The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
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Fill The Gap: Global Discussion on Digital Natives
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet
<b>More often than not people don't understand the new practices inspired by Internet and digital technologies. As such a series of accusations have been leveled against the Digital Natives. Educators, policy makers, scholars, and parents have all raised their worries without hearing out from the people they are concerned about. Hivos has initiated an online global discussion about Digital Natives. So, to voice your opinion, start tweeting with us now #DigitalNatives.</b>
<div class="content-view-full">
<div class="class-event">
<div class="pagecontent">
<h2>If you cannot attend Fill The Gap, you can also join us in a global discussion on some of the issues being discussed at #DigitalNatives<br /></h2>
<br />
<p>1.
Are
you an apolitical consumer, or do you have ambitions?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNatives" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNatives</a></p>
<p>2.
Are
you a little prince or princess, who only wants to talk to like minded people
or are you different?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesPrincess" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesPrincess</a></p>
<p>3.
Is
Wikipedia your bible or do you really know something?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesWiki" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesWiki</a></p>
<p>4.
Are
you a digital dinosaur? They say you don’t know anything about ICT!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalDinosaur" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalDinosaur</a></p>
<p>5.
Why
use the Internet, why don’t you march the streets?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesProtest" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesProtest</a></p>
<p>6.
Plans
to change the world? What do you need?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesChanceTheWorld" target="_blank">http://www.tweetworks.com/groups/view/DigitalNativesChanceTheWorld</a></p>
<br />If you are in Amsterdam, here is the information you will need to attend the event:<br />
<h2>Fill the Gap! - 7</h2>
<h3>
R U Online?</h3>
<div class="date">Date: 15 January 2010 </div>
<div class="date">Time: 12.30 until
17.00 hour</div>
<div class="date">Location: Het Sieraad, Postjesweg 1, Amsterdam</div>
<br />
<strong></strong>The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of youth
and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be strengthened
and put to use for a better world? Hivos, apart from cohosting the
event, will be involving digital natives to hear their stories about
ICT and engagement.
<br />
<p>
An Open Space event on the potential of new (mobile) media and youth in
developing countries. For everyone in politics, the profit and the
non-profit sectors who is interested in ICT and international
development cooperation.</p>
<p>
The use of new (mobile) technology is the most natural thing in the world for the youth of today.</p>
<p>
Shaped by the digital era and at ease with creativeity, these
innovators use new media to change the world. Just think of the Twitter
revolution in Iran. What can the international development sector learn
from this? How could international development cooperation use the
potential power of youth to tackle development problems?</p>
<p> The seventh edition of Fill the Gap! is all about the power of
youth and IT in developing countries. How can their skills be
strengthened and put to use for a better world? The kick-off will be
hosted by Jennifer Corriero, co-founder of Taking IT Global: the
international platform for youth and the use of new media for a better
world. Then the floor is open to discuss your own ideas with people
from new media, the business world and the international development
sector during the Open Space sessions. Join in: come to Amsterdam on
Friday January 15th and be inspired during Fill the Gap!<br />
<br /> Registration is free. The programme is in English.</p>
<br /><a href="http://www.fill-the-gap.nl/Fill_the_gap_7?" target="_blank">» Fill the Gap</a></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/digital-natives-with-a-cause/dntweet</a>
</p>
No publishernishantSocial mediaDigital ActivismDigital GovernanceDigital NativesAgencyYouthFeaturedCyberculturesNew PedagogiesDigital subjectivitiesICT2010-01-22T10:54:13ZBlog EntryInquilab 2.0? Reflections on Online Activism in India*
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/revolution-2.0/digiactivprop
<b>Research and activism on the Internet in India remain fledgling in spite the media hype, says Anja Kovacs in her blog post that charts online activism in India as it has emerged. </b>
<p>Since the late 1990s when protesters against the WTO in Seattle used a variety of new technologies to revolutionize their ways of protesting so as to further their old goals in the information age, much has been made of the possibilities that new technologies seem to offer social movements. The emergence of Web 2.0 seems to have only multiplied the possibilities of building on the Internet's democratising potentials, so widely heralded since the rise of the commercial Internet in the 1990s, and since then, the use of social media for social change has received widespread media attention worldwide. From Spain to Mexico, activists used the Internet as a central tool in their efforts to organise and mobilise – be it to express their stand against a war in Iraq, against a Costa Rican Free Trade Agreement with the United States, to mobilise support for the Zapatistas of Chiapas, or more recently, to push for a change of guard in Iran.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In 2009, when Nisha Susan launched the Pink Chaddi campaign, the 'ICT for Revolution' buzz finally seemed to have reached India as well. Phenomenally successful in terms of the attention it generated for the issue it sought to address, the campaign sought to protest in a humorous fashion against attacks on women pub-goers in Karnataka by Hindu right wing elements. In only a matter of weeks, Facebook associated with the campaign – 'The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women', which gathered tens of thousands of members. It was ultimately killed off when Susan's Facebook account was cracked by rivals. The campaign was perhaps the singular most successful account of ‘digital activism’ in India so far, and an impressive one by all measures.</p>
<p>The creativity of the campaign should not come as a surprise to those familiar with the long and rich history of activism for social change in India. Organised social actors have been critical influences in the emergence of new social identities as well as on critical policy junctures from colonial times onwards, developing a fascinating and unmistakably Indian language of protest in the process (see Kumar 1997 and Zubaan 2006 for examples from feminist movement).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>As Raka Ray and Mary Faizod Katzenstein (2006) have pointed out, in the post-independence period, such organised activism for long was connected by at least verbal – if not actual – commitment to the common master frame of poverty alleviation and the ending of inequality and injustice, and this irrespective of the particular issues groups were working on. Since the late 1980s, however, a number of far-reaching changes have taken place in India. This period has been marked by the definite demise of secular democratic socialism as the dominant script of the Indian state and its simultaneous replacement by neo-liberalism. Moreover, in the same period, Hindu nationalism as an ideology too has gone from strength to strength, with only in the last five years a slowdown in its ascendancy. While for many traditional social movements of the Left the commitment to social justice remains, in this context a space has undeniably been created for groups with a very different agenda. The considerable popularity of organisations such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, both Hindu nationalist organisations, are prime indications of these transformations. However, the fragmentation of the activist space did not only benefit reactionary elements of society. The final emergence into visibility of a well-articulated middle class queer politics, for example, too, may well in many ways have been facilitated by the evolutions of the past 20 years. Although this point has been mostly elaborated in the context of the US (Hennessey 2000), in India, too, this seems to ring true at least in some senses.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The general shape-shifting of activism in India since the 1990s is not the only contextual factor that deserves obvious consideration in a study like this. In addition, since independence a close link has been forged in policy and people's imagination alike between science and technology on the one hand and development paradigms in India on the other. Not everyone agrees on the benefits of this association: all too frequently, the struggles of grassroots social movements are directed precisely against the outcomes or consequences of a supposedly 'scientifically' inspired development policy. The neo-liberal era is no exception to this: as Carol Upadhya (2004) has shown quite convincingly, the economic reform policies that are at the heart of neo-liberalism have been inspired first and foremost by the information technology sector in India, which has also in turn been their first beneficiary. And today as earlier, Asha Achuthan (2009) has pointed out, in the resistance to these policies, the subaltern who is the agent of grassroots social movements is frequently associated with a pre-technological purity that needs to be maintained in order to resist discourses and material consequences of technological change themselves. In popular discourses, at least, attitudes towards technology inevitably come in a binary mode.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Seeing the context in which digital activism in India has emerged, a number of pressing questions regarding the new forms that even progressive activism takes as it adopts new tools and methods, then, immediately offer themselves. Leaving aside the activities of right wing groups in India, who are the actors that occupy this space for activism and what are their relationship with offline activists groups? Which are the issues online activism seeks to address, and what are its master narratives, goals and audiences? Where does it locate problems in today's society, and what kind of solutions does it propose? How does it posit its relation to the global/international and to the offline-local; to dominant understandings of science and technology, development, or desirable social change? How are these understandings reflected in online activism, including in the choice and use of technologies but also in the discourses that are deployed and the audiences that are targeted? What are its methods, its strategies, its ways of organising? What role is played by organisations, collectives, networks, individuals? In what ways is the field marked by the conjuncture at which it emerged? Do those who first occupy (most of) it also set the parameters? Or do its tools fashion online activism's very conditions of existence?</p>
<p>The value of greater insight into these issues is not immediately apparent to all. For one thing, some would argue that, as connectivity in the emerging IT superpower remains limited, the importance of these questions to those concerned with social justice in India is really marginal. It is true that while commercial Internet services have been available in the country since 1995, for long the number of connections remained abysmally low. Even today, the number of subscriptions has only just crossed the 14 million mark, and barely half of these are broadband subscriptions, severely limiting the usefulness of a wide range of potential online activism tools (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India 2009 – figures are for the second quarter of 2009). According to I-Cube 2008 report (IMRB and Internet and Mobile Association of India 2008), there were an estimated 57 million claimed urban Internet users in the country in September 2008 and an estimated 42 million active urban Internet users. Corresponding figures for Internet users in rural areas in March 2008 were 5.5 million and 3.3 million respectively. Almost 88 million Indians were believed to be computer-literate at the time. Clearly, then, online activists are a tiny section of an already fairly small, privileged group, and at least in a direct sense, the availability of new tools is thus indeed unlikely to affect all activists or activism in the country.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Some of my own starting points while embarking on this study may seem to further give fuel to arguments against the value of this research. The idea of investigating online activism in India as it emerges followed from my observation – and a troubling one at that for me – that so far, and despite all the hype internationally, more traditional grassroots movements in India seem to have been slow to embrace the Internet as an integral part of their awareness raising and mobilisation strategies. Although they may attract the largest numbers of activists offline, the many so-called 'new' social movements that have emerged since the 1970s and that remain important actors pushing for social change seem most conspicuous by their relative absence online. This is especially true of those critical of current development paradigms and practices: movements fighting against dams, special economic zones or land acquisitions for “development” purposes seem visible only in relatively fragmented and generally marginal ways. Instead, middle-class actors addressing middle class audiences on middle class issues seem to be the flag bearers of Internet activism in India – the Pink Chaddi campaign or VoteReport India, a “collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian general elections” (see votereport.in/blog/about) perhaps among the most well-known illustrations of this argument.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Both points are valid, and yet, while inquilab it may not be, to conclude from this that the study of online activism automatically is of only very limited value would be short-sighted. Indeed, even if the hypothesis that Internet activism is dominated by middle class actors who address middle class concerns is validated (note that in any case considerable segments of the leadership and cadre of grassroots movements, too, tend to come from middle class backgrounds), this is likely to affect all those interested in affecting social change, even if perhaps in varying degrees. For one thing, it would mean that as the public sphere is reshaped, important new quarters of its landscape are inhabited only be the elite, contradicting the still widely popular and even cherished belief (at least among those who are familiar with the Internet) that the Internet is a democratising force. Instead, the proportional visibility in the public sphere of dissenting viewpoints on development, science, neo-liberalism, progress, the state will only decrease. In addition, then, it may also indicate a further refracting of the activism landscape and its master narratives and methods, where different segments of activists increasingly need to vie with each other for recognition and validation of their respective understandings of political processes and of appropriate forms of engaging with these. As such battles intensify it is not too risky to make a prognosis on who will be the main losers. If, in an era in which the old activist master narrative of justice for all remains under strident attack, civil society has come to occupy at the expense of political society (a useful distinction first made by Parth Chatterjee in Chatterjee 2004) a whole arena of activism, this would indeed need to be a cause of concern for all. In order to gauge its ramifications, it is however, crucial to first of all understand in which ways and to what extent this statement rings true.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The current study may well not be able to fully develop all the above and other theoretical strands as they emerge in the course of this research. But what it does promise to do is to outline the breaks and continuities that mark the make-up, strategies, audiences and goals of those who embrace the new possibilities that the Internet provides at the same time as the information age so fundamentally reconstitutes our society. As a starting point for the analysis, this research will therefore, attempt to map the online activism that has taken place in India so far, focusing more specifically on the forms of activism that leave a public record on the Internet (a more extensive debate of various definitional issues is in order – I will take this up in a separate blog post, to follow later, however). At the core of the research will be the construction of a database pertaining to online activism in India with links to email lists, blogs, Facebook groups, popular hash tags and the like. Although much of the activism I will be looking at will be centred around what has come to be known as 'social media', my focus is thus broader than that, as older tools such as e-petitions, discussion boards and list servs, too, will be included in this study. The aim is to be as comprehensive as possible, although for the database to ever be complete will, of course, be an impossibility. Moreover, since only data available in the English language will be collected, the database will automatically have its limitations. The database will be further complemented by interviews with activists who have been involved in key online campaigns and, where appropriate, case studies. It is the data thus gathered that will form the basis of our analysis.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>While the scope of the study is thus admittedly ambitious, the fact that online activism in India is a fairly recent affair – little happened before 2002, and it has only really taken off in the past three years or so – makes this venture not an impossible one. The contribution I hope to make through this research is not simply to work on the Indian context, however. Despite the media hype surrounding the possibilities of the Internet for social change, research on the Internet and activism more generally remains limited so far. The paucity is perhaps particularly acute where activism and social media are concerned (Postill 2009). Moreover, the work that does exist, I argue, tends to look mostly at activists' use of one particular tool, for example YouTube, or Facebook. Sight is thus generally lost of the larger cyberecology of communication in which this use must be located, preventing an opportunity for genuine insight into the ways in which activism is reconfigured from materialising. By using a much wider lens, this research hopes to make a beginning to correcting this lacuna. It is in this way that the importance of the changes that are underway in the Indian activist landscape as elsewhere can be appropriately assessed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><em><strong>*
Inquilab means revolution</strong></em></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"><strong>References</strong></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Achuthan, Asha (2009).
Re-Wiring Bodies. Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.
<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/rewiring/review">http://www.cis-india.org/research/cis-raw/histories/rewiring/review</a>,
last accessed on 15 January 2010.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Chatterjee, Partha
(2004). <em>The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular
Politics in Most of the World</em>. Delhi: Permanent Black.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Hennessy, Rosemary
(2000). <em>Profit and Pleasure: Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism</em>.
London: Routledge.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">IMRB and Internet and
Mobile Association of India (2008). I-Cube 2008: Facilitating Citins,
Altins, Fortins (Faster, Higher, Stronger) Internet in India. IMRB
and Internet and Mobile Association of India, Mumbai. <a href="http://www.iamai.in/">www.iamai.in/</a>,
last accessed on 15 January 2010.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Kumar, Radha (1997). <em>The
History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women's
Rights and Feminism in India 1800-1990</em>. New Delhi: Zubaan.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Postill, John (2009).
Thoughts on Anthropology and Social Media Activism.
<em>Media/Anthropology</em>,
<a href="http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/thoughts-on-anthropology-and-social-media-activism/">http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/thoughts-on-anthropology-and-social-media-activism/</a><a href="http://johnpostill.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/thoughts-on-anthropology-and-social-media-activism/">,
</a>last accessed on 15 January 2010.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Ray, Raka and Mary
Fainsod Katzenstein (2006). Introduction: In the Beginning, There Was
the Nehruvian State. In Raka Ray and Mary Fainsod Katzenstein
(eds.). <em>Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power, and Politics.</em>
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Telecom Regulatory
Authority of India (2009). The Indian Telecom Services Performance
Indicators, April-June 2009. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India,
New Delhi. <a href="http://www.trai.gov.in/">www.trai.gov.in</a><a href="http://www.trai.gov.in/">,
</a>last accessed on 15 January 2010.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Upadhya, Carol (2004). A
New Transnational Capitalist Class: Capital Flows, Business Networks
and Entrepreneurs in the Indian Software Industry. <em>Economic and
Political Weekly</em>, 39(48): 5141-5151.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Zubaan (2006). <em>Poster
Women: A Visual History of the Women's Movement in India</em>. New
Delhi: Zubaan.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p align="JUSTIFY"> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/revolution-2.0/digiactivprop'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/revolution-2.0/digiactivprop</a>
</p>
No publishernishanthistories of internet in IndiaSocial mediaDigital ActivismCyberspaceAccess to Medicineinternet and societyResearchCybercultures2011-08-02T09:25:30ZBlog EntryChina's Generation Y : Youth and Technology in Shanghai
http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/GenerationY
<b>Within the context of internet technologies in China, Nishant Shah, drawing from his seven month research in Shanghai, looks at the first embodiment of these technologies in the urbanising city. In this post, he gives a brief overview of the public and academic discourse around youth-technology usage of China's Generation Y digital natives. He draws the techno-narratives of euphoria and despair to show how technology studies has reduced technology to tools and usage and hence even the proponents of internet technologies, often do a disservice to the technology itself. He poses questions about the politics, mechanics and aesthetics of technology and offers the premise upon which structures of reading resistance can be built. The post ends with a preview of the three stories that are to appear next in the series, to see how youth engagement and cultural production can be read as having the potentials for social transformation and political participation for the Digital Natives in China.</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/GenerationY'>http://editors.cis-india.org/research/grants/the-promise-of-invisibility-technology-and-the-city/GenerationY</a>
</p>
No publishernishantCyberspaceSocial mediaShanghaiCyborgsCyberculturesDigital Natives2009-09-21T14:09:16ZBlog EntryRound Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Public Initiatives: A Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy
<b>Zainab Bawa reports on the Round Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies for Public Initiatives, hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, on 17 June 2009, in collaboration with the Liberty Institute, New Delhi. </b>
<p></p>
<p>
In
recent times, there has been an upsurge in the use of ICTs to provide
information to people and to elicit participation. Individuals, corporate
organisations, NGOs, civil society organisations, collectives, municipalities,
political parties and politicians have been using the internet and other
mediums to communicate with people. The round table was organised primarily to
discuss two issues:</p>
<ol><li>What is the
effectiveness of the initiatives introduced in recent times?</li><li>How do we
move forward in terms of partnerships/collaborations in the areas of data
gathering, sharing, dissemination and architecture of information? </li></ol>
<p>Given
the constraints of time, however, we were only able to discuss a few issues with
respect to efficacy of initiatives, rather than come up with a concrete action
plan on how to measure effectiveness of many of the existing initiatives. This
remains an agenda for subsequent meetings.</p>
<p>This round table was the first meeting of its kind. It
brought together participants from diverse backgrounds to discuss key issues
involved in leveraging ICTs towards various ends, and to collaborate with each
other on ongoing initiatives. Participants included researchers,
persons who have developed information platforms and databases, individuals
working in the area of leveraging technology for streamlining processes in
society and people who have been studying usage patterns of social media tools.
Most of the participants were using ICTs to improve information access
related to health issues, education, budgets, development of rural areas and
recently, elections and governance. In the subsequent sections, I will briefly
elaborate on some of the key themes around which discussions took place
during the round table.</p>
<p><strong>Building on Ideas:</strong> In the morning
and pre-lunch sessions, one issue that featured prominently was the importance of developing ideas rather than trying to work out a perfect model that
we believe will solve what we perceive to be people’s problems. Two of the
participants explained that they started implementing ideas as they came to
them, rather than trying to come up with a framework that they thought would
work for the masses. They worked towards evolving their ideas, exploring what
works and what does not. One of them further pointed out that such evolution
cannot be observed as it happens; it only becomes apparent in hindsight. Hence,
discussions such as the current round table are useful.</p>
<p>It is
also important to note that we are still in a nascent stage of understanding
how ICTs can impact people’s lives and deploying them accordingly. As a result, many efforts are likely to be in the stage of trial and error.</p>
<p><strong>Key areas of interest and concern:</strong> Based
on the input from participants in the morning session, we
arrived at a list of areas that require more understanding and discussion.</p>
<ol><li><u>Information gathering, dissemination, access –
including information architecture, technology design</u>:
Here, three issues were discussed:</li>
<ul><li>Who are we talking about when we refer to information
access? It was pointed out that information is crucial particularly for people
who do not have computers and for whom internet is not a priority. The intensity
with which they seek information is remarkable. One of the participants argued
that we undervalue the potential of information to make a difference to
people’s lives.</li><li>How do we deliver information? Providing information
is not enough.</li><li>Representativeness of the information for those who it
is provided for.
</li></ul>
</ol>
<p>Another issue that was referred to
was whether language is a problem, i.e., most information is available only in
English. One of the participants suggested that this is not the case because Google has found that a very small percentage of the population actually refers
to material on the web in languages other than English.</p>
<ol type="1" start="2"><li><u>Community mobilization</u>:
During the deliberations, we referred to the problem of replication of initiatives. Two observers of social media pointed
out that replication happens because people are trying to create their own
unique communities around their initiatives. This is an important insight
for future efforts and also indicates the need to share databases and
information that individuals and organisations have compiled. They also
suggested that it is important to discover existing communities and spaces
where conversations around issues of governance, education, health and
development are taking place. This helps to plug into existing resource
pools and to extend outreach. <br /></li></ol>
<ol type="1" start="3"><li><u>Citizens’ participation</u>:
Initiatives that work and why they
succeed - We briefly discussed the Jaagore campaign and India Vote Report,
which were launched before the 2009 national elections in India to enable
people to register on the electoral rolls and to report irregularities during
elections respectively. Some people found it difficult to register
themselves on the Jaagore website and some had difficulties in finding the
local offices where they needed to follow-up with the process. It was also
pointed out that Vote Report did not connect with the end user because it
would have been easier to report irregularities and anomalies via SMS
rather than trying to report them by logging on to the site. If one looks
at the case of the Online Complaint Management System (OCMS) developed by
Praja, the availability of the telephone hotline service through which
citizens could register their complaints helped in widening usage. Thus,
it appears that two issues are pertinent:</li>
<ul><li>Whether the initiative connects with the people who
are likely to use it;</li><li>Simplicity of design/system that enables more users. <br />
</li></ul>
</ol>
<p><strong>Target
Audience:</strong> One of
the participants pointed out that some initiatives do not work because they are
targeted towards the wrong audiences. For example, when it comes to voting and
elections, poor groups are the ones who go out and vote in large numbers.
Hence, information systems need to be tailored to provide them with the data
that they need most. Access also has to be configured accordingly. In some
instances, the target is too broad to reach out effectively.</p>
<p>It appears that there is a need to
develop strategies on how platforms and databases that have been created to
enhance access to information can be made known among the masses and how people
can be made aware to use them. It is equally important to understand what
constitutes ‘information’ and for whom. Here,
the other issue to explore is how information links back to the people for who
it is provided.</p>
<ol type="1" start="4"><li><u>Technology</u>: In this
area, a key concern was the high costs involved in developing technologies
and whether we could learn from each other’s experience of developing
technologies instead of reinventing the wheel. We also discussed whether
open source software helps to reduce costs of development. The other issue
with respect to open source is whether there is enough assistance and
support available to resolve problems that may crop up during use of
technology from time to time. </li></ol>
<p><strong>Sharing
of Data:</strong> Discussions also veered around the issue of whether
appropriate technology and applications could be created to help with sharing
existing databases and information pools. We did not discuss this issue
in depth, but it remains relevant for subsequent meetings.</p>
<ol type="1" start="5"><li><u>Back end integration</u>: According
to some of the participants, one of major problems is the interface
between government and citizens, which remains weak. Technology
can be used to enhance the interactions. Participants also pointed out
the difficulty in obtaining data from government bodies that is important
to create the interface between government and citizens. A participant
involved with the Jaagore campaign referred to the problem of back-end
integration during their efforts to help citizens register themselves with
the election commission (EC) offices. A participant from Google similarly
reported that they faced problems in obtaining election results from the EC’s
offices as a result of which, they had to rely on their partners for this
information. Here too, we could not deliberate on how to resolve this
problem, but this could be a major theme for a subsequent meeting. <br /></li></ol>
<ol type="1" start="6"><li><u>Performance (monitoring, evaluation)</u>:
One of the themes that participants zeroed in on was the evaluation of
the performance of elected representatives and making this evaluation available for
people to see. Here, the debate was around the problem of evaluation being carried out according to the criteria we set which may not seem relevant
to other sections of society. One of the suggestions that came up was to
develop a matrix for evaluation and put out information accordingly.
People can then use it to make their own judgments. <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/uploads/00016.jpg/image_preview" alt="rt2" class="image-right" title="rt2" /><br /></li></ol>
<p>In
the post-lunch session, some of the participants shared their experiences with
implementation and also the work they and their organisations are currently
engaged with. Towards the end of the round table, each one of the participants
explained their respective projects and how they may wish to collaborate with
other participants (who were present) in their initiatives. An e-group called “CIS-Info-Access” has
been created to take these conversations and collaborations further. </p>
<h3><strong>Evaluation of the Round Table and Way Forward:</strong> <br /></h3>
<p>When
invitations were sent out to people to participate in the round table, many of
the invitees expressed a genuine and enthusiastic interest in being part of
this effort. As mentioned above, one of the reasons for this enthusiasm was
because this was the first meeting of its kind, bringing together
individuals from the fields of technology, research and implementation. We
invited a total of 35 people out of which 27 finally attended the meeting.
The diversity of the participants was an asset in that a variety of issues were
brought to the table. The drawback was that there was not enough time to
discuss some of the pertinent issues in depth. Future meetings can be tailored
to discuss one or two specific themes such as back-end integration and sharing
of information, technology issues, ideas for mobilising citizens and
communities, etc.</p>
<p>The
possibilities of collaboration between participants in this meeting are immense
and we hope that some of the synergies will materialise into concrete outcomes.
Further, a few participants have expressed an interest in organising similar
meetings in their cities/towns, perhaps focusing on a few issues instead of
bringing people together under a broad theme. Of some of the issues discussed,
participants have indicated that back-end integration with government and
ideating on different ways of disseminating data can be further deliberated on
in future. One of the participants also suggested that there is a need to make
‘data’ more relevant to people’s lives.</p>
<p>While
the meeting was fruitful in many respects, one issue needs to be underlined.
This concerns the imagination of internet and ICTs as mediums that can resolve all existing problems with respect to citizen-government
interface, streamlining of processes and provision of information. Such an
overarching imagination of technology overlooks the cultural, economic, social and
political specificities of communities and contexts. Technology
can also have negative implications in some circumstances. It also needs to be
reinforced that technology is embedded in society and culture. Therefore we
need to view technology as one of the avenues among others available which will
facilitate interactions between people and their governments and the state.
Democratisation is more likely to be realised through such a perspective.</p>
<p></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/round-table-assessing-efficacy</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaSocial mediaDigital ActivismDigital AccessPublic AccountabilityDiscussionFeaturedTransparency, Politics2011-08-20T22:28:55ZBlog EntryUsing Social Media for Mobilisation: Discussion with Dina Mehta and Peter Griffin
http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/using-social-media-for-mobilisation-discussion-with-dina-mehta-and-peter-griffin
<b>Zainab Bawa reports on the discussion with Peter Griffin and Dina Mehta, hosted at CIS on 19 June 2009, on 'Using Social Media for Mobilisation'. </b>
<p></p>
<p>Iran
Elections and the Twitter Revolution …</p>
<p>Memes
– how and why do some memes become popular on Twitter?</p>
<p>FaceBook
– privacy, community, locality, socializing?</p>
<p>Blogs
– once, we thought they would revolutionize the world, but how are blogs now placed
vis-à-vis twitter and facebook?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Many
questions abound concerning the phenomenon called 'social media', particularly
in the wake of the protests taking place in Iran and the ways in which information has
reached out to the world about what is going on in the country. The panel
discussion on social media, organised by the Centre for Internet and Society
(CIS) on 19 June 2009, aimed to understand how mobilisations take
place through social media and how memes are engineered and spread across
communities. We invited Dina Mehta and Peter Griffin to join us as panellists at the event and share
their experiences.</p>
<p>Dina
and Peter set up the tsunami help blog in December 2004 (<a href="http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/">http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com</a>)
which for the first time demonstrated the importance of social media tools in
coordinating local efforts and disseminating information in the region. What
caused them to become involved through this medium? Both Dina and Peter used
discussion forums and email during the formative years of the internet in
India. 'The sheer miracle of chat', as Peter puts it, also allowed them to
connect with people. When the tsunami struck, they became nodes through which
action was mobilised and information was spread. It still remains to be
explored how nodes develop in different circumstances, how spaces of
conversations develop and what causes some individuals to enter the space of
social media and inhabit them in significant ways, to the extent of becoming
nodes for coordination and mobilisation.</p>
<p>So,
what is social media? Dina says she does not like the term. But, since it is
used so commonly, she follows the tide. For Dina and Peter, social media is a
set of tools which can be mobilised for various purposes – for a call to action,
response to a crisis, and persuading people to support a cause, among many other
things. What is curious however is that the use of social media becomes more marked
and prominent during moments of crisis. This observation led one audience member to ask
whether social media is mirroring some of the behaviours of mainstream media.
Dina pointed out that social media does not exist in opposition to mainstream
media – both complement each other. Social media becomes more powerful
during moments of crisis due to some of the following factors:</p>
<ol><li>Powerful search functions;</li><li>Tools for aggregating content which helps in picking
up the noise;</li><li>Hash (#) tags which make it easy to search and to
connect and contribute to ongoing conversations and mobilizations.
</li></ol>
<p>These
help to amplify what is going on. Dina also referred to the simplicity of
social media tools which enables diverse individuals to participate in their
own ways. She cited the recent example of showing solidarity with the Iranian
revolutionaries by adding the colour green to one’s Twitter image. 'I only had
to click to indicate whether I wanted to show support in this way and a program
automatically applied the green colour to my twitter image without my having to
do anything. I don’t have to write code to participate in this medium. I can be
anyone,' she added.</p>
<p>What
is also unique is that unlike newspapers and early television, interactions via
social media tend to be two-way. For instance, blogs have made it possible for
individuals to become publishers of their own materials whether it is diary-like entries or filter blogging. Moreover, in the case of the protests
following the Iran elections, people used their mobile phones to capture
images, make videos and post these on the internet for others to see.</p>
<p>Individuals
from the audience raised questions about how they and their organisations could
use social media tools effectively to raise funds and to communicate their
causes/issues to other people. To this, both Dina and Peter suggested that it
is important to find the spaces where conversations about issues are already
taking place and to participate in them. They also stated that credibility is
built over time through acts of giving to different communities that develop
around various issues. Dina also emphasised the need to recognise target
audiences, identify the mediums they use regularly and accordingly develop
strategies concerning the use of social media. If the outreach group is more
tuned into radio, it is more effective to reach out to them in this way. Dina
mentioned that the mobile phone is a powerful medium that is
often neglected because of the publicity that the internet tends to receive.
She said that in South East Asian countries, people have better mobile phone
connectivity, and often, political activism has taken place by spreading
messages through mobile phones. One of the participants questioned the feasibility of moving from an existing yahoogroup to start a new discussion group; to
which another audience member responded that it is preferable to stay with
existing mediums used rather than to switch. Discussion forums require
more participation and if the goal is only to send out announcements, a
yahoogroup serves the purpose.</p>
<p>The
issue of arm-chair activism was also raised – whether social media is in fact
leading people to participate in issues only through clicking ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Peter stated that this is true, but the ease of transmitting information to
others enhances the possibility of moving beyond arm-chair activism. 'For
instance, I am concerned about eve teasing and harassment of women in public
spaces, but I may not have the time to participate in an intervention or gathering
on a particular day. However, I forward the email/invitation to my friends who are
concerned similarly and they may choose to participate on-site,' he explained.</p>
<p>The
lack of connectivity to the internet and therefore to social media was referred
to in the discussions. An audience member pointed out that according to a
recent study, only 10% of the people in India are connected to the internet.
Peter immediately remarked that the figure of 10% translated into 10 million
people which is still a large number that can be reached out to. Similarly, it
was pointed out that English is still the predominant language of the web and
therefore social media can be exclusive. In this respect, the issues are
developing technologies for facilitating the use of scripts, the extent to
which the masses use languages other than English on the internet and also
whether people in fact use the internet and other communication technologies as
a means to learn English. In this context, a participant drew our attention to a
twitter community of approximately 800 people who tweet regularly in Malayalam.</p>
<p>The
discussion brought up some interesting nuanced perspectives on social media that users and
novices may not have thought about. Questions still remain about the efficacy
of social media, the nature and characteristics of communities that are formed
around use of social media, distinctions between networks and communities, etc. Over time, these questions will be answered as usage increases
and trends are studied in all their complex aspects.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/using-social-media-for-mobilisation-discussion-with-dina-mehta-and-peter-griffin'>http://editors.cis-india.org/events/event-blogs/using-social-media-for-mobilisation-discussion-with-dina-mehta-and-peter-griffin</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaSocial mediaDigital ActivismDiscussion2011-08-20T22:28:42ZBlog Entryopen video summit
http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Open%20Video%20Summit..jpg
<b></b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Open%20Video%20Summit..jpg'>http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Open%20Video%20Summit..jpg</a>
</p>
No publisherradhaSocial media2009-11-19T07:04:40ZImage