004 he is researcher in the Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA) where he is the founder of the Institute of Network Cultures. His centre recently organized conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (the politics and aesthetics of online video), Unlike Us (alternatives in social media), Critical Point of View (Wikipedia), Society of the Query (the culture of search), MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts) and a project on the future of art criticism. From 2004-2013 he was also associate prof. at Mediastudies (new media), University of Amsterdam. Since 2009 he is professor at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee/Malta) where he supervises PhD students.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/tech-anthropology-today-collaborate-rather-than-fetishize-from-afar

Digital native: Snap out of outrage mode

nishant — 2017-05-05T01:45:12Z

Rage at the inequality of the digital world is good. But why stop at the Snapchat CEO?

Nishant Shah is a professor of new media and the co-founder of The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore. The article was published in the Indian Express on April 30, 2017.

If you are reading this right now, let’s just get something out of the way — you are not poor. Just the affordability of English language literacy and access to national news media marks you as belonging to a very small elite group in the country. If you are reading this online, the point is driven home even more. So, when you heard about the CEO of Snapchat (If you are asking SnapWhat, don’t feel crestfallen, you are not “out of it”, you are just not 17) being quoted from a statement he made two years ago, that he is not interested in expanding in poor countries like India, you were obviously riled.

There were many things wrong with the alleged statement that Evan Spiegel made. He betrayed his own ignorance and arrogance, where he was unable to understand the growing consumer base of mobile-based apps in emerging networked countries like India. He also more or less failed to understand that poverty is layered, and while India continues to struggle with poverty, it has a growing population of extremely wealthy and affluent users, who are not only driving global consumption trends but also the key focus of digital growth. His biggest faux pas was to not recognise that in the global information technologies development cycles, there is a huge chance that a large number of his employees and contractors might be located in India, and that Digital India is an undeniable extension of Silicon Valley apps and platforms.

Speigel’s cockiness is actually so common in how digital ecosystems are mapped, that you could almost ignore it because “everybody says it”. It is great that he was called out on his neo-colonial viewpoints. Users from India (and around the world) joined in to not only to protest against his bravado, but also to call for an action that hurts private companies in the one way they recognise — revenue. #BoycottSnapchat has been trending this last week, and millions of people using this visual filtered storytelling app are uninstalling it from their devices. People have been making jokes and criticising Snapchat, leading to a huge dip in the user base of Snapchat.

These moments of digital collective action are admirable and we need more instances where we call out such acts of discrimination and exclusion. We do need to make sure that we do not make Snapchat Enemy No. 1, pretending that the rest of the web is all good. Speigel is profoundly wrong, in his comments or in his defence that his app is “free” to download, which shows that he is not excluding India. However, Speigel cannot be singled out in all of this. Across the digital landscape, countries like India are always trapped in a strange dichotomy. On the one hand, Indian engineers and knowledge workers are being harvested as the cheap labour who “steal global jobs” and on the other, India is always seen as poor, underdeveloped, in need of saving.

This distilling of the Indian landscape, in all its complexity, into these two polarised identities, allows for these tech companies to continue unfair practices which affect both the glamorous white-collar techies and the invisible labours of IT cities. It emphasises the idea that the IT worker, upwardly and geographically mobile, is being offered a path to escape either the country or their context, because they are touched by the economic power of the digital corporation. It also justifies the exploited labour conditions of IT industries, where the story of transformation is presented as an excuse for underpaid overworked production environments.

At the same time, these companies seek to take up state-like responsibilities without the accountability, destroying fundamental media and information rights in the guise of bridging the digital divide. Remember Internet.Org’s attack on #NetNeutrality in their attempt to provide free Internet to the poor. Pay attention to Uber’s continued exploitation of its drivers, refusing to treat them as employees and yet regulating them more than any employer can dare to. Realise that despite our #MakeInIndia campaigns, we have very little investment in creating localised, Indian language digital infrastructure. Notice that the Indian digital scene, far from being start-up friendly, is turning into a monopoly of a handful of telecom companies, which nonchalantly discard the legal apparatus of safeguards. Reflect on how we are building biometric databases like Aadhaar, without any regard for data protection and security, so that millions of people are compromised through data leaks. All of these different phenomena need to be read along with our outrage at Snapchat. All of these are stern reminders that our act of questioning the digital does not stop at uninstalling an app, but at reorganising our policies and politics of the digital in the country.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-april-30-2017-digital-native-snap-out-of-outrage-mode

Digital transitions in the newsroom: How are Indian language papers adapting differently?

zeenab — 2017-02-03T01:50:20Z

In a new report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Centre for Internet and Society, Zeenab Aneez explores how Indian newsrooms are adapting their workflow and processes to cater to an increasing digital audience and the implications these changes have on how journalists produce news.

This was published on the website of the London School of Economics and Political Science on January 16, 2017.

Global discussions about how the rise of the Internet has impacted journalism and news publishers has involved accounts of newspapers stopping publication altogether, or bringing their presses to a halt in order to direct resources to publishing solely digital content as in the case of Newsweek or the Independent. Large newspapers like The New York Times and The Guardian have successfully managed to transition from print only publications to multimedia news providers, bringing out both print and digital news but this is an ongoing and costly process.

In the Indian context however, things are a bit different, especially with regard to Indian language newspapers whose print business remains profitable, which positively impacts the dynamics of this transition. For our report, we interviewed over 30 senior editors, managers and rank-and-file journalists of three newsrooms – Hindustan Times, Dainik Jagran and Malayala Manorama – to understand how large Indian newspapers are reorganising themselves to cater to the demands of the digital space.

It has always been known than the print industry in India is still growing and we found that this leaves big Indian newspapers in a more comfortable position when it comes to investing in digital operations. Contrary to our assumptions, we discovered that these newspapers are taking aggressive steps to capture India’s growing digital audience and while Hindustan Times’ transition is very similar to English-language newspapers abroad, both Malayala Manorama and Dainik Jagran have adopted approaches that are specific to their niche audience and their position as market leaders.

Expansion rather than transition

In contrast to the Hindustan Times, which has reorganised and equipped its existing print newsroom to do print as well as digital and mobile journalism, both the Indian language newspapers have focused on launching digital operations that run parallel to the print newspaper organisation.

This involved creating new brands (Jagran Online, Jagran Josh, Manorama Online), opening up new offices and hiring new personnel geared towards putting purely digital media products, that are not limited to news.

Sukirti Gupta, CEO of MMI Online explains, “When we started thinking of our digital strategy, we were not looking so much at news but asking if there are new areas of growth as a media company and content was the first thing that seemed exciting for us. We looked at two genres that we thought would be great – health and education.”

Jagran Online includes ten websites covering news, health, entertainments, blogging and classifieds. Manorama Online lists fifteen websites as part of their operations, of which about ten are news, feature or content websites while the rest include a matrimonial site, classifieds and portals for real estate listings and doctor’s appointments.

Changing rhythms in the newsroom

The production and distribution of digital news content for Malayala Manorama and Dainik Jagran is handled primarily by their respective digital counterparts from a separate newsroom. In adopting this approach, both newspapers have partially shielded their traditional newsrooms from the difficulties that arise when moving from a print to a digital newsrooms. At the same time Manorama Online and MMI Online, which operate as start-ups within these incumbent organisations, partially avoid the inertia that comes from their established organisational and professional cultures. Although print reporters are not directly involved with the digital publication, they continue to be the primary source of news for the website and mobile applications and have to adapt their workflow according to the demands of the online space.

This means that breaking news, a prominent feature of online news, has been made a priority for all reporters. “The journalism remains the same,” says Santosh Jacob George, Editor, Manorama Online, “the only difference is that we have to break the news ourselves while print has the whole day to produce the story. We’ve requested our print reporters to file first for online, either directly into the CMS or via WhatsApp.” At Dainik Jagran, Digital Editor Shekhar Tripathi, has the right to ask a reporter to file the story immediately for the website. “First our policy was print but now online is our first priority, but not at the cost of print. If a story breaks at 8 am, it first comes to me on WhatsApp. If I’m interested, I ask the reporter for more details and then to file the story. Our print reporters have gotten into the habit of filing stories online, they give us the facts first and add perspective later,” he says.

This change in rhythm has not come easily to the print newsrooms which are accustomed to filing stories towards an evening deadline but efforts by management are towards promoting a systematic collaboration between the print and online desks. Dainik Jagran’s Chief Editor has made digital a part of every journalist’s Key Result Area (KRA). “So it’s not just the digital team’s responsibility but now everyone has it in his list of duties and responsibilities to support digital,” explains Gupta. At Malayala Manorama, a clear set of guidelines to streamline workflow were introduced; ‘They called in senior people from print to have detailed discussions on this and our senior editors also visited individual bureaus and spoke to reporters there,’ informs an associate content producer, recalling efforts to sensitise print journalists to the demands of digital news.

Emergence of new forms of newswork

Apart from the changes in workflow, the medium demands the use of various new tools and methods to gather, publish and distribute news. This has resulted in the emergence of new kinds of newswork performed by a new category of news workers. At the Hindustan Times newsroom, this work is performed by journalists who work on the online and audience engagement desks while at Dainik Jagran and Malayala Manorama, it is carried out by ‘content producers’ of the digital newsrooms. Although writers and editors for Manorama Online are journalism graduates who have also undergone journalism training specific to MM’s writing styles and journalistic values, they are designated as ‘content producers’ to differentiate their role from that of print journalists. At MMI Online, content producers do not necessarily possess prior journalistic experience, but have experience in web content production.

These content producers are social media savvy, have an eye for trending topics, are acutely aware of their competition and feel directly responsible for performance of their stories and subsequently, revenue. “We have to be very quick and prepare keyword-stuffed, trending news in a matter of minutes. It’s a race not just to get clicks but to retain the audience,” informs a junior content producer at Jagran Josh. “In print, your job [is], you write your story and you are done. With online we are more responsible for the outcomes. A well-researched story may not garner too many views so we have the option and the responsibility to package and redistribute the story until it finds the audience,” explains a senior content producer at Manorama Online.

Aside from these key observations, our interviews revealed the increased use of audience analytics combined with the introduction of new applications like Chartbeat and Parse.ly that analyse performance of stories and aid in editorial decision making, the increased use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter as a source of news and distribution, experiments with new forms of storytelling, especially with the use of mobile phones and a renewed focus on hyperlocal news especially in the case of Indian-language publications.

Our findings, which are limited to observations of what changes are taking place within newsrooms and how this is impacting journalists, open up several questions about the current state of journalism in India, the increasing interdependence on social media platforms, especially Facebook, the use of external software to make editorial decisions, the evolving role of journalists in digital newsrooms and finally, the question of developing a sustainable business model for news on the web.

This article is based on a report co-authored by Zeenab Aneez, Sumandro Chattapadhyay from the Centre for Internet and Society, Vibodh Parthasarathi of the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Milia Islamia and Rasmus Kleis Nielson of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The open access report can be read and downloaded on the Reuters Institute website here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/london-school-of-economics-and-political-science-january-16-2017-digital-transitions-in-the-newsroom-how-are-indian-language-papers-adapting-differently