The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 111 to 125.
Digital Native: Twin Manifestations or Co-Located Hybrids
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/twin-manifestations
<b>Samuel Tettner reviews ‘Digital Natives and the Return of the Local Cause’ from Book 1: To Be. The essay is authored by Anat Ben-David.</b>
<p>Ben-David’s piece is a well-articulated and informed attempt to
resolve two of the several conceptual fuzziness of the term “Digital
Native”. She attempts this in a philosophical manner: trying to move
away from the ontological “who are Digital Natives?” to an
epistemological “when and where are Digital Natives?” Her reasoning is
that this perceptive change will allow us to unpack the duplicity of a
hybrid term and to understand if it refers to a unique phenomenon in the
world worth exploring.</p>
<p>To answer the when and the where, Ben-David situates the term into
its constituencies: digital and native, contextualizing the words using
two approaches; historiographical (when) for the digital and
geopolitical (where) for the native.</p>
<p>The digital is semantically pin-pointed in the short but active
history of information technology within an activism framework, to use a
broad word. The author then places two events side to one: First the
1999 manifestations against World-trade Organization protests in Seattle
and then the 2011 Tahir Square protests in Egypt. Are these two
phenomena different in nature? Is Tahir Square a more technologically
advanced version of Seattle? Are the basic mechanisms the same, albeit
with new faces and shinier phones?</p>
<p>Ben-David postulates three reasons for placing the manifestations on a
different trajectory. First, “The Internet” of 1999 and “The Internet”
of 2011 are distinctively not the same thing. The second is that the
demographic constituting the protest are not the same: in 1999 they were
mostly Civic Society Organization (CSO) employees and volunteers, while
in Tahrir they were mostly civilians and concerned citizens connected
through their local networks.</p>
<p>The third concerns the spatial and symbolic nature of the protests.
In Seattle, the protests were against large transnational corporations;
Seattle was chosen because it hosted the World Trade Organization that
year. In Egypt, the protest was directed against local corruption and
concerned itself with local governance issues. Tahir Square was chosen
because the protests were directly about, of and in Egypt.</p>
<p>Which brings us to the where. The ‘Native’ is used by Ben-David to
refer to the ongoing structural shifts towards localized activism
campaigns. This change came with the growing realization that
transnational activism campaigns that tried to effect change across
loosely cohesive cross-sections of the world, tended to lose touch with
their points of origin and remain in suspended animation. Local
campaigns seem to be more responsive and agile, specially in their
ability to enter into dialogues with the needs of local populations. The
spontaneity of action, the granular level of the causes, and the
lowered threshold of the agents and initiators are some of the aspects
Ben-David sees in emergent campaigns, which are critically different
from activism campaigns in the past. </p>
<p>Of course, the location and the time intertwine eventually. A growing
trend in the development of the digital world has been the localization
of frameworks, methodologies and approaches. The author’s use of
Richard Roger’s four stages of the evolution of politics about the web
is outstanding: It shows us without telling us that the distinction
between when and where is purely analytical and that they really are a
single entity of the time-space continuum.</p>
<p>Ben-David succeeds in contextualizing both the digital and the native
as different sides of the same coin: as two manifestations of the
growth and maturation process that technology-mediated activism has been
through over the last 10 years. The result is an internally-consistent
perspective which sees Digital Natives habituating hybrid-timespaces
alongside heterogeneous actors, where the relationship between the local
and the global is contingent, transitory, dynamic – and knowledge can
be transformed and adapted to fit actors and their causes.</p>
<p>This review is part of the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.facebook.com/events/235958519806737/">Tweet-a-Review</a> event organized by the ‘Digital Natives with a Cause? Project and is republished here from <a class="external-link" href="http://tettner.com/post/13298655331/digital-native-twin-manifestations-or-co-located">Samuel Tettner’s blog</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/twin-manifestations'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/twin-manifestations</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDigital Natives2011-12-23T04:36:40ZNews ItemOn Natives, Norms and Knowledge
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/on-natives-and-norms
<b>Philip Ketzel reviews Ben Wagner's essay "Natives, Norms and Knowledge: How Information Technologies Recalibrate Social & Political Power Relations Communications" published in Book 4: To Connect.</b>
<p>Using digital technologies has become so convenient that with the
rise of the so called digital revolution arose also the need to reflect
it. A very impressive compilation of reflections dealing with the role
and impact of the “user” (or digital native, as it is now called) comes
in the form of a four book collective called <a class="external-link" href="http://www.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook/">Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? </a>by
the Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos. The fourth book
features Ben Wagner’s essay Natives, Norms and Knowledge: How
Information and Communications Technologies Recalibrate Social and
Political Power Relations. It is a text I strongly recommend, especially
to those interested in the reasons behind contemporary policies that
try to regulate digital activism such as the US SOPA Act.</p>
<p>Wagner starts out by recapitulating the fact that, as any
technological progress, the digital revolution has produced profound
cultural changes. In order to make these changes more visible and to
question their implications, he analyses the ways in which they can be
understood as shifts of "sociological, normative and knowledge
boundaries" (p. 22).Yet behind every boundary lies a legitimising
process setting it up. Hence, Wagner is also interested in the
discourses and institutions that legitimise these shifts of boundaries.</p>
<p><strong>So where and how are the boundaries being shifted?</strong></p>
<p>For example, there is the fact that now more people have the power to
influence what we call reality or history. Wagner points out that this
new power is socially seen less evenly distributed than one would hope.
He says "it seems that the existing elite has simply expanded
and been complemented by an additional 'digital elite'." (p. 22)
Though the old-school elite still holds some aces up their sleeves in
order to keep this new 'digital elite', respectively digital natives,
under control. This is for instance, according to Wagner, reflected in
the ways the media keeps producing and sustaining stereotypes of the
unsocial nerd, which makes it possible to easily stigmatise subversive
elements such as Mr. Assange.</p>
<p>Analysing the effects of this newly gained power, Wagner looks at the
norms set up by digital natives. Instead of pining down a list of
certain norms, he has a much better approach by saying:</p>
<p>[T]he tools provided by the internet have unmasked pre-existing norms
which were not previously evident. The tools of the internet bring
these norms to the surface by allowing for their practise an
environment which seems to offer endless opportunities to those
connected to it. (p. 24)</p>
<p>So we’re dealing with a new playground on which the digital natives
seem to dominate the rule defining process. This makes it problematic
for the political system, as its purpose is to keep social order and
also to acknowledge, reflect and integrate certain shifts of norms. As
an example for such a critical discourse, Wagner refers to the rise of
the Pirate Party.</p>
<p>However, this establishment of a new social order is strongly
correlated with a re-bordering of knowledge, as Wagner states. On the
one hand there are those who seek to open up knowledge borders by for
example sharing files, while on the other hand there are those who call
for more restrictions because they fear a digital "wild west culture"
(p. 26) or a destruction of their position. Both sides have valid
points, and Wagner correctly highlights the conflict a society faces
when this re-bordering process "takes place outside of realms where it
can be contested." (p. 28)</p>
<p>This review is part of the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.facebook.com/events/235958519806737/">Tweet-a-Review</a> event organized by the ‘Digital Natives with a Cause? Project and is republished here from <a class="external-link" href="http://gottloburrhythm.tumblr.com/post/13206125040/on-natives-norms-and-knowledge">Philip Ketzel’s blog</a>.<br /><br /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/on-natives-and-norms'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/on-natives-and-norms</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDigital Natives2011-12-23T04:40:10ZNews ItemBangalore + Sustainability Summit
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/bangalore-sustainability-summit
<b>The power of technology to create youth engagement and positive social change were discussed at the Bangalore + Sustainability Summit on September 21, 2013 at the Centre for Internet and Society(CIS) , Bangalore. The event, in conjunction with the Social Good Summit that took place in New York during the same weekend, explored creative and tech-based avenues to solve sustainability challenges and promote social good.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Our interest in understanding the role of digital natives in our society stems from the possibilities technology brings for the social good. This concept, a variation of the notion of the ‘common good’, is nowadays a popular and widely utilized term, both in its secular and religious variations. It conveys values and actions that benefit the well-being of society and in Mill’s utilitarian view: one which promotes the moral, intellectual and active traits of its citizens. Nowadays, its social justice undertones are part of the human rights discourse that characterizes twenty-first century civil society and citizen action, which are at the same time becoming increasingly connected in the context of network societies, leading to the new socialized form of the common good. The buzzword was there at the core of the <a class="external-link" href="http://mashable.com/sgs/#about"><strong>Social Good Summit</strong></a> that took place in New York from September 22 to 24, as well as of the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.plussocialgood.org/Post/social-good-summit-ashoka-india/836a3a1e-ea21-4a96-bdbd-bb4fe58a8612"><strong>Bangalore + Sustainability</strong></a> workshop, organized by <a class="external-link" href="http://india.ashoka.org/"><strong>Ashoka India</strong></a> in partnership with <a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/1837024/report-lungi-warriors-on-a-mission-to-rid-bangalore-of-blackspots"><strong>Green Lungi</strong></a> and <a class="external-link" href="https://www.idex.org/"><strong>IDEX</strong></a> on September 21 at CIS office in Bangalore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Local leaders and change-makers in Bangalore discussed the power of technology and its potential to provide sustainable solutions for the city’s greatest challenges at the event. The workshop was dynamic in structure and inspiring in content, as the participants were divided into make-a-thon sessions to collaboratively design technology-based prototypes that tackle the problems with feasible and impactful solutions. In the opening session Meera Vijayann, consultant for Ashoka India, commented on the nature of sustainability and how technological design must tackle all of its fronts, including environmental, government, public and citizenship engagement, to name a few, establishing a working framework for the day. This was followed by four panelists who gave brief talks highlighting their professional backgrounds and some of the lessons learned in the pursuit of social good.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The first to present was <strong>Kuldeep Dantewadia,</strong> founder of <a class="external-link" href="http://reapbenefit.org/">Reap Benefit</a>, a start-up that provides low-cost solutions to encourage behavioural change around waste, water and biodiversity management. Inspiring attendees to “be fools”, and take chances, based on <a class="external-link" href="http://vimeo.com/27321796">Ranjan Maliks’s talk: The Fool and his kind of Innovation</a>, he spoke about environmental issues as a man-made disease with behavioural solutions, as opposed to an external crisis requiring intervention. His social approach within a workshop discussing the power of technology was, as the representative of IDEX, Daniel Oxenhandler said, a great entry point to start thinking of the leaps of good-will and risks to be taken in the field of social change. Encouraging the participants to be foolish, he invited them to be bold and inventive with their ideas throughout the day.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">He was followed by <strong><a class="external-link" href="http://cargocollective.com/raahulkhadaliya">Raahul Khadaliya</a>,</strong> who defines himself as a thinker, observer and explorer of design for sustainability. He delved on the ultimate purpose of design and framed it as a problem-solving tool that ought to bring benefits for the masses. Stressing that design is not only concerned about how tools works, but instead on “how they work in a given environment” he brought up the importance of context and historicity in design, an important discussion point , incidentally also explored by the <strong>‘<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/hivos-knowledge-programme-june-14-2013-nishant-shah-whose-change-is-it-anyway" class="external-link">Making Change</a>’</strong> project by CIS in conjunction with the HIVOS Knowledge Program. Digital technologies and derived platforms do not carry value in themselves when pursuing social change, unless they speak to the locality and respond to the crises lingering in their given ecosystem. Khadaliya ended his presentation with a slide that read “design is a behaviour”, adding to the recurring theme of the day: the need for citizen behavioural change, being it in creation, participation or conservation of resources.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Coming from a different angle, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bpac.in/ms-kalpana-kar/"><strong>Kalpana Kar</strong></a>, who contributed to the Bangalore Agenda Task Force in an urban governance project, gave an insightful account of the role of public policy and private-public partnerships. Her talk came across as an insightful set of advice tackling considerations around space and how it intersects with collectives and their sense of entitlement and territoriality. Notions of power, pride and hierarchical arrangements are determining accessibility to public spaces, a highly relevant reflection that also applies to digital participation in online platforms, as explored in the Digital Natives framework. She added that creating technological solutions with social impact calls for a change in our behaviour and how we gauge our individual needs against the social good. “Enthusiasm can take you far, but not further”, for which she appealed to participants to “be real, practical and foolish” in their interventions and focus on designs that have impact with scale and economic viability. This vision puts the private sector on a par with sustainability state policies, and sets the ground for mechanisms of social accountability as an important complement of technological design.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The last panelist <a class="external-link" href="http://hackteria.org/wiki/index.php/HackteriaLab_2013_Participants#Sharath_Chandra_Ram"><strong>Sharath Chandra Ram</strong></a>, researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society and instructor at the Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology brought the aforementioned points together and based his talk on alternatives to bridge the distance between the citizen and the state through online-offline interventions. He focused on the enabling of citizen voices and freedoms in governance as a fundamental mandate for tech innovators of our times. “Models must maintain cultural specificities and have a holistic approach” to facilitate engagement in the globalized socio-political arena. He provided three of examples of citizen involvement in information and state governance: citizen journalism, citizen uprisings and citizen governance, coupled with a showcase of low-cost technologies designed at the <a class="external-link" href="http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotbangalore/">CIS Metaculture Media Lab</a> that would allow larger online access and offline participation if made pervasive. His pragmatic approach provided tangible and innovative examples, using every day apparatuses, to enable connection and overcome the social and political roadblocks in our networks; an interesting and inspiring segue into team formation and the make-a-thon to come up next.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Following the panel, the 40+ participants divided into working groups moderated by the organizers and delved into discussion on one out the five proposed problem statements: road safety, waste management, gender-inclusive spaces, forestation and public infrastructures. Brainstorm props provided, the groups created mind maps, Lego structures and comic strips to shape, frame and later pitch their idea to the rest of the workshop. While the use of technology was mandatory, the social good impact brought forward by these apps and campaigns took precedence in the presentations. The event all in all embodied an opportunity to bring ideas, skills and experience together from their different walks of life and yield innovation. In fact, as Ira Snissar, Venture Associate for Ashoka mentioned in her closing speech: three or four of the presented ideas had the potential to comprise business plans for future start-ups. The remark concluded the session by highlighting the need to create marketable and economically viable solutions to ensure sustainability of social good tools in market systems, defeating the long-standing tensions between corporate interests and social responsibility.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The four themes brought forward by the panelists: audacious innovation, large-scale design, power negotiations and citizen governance, as well as the group discussions reiterated a fundamental idea throughout the day: the need for behavioral change in the name of social good. While the state, the private sector and of course technologies were present as important actors in the making of change, the citizen was framed as the main engine and beneficiary of these processes. Stronger citizen engagement, improved negotiation between individual and collective needs, and diminished contestation in spaces of power are among the main objectives to attain these long-sought social good objectives. Technological solutions come across as enablers and amplifiers, perhaps necessary in a networked environment, yet not sufficient if not coupled with sustainable behavioural change. In this respect the question that should precede events like this one should focus on the substance behind the summit’s buzzword: what does ‘the social good’ entail? And attempt to understand the alignments of these understandings considering different models of citizenship and activism.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As of now, the implications and nuances of the social good remain under-theorized and lack epistemological consensus, yet the concept still represents an interesting pathway of research within the Digital Natives project. Is it possible to instill the need for behavioural change in the social imaginary? Is it feasible to establish solidarity networks through pervasive technologies? These are some of the avenues to be taken at the aftermath of the Bangalore + Sustainability event. The willingness to work together towards what benefits all was very prominent in the summit, suggesting that the feel-good nature of the concept and its social justice foundations make it a powerful drive to mobilize people and ideas. The challenge remains on how to extrapolate it and as advised by the panelists, have it derive into large scale impact among the masses.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Sources:</strong></p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;">
<li>“7 Definitions 4 Social Good” Armchair Advocates. Last modified August 21<sup>st</sup>, 2012. Accessed September 23<sup>rd</sup>, 2013<a href="http://armchairadvocates.com/2012/08/21/the-7-definitions-4-social-good-back2school-yourself-series/">http://armchairadvocates.com/2012/08/21/the-7-definitions-4-social-good-back2school-yourself-series/</a></li>
<li> “Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy” Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Last modified October 9<sup>th</sup>, 2007. Accessed September 23<sup>rd</sup>, 2013 <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#LibDemComGoo">http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/#LibDemComGoo</a></li>
<li>Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? <em>Hivos Knowledge Program. </em>April 30, 2013</li>
<li>“Social Good Summit 2013” accessed September 23<sup>rd</sup>, 2013, <a href="http://mashable.com/sgs/#about">http://mashable.com/sgs/#about</a></li>
<li>“Social Good Summit: Ashoka India”, accessed September 23<sup>rd</sup>, 2013, <a href="http://www.plussocialgood.org/Post/social-good-summit-ashoka-india/836a3a1e-ea21-4a96-bdbd-bb4fe58a8612">http://www.plussocialgood.org/Post/social-good-summit-ashoka-india/836a3a1e-ea21-4a96-bdbd-bb4fe58a8612</a>
<ol></ol>
</li></ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/bangalore-sustainability-summit'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/bangalore-sustainability-summit</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseWeb PoliticsResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-04-17T10:48:52ZBlog EntryThe Digital Other
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/the-digital-other
<b>Based on my research on young people in the Global South, I want to explore new ways of thinking about the Digital Native. One of the binaries posited as the Digital ‘Other’ -- ie, a non-Digital Native -- is that of a Digital Immigrant or Settler.</b>
<p>I am not comfortable with these terms and they probably need heavy unpacking if not complete abandonment. Standard caricatures of Digital Others show them as awkward in their new digital ecologies, unable to navigate through this brave new world on their own. They may actually have helped produce digital technology and tools but they are not ‘born digital’ and hence are presumed to always have an outsider’s perspective on the digital world order.</p>
<p>As I’ve interacted with young people in the Global South, one thing suddenly started emerging in dramatic fashion -- that many of the youth working extensively with digital technologies in emerging ICT contexts often shared characteristics of the Digital Other. In countries like India, where the digital realm became accessible and affordable to certain sections of the society as late as 2003, there is a learning curve among youth that does not necessarily match the global thinking on Digital Natives. Even though these young people might be considered Digital Natives, because they are at the center of the digital revolution in their own countries, there is no doubt they are also Digital Others relative to Global North and West conceptions of young people in digital networks.<br /><br />There is a very popular tweet that was making the rounds recently, which suggested that Digital Natives don’t have an account of the digital just like fish don’t have a theory of water -- they take to the digital as fish take to water. In this analogy lies a very important distinction between Digital Others and Digital Natives. Out of necessity, Digital Others have a relationship of production, control and design with the technologies they work with. They have a critical engagement with technology, as they code, hack, design, and create protocols and digital environments to suit their needs and resources. Digital Natives, on the other hand, have a purely consumption based interaction with the technology they use.<br /><br />I want to repeat that. The Digital Natives I’ve observed have a purely consumption based interaction with the technologies they use. I know this sounds weird in the face of widespread perceptions that Digital Natives have participatory, engaged, intuitive relationships with technology. We are supposed to be living in prosumer times, where the user on the Infobahn is a consumer and producer of information. But Web 2.0 entities like Facebook have created a business where the user is not just consuming but indeed the user is the consumed. While Facebook and Twitter revolutions are interesting in how users have been able to ‘abuse’ information censorship and create new communities of political protest, we still have to remember that the technologies that supported these revolutions were closed, proprietary, and coercive -- often even putting users in danger.<br /><br />From my perspective and my research, we have conflated access to information with access to technology, and we have misread this increased access as a sign of intimate relationship with digital technology and the Internet. However, for many youth, media production and information sharing are actually merely forms of consumption.<br /><br />What is most alarming to me is that the individual’s relationship with original production and design of technology is on the decline. More and more, technology platforms and apps that Digital Natives interact with are closed hardware and software systems. Private corporations produce and shape the tools of interaction, producing seductive interfaces and information engagement choices that make opaque the actual working of the technologies we use. I am concerned that, increasingly, Digital Natives are acting as pure consumers of technology and gadgets, and seem willing to do so.</p>
<p>Banner image credit: World Bank Photo Collection <a class="external-link" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/3492673512/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/3492673512/</a></p>
<p>Nishant wrote the original blog post in DML Central. Read it <a class="external-link" href="http://dmlcentral.net/blog/nishant-shah/digital-other">here</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/the-digital-other'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/the-digital-other</a>
</p>
No publishernishantDigital subjectivitiesResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-05-14T12:07:42ZBlog EntryDigital (Alter)Natives with a Cause? — Book Review by Maarten van den Berg
http://editors.cis-india.org/book-review-digital-alternatives
<b>‘Digital (Alter)Natives with a cause?’ is a collection of four books with essays published by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, and the Dutch NGO Hivos. The books come in a beautifully designed cassette and are accompanied by a funky yellow package in the shape of a floppy disk containing the booklet ‘D:coding Digital Natives’, a corresponding DVD, and a pack of postcards portraying the evolution of writing - in the sentence ‘I love you’, written with a goose feather in 1734, to the character set ‘i<3u’ entered on a mobile device in 2011.</b>
<h3>Digital Natives</h3>
<p>The publication is the outcome of a programme initiated by the two
organizations to investigate the potentials for social change and
political participation in emerging societies through the use of
internet and communication technologies (ICTs). The programme is
particularly interested in the strategic use of ICTs among young people,
those who are born and have grown up with ‘things digital’ – hence, the
‘digital natives’, a term coined by Marc Prensky in 2001.</p>
<p>But in the preface of the collection and the introduction to the
first book, entitled ‘To Be’, the editors Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen
are quick to stress that by naming digital natives, they do not want to
exclude any position whether defined by age, gender, class, language or
location. Still, ‘we continue with the name’, they say, ‘because we
believe that replacing this name with another is only going to be an
epistemic change which tries to disown the earlier legacies and baggage
that the name carries’. I am not quite sure what that means. I take it
they just like the hashtag #DigitalNatives – and I can’t blame them.</p>
<h3>Testimonies</h3>
<p>So who are these digital natives or how have they become? The booklet
‘D:coding Digital Natives’ portrays some of them. For instance, there
is Frank Odaongkara from Uganda. He says that already in primary school
he had the feeling that computers would change his life. Now Facebook is
his homepage, and he has 1000 ebooks on his laptop, of which he’s read
350 already. Or there is Leandra Flor from the Philippines who says she
became more dynamic and in touch with her surroundings because of the
‘wonders of technology in communication’. She has built her social life
around it.</p>
<p>What emerges from these testimonies, what many of the digital natives
share is the sense of empowerment. They feel empowered by ICTs to
connect to others, to learn something, to engage with the world and
build social lives. Contrary perhaps to the aspirations of the editors, I
do find that the digital natives in emerging societies portrayed in the
publication tend to come from relatively well-to-do families. The
digital divide is still very real, when it comes to access to ICTs and
their life-changing potentials.</p>
<h3>Personal > political</h3>
<p>That digital natives feel empowered by ICTs to build a social life
does of course not necessarily entail that they bring about social
change or pursue political goals. But one thing can lead to the other,
even accidentally. Take the story of Manal Hassan, an Egyptian woman
who found herself trapped in Saudi Arabia when her family went to live
there. She started a blog to write about her problem and got in contact
with other Egyptian bloggers and digital activists. Women rights
organizations adopted her cause, a lawyer took up her case, and she made
news in the mainstream media. She had become a political actor.</p>
<p>There are more such stories in the publication. In the digital age,
it seems, social change has gone viral. Digital natives can become
political actors by sheer coincidence. I believe there is an important
lesson to learn from that for sociologists and political scientists. We
have to come to terms with the serendipity of collective action.</p>
<h3>Digital methodology</h3>
<p>For social scientists, there is more to be learned from the
publication. In the introduction to the essays brought together in the
chapter ‘To Think’ the editors pose that the rise and spread of digital
and online technologies elicit new methods of understanding and
research. And they are quite right. In the essay ‘Digital methods to
study digital natives with a cause’, Esther Weltevrede uses Twitter as a
platform to study digital natives and their practices. And because the
retweet is a practice adopted by digital natives to forward, or give
voice to a message, she proposes that for the researcher the retweet
becomes a way to quantify those messages that have ‘pass-along value’. </p>
<h3>Mob rule 2.0</h3>
<p>As many of the authors are themselves digital natives and activists
of sorts, most of them cannot hide their excitement about the
opportunities that ICTs afford. But there is some room for skepticism
too. Thus, essayist Yi Ping Zou rightly observes that ‘the newly
imagined communities that we call digital natives […] may not be all
progressive, liberal and striving to make a change for the better’. In
her contribution she warns us for ‘mob rule 2.0’ as the very digital
technologies that allow us ‘to create processes of change for a just and
equitable world’ are also technologies that ‘enable massively
regressive and vigilante acts that exercise a mob-based notion of
justice’.</p>
<h3>That vision thing</h3>
<p>And as is the case with any form of collective action, digitally
mediated or not, there is the question of purpose. In an essay that
compares the youth-led ‘revolution’ of 1968 and the Arab Spring of 2011,
David Sasaki observes that both are essentially anti-establishment
movements and that, so far, the latter has prioritized the removal of
the current political class without offering a concrete vision of what
ought to come next. As far as this author is concerned, the digital
natives have yet to develop a vision of their own future – and the
future of their governments.</p>
<p>I believe that we should not expect from today’s youth what
yesterday’s young ones did not accomplish. Let us consider the digital
natives and the technologies they employ for what they do, not for what
they ought to be doing. And after reading some of the testimonies of
digital natives in this publication, I cannot but conclude – as Eddie
Avila does in the last book – that what brings them together is “a
vision that the everyday technologies in their lives can help them make
changes in their immediate environments”. Such is not a vision about
politics writ large. It is about change at the personal level, the
ability to connect and engage with others, and, from there, the
possibility to act collectively – and give it a larger direction.</p>
<p><em>'Digital (Alter)Natives with a cause?', Nishant Shah and Fieke
Jansen (eds), is available for download in four parts at the website of
the Hivos Knowledge Programme.</em></p>
<p>The review by Maarten van den Berg was published in "The Broker" on September 19, 2011. Please click <a class="external-link" href="http://www.thebrokeronline.eu/Articles/Digital-Alter-Natives">here</a> to read the original review.</p>
<h3>About the author</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Maarten.jpg/image_preview" alt="Maarten" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Maarten" /></td>
<td>
<p>A political scientist by training (University of Amsterdam, York
University, Canada), Maarten van den Berg is senior editor of The
Broker,an independent magazine on globalization and development. Before
he joined The Broker in 2011, Maarten worked as a communication and
knowledgement professional for a variety of international organizations,
and still has his own consultancy, RISQ. After work, Maarten loves to
cook and shares in the care of his son Titus. </p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p> Photo credit main picture: Postcard 'Digital Natives' designed by Jonathan Remulla.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/book-review-digital-alternatives'>http://editors.cis-india.org/book-review-digital-alternatives</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaWeb PoliticsResearchers at WorkBook ReviewDigital Natives2015-05-15T11:30:47ZNews ItemPathways 3rd Faculty Workshop & Regional Facilitators Meeting at CSCS
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways-third-faculty-workshop
<b>The third annual faculty workshop and regional facilitators meeting is being organised by HEIRA and CIS at the CSCS office in Bangalore from 8 to 10 December 2011. This is a closed event. </b>
<h2><br /></h2>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Day 1: December 8, 2011</h2>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h3>Title</h3>
</td>
<td>
<h3>Moderators & Resource Persons</h3>
</td>
<td>
<h3>Timings</h3>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>Introductory Session</strong>
<ol><li>New Pathways Design</li><li>Campus Projects</li></ol>
</td>
<td>Tejaswini Niranjana<br />Sneha PP<br /></td>
<td>10.00 - 10.45 a.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>Need for Curricular Reform and Innovation</strong>
<ol><li>Changing social composition of the UG classroom</li><li>Alternative sites of knowledge production</li><li>New curricular objectives</li></ol>
</td>
<td>S.V. Srinivas<br />Milind Wakankar<br />Maithreyi Mulupuru<br /></td>
<td>10.45 - 11.30 a.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>Exploring the Potential of Curricular Innovation in the UG Space</strong>
<ol><li>Curricular experiments at the UG level<br /></li></ol>
</td>
<td>Initial Inputs by Nishant Shah & Tejaswini Niranjana, followed by Group Discussion</td>
<td>11.30 - 12.30 p.m.<br /><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Lunch</strong></td>
<td> </td>
<td>12.30 p.m. - 1.00 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>Group Activity: Designing a certificate course/module</strong></td>
<td> </td>
<td>1.30 p.m. - 3.00 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>Group Reports and Discussion</strong></td>
<td> </td>
<td>3.00 p.m. - 4.00 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<strong>Meeting at IIMB</strong></td>
<td> </td>
<td>5.00 p.m. - 6.30 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2>Day 2: December 9, 2011</h2>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h3>Title</h3>
</td>
<td>
<h3>Speakers/Moderators</h3>
</td>
<td>
<h3>Timings</h3>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Issues for a New Pedagogy</strong><br />
<ol><li>Social and linguistic barriers in the classroom</li><li>Lack of emphasis on critical and analytical skills</li><li>Need for student-driven learning</li></ol>
</td>
<td>Ashwin Kumar<br /><br />Tejaswini Niranjana<br /><br />Nishant Shah<br /></td>
<td>10.00 a.m - 11.00 a.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>New Teaching Resources for the UG Space</strong><br />
<ol><li>Local Context & Resources – the language issue</li><li>Building research capacity</li></ol>
<br /></td>
<td>AK<br /><br />Milind Wakankar<br />(Discussants: SB,TH & AJ)</td>
<td>11.00 a.m. - 11.45 a.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Innovative Teaching Methods</strong><br />
<ol><li>-New methods of classroom teaching</li><li>-Digital media in teaching</li><li>-Assessing classroom practices (Questionnaire)</li></ol>
</td>
<td> S.V. Srinivas<br /><br />Nishant Shah<br /><br />MG Hegde & Geethika G. (Discussants)<br /><br />Tanveer Hasan<br /></td>
<td>11.45 a.m - 12.45 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Lunch</strong></td>
<td> </td>
<td>1.15 p.m. - 2.00 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Group Activity: Developing New Teaching Methods for the new course developed on Day 1 </strong><br /></td>
<td> </td>
<td>2.00 p.m. - 3.00 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Group Discussion: Pathways Campus Projects </strong><br /></td>
<td> </td>
<td>3.00 p.m. - 4.30 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Final Round-Table Discussion and Concluding Remarks</strong></td>
<td> </td>
<td>4.30 p.m. - 5.00 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Speakers/ Moderators and Discussants</h3>
<ol><li>Abhilash J (Regional Facilitator -Kerala)</li><li>Ashwin Kumar (Initiative Head – Regional Language Resources, HEIRA)</li><li>Maithreyi Mulupuru (Research Associate, HEIRA)</li><li>Milind Wakankar (Initiative Head -Social Justice in HE, HEIRA & Fellow, CSCS)</li><li>Nishant Shah (Director – Research, CIS)</li><li>Shrikant Botre (Regional Facilitator – Maharashtra)</li><li>Sneha PP ( Programme Associate, HEIRA)</li><li>S.V. Srinivas (Senior Fellow, CSCS & Lead Researcher, CIDASIA)</li><li>Tanveer Hasan (Regional Facilitator – Karnataka)</li><li>Tejaswini Niranjana (Senior Fellow, CSCS & Lead Researcher, HEIRA)</li><li>Dr. MG Hegde (Dept. of English, Dr. A.V Baliga College, Kumta)</li><li>Geethika G (Dept. of Political Science, Union Christian College, Aluva)<br /><br /></li></ol>
<h2>Day 3: December 10, 2011</h2>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Title</td>
<td>Speakers/Moderators</td>
<td>Timings</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>HEIRA and Knowledge Potential</strong></td>
<td>Tejaswini Niranjana, Milind Wakankar</td>
<td> 10.30 a.m. - 11.30 a.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Facilitators' Cases:</strong><br />
<ul><li>Steps to Conduct a Survey in Ahmednagar College</li></ul>
<ul><li>Kumta Ethnographic Project </li></ul>
<br /></td>
<td><br />Shrikant Botre<br />Tanveer Hasan<br />(Discussant: Abhilash J)<br /></td>
<td> 11.30 a.m. - 1.00 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Lunch</strong></td>
<td> </td>
<td>1.00 p.m. - 2.00 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Relays between Current and Future Projects</strong></td>
<td>Ashwin Kumar, Nishant Shah<br />(Feedback: Arun Kumar)<br /></td>
<td>2.00 p.m - 2.45 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Possible Convergences between HEIRA projects</strong></td>
<td>(Feedback: Arun Kumar)</td>
<td>2.45 p.m - 3.30 p.m.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Final Round of Discussion & Concluding Remarks <br /></strong></td>
<td> </td>
<td>3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. <br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3>Speakers/ Moderators and Discussants</h3>
<ol><li>Abhilash J</li><li>Ashwin Kumar</li><li>Maithreyi Mulupuru</li><li>Milind Wakankar</li><li>Nishant Shah</li><li>Shrikant Botre</li><li>Sneha PP</li><li>S.V. Srinivas</li><li>Tanveer Hasan</li><li>Tejaswini Niranjana<br /><br /></li></ol>
<h3>College and Participants</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>SIES College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Mumbai</td>
<td>
<ul><li>Rupal Vora</li></ul>
<ul><li>Archana Sanil</li></ul>
</td>
<td>Counselling<br />Business Management<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai</td>
<td>
<ul><li>Rashmi Lee George</li></ul>
<ul><li>Girja Balan</li></ul>
</td>
<td>English<br />Life Science<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td>Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar</td>
<td>
<ul><li>B. Eshwar Gouda</li></ul>
<ul><li>A.Y Raikwad</li></ul>
</td>
<td>Commerce<br />Commerce<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td>St. Aloysius College, Mangalore</td>
<td>
<ul><li>George Rodrigues</li></ul>
<ul><li>Praveena Cardoza</li></ul>
</td>
<td>Librarian<br />Sociology<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5</td>
<td>Vidhyavardhaka First Grade College, Mysore</td>
<td>
<ul><li>Manoj Kumar</li></ul>
<ul><li>R. Arvind</li></ul>
</td>
<td>Commerce<br />English<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>6</td>
<td>Dr. A V Baliga College of Arts and Science, Kumta ( North Kanara)</td>
<td>
<ul><li>MG Hegde</li></ul>
<ul><li>Pratibha Bhat </li></ul>
</td>
<td>English<br />English<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>7</td>
<td>Farook College, Kozhikode</td>
<td>
<ul><li>Muhammed Rasheed P</li></ul>
<ul><li>Haris P</li></ul>
</td>
<td>Economics<br />Economics<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>8</td>
<td>Union Christian College, Aluva</td>
<td>
<ul><li>Geethika</li></ul>
<ul><li>Seena Mathai</li></ul>
</td>
<td>Political Science<br />Psychology<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9</td>
<td>Newman College, Thodupuzha</td>
<td>
<ul><li>Louis. J. Parathazham</li></ul>
<ul><li>Saju Abraham</li></ul>
</td>
<td>Physics<br />Botany</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways-third-faculty-workshop'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/pathways-third-faculty-workshop</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDigital Natives2012-01-04T05:15:45ZEventTweet a Review of Digital AlterNatives with a Cause Books
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/events/tweet-a-review
<b>Essays from 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?' books are getting reviewed. We invite everyone to participate in this book review event! Deadline: January 31</b>
<p>Read one essay from the 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?' books published by the Centre for Internet & Society and HIVOS. <br />Download PDFs <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/front-page/blog/dnbook" class="external-link">here.</a></p>
<ul><li>Post a review on your blog</li></ul>
<ul><li>Tweet the review's link on Twitter using #TweetReview and copy @cis_india</li></ul>
<ul><li>For e.g. "Unpacking the shiny packaging of Digital Natives" Book 2 To Think #TweetReview <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/unpacking-from-shiny-packaging" class="external-link">http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/unpacking-from-shiny-packaging</a> @cis_india</li><li>Send us a link to your view<br /></li></ul>
<p><br />For more details about the event and the essays you want to review, email: <a class="external-link" href="mailto:nilofar.ansh@gmail.com">nilofar.ansh@gmail.com</a></p>
<p>Tweet-a-Review is a monthly event organized as part of the 'Digital Natives with a Cause?' project.</p>
<p>Read previous reviews <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/media-coverage" class="external-link">here </a></p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.facebook.com/events/186700531427527/"><br /></a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/events/tweet-a-review'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/events/tweet-a-review</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaEvent TypeDigital Natives2012-01-07T14:42:32ZEventJanuary 2012 Bulletin
http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2012-bulletin
<b>Welcome to the Centre for Internet and Society newsletter! In this issue we bring you the updates of our research, events, media coverage and videos of events organized by us during the month of January 2012!</b>
<h2>Digital Natives with a Cause?</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS, India and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and internet technologies, in emerging information societies. The major outputs have been a four book collective asking questions about theory and practice around 'digital revolutions' in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world, a position paper, a scouting study and three international workshops.</p>
<h3>Events Organised<b> </b> <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1038&qid=140996" target="_blank"></a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1038&qid=140996" target="_blank">Digital AlterNatives Video Contest: The Everyday Digital Native — To Be, To Think, To Act, To Connect</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1039&qid=140996" target="_blank">Digital AlterNatives Tweet-a-Review</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">'Digital Natives with a Cause?' project invites readers to review essays from the 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause', a four-book collective published by Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos.<b> </b></p>
<h3>Digital AlterNatives: Book Reviews <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1040&qid=140996" target="_blank"></a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1040&qid=140996" target="_blank">Alternative Approaches to Social Change</a></li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“<i>Observations about intangible aspects of a movement will keep a research from clinging to activism with a capital A, and start seeing a gradation in the social movement practices. It is constructive and opens the door to analyses of multi-dimensional movements such as the Blank Noise initiative (India). Drawing on methods of identifying new developments to the field of social movement, Maesy examines some aspects of it: the issue, strategy, site of action, and internal mode of organization</i>.”<br /><b>Nuraini Juliastuti</b>, Co-founder, KUNCI Cultural Studies Center</p>
<hr />
<h2>Accessibility</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. This includes persons with blindness, learning disabilities such as dyslexia, cerebral palsy and persons who do not have full control over their limbs. For these people, the material needs to be converted into alternate formats such as Braille, audio or video or electronic formats (text document, word document or PDF) which they can access using assistive technologies. Our key research has focused on a submission to amend the Indian Copyright to the HRD Ministry, publishing a policy handbook on e-accessibility, research on accessible mobile handsets in India and an analysis of the Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010.<b> </b></p>
<h3>Journal Article</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1041&qid=140996" target="_blank">Technology for Accessibility in Higher Education</a>, published in the Journal: Enabling Access for Persons with Disabilities to Higher Education and Workplace. Nirmita Narasimhan wrote an article.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Featured Research</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1042&qid=140996" target="_blank">Making Mobile Phones and Services Accessible</a>. CIS researched, edited and published this report in partnership with G3ict and ITU. The report contains a foreword, eleven chapters, a bibliography and glossary with contributions from Deepti Bharthur, Nirmita Narasimhan and Axel Leblois.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Upcoming Event</h3>
<ul>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<ul>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1043&qid=140996" target="_blank">ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility</a>, organized by the International Telecommunication Union, India International Centre, 14-15 March 2012. CIS is hosting the meeting. The Tutorial will be preceded by the fourth meeting of the Focus Group on Audio Visual Media Accessibility (FG AVA) on 13 March 2012. This meeting will take place at the same venue and will also be hosted by CIS, in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2>Access to Knowledge</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. We prepared the India report for the Consumers International IP Watchlist, made submission to the HRD Ministry on WIPO Broadcast Treaty, questioned the demonization of pirates, and advocated against laws (such as PUPFIP Bill) that privatize public funded knowledge.</p>
<h3>Event Organised <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1044&qid=140996" target="_blank"></a></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1044&qid=140996" target="_blank">Gandhi, Freedom, and the Dilemmas of Copyright</a>: To commemorate Mahatma Gandhi's death anniversary, CIS organised a public lecture. Prof. Shyamkrishna Balganesh of the University of Pennsylvania gave a lecture.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2>Openness</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The advent of the Internet has radically defined what it means to be open and collaborative. Even the Internet is built upon open standards and free/libre/open source software. CIS has been committed and actively campaigned for promotion of open standards, open access and free/libre/open source software.<b> </b></p>
<h3>Workshop Reports <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1045&qid=140996" target="_blank"></a></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1045&qid=140996" target="_blank">Summary of the Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics</a>, organized by the Western Ghats Portal team to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore on 25 November 2011.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1046&qid=140996" target="_blank">Design!PubliC — Innovation and the Public Interest</a>: On the 14th of October, 2011, the Center for Knowledge Societies organized the second edition of the Design Public Conclave, a conversation on how innovation can serve the Public Interest. The conclave was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1047&qid=140996" target="_blank">Report on the 'Open Access to Academic Knowledge' workshop</a>: On Wednesday the 2nd of November, during Open Access Week, the Indian Institute of Science in conjunction with the Centre for Internet and Society held a workshop on Open Access at the National Centre for Science Information, in Bangalore. We recorded the meeting and published it online.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Event Organised <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1048&qid=140996" target="_blank"></a></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1048&qid=140996" target="_blank">Geekup on Open Data in Bangalore</a>: Hapee de Groot, Hivos, Netherlands gave a talk on Open Data and its use for citizen engagement.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<h3>Media Coverage</h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1049&qid=140996" target="_blank">Wikipedia turns 11 today</a>: The Bangalore event, open to all Wikipedia users, contributors and enthusiasts, is being held at the Centre for Internet and Society at Domlur.<br />The Hindu, 15 January 2012</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2>Internet Governance</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the internet. CIS partnered with Privacy International and Society in Action Group which has produced outputs in banking, telecommunications, consumer rights, etc., submitted open letters to Parliamentary Committee on UID, feedbacks on NIA Bill, and IT Rules.</p>
<h3>Newspaper / Magazine Articles <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1050&qid=140996" target="_blank"></a></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1050&qid=140996" target="_blank">Keeping it Private</a><br />As we disclose more information online, we must ask who might access it and why, writes Nishant Shah in the Indian Express, 15 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1051&qid=140996" target="_blank">Click to Change</a><br />From organising political protests and flash mobs to uploading their versions of Kolaveri Di, people brought about change with the help of the internet, Nishant Shah, Indian Express, 1 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1052&qid=140996" target="_blank">The Quixotic Fight to Clean up the Web</a><br />The ongoing attempt to pre-screen online content won’t change anything. It will only drive netizens into the arms of criminals, writes Sunil Abraham, Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 04, 28 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1053&qid=140996" target="_blank">Sense and Censorship</a><br />The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills, at the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively, appear to enforce property rights, but are, in fact, trade bills, Sunil Abraham in the Indian Express, 20 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Interview</b></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1054&qid=140996" target="_blank">Our Internet and the Law</a><br />Nishant Shah was interviewed by the BBC Channel 5 (Radio) for its Outriders section. Jamillah Knowles reports this. Listen to the podcast online, BBC Radio, 24 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Event Reports</b></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1055&qid=140996" target="_blank">Privacy Matters — Analyzing the Right to "Privacy Bill"</a><br />On January 21, 2012 a public conference “Privacy Matters” was held at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. It was the sixth conference organised in the series of regional consultations held as “Privacy Matters”. The present conference analyzed the Draft Privacy Bill and the participants discussed the challenges and concerns of privacy in India.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1056&qid=140996" target="_blank">Future of Integrated Science Education in Higher Education in India</a><br />The Higher Education Innovation and Research Application (HEIRA) at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) and the Centre for Contemporary Studies (CCS) at the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) hosted a two day workshop on 2 and 3 January 2012 on the Future of Integrated Science Education in Higher Education in India at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc. Nishant Shah participated in the workshop.</li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Media Coverage</b></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1057&qid=140996" target="_blank">Twitter’s Censorship Move Aimed at Regaining China?</a><br />"<i>The region-specific blocking was already being used on video hosting websites like YouTube and Hulu, where due to the wishes of copyright owners many videos are not available in India. Twitter is extending this technology to its tweets</i>.”<br />Pranesh Prakash in International Business Times, 28 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/google2019s-privacy-policy-raises-hackles" class="external-link">Google's privacy policy raises hackles</a> (Times of India, January 26, 2012)<br />“<i>Storing data makes it prone to misuse by authorities as well as corporations... I don't want my bakery shop owner to know what kind of medicines I buy from the nearby medical store</i>.”<br />Sunil Abraham in the Times of India, 26 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1059&qid=140996" target="_blank">Google to change privacy policy to use personal info of users</a><br />“<i>New changes are not good for a consumer's privacy</i>.”<br />Sunil Abraham in Punjab Newsline, 27 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/tangled-web" class="external-link">Tangled Web</a><br />“<i>We did a policy sting operation wherein we sent fraudulent notices to big web sites...in one case where we asked for the removal of three comments, they removed all 13. So there is already a private censorship underway.</i>”<br />Sunil Abraham in the Week, 21 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1061&qid=140996" target="_blank">POV: Should user-generated content be monitored?</a><br />“<i>We should not fool ourselves into thinking that private sector companies like Google will defend our fundamental rights. The next Parliament session is the last opportunity for parliamentarians to ask for the revocation of the rules for intermediaries, cyber-cafes and reasonable security practices</i>.”<br />Sunil Abraham in afaqs, 19 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1062&qid=140996" target="_blank">Indian Internet Lawsuit Puts Spotlight on Freedom of Expression</a><br />“<i>These rules have the potential to curtail debate and discussion on the net... They allow for all sorts of subjective tests by private parties and we predicted they would have a chilling effect on freedom of expression online</i>.”<br />Sunil Abraham in the Voice of America, 19 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1063&qid=140996" target="_blank">India: obscene pics of gods require massive human censorship of Google, Facebook</a><br /> “<i>It’s difficult to establish exactly what is anti-religious: for example, the Hindu profession of belief in multiple gods is blasphemous to Muslims, Christians and Jews</i>.”<br /> Sunil Abraham in ars technica, 14 January 2012.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/is-india-ignoring-its-own-internet-protections" class="external-link">Is India Ignoring its own Internet Protections? </a><br />“<i>The I.T. Act provides immunity to (Internet companies) and that should be the default starting position</i>.”<br />Sunil Abraham in the Wall Street, 16 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1065&qid=140996" target="_blank">India internet: clean-up or censorship?</a><br />Sunil Abraham was quoted in Financial Time’s beyondbrics, 13 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1066&qid=140996" target="_blank">Twists and turns of the SOPA opera</a><br />“<i>In terms of infrastructure, the U.S. controls critical web resources. Contrasting this to the Chinese firewall that blocks content for users within its jurisdiction, the U.S. decision to redirect a link can act as a ‘global block’</i>.”<br />Sunil Abraham in the Hindu, 15 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1067&qid=140996" target="_blank">Activists cry foul against Aadhaar</a><br />Sunil Abraham participated in the meet on Aadhaar convened by the Indian Social Action Forum.<br />The Telegraph, 12 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1068&qid=140996" target="_blank">NGO questions people's privacy in UID scheme</a><br />“<i>The UID project was allowed to march on without any protection being put in place</i>.”<br />Sunil Abraham in the Times of India, 11 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1069&qid=140996" target="_blank">Revealed: Bangalore’s Basic Instincts</a><br />“<i>If you look at the Google trend or any other website, Bangalore does not figure among the top 10 cities that surfs for porn. But that does not mean that Bangalore does not surf porn. It only means that we have a very sophisticated surfer with a very specific type. They don’t go through Google or other websites. They know how to go about it. But whether it affects their personal lives is lot more complicated</i>.”<br />Sunil Abraham in the Bangalore Mirror, 8 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/news/facebook-google-face-censorship-in-india" class="external-link">Facebook, Google face censorship in India</a><br />“<i>Traditional intellectual property rights holders like movie studios, music companies and software vendors are trying to protect their obsolete business models by pushing for the adoption of blanket surveillance and filtering technologies</i>.”<br />Sunil Abraham in SmartPlanet, 5 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1070&qid=140996" target="_blank">Trail of the Trolls</a><br />“<i>Trolling provokes a non-productive argument and as of now it is not considered a criminal offence anywhere in the world</i>.”<br />The Telegraph, 4 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1071&qid=140996" target="_blank">Constitution of Group of Experts to Deliberate on Privacy Issues</a><br />It has been decided to constitute a Small Group of Experts under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, Former Chief Justice, Delhi High Court, to identify the privacy issues and prepare a paper to facilitate authoring the Privacy Bill. Pranesh Prakash is one of the members.<br />Published by the Planning Commission, New Delhi.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1072&qid=140996" target="_blank">2011: The year India began to harness social media</a><br />“<i>We saw an increased sharing of digital content whether photos, videos, songs, news or blogs pointing to the Why This Kolaveri Di video, which went viral on YouTube with over 1.3 million views within a week of its release</i>.”<br />Nishant Shah in the Sunday Guardian, 1 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<p><b> </b></p>
<h3><b>Blog Posts</b></h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1073&qid=140996" target="_blank">Section 79 of the Information Technology Act</a> by Pranesh Prakash</li>
<li><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1074&qid=140996" target="_blank">How India Makes E-books Easier to Ban than Books</a> (And How We Can Change That) by Pranesh Prakash. This was reproduced in <a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1075&qid=140996" target="_blank">Medianama</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Upcoming Events</b></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1076&qid=140996" target="_blank">The High Level Privacy Conclave</a><br />Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Society in Action Group, Gurgaon and Privacy International, UK is organizing the High Level Privacy Conclave at the Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens in New Delhi on Friday, 3 February 2012.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1077&qid=140996" target="_blank">All India Privacy Symposium</a><br />Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, and Society in Action Group, Gurgaon, Privacy International, UK and Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative is organizing the All India Privacy Symposium at the India International Centre, New Delhi on Saturday, 4 February 2012.</li>
</ul>
<h3><b>Events Organised</b></h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1078&qid=140996" target="_blank">Workshop on the Standardization of Kannada Computing Terminology</a>, 28-29 January 2012, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1079&qid=140996" target="_blank">The Curious Case of Whose Data is it Anyway?</a> The second round of discussions of the Exposing Data Series was co-organized by Tactical Tech and CIS. Siddharth Hande and Hapee de Groot gave lectures.</li>
<li>"ಕನ್ನಡ ಮತ್ತು ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಜೊತೆ ಜೊತೆಗೆ..." organised in TERI, Bangalore, 22 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2>Telecom</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. In this connection, Shyam Ponappa continues to write his monthly column for the Business Standard.</p>
<h3><b> Article by Shyam Ponappa</b></h3>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://crm.cis-india.org/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1081&qid=140996" target="_blank">Reversing India's Downward Trajectory</a><br />The country can regain growth momentum with rate cuts and telecom reforms, writes Shyam Ponappa in this column published in the Business Standard on 5 January 2012.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3><b>Follow us elsewhere</b></h3>
<ul>
<li>Get short, timely messages from us on <a href="http://components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=456&qid=46981" target="_blank">Twitter</a></li>
<li>Follow CIS on <a href="http://components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=457&qid=46981" target="_blank">identi.ca</a></li>
<li>Join the CIS group on <a href="http://components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=458&qid=46981" target="_blank">Facebook</a>\</li>
<li>Visit us at <a href="http://components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=459&qid=46981" target="_blank">www.cis-india.org</a></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2012-bulletin'>http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2012-bulletin</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomAccessibilityInternet GovernanceResearchOpenness2012-07-09T09:36:46ZPageCitizen Activism the Past Decade
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/citizen-activism-the-past-decade
<b>Call for Contributions to the ‘Digital Natives with a Cause?’ newsletter, ‘Citizen Activism the Past Decade’. Deadline: August 15, 2012.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The past decade (2001 – 2011) has been marked by unprecedented democratic protests across the globe. Not only have citizens risen against autocratic regimes or systemic corruption, which is not unprecedented in itself, but also, a spark in one region inflamed solidarity among neighbouring nations to pick up the placards and march for change. Plenty has been written about the strategic deployment of social media, Web 2.0 platforms and Smart-gadgets by the digital natives (the youth and the old alike) to rewrite the rules of citizen activism.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In this issue of the newsletter, we explore the mechanics of activism aided by media: web, social, digital, and traditional. What do we understand by a cause and how does it find resonance at the local and global platforms? Is the digital native a community player or a global citizen? How do digital natives connect, collaborate, mobilize and bring about their visions of change? The aim is to not establish or reinforce these dichotomies, if indeed they exist, but to understand the dimensions of the stage the digital natives operate on <em>and if that stage is a synecdoche for global youth-led civic action.</em> A case in point: <strong>‘Slut Walk’ </strong>moved from being a one-off march in Toronto to becoming a global movement and came full circle when small towns and cities across the world organized protest marches with a local ‘twist’.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Topics that contributors can explore:</h3>
<ol></ol>
<ul>
<li>What do we understand by citizen activism? How has citizen activism changed over the last 10 years with the advent of new media tools?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Youth as 'change agents'. Are protest movements youth oriented today? How are civil rights movements of the past decade different from the wave of movements that marked the 60s? (women's lib, LGBT rights, civil rights, disability rights). Explore the mechanics of organizing, mobilizing and measuring the success of a campaign in both the cases.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Participatory Politics and Web 2.0 | Value and power of the Network in effecting change | Mobilizing support and consensus within the network |studies on politically active youth using social media | digital natives as apathetic citizens | Is Slacktivism still a misunderstood term?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Kony 2012 video campaign | interviews | what went wrong and what did they do right? | Rise of DIY activism | mechanics of digital activism | resources, tools and strategies</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Rise of the ‘Glocal’ (global with local resonance) cause | Slut Walk and Co – global protests inspiring local campaigns | Children of globalization with global stakes supporting local causes – how does this work?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Role of new media as a vehicle for civic engagement | Are new media and traditional media mutually exclusive in influencing citizen action? | How are new media strategies deployed by citizens in comparison with traditional media engagement?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Learning from past campaigns: citizen activism initiates and strategies in history that inspire modern campaigns (The ‘Walk to Work’ protest in Uganda protesting against fuel price hike and removal of subsidies is similar to Mahatma Gandhi’s <em>Dandi</em> <em>March</em> in pre-independence India to protest against Salt Tax).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Finding commonalities in citizen activism across Asia, Africa and Middle East | Explore the citizen action campaigns that have shaped political discourse in the past decade | Explore some of the most successful youth action campaigns of the past decade </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">How do we measure value, quality and success of campaigns? When does a protest officially end? Studies that explore the life-cycle of a protest or movement </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The future of activism: new technologies, new demography, new forms of engagement | art and activism | Gamification </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Role of non-governmental organizations and civil society networks in fostering political change | collaboration between NGOs and social media activists / independent protesters</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">State and the empowered citizen | State response to protest | surveillance and censorship</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Technologies of protest</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Studying citizen activism | digital native research methodology to study citizen activism</li></ul>
<ol></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;">To know more about the topics you can write about, please write to: <a class="external-link" href="http://mailtonilofar.ansh@gmail.com">nilofar.ansh@gmail.com</a> (Nilofar Ansher, Community Manager). Contributions can be in the form of essays, notes, commentaries, reviews (book or paper), dialogues and chat transcript, poems, sketches / graphics. Essay word count between 800-1,600 words. Send your entries along with a brief bio and a profile picture by August 15, 2012.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">View previous issues of the 'Digital Natives with a Cause?' newsletter here: <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/newsletter" class="external-link">http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/newsletter</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/citizen-activism-the-past-decade'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/citizen-activism-the-past-decade</a>
</p>
No publisherNilofar AnsherFeaturedResearchers at WorkDigital Natives2015-04-24T11:52:44ZBlog EntryPublic Art, Technology and Citizenship - Blank Noise Project
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/blank-noise-citizenship
<b>Jasmeen Patheja speaks about the active citizen in the digital age, its challenges in the public and private spheres and interdisciplinary methods to overcome them.</b>
<div align="center">
<pre><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/copy2_of_copy_of_PhotoComic.jpg/image_preview" alt="Reconceptualizing Eve-Teasing" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Reconceptualizing Eve-Teasing" />
<strong>
CHANGE-MAKER:</strong> Jasmeen Patheja
<strong>
PROJECT</strong>: Blank Noise Project: A volunteer-led arts collective community
<strong>
STRATEGY OF CHANGE</strong>:
Fostering an active, participatory and horizontal model of citizenship,
empowering its volunteers to participate politically and address issues
of street sexual harassments in the public sphere.
<strong>
METHOD OF CHANGE</strong>: Public space interventions using community art and technology.</pre>
</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">To open the interview series for the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/" class="external-link">Making Change project</a>, I interviewed <a class="external-link" href="http://fellows.ted.com/profiles/jasmeen-patheja">Jasmeen Patheja</a>. She is the founder of <a class="external-link" href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/">Blank Noise</a>, a <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_Noise">volunteer-led arts collective community that started in Bangalore</a> and has now spread to Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, and Lucknow. It seeks to address street sexual harassment and violence by triggering dialogue and building testimonials around notions of "teasing" and "harassment" in the public discourse. The collective has garnered attention and momentum since it was founded in 2003, and ever since, it’s fostering a model of active citizenship across India through its volunteer network. The story of Blank Noise and the working of community art with technology highlight the need to create spaces of expression and experience in which civic and political creativity can develop and unfold organically.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">One of the main reflections stemming from my conversation with Jasmeen was the question of how technologies can create a sense of ownership and active citizenship. At the moment, we are moving on to a scenario in which technology has a more pervasive and complex presence. It is no longer judged merely on its connective utility, but is also understood as an actor, a space and a context within the ecosystem of social change and political democratic systems. For this reason, it is paramount to get to know the citizen that is being exposed to, influenced and impacted by these technologies and identify the ways in which his self-identity, social membership and political participation (King and Waldron 1988, Turner 1986, 1990) are being molded by them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In this post, I aim to unpack ‘active citizenship’ drawing from political science literature around citizenship and civic engagement. The analysis will be based on two dichotomies proposed by Turner: the tension between the active-passive citizen, and the contradictions between its private and public presence. I will then refer to Westmeister and Kahnein, Kabeer, Gaventa and Bennett to identify the type of citizen that Jasmeen Patheja hopes to yield through her project and the main challenges of manoeuvering in the public space. Finally, I will look at some of the tactics taken by Blank Noise to reconcile these tensions through community art and technology. This exploration of citizenship is a first stage in the journey of detecting the undertones of citizen action for social change in the digital era.</p>
<h2 align="center" style="text-align: justify;">Unpacking Citizenship</h2>
<h3><br />ACTIVE VS. PASSIVE CITIZEN</h3>
<p><strong>What is the difference between an active and a passive citizen?</strong></p>
<div class="pullquote">A passive citizen comes to existence as a subject, recipient or client of the state (...) regards its rights as privileges handed down from above (...)complies with norms yet does not act to change circumstances (...)and its security and survival are merely determined by constitutional and common law traditions</div>
<p align="justify">Turner places the citizenship question on two points of contention. The first: the vectorial nature of citizenship and how to recognize an ‘active or passive’ citizen. According to his analysis, a citizen either comes to existence from above as mere subject of the state, or from below as an active bearer of its rights (Mann 1987, Ullmann 1975, Turner 1990). The force and direction from which the citizen emerges has important implications for the self-identity of the individual, its confidence and disposition for political participation (Merrifield, 2001). A passive citizen regards its rights as privileges handed down from above, in such a way that citizenship becomes a strategy for social integration and cooperation (Mann, 1986). Westheimer and Kahne find the manifestation of this model in what they call a “Personally Responsible Citizen”: a dutiful citizen who complies with norms, pays taxes and obeys laws, yet does not act to change the circumstances of other communities (2004). However, defining the citizen as a passive actor constraints its role within its network. If the citizen’ security and survival are merely determined by constitutional and common law traditions, and the negotiation between institutions and the individual (Weber 1958 - refer to Turner 1990), the individual is a disempowered recipient or client (Cornwall, 2007) as opposed to the proactive agent Blank Noise looks to recruit and shape through heir interventions.</p>
<p>Patheja, as shown by the interview, aims to disrupt the passive citizen model by fostering political participation and putting its counterpart: ’the active citizen’ forward. Blank Noise believes the citizen must ground its claims from the grassroots and grow from below; yet still be visible and present in the public space, redefining problematic concepts looming in society’s social imaginary; what Turner would describe as revolutionary citizenship (1990).</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>How is your practice building a stronger model of citizenship?</strong><br />Change cannot happen only at one level. It would involve more people and different groups from different communities. For example, with citizen-led street action; we can’t end it there. It needs to push home the cause and make [the issues] visible with the government. How do we work with the government? Learning to ask and not assume it’s all their responsibility, but learning to assert our citizenship. What does it mean to do this? What does it mean to ask for safer cities in a way that it doesn’t become somebody else’s business entirely but that it’s about being able to see we are a society. We must understand the process of citizenship; what it means to be in a democratic country and what means to be a female citizen in it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/blank-noise-citizenship" alt="null" align="middle" title="Public Art, Technology and Citizenship - Blank Noise Project" /><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/SafeCityPledgeDelhi.jpg/image_preview" alt="Safe City Pledge - Delhi" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Safe City Pledge - Delhi" /></p>
<p align="center">Safe City Pledge - Delhi<br /> <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/uploads/SafeCityPledgeMumbai.jpg/image_preview" alt="Safe City Pledge - Mumbai" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Safe City Pledge - Mumbai" /><br />Safe City Pledge - Mumbai<br />Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: <span id="url_shortened"><a href="http://bit.do/fHMm">http://bit.do/fHMm</a></span></p>
<blockquote>
<p>The message is: “this is your city, this is your space. Don’t be apologetic for your presence” And over time, Action Heros are reporting change: ”I'm getting my space. I'm not thinking twice about what I have to wear.” [...]So it was not only about a vocabulary shift, but a shift in attitude.</p>
</blockquote>
<div align="justify;" class="pullquote">
<p><br />An active citizen comes from below as an active bearer of its rights (...), feels impelled to engage and mobilize its network (...) keeps government and community members in check (...) and evolves with a higher sense of individual purpose favoring solidarity and maintaining networks of community action.</p>
</div>
<p align="justify"> </p>
<p align="justify">Westheimer and Kahne label this stronger orientation towards a social-change approach as the second degree of civic engagement or as the behaviour of a <strong>‘participatory citizen</strong>’; an individual who feels impelled to engage and mobilize its network, skills and action to respond to a community need. This participation impetus is one of Patheja’s main expectations from its Action Hero Network. However, this entails relying on intimate shifts of behaviour and attitude among the volunteers, which are in essence hard to demand, inculcate and entrench by a third party.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Their approach also reflects a vision of citizenship that relies on collective action (Montgomery, 2004) to, not only keep the government in check as suggested by Westheimer and Kahnne, but other community and society members as well. From Bennett’s point of view and taking the role of information technologies into account, he would define the ideal Action Hero as a self-actualizing citizen. In contrast to its counterpart: the dutiful citizen, who sees its obligation to participate in government-centered activities, the AC evolves with higher sense of individual purpose, favouring and maintaining networks of community action, backed up by a growing distrust in media and the government. In this sense the role of technology is also paramount to how Blank Noise spreads its predicament and expands its outreach:</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="normal"><strong>What is the role of technology and media in your project?</strong><br />Using the web for example, we happened to stumble upon blogging and we realized there was a community there. Once [Action Heroes] started blogging and the press started writing about it, it created a community further. So, going back to the fact that our constant thread of conversation has been the web, there is a large percentage of the English speaking youth who are action hero agents anidd now have the responsibility of taking the conversations and actions forward.</p>
<p class="normal">On the other hand, this is not always the case. In Delhi we did an event in collaboration with Action Aid. Many of the Action Aid volunteers weren’t necessarily on Facebook. They were people who were largely Hindi speaking; their stories were about harassment in slums and these were men and women wanting to do something about the issue. So being a loose volunteer is one way, but identifying different communities is also important. Every space is a point of engagement and we use different forms of media to enable that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Citizen participation, communication and mobilization mechanisms, mediated by the state in the past, are now taken up by the people in the form of social protest, civil disobedience, digital activism, consumerism, etc. (Bennett, 2008). The emphasis on collective action also calls for a broader understanding of the citizen, away from the state-conferred rights and duties, and a definition that includes solidarity and membership to broader communities (Ellison 1997), Heater and Kabeer defines this as a “horizontal view” that stresses the relationship between citizens over that of the state and the individual (Heater 2002, Kabeer 2007) and Berlin has also made the connection between group identity and affiliation as a building block of citizenship (1969).</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="normal">[on Giving Letters to Strangers] We trigger a conversation and it takes its own journey. Over time, what does it take to lean back and relax? Each person participates establishing their own level of comfort and every person’s narrative is different. [The project is] happening in Delhi while it is happening in Bangalore; allowing it to happen in a very individual, self-confrontational and at the same time, collective experience. They are doing this alone knowing that others are doing the same.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;"><br /><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/LettersStrangers.jpg/image_preview" alt="Giving out letters to Strangers" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Giving out letters to Strangers" /><br /><br /><br /><br /><strong>Dear Stranger</strong>:<br />Giving out letters to strangers in the streets of Bangalore. Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: <span id="url_shortened"><a href="http://bit.do/fHJw">http://bit.do/fHJw</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span id="url_shortened"><a href="http://bit.do/fHJw"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_LettersStrangers2.jpg/image_preview" alt="Giving out letters to Strangers 2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Giving out letters to Strangers 2" /><br /></a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In this way, Blank Noise has envisioned and designed a project that fosters an active, participatory, self-actualizing and horizontal model of citizenship. This combination builds a citizen prototype with a positive disposition and attitude to civic action; traits that Gaventa identifies as elements of empowerment and political agency that can derive into higher possibilities for social change. Having citizens identify community’s ailments as their own and their network’s responsibility, results in conversations that act as causal nexus of community action. The main challenge at the moment is the implementation of this model. To what extent will the Action Hero represent this model uniformly and steadily, preventing dissonance between Blank Noise’s discourse and its practice. And secondly, how will Blank Noise volunteers negotiate their political participation between public and private spaces?</p>
<h3>PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC SPACE</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Where should the active citizen operate?</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The second tension on citizenship, as identified by Turner, is its political expression on the public arena versus its manifestation on the individual’s private space. We asked Jasmeen about the crises and spaces in which Blank Noise is operating:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>To what crisis is the project responding to?</strong><br />The project responds to the crises and experiences of street harassment. To the sense of getting defensive, agitated, angry; creating a wall and feeling vulnerable in a city. Blank Noise was initiated at a time were street harassment was disregarded and dismissed as teasing. This ‘eve-teasing’, just going by the pulse of things, included concepts of molestation and sexual violence. There was denial, there was silence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">First point on the public vs. private dilemma lies on the issue at hand. Volunteers are working to re-conceptualize social norms around ‘safety’, ‘agency’ and ‘gender’, that are not only deeply entrenched in society, but that can also be traced back to the private domain of traditions and culture at the household level. By openly discussing ‘sexual harassment’ in the public space and enabling volunteers to express and act on the basis of a new understanding of citizenship and freedom, the collective is possibly also redefining dynamics at the private space of its volunteers. What is more, the motivation and determination to be an Action Hero, as mentioned by Patheja, must be grounded in a "<em>personal shift and challenge</em>".</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>How does this translate it into citizens taking ownership of the cause and sustained behavioral change in everyday practices?</strong><br />Anger is a good starting point. It is worrying when there is no anger. And then it has to be a personal shift. We’ve learned from conversations and feedback that volunteers who would say: “we came to address the issue and we are realizing that we are doing something in ourselves”. So what is the spirit of an Action Hero? Allowing something to shift and challenging something in yourself. Last year for example we worked towards having locality specific Action Hero networks and on how this intuitive citizen can become a full citizen, in terms of being an informed citizen as well.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;" class="normal"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_ActionHeroGame.jpg/image_preview" alt="Action Hero Game" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Action Hero Game" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" class="normal">Acton Hero Game. Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: <span id="url_shortened"><a href="http://bit.do/fHKq">http://bit.do/fHKq</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="normal">The expectation of a personal pledge at the individual, community and public level, signals the project is blurring the lines between the private and public domain and fostering the politicization of the citizen at all fronts. This suggests that in order for the claims and behaviour of Action Heroes to become sustainable, they must also trickle into the common citizen’s routine. In words of Arendt: <em>“the space of appearance comes into being whenever men are together in the manner of speech and action, predating all formal constitutions of the public realm” </em>(1989). Establishing the private-public space as a common ground works towards bringing consistency and coherence to the interventions, yet it remains in many ways problematic and threatening to individual freedoms.</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Does your project create new spaces for citizen expression and action?</strong><em><br /></em>Our role is to build testimonials and translate them back into the public domain. An example of this is the blogathon that happened in 2006, initiated by our Action Hero. She said: let’s invite bloggers to share their experiences of street harassment. 4-5 male and female Action Heroes made the event happen and in a couple of days we had hundreds and hundreds of testimonials and people talking about this for the first time. Maybe it was the first time speaking about it, remembering things that happened ages ago and that they had never shared. Suddenly the web was seen as a space where people could speak. Suddenly people had so much to say about the issue, the person dismissing the issue and their relationship with their body and the city.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TalktoMe1.JPG/image_preview" alt="Talk to Me" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Talk to Me" /><br /><strong>Talk To Me:</strong><br />Creating spaces for conversation and collaboration. Courtesy of Blank Noise blog: <span id="url_shortened"><a href="http://bit.do/fHKq">http://bit.do/fHKq</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Turner reflects on the French revolution tradition to shed light on this particular challenge for active citizenship, as what bound Frenchmen together was their citizen identity (Baker 1987). Passing on from state subjects, to actively voicing their political, civic and social aspirations coupled with meaningful mechanisms of participation. However, how do we reconcile this tradition of positive democracy with the American understanding of citizenship that enshrines the autonomous sanctity of the private space. American individualism values personal success and the main way to exercise political participation is through voluntary associations that do not represent a large-scale force -or a threat- with enough power to shape their lives (Bellah et. al 2008, Turner 1990). Translating this to the Bangalorean context: a changing society in which community- based traditions in the household are coexisting with an agitated and growingly individualist youth culture; the issues and interventions must be addressed in an implicational manner. The connections between the issue and individual freedoms must be made, in order for these actors to be willing to politicize their action in both the public and private spheres.</p>
<h3><strong>MIDDLE CLASS ACTIVISM<br /></strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Can everybody be an active citizen?</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The second challenge is rooted in the socio-economic group that comprises the body of volunteers of Blank Noise. I asked Jasmeen the extent to which the Action Hero Network was being led by middle class citizens.</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Are you only reaching out to the middle class activist that has the resources to be part of the Blank Noise project?</strong><br /> Yes and no. A large percentage of our volunteers are usually web-savvy, English speaking, teenagers or in their early 20s. Others have been around for the last decade. The mainstream media also reports back mainly to the web-savvy groups. But it is also about one action hero inspiring another Action Hero. I find [the project] fascinating in terms of the spaces it leaks into. Some people tell me they were at their religious meeting and they overheard two women talking about the project, who were not necessarily web-savvy. Ultimately the media is not only reporting us but we see them as point of engagement in which more and more citizens take ownership of the issue. Although our network is largely urban middle class, we are at the point where we collaborate largely with other groups that are working with different communities so it completes the entire picture. The question is: how do you take the conversation forward? What can be that medium? and what kind of technology can get to people?</p>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;" class="pullquote"><br />
<div align="right">
<div align="left">“We use different strategies to enable dialogue across communities. It could be on the street, on the blog, within a workshop; the web has been a constant space. If you are an Action Hero, yes you may be web-savvy, but you also carry the responsibility to take the conversation to another space."</div>
Jasmeen Patheja</div>
</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><br />This demographic is ultimately an interest group leading a movement and has taken on the responsibility of spreading the call to action among its network. Foregoing the assumption that every Indian citizen wants to challenge concepts of sexual harassment in the city, the fact that one group is spreading a specific opinion puts forward a tension between the dynamics of public social protest and the existence of privatized dissent. Turner reflects on Mill’s On Liberty and shows how this could entail a threat of spreading mass opinion to the extent it makes all people alike (Turner, 1990).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Kabeer also highlights this by exploring the tension between universality versus particularity — a debate that questions the extent to which human rights advocacy in the public sphere will be equally received and supported by every group, given diversity of opinion within as well as obstacles to freedom of speech. Nyamu-Musembi attempts to bridge this dichotomy by framing universality as “the experience of resistance to general oppression” and particularity as “how resistance speaks to each relevant social context”. In order to have the issue speak to all citizen groups, Blank Noise is currently also depending on the the ability of its Action Heroes to pass on a message that speaks to the different needs and cultural sensibilities of communities who do not belong to the Anglo-speaking middle class it is currently operating with.<br /><br />In response to having the protest of a specific social group translate into homogenized dissent, Jasmeen is looking to increase her outreach by approaching and working with other groups.</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>How can you build effective solidarity networks among middle class activists, their networks and further communities?</strong><br />It is an attitude we are trying to push forward: have that conversation with your grandma; with your domestic help. We would love to do something with domestic workers for example. We don’t hear enough stories of who empowers or harasses them. That’s definitely a rising concern within the collective. We really need to have the complete spectrum and what kind of technology or strategies can be used to get it. Identifying these groups is a proposed future project and also an ongoing preoccupation. For now, our role is to trigger conversations and have them take their own journey.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">METHODS FOR CHANGE</h3>
<p><strong>How does the combination of art and technology foster active citizenship?<br /></strong></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;"></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some of the strategies Blank Noise has devised to overcome these obstacles relate back to the interdisciplinary design of its interventions. First, they are designed to be highly visible and aimed at triggering dialogue. This enables opinions and thoughts to flow from the private space into the public realm. Also, community art and technology as tools of expression and reflection, work as effective channels for responses to flow back and forth between both spaces.</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Why did you take a multi-stakeholder approach and brought together technology and art?</strong><br />The entire collective is really based on defining strategies and identifying approaches to breaking denial and building conversation. Our role is enabling dialogue across forms of media and using different strategies to enable dialogue across communities. There are also lots of questions of how to create an art practice that can be collaborative and participatory. Where does art exist? How can art exist, be, feel confrontational? Can arte provoke? How can we build testimonials? Could be on the street, on the blog, twitter or within a workshop. The web has been a constant space. We also work with the web in a way that we have a growing community of Action Heroes, and if you are web-savvy, you carry the responsibility to take the conversation to another space.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Twitter.jpg/image_preview" alt="Twitter" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Twitter" /><br />Twitter campaign. Courtesy of: <span id="url_shortened"><a href="http://bit.do/fHLK">http://bit.do/fHLK</a></span><br /><br /><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Ineverasked1.jpg/image_preview" alt="I never asked for it" class="image-inline image-inline" title="I never asked for it" /><br />Public art installation to redefine sexual harassment and eve-teasing. Courtesy of Caravan Magazine: <span id="url_shortened"><a href="http://bit.do/fHLV">http://bit.do/fHLV</a></span></p>
<p align="justify">Bennett and his work on civic engagement in the digital age, notes that one of the main strategies for positive civic engagement is nurturing creative and expressive actions in this generation.</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>How does this approach work towards creating sustainable change?</strong><em><br /></em>We are creating tool kits for different ideas so the community can take it forward. There are many creative processes that equip them to initiate action in a community space. For instance, the Yelahanka Action Heroes workshop (http://yelahankaactionheroes.wordpress.com/), was a one month initiative that got Sristhi students to arrive to action heroism through games, like the Hahaha Sangha for example. We invited women out of their homes, and we would speak through pure laughter, gibberish and a sense of play. In doing that, people felt they knew each other. Anonymity was broken, people felt comfortable and safety was established. We are working towards creating safe public spaces and going beyond the biases that come from language or through age. But through the Hahaha Sangha we found there is still a need for facilitators to continue the project with the purpose of creating a safe space. Also, one of our interns is in charge of creating an Action Hero College Network and spreading information about different events, calendars, etc. It is still fluid but we are moving in that direction. Action Heroes are the strength of the project.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Hahaha.jpg/image_preview" alt="Hahaha" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Hahaha" /><br />Hahaha Sangha sessions - Courtesy of Blank Noise blog <span id="url_shortened"><a href="http://bit.do/fHMb">http://bit.do/fHMb</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The ideal of an engaged youth must be sustained by the empowerment of young people; getting them to recognize their personal expression and identities in collective spaces (Bennett, 2008). By setting in place mechanisms and opportunities to critically dissect societal problems and develop a political perspective as put forward by Westheimer and Kahne, as well as the awareness, self-identity and political confidence to act, as noted by Gaventa, the Blank Noise interventions become a context in which active citizenship is more likely.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Conclusion</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This analysis, part of the Methods of Social Change research project, aimed to shed light on how change-makers such as Blank Noise still place a heavy consideration on the notion of citizenship when designing, framing and implementing their projects. What is more, it is paramount to identify the working characteristics of an ‘active citizen’ and reflect on whether these are desirable and necessary in the populace to make political and social change more likely. It also contributes to the Making Change project by unpacking the workings of a change actor that is not confined to the ‘category of citizen’ but is still closely linked to processes of citizen action and social change in Bangalore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As seen throughout this post, the analysis of our citizen is not grounded on its relationship with the state, but instead on its disposition, self-identity and notion of social membership. After identifying our ideal active citizen: an active bearer of his rights, that defines itself horizontally in relation to other citizens and their rights, participates in political processes and is informed about and at odds with power imbalances, the Blank Noise experience demonstrated spatial tensions in implementing this ideal and practice in the public and private realms. Designing strategies and identifying technologies that enable a flow of thought and action between both spaces is a way of restructuring the ecosystem in which volunteers from the Action Hero Network interact with each other, reclaim their citizenship and alter the status quo from within. While Blank Noise is not starting a revolution, it is consolidating a process of steady and growing resistance in the public and private discourse of sexual harassment and eve-teasing in the city.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Shah also notes there are implicit codes allowing only certain people to embrace this model of citizenship. This was evident on the demographic that comprises the activist bases of Blank Noise and the risks of homogenizing the political space with their discourse of change. Jasmeen Patheja brought this point forward herself, but with full confidence on the ability of dialogue and conversation to keep luring other social groups and communities into joining the debate. We discussed opportunities from exploring the foreign women experience in the public space in India to expanding the Blank Noise basis through simultaneous international interventions enabled and coordinated through technology. The network is ever-growing and its mechanisms of change are constantly innovating and adapting through its content. In the meantime, the ‘active citizen’ remains at the core of it all, pushing the project forward; fighting among other battles, that of its identity’s reassertion in the landscape of change.</p>
<hr />
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Sources</h2>
<ol>
<li>Arendt, Hannah (1989) The Human Condition. Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press.</li>
<li>Baker, Keith Michael. <em>The French Revolution and the creation of modern political culture</em>. Vol. 3. Pergamon Press, 1987.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Bennett, W. Lance. "Changing citizenship in the digital age." <em>Civic life online: Learning how digital media can engage youth</em> 1 (2008): 1-24.</li>
<li>Berlin, Isaiah. "Two concepts of liberty." <em>Berlin, I</em> (1969): 118-172.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Bellah, Robert Neelly, ed. <em>Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American life: with a new preface</em>. University of California Pr, 2008.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Cornwall, Andrea, and Vera Schatten Coelho, eds. <em>Spaces for change?: the politics of citizen participation in new democratic arenas</em>. Vol. 4. Zed Books, 2007.</li>
<li>Ellison, N. (1997) ‘Towards a new social politics: citizenship and reflexivity in late modernity’, Sociology, 31(4): 697–717.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Gaventa, John, and Rajesh Tandon “Citizen engagements in a globalizing world." <em>Globalizing citizens: New dynamics of inclusion and exclusion</em> (2010): 3-30.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Heater, D. (2002) World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and Its Opponents, London: Continuum</li>
<li>Kabeer, Naila, ed. <em>Inclusive citizenship: Meanings and expressions</em>. Vol. 1. Zed Books, 2005.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Kathryn Montgomery et al., Youth as E-Citizens: Engaging the Digital Generation. Center for Social Media, 2004. Retrieved February 15, 2007. <a href="http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/ecitizens/project.htm">http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/ecitizens/project.htm</a>.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Mann, Michael. "Ruling class strategies and citizenship". <em>Sociology </em>21, no.3 (1987): 339-354</li>
<li>Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? <em>Hivos Knowledge Program. </em>April 30, 2013.</li>
<li>Turner, Bryan. Outline of a Theory of Citizenship. Sociology (May 1990), 24 (2), pg. 189-217</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Westheimer, Joel, and Joseph Kahne. "What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy." <em>American educational research journal</em> 41, no. 2 (2004): 237-269</li></ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/blank-noise-citizenship'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/blank-noise-citizenship</a>
</p>
No publisherdenisseSocial MediaWeb PoliticsDigital NativesMaking ChangeBlank Noise ProjectResearchers at Work2015-04-17T10:43:55ZBlog EntryNishant Shah: “We will develop new textual and visual practices to facilitate the transfer of knowledge worldwide”
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/nishant-shah-we-will-develop-new-textual-and-visual-practices-to-facilitate-the-transfer-of-knowledge-worldwide
<b>Today we are starting with a new format for the blog of the Hybrid Publishing Lab. There will be an interview series with our International Tandem Partners giving an insight on their current work, interest and cooperation with HP.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="https://hybridpublishing.org/2014/02/nishant-shah-we-will-develop-new-textual-and-visual-practices-to-facilitate-the-transfer-of-knowledge-worldwide/">Read Dr. Shah's interview by Julia Rehfeldt published on the website of Hybrid Publishing Lab</a></p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">First up is our Tandem Partner <a href="http://cdc.leuphana.com/people/#nishant-shah">Dr. Nishant Shah</a>, Research Associate at Common Media Lab and Hybrid Publishing Lab. He is the co-founder and Director-Research at the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/">Centre for Internet and Society</a> in Bangalore, India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Julia Rehfeldt</b>: Dr. Shah, can you introduce yourself briefly und tell us what you are currently concerned with in your research?<br /> <br /> <b>Dr. Nishant Shah</b>: This is a question that has always flummoxed me. I have spent all of the last decade trying to figure out how to explain what I do and what my research concerns are and I never have one straightforward answer to give.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The easiest way to answer this would be to say that I wear many hats. I am deeply interested in looking at how the digital shift is changing the way in which we see the world around us. And so my work spans several sectors, disciplines and intersections, trying to look at the mechanics and logics, logistics and structures of the world that we live in.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the Hybrid Publishing Lab, as an International Tandem Partner, I look at the knowledge infrastructures of the digital times. I learn from the research and practice of my colleagues to explore the future of academic publishing, and I try to critically think through questions of Intellectual Property, Open Access movements, and concerns of Digital Humanities in the global knowledge circuits. Apart from that, I like to translate my research and knowledge for different stakeholders, to work with practitioners, policy makers, artists, technologists, hackers, legal scholars and development actors at the intersection of Internet and Society. As the Director – Research at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, I have been trying to develop South-based global networks that examine the conditions of being human, being social, and being political in emerging network societies. I also enjoy exploring new forms and content of pedagogy for students in and out of the classrooms, to develop new conditions of learning through and with digital media and cultures.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><br /> Rehfeldt:</b> What was the most significant change, talk or lecture you experienced in 2013 that had an impact on the rights of open access or on your personal insights on that matter?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Dr. Shah</b>: I think, on a very personal and a professional level, the death of Aaron Swartz and the horrific face of Intellectual Property tyrannies that surround the academic publishing which ironically focuses on questions of human liberty, values, equity and access, has had the most dramatic impact on me. Aaron Swartz committed suicide just over a year ago, and the conditions of his persecution, on the behalf of the American legal system, the intellectual property conglomerates and a globally reputed university that claims to build better futures for our digital worlds, has shocked most of us.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While playing the blame-game is redundant now – it is not going to bring back a young man who only believed in dreams of utopic sharing and commons – it is important to remind us that these battles of information and intellectual property are not for niche circles. We are increasingly living in worlds where more and more of our everyday life is being mediated, mitigated and measured in big data and quantified services.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We don’t only live in information age, but we also live through information, constantly producing data. And the technologies we use, the applications we live with, the platforms we live on, the social networks that we belong to, all take our information and data and copyright it so that we have almost no rights over it. This problem becomes only more amplified in the traditional academic knowledge industries where publicly funded research and practice gets hidden behind paywalls so that it remains in niche circles of access to those with privilege. We are reaching a stage where not only our formal knowledge but even our thoughts, desires and memories are quickly being contained in forms and formats that are no longer accessible to us.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">2013 has shown that the more we lose control of our data, the more we lose battles of access to our collective knowledge, the more we concede our rights to information, which is the de facto currency of our times, the more we are going to be at the service of private and governmental conglomerates that shall control and contain the possibilities of radical transformation and change in our future.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><br /> Rehfeldt:</b> You are currently involved in setting up a ‘Making Change’ project based on your paper ‘Whose change is it, anyway?’ published April 2013. Can you tell us what prompted your reflections in that paper, and what you seek to achieve with the project?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Dr. Shah:</b> The ‘<a href="http://cdc.leuphana.com/structure/common-media-lab/making-change/">Making Change</a>‘ project is an example of the multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary, knowledge methods and production that I am interested in. It is shaped by the framework proposed in the ‘Whose Change is it anyway?’ concept paper that proposes that in order to look at the change processes around us, we need to change the ways in which forms, formats, conditions, structures, processes, and life-cycles of knowledge practices need to be re-examined. The project aims to build conceptual frameworks by engaging different change actors in digital storytelling to understand how we analyse and examine the radical processes of change in the times to come.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Making Change is a knowledge exploration through which we seek to unpack the form, function, and practice of social and political change in emerging network societies. With this project, we will map existing traditional and innovative change practices through new knowledge methods and propose hybrid ways of building a knowledge commons that helps consolidate, curate and disseminate these new insights for change actors.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hence, we will create a Knowledge Commons. The Knowledge Commons is a mash-up of resources, which we will set in motion through four distinct processes of getting insight into the mechanics, logistics, and catalysts of social and political change:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">1. In this project, we will use new methods of collaborative knowledge production methods that bring in different knowledge stakeholders and actors to reflect upon and consolidate their existing projects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">2. We will develop new textual and visual practices to facilitate the transfer of knowledge worldwide.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">3. We will work with existing knowledge communities – academia, policy, and practice – to build pedagogic resources for training knowledge visionaries about the future of change.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">4. We will produce, curate and disseminate knowledge prototypes through storytelling to debate, question and re-energize discussions on important keywords and concepts in the change narratives.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The core of the Knowledge Commons will consist of new narratives and prototypes of how these narratives might help other approaches for social and political change. We shall further organize these narratives to train and help social change actors to develop better strategies of working within digital and network societies. The Knowledge Commons seeks to generate cross-fertilization between different networks of knowledge actors to generate critical insights to gain access, exchange and contribute to knowledge dialogues.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Knowledge Commons is not just an online platform, but is built up through a combination of knowledge generating workshops (production sprints) as well as reflections, which are curated through online dialogues and critique. The production sprints invite the key change actors from our networks to incite conversations inspired by the thought piece ‘Whose Change is it Anyway?’. The conversations will be further annotated by the ‘Making Change’ white paper which offers more complex and nuanced ways of looking at the contexts, catalyst and processes of change embedded in particular movements.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Rehfeldt:</b> There has been a lot of talk about ‘Twitter revolutions’ and ‘Blackberry riots’ – what would you say do digital technologies contribute to contemporary social movements and political action in the public sphere more generally?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Dr. Shah:</b> I have spent some time trying to do away with the binaries and polarised responses that phrases like ‘Twitter Revolutions’ and ‘Blackberry Riots’ produce. They seem to bring pre-defined responses – they either suggest that the emergence of new digital technologies and applications, by their very presence, are producing radical change practices. They deny the historical conditions, the political contexts, the social and cultural practices of the region, and the structures of inequity and injustice that are often characteristic to particularly geographies and cultures. They refuse to understand that the digital does not merely produce things new – instead, it helps extend the existing movements of social and political change and are a part of a much larger paradigm shift. They alienate existing human endeavours of change and create false dichotomies like the old and new activisms, or traditional and digital movements.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I think it is better to understand that the digital produces ruptures and interruptions in the narrative of change; but the digital also has historical continuities which need to be better embedded in the geographical and political contexts of change. At the end of the day, we need to debunk the idea that digital activism around the globe is the same. Just because everybody uses Twitter to orchestrate people’s movements in different countries, it doesn’t mean that they are doing the same thing or in the same way. We need to do away with the homogenizing rhetoric of the digital that presumes that digital cultures are universal, and learn to look at the intersections of life that inform and are shaped by the emergence of the digital technologies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Rehfeldt</b>: To finish up, is there an interesting online article, or video you have read or seen lately which you could suggest to our readers?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Dr. Shah:</b> I think one of the most interesting collections around digital and new activism last year was the anthology edited by Kees Biekart: <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dech.2013.44.issue-3/issuetoc">Development and Change – Special Issue: FORUM 2013</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/nishant-shah-we-will-develop-new-textual-and-visual-practices-to-facilitate-the-transfer-of-knowledge-worldwide'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/nishant-shah-we-will-develop-new-textual-and-visual-practices-to-facilitate-the-transfer-of-knowledge-worldwide</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDigital Natives2014-03-06T12:05:45ZNews ItemInstitute for Internet & Society 2014, Pune
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/institute-for-internet-society-2014-pune
<b>Last month, activists, journalists, researchers, and members of civil society came together at the 2014 Institute for Internet & Society in Pune, which was hosted by CIS and funded by the Ford Foundation. The Institute was a week long, in which participants heard from speakers from various backgrounds on issues arising out of the intersection of internet and society, such as intellectual property, freedom of expression, and accessibility, to name a few. Below is an official reporting summarizing sessions that took place.</b>
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<h1>Day One</h1>
<p>February 11, 2014</p>
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<p><b>Time</b></p>
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<p><b>Detail</b></p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">9.30 a.m. – 9.40 a.m.</p>
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<p>Introduction: Sunil Abraham, <i>Executive Director Centre for Internet and Society</i><i> </i></p>
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<td>10.00 a.m. – 10.15 a.m.<br /></td>
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<p>Introduction of Participants</p>
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<td>10.15 a.m. – 12.00 p.m.</td>
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<p>Internet Governance and Privacy: Sunil Abraham</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">12.00 p.m. – 12.30 p.m.</p>
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<p>Tea-break</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">12.30 p.m. – 1.00 p.m.</p>
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<p>Keynote: Bishakha Datta, <i>Filmmaker and Activist, and Board Member, Wikimedia Foundation</i></p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">1.00 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.</p>
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<p>Lunch</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.</p>
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<p>Participant Presentations<i> </i></p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.</p>
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<p>Tea Break</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.</p>
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<p>Histories, Bodies and Debates around the Internet: Nishant Shah, <i>Director-Research, CIS</i></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">This year’s Internet Institute, hosted by the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), kicked off in Pune to put a start to a week of learnings and discussions surrounding internet usage and its implications on individuals of society. Twenty two attendees from all over India attended this year, from backgrounds of activism, journalism, research and advocacy work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Attendees were welcomed by<b> Dr. Ravina Aggarwal</b>, Program Officer for Media Rights & Access at the Ford Foundation, the event’s sponsor, who started off the day by introducing the Foundation’s initiatives in pursuit of bridging the digital divide by addressing issues of internet connectivity.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Internet Governance & Privacy</b>, Sunil Abraham <br />The Institute’s first session was led by <b>Sunil Abraham</b>, Executive Director of CIS, and engaged with issues of internet governance and privacy with reference to four stories: 1) a dispute between tweeters from the US and those in South Africa over the use of hashtag <a href="http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/khayadlanga/2009/11/05/yesterday-a-short-lived-war-broke-out-between-america-and-south-africa/comment-page-1/">#thingsdarkiesays</a>, which is said not to be as racially derogatory as it is in the US; 2) Facebook’s contested policies on <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-clarifies-breastfeeding-photo-policy/8791">photos featuring users breastfeeding</a>, 3) a lawsuit between <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/26/tata-sue-greenpeace-turtle-game">Tata and Greenpeace</a> over the organization’s use of Tata’s logo in a video game created for public criticism of their environmentally-degrading practices, and lastly, 4) the case of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savita_Bhabhi">Savita Bhabhi</a>, an Indian pornographic cartoon character which had been banned by India’s High Court and which had served as a landmark case in expanding the statutory laws for what is considered to be pornographic.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Each of these stories has one major thing in common: due to their nature of taking place over the internet, they are not confined to one geographic location and in turn, are addressed at the international level. The way by which an issue as such is to be addressed cuts across State policies and internet intermediary bodies to create quite a messy case in trying to determine who is at fault. Such complexity illustrates how challenging internet governance can be within today’s society that is no longer restricted to national or geographic boundaries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sunil also goes on in explaining the relationship between privacy, transparency, and power, summing it up in a simple formula; <b>privacy protection s</b>hould have a <i>reverse</i> relationship to <b>power</b>—the more the power, the less the privacy one should be entitled to. On the contrary, a <i>direct correlation</i> goes for <b>power</b> and <b>transparency</b>—the more the power, the more transparent a body should be. Instead of thinking about these concepts as a dichotomy, Sunil suggests to see them as absolute rights in themselves—instrumental in policies and necessary to address power imbalances.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The Web We Want</b>, Bishakha Datta<br />The Institute’s kickoff was also joined by Indian filmmaker and activist, <b>Bishakha Datta</b>, who had delivered the keynote address. Bishakha bridged together notions of freedom of speech, surveillance, and accessibility, while introducing campaigns that work to create an open and universally accessible web, such as the <a href="https://webwewant.org/">Web We Want</a> and <a href="http://www.sexualityanddisability.org/">Sexuality and Disability</a>. Bishakha stresses how the internet as a space has altered how we experience societal constructs, which can be easily exhibited in how individuals experience Facebook in the occurrence of a death, for example. Bishakha initiated discussion among participants by posing questions such as, “what is our expectation of privacy in this brave new world?” and “what is the society we want?” to encompass the need to think of privacy in a new way with the coming of the endless possibilities the internet brings with it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Histories, Bodies and Debates around the Internet</b>, Nishant Shah<br />CIS Research Director, <b>Nishant Shah</b>, led a session examining internet as a technology more broadly, and our understandings of it in relation to the human body. Nishant proposes the idea that history is a form of technology, as well as time, itself, for which our understanding only comes into being with the aid of technologies of measurement. Although we are inclined to separate technology from the self, Nishant challenges this notion while suggesting that technology is very integral to being human, and defines a “cyborg” as someone who is very intimate with technology. In this way, we are all cyborgs. While making reference to several literary pieces, including Haraway’s <i>Cyborg: Human, Animus, Technology</i>; Kevin Warwick’s <i>Living Cyborg</i>; and Watt’s small world theory, Nishant challenges participants’ previous notions of how one is to understand technology in relation to oneself, as well as the networks we find ourselves implicated within.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Also brought forth by Nishant, was the fact that the internet as a technology has become integral to our identities, making <i>us</i> accessible (rather than us solely making the technology accessible) through online forms of documentation. This digital phenomenon in which we tend to document what we know and experience as a means of legitimizing it can be summed in the modern version of an old fable: “If a tree falls in a lonely forest, and nobody tweets it, has it fallen?”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nishant refers to several case studies in which the use of online technologies has created a sense of an extension of the self and one’s personal space; which can then be subject to violation as one can be in the physical form, and to the same emotional and psychological effect—as illustrated within the 1993 occurrence referred to as “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_in_Cyberspace">A Rape in Cyberspace</a>.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Attendee Participation</b><br />Participants remained engaged and enthusiastic for the duration of the day, bringing forth their personal expertise and experiences. Several participants presented their own research initiatives, which looked at issues women face as journalists and as portrayed by the media; amateur pornography without the consent of the woman; study findings on the understandings of symptoms of internet addiction; as well as studies looking at how students engage with college confession pages on Facebook.</p>
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<h1>Day Two</h1>
<p>February 12, 2014</p>
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<p><b>Detail</b></p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.</p>
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<p>Wireless Technology: Ravikiran Annaswamy, <i>CEO and Co-founder at Teritree Technologies</i></p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.</p>
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<p>Tea-break</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.</p>
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<p>Wired Technology: Ravikiran Annaswamy</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.</p>
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<p>Lunch</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.</p>
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<p>Network, Threats and Securing Yourself: Kingsley John, <i>Independent Consultant</i></p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.</p>
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<p>Tea Break</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.</p>
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<p>Practical Lab: Kingsley John</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">4.45 p.m. – 5.00 p.m.</p>
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<p>Wrap-up: Sunil Abraham</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Day Two of the Institute entailed a more technical orientation to “internet & society” across sessions. Participants listened to speakers introduce concepts related to wired and wireless internet connectivity devices and their networks, along with the network of internet users and how one may secure him or herself while “online.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Wireless & Wired Technology</b>, Ravikiran Annaswamy<br />Senior industry practitioner, <b>Ravikiran Annaswamy</b> had aimed to enable the Institute’s participants to “understand the depth and omnipresent of telecom networks” that we find ourselves implicated within. Ravikiran went through the basics of these networks—including fixed line-, mobile-, IP-, and Next Generation IP-networks—as well as the technical structuring of wired and wireless broadband. Many participants found this session to be particularly enriching as their projects aimed to provide increased access to internet connectivity to marginalized areas in India, and had been without the know-how to go about it.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Network, Threats and Securing Yourself</b>, Kinglsey John<br />An instructional session on how to protect oneself was given by <b>Kingsley John</b>, beginning with a lesson on IP Addresses—what they are and the different generations of such, and how IP addresses fit into a broader internet network. Following, Kingsley demonstrated and explained <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/lupucosmin/encrypting-emails-using-kleopatra-pgp">email encryption through the use of software, Kleopatra</a>, and how it may be used to generate keys to <a href="http://thehackernews.com/2014/01/PGP-encryption-Thunderbird-Enigmail_12.html">encrypt emails through Thunderbird mail client</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Evening Discussion</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A handful of participants voluntarily partook in an evening discussion, looking at the role of big players in the global internet network, such as Google and Facebook, how they collect and utilize users’ data, and what sorts of measures can be taken to minimize the collecting of such. Due to the widely varying backgrounds of interest among participants, those coming from this technical orientation towards the internet were able to inform their peers on relevant information and types of software that may be found useful related to minimizing one’s online presence.</p>
<hr />
<h1>Day Three</h1>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">February 13, 2014</p>
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<p>9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.</p>
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<p>Free Software: Prof. G. Nagarjuna, <i>Chairperson, Free Software Foundation</i></p>
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<p>11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.</p>
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<p>Tea-break</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.</p>
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<p>Open Data: Nisha Thompson, <i>Independent Consultant</i></p>
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<p>12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.</p>
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<p>Lunch</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.</p>
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<p>Freedom of Expression: Bhairav Acharya, <i>Advocate and Adviser, Centre for Internet and Society</i></p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.</p>
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<p>Tea-break</p>
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<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.</p>
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<p>Copyright: Nehaa Chaudhari, <i>Program Officer, Centre for Internet and Society</i></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">The third day of the Internet Institute incorporated themes presented by speakers ranging from free software, to freedom of expression, to copyright.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Free Software</b>, Prof. G. Nagarjuna<br />Chairman on the Board of Directors for the Free Software Foundation of India, <b>Professor G. Nagarjuna</b> shared with the Institute’s participants his personal expertise on <b>software freedom</b>. Nagarjuna mapped for us the network of concepts related to software freedom, beginning with the origins of the <b>copyleft movement</b>, and also touching upon the art of hacking, the <b>open source movement</b>, and what role software freedom plays in an interconnected world.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nagarjuna looks at the free software movement as a political movement in the digital space highlighting the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">user’s freedoms</a> associated to the use, distribution, and modification of software for the greater good for all. This is said to distinguish this movement from that of Open Source—a technical and more practical development-oriented movement. The free software movement is not set out to compromise the fundamental issues for the sake of being practical and in that sense, ubiquitous. Instead, its objective is “not to make everybody <i>use</i> the software, but to have them understand <i>why</i> they are using the software,” so that they may become “authentic citizens that can also resonate <i>why </i>they’re doing what they’re doing. We want them to understand the ethical and political aspects of doing so,” Nagarjuna says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Open Data</b>, Nisha Thompson<br />Participants learned from <b>Nisha Thompson</b> on Open Data; what it is, its benefits, and how it is involved in central government initiatives and policy, as well as civil society groups—generally for uses such as serving as evidence for decision making and accountability. Nisha explored challenges concerning the use of open data, such as those pertaining to privacy, legitimacy, copyright, and interoperability. The group looked at the <a href="http://www.indiawaterportal.org/">India Water Portal</a> as a case study, which makes accessible more than 300 water-related datasets already available in the public space for use from anything from sanitation and agriculture to climate change.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Freedom of Expression</b>, Bhairav Acharya<br /><b>Bhairav Acharya</b>, a constitutional lawyer, traced the development of the freedom of speech and expression in India. Beginning with a conceptual understanding of censorship and the practice of censorship by the state, society, and the individual herself, Bhairav examines the limits traditionally placed by a nation-state on the right to free speech.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India, modern free speech and censorship law was first formulated by the colonial British government, which broadly imported the common law to India. However, the colonial state also yielded to the religious and communitarian sensitivities of its subjects, resulting in a continuing close link between communalism and free speech in India today. After Independence, the post-colonial Indian state carried forward Raj censorship, but tweaked it to serve to a nation-building and developmental agenda. Nation-building and nationalism are centrifugal forces that attempt to construct a homogenous 'mainstream'; voices from the margins of this mainstream (the geographical, ethnic, and religious peripheries) and of the marginalised within the mainstream (the poor and disadvantaged), are censored.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Within this narrative, Bhairav located and explained the evolution of the law relating to press censorship, defamation, obscenity, and contempt of court. Free speech law applies equally online. Broadly, censorship on the internet must survive the same constitutional scrutiny that is applied to offline censorship; but, as technology develops, the law must innovate.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Copyright</b>, Nehaa Chaudhari<br />CIS Programme Officer, <b>Nehaa Chaudhari</b> examined the concept of Copyright as an intellectual property right in discussing its fundamentals, purpose and origins, and Copyright’s intersection with the internet. Nehaa also explained the different exceptions to Copyright, along with its alternatives, such as opposing intellectual property protection regimes, including the Creative Commons and Copyleft. Within this session, Nehaa also introduced several cases in which Copyright came into play with the use of the internet, including Hunter Moore’s “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_Anyone_Up%3F">Is Anyone Up</a>?” website, which had showcased pornographic pictures obtained by submission bringing rise to the phenomenon of “revenge porn.” Instances as such blur the lines of what is commonly referred to as intellectual property, and what specific requirements enables one to own the rights to such.</p>
<hr />
<h1>Day Four</h1>
<p>February 14, 2014</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><b>Time</b></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><b>Detail</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>E-Accessibility and Inclusion: Prashant Naik, <i>Union Bank</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Tea-break</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Patents: Nehaa Chaudhari</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Lunch</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">1.30 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Fieldwork Assignment</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="invisible">
<thead>
<tr>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/DSC_0053.JPG/image_preview" alt="Pune_Rohini" class="image-inline" title="Pune_Rohini" /><br /></th>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Day Four of the Internet Institute introduced concepts of eAccessibilty and Inclusion on the internet for persons with disabilities, along with patents as an intellectual property right. Participants were also assigned a fieldwork exercise as a hands-on activity in which they were to employ what they’ve learned to initiate conversation with individuals in public spaces and collect primary data while doing so.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>eAccessibility and Inclusion</b>, Prashant Naik</p>
<b>Prashant Naik</b> started off the day with his session on E-Accessibility and Inclusion. Prashant illustrated the importance of accessibility and what is meant by the term. Participants learned of assistive technologies for different disability types and how to create more accessible word and PDF documents, as well as web pages for users. Prashant demonstrated to participants what it is like to use a computer as a visually impaired individual, which provided for an enriching experience.</td>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Patents</b>, Nehaa Chaudhari<b><br />Nehaa Chaudhari </b>led a second session at the Internet Institute on intellectual property rights—this one looking at patents particularly and their role within statutory law. Nehaa traced the historical origins of patents before examining the fundamentals of them, and addresses the questions, “Why have patents? And is the present system working for everyone?” Nehaa also introduced notions of the Commons along with the Anticommons, and perspectives within the debate around software patents, as well as different means by which the law can address the exploitation of patents or “patent thickets”—such as through patent pools or compulsory licensing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Fieldwork Assignment</b>, Groupwork<br />Participants were split into groups and required to carry out a mini fieldwork assignment in approaching individuals in varying public spaces in Pune in attempts to collect primary data. Questions asked to individuals were to be devised by the group, so long as they pertained to themes examined within the Internet Institute. Areas visited by groups included the Pune Central Mall, MG Road, and FC Road.</p>
<hr />
<h1>Day Five</h1>
<p>February 15, 2014</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><b>Time</b></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><b>Detail</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>E-Governance: Manu Srivastav, <i>Vice President, eGovernments Foundation</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Tea-break</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Market Concerns: Payal Malik, <i>Economic Adviser, Competition Commission of India</i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Lunch</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Digital Natives: Nishant Shah</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Tea-break</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Fieldwork Presentations</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="invisible">
<thead>
<tr>
<td>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Day Five of the Internet Institute brought with it sessions related to themes of e-governance, market concerns of telecommunications, and so called “Digital Natives.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>eGovernance</b>, Manu Srivastava<br />Vice President of the eGovernments Foundation, <b>Manu Srivastava</b> led a session on eGovernance—the utilization of the internet as a means of delivering government services communicating with citizens, businesses, and members of government. Manu examined the complexities of the eGovernance and barriers to implementation of eGovernance initiatives. Within discussion, participants examined the nuanced relationship between the government and citizens with the incorporation of other governing bodies in an eGovernance system, as well as new spaces for corruption to take place.</p>
</td>
<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/19.JPG/image_preview" alt="Pune_Chatting" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pune_Chatting" /><br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Market Concerns</b>, Payal Malik<br /><b>Payal Malik</b>, Advisor of the Economics Division of the Competition Commission of India shared her knowledge on market concerns of the telecommunications industry, and exclaimed the importance of competition issues in such an industry as a tool to create greater good for a greater number of people. She demonstrated this importance by stating that affordability as a product of increased access can only be possible once there is enough investment, which generally only happens in a competitive market. In this way, we must set the conditions to make competition possible, as a tool to achieve certain objectives. Payal also demonstrated the economic benefits of telecommunications by stating that for every 10% increase in broadband penetration, increase in GDP of 1.3%. She also examined the broadband ecosystem in India and touched upon future possibilities of increased broadband penetration, such as for formers and the education sector.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Digital Natives</b>, Nishant Shah<br /><b>Nishant Shah</b> shed some light on one of the areas that the Centre for Internet & Society looks at within their research scope, this being the “<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives">Digital Native</a>.” As referred to by Nishant, the Digital Native is not to categorize a specific type of internet user, but can be said for simply any person who is performing a digital action, while doing away with this false dichotomy of age, location, and geography.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Nishant examines varying case studies in which “the digital is empowering natives to not merely be benefactors of change, but agents of change,” from the <a href="http://blog.blanknoise.org/2012/07/i-never-ask-for-it.html">Blank Noise Project</a>’s “I NEVER Ask for it…” campaign in efforts to rethink sexual violence, to <a href="http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/">Matt Harding</a>’s foolish dancing with groups of individuals from all over the world.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As occurrences in the digital realm, however, these often political expressions may be rewritten by the network when picked up as a growing phenomenon, in order to make it accessible to online consumers by the masses. In doing so, the expression is removed from its political context and is presented in the form of nothing more than a fad. For this reason, Nishant stresses the need to become aware of the potential of the internet in becoming an “echo-chamber”—in which forms of expression are amplified and mimicked, resulting in a restructuring of the dynamics surrounding the subject—whether it be videos of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Dorm_Boys">boys lipsyncing to Backstreet Boys</a> in their dorm room going viral, or a strong and malicious movement to punish the Chinese girl who had taken a video of her heinously and wickedly killing a kitten after locating her using the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine">Human Flesh Search Engine</a>.<b><br /></b></p>
<p><b>Fieldwork Presentations</b>, Groupwork</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To end off the day, participant groups presented findings collated from the prior evening’s fieldwork exercise, in which they were to ask strangers in various public places of Pune questions pertaining to themes looked at from within this year’s Institute. Participants were divided into four groups and visited Pune’s FC Road, Mahatma Gandhi Road, and Central Mall.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Groups found that the majority of those interviews primarily accessed the phone via the mobile. There was also a common weariness of using the internet and concern for one’s privacy while doing so, especially with uploading photos to Facebook and online financial transactions. People were also generally concerned about using cyber cafes for fear of one’s accounts being hacked. Generally people suspected that so long as conversations are “private” (i.e. in one’s Facebook inbox), so too are they secure. Just as well, those interviewed shared a sense of security with the use of a password.</p>
<hr />
<h1>Day Six</h1>
<p>February 16, 2014</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><b>Time</b></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><b>Detail</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Wikipedia: Dr. Abhijeet Safai</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Tea-break</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Open Access: Muthu Madhan (TBC)</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Lunch</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Case Studies Groupwork</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Tea-break</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Case Studies Presentations</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the Institute came closer to its end, participants got the opportunity to hear from speakers on topics pertaining the Wikipedia editing in addition to Open Access to scholarly literature. Participants also worked together in groups to examine specific case studies referenced in previous sessions, and then presented their conclusions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Wikipedia</b>, Dr. Abhijeet Safai<br />The Institute was joined by Medical Officer of Clinical Research at Pune’s Symbiosis Centre of Health Care, <b>Dr. Abhijeet Safai</b>, who led a session on Wikipedia. Having edited over 3700 Wikipedia articles, Dr. Abhijeet was able to bring forth his expertise and familiarity in editing Wikipedia to participants so that they would be able to do the same. Introduced within this session were Wikipedia’s different fundamental pillars and codes of conducts to be complied with by all contributors, along with different features and components of Wikipedia articles that one should be aware of when contributing, such as how to cite sources and discuss the contents of an article with other contributors.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Open Access</b>, Muthu Madhan<br /><b>Muthu Madhan</b> joined the Internet Institute while speaking on Open Access (OA) to scholarly literature. Within his session, Muthu examined the historical context within which the scholarly journal had arisen and how the idea of Open Access began within this space. The presence of Open Access in India and other developing nations was also examined in this session, and the concept of Open Data, introduced.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Case Studies</b>, Groupworks</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/11.JPG/image_preview" alt="Pune_Group2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pune_Group2" /><br /></td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/8.JPG/image_preview" alt="Pune_Group" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pune_Group" /><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Participants were split up into groups and assigned particular case studies looked at briefly in previous sessions. Case studies included <a href="http://siditty.blogspot.in/2009/11/things-darkies-say.html"><i>#thingsdarkiessay</i></a><i>,</i> a once trending Twitter hashtag in South Africa which had offended many Americans for its use of “darkie” as a derogatory term; the literary novel, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hindus:_An_Alternative_History"><i>The Hindus</i></a>, which offers an alternative narrative of Hindu history had been banned in India for obscenity; a case in which several users’ avatars had been controlled by another in a virtual community and forced to perform sexual acts, referred to as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_in_Cyberspace"><i>A Rape Happened in Cyber Space</i></a>; and lastly, a pornographic submission website, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_Anyone_Up%3F">Is Anyone Up?</a>, for which content was largely derived from “revenge porn.” Each group then presented on the various perspectives surrounding the issue at hand.<b><br /></b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The Cyborg</b>, Nishant Shah<br />Nishant Shah led an off-agenda session in the evening looking more closely at the notion of the human cyborg. Nishant deconstructs humanity’s relationship to technology, in suggesting that we “think of the human as <i>produced</i> with the technologies… not who <i>produces</i> technology.” Nishant explores the Digital Native as an attained identity for those who, because of technology, restructure and reinvent his or her environment—offline as well as online. Among other ideas shared, Nishant refers to works by Haraway on the human cyborg in illustrating our dependency on technology and our need to care for these technologies we depend on.</p>
<hr />
<h1>Day Seven</h1>
<p>February 17, 2014</p>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p><b>Time</b></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><b>Detail</b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">9.30 a.m. – 11.00 a.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Internet Activism: Laura Stein, <i>Associate Professor, University of Texas </i>and <i>Fulbright Fellow<br /></i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.00 a.m. – 11.15 a.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Tea-break</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">11.15 a.m. – 12.45 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Domestic and International Bodies: Chinmayi Arun, <i>Research Director<br /></i></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">12.45 p.m. – 1.30 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Lunch</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Participant Presentations</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.00 p.m. – 3.15 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Tea-break</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p align="center" style="text-align: center; ">3.15 p.m. – 4.45 p.m.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Hot Question Challenge</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b> </b>The last day of the week-long Internet Institute examined concepts of Internet Activism and Domestic and International Bodies. Some participants led presentations on topics of personal familiarity, before a final wrap-up exercise, calling upon individuals to share any new formulations resulting from the Institute.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Internet Activism</b>, Laura Stein</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/17.JPG/image_preview" alt="Pune_Laura" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pune_Laura" /><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">Associate Professor from the University of Texas, <b>Laura Stein</b>, spoke on activism on the internet. Laura examined some grassroots organizations and movements taking place on the online and the benefits that the internet brings in facilitating their impact, such as its associated low costs, accessibility and possibility for anonymity. Despite the positive effects catalyzed by the internet, Laura stresses that the “laying field is still unequal, and movements are not simply transformed by technology.” Some of the websites exemplifying online activism that were examined within this session includes the <a href="http://www.itgetsbetter.org/">It Gets Better Project</a>, which aims to give hope to LGBT youth facing harassment, and the national election watch by the <a href="http://adrindia.org/">Association for Democratic Reforms</a>. Additionally, Laura spoke on public communication policy, comparing that of the US and India, and how this area of policy may influence media content and practice.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Domestic and International Bodies</b>, Chinmayi Arun<br />As the Internet Institute’s final speaker, Research Director for Communication Governance at National Law University<i> </i>,<b> Chinmayi Arun</b>, explores the network of factors that affect one’s behavior on the internet—these including: social norms, the law, the markets, and architecture. In referring to Lawrence Lessig’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_dot_theory">pathetic dot theory</a>, Chinmayi illustrates how individual’s—the pathetic dots in question—are functions of the interactions of these factors, and in this sense, regulated, and stresses the essential need to understand the system, in order to effectively change the dynamics within it. It is worth noting that not all pathetic dots are equal, and Google’s dot, for example, will be drastically bigger than a single user’s, having more leveraging power within the network of internet bodies. Also demonstrated, is the fact that we must acknowledge the need for regulation by the law to some extent, otherwise, the internet would be a black box where anything goes, putting one’s security at risk of violation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Hot Question Challenge</b><br />The very last exercise of the Institute entailed participants asking each other questions on demand, relating back to different themes looked at within the last week. Participants had the chance, here, to bridge together concepts across sessions, as well as formulate their own opinions, while posing questions to others that they, themselves, were still curious about.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/DSC_0371.JPG/image_large" alt="Pune_Everyone" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pune_Everyone" /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/institute-for-internet-society-2014-pune'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/blog/institute-for-internet-society-2014-pune</a>
</p>
No publishersamanthaAccess to KnowledgeDigital NativesTelecomResearchers at WorkWikipediaAccessibilityInternet GovernanceFeaturedWikimediaOpennessHomepage2014-04-07T11:31:23ZBlog EntryPromoting Life
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/promoting-life
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<div class="kssattr-macro-rich-field-view kssattr-templateId-widgets/rich kssattr-atfieldname-text" id="parent-fieldname-text-822b1c0e-cfc7-4e0c-ae28-6ebdc4a16943"><dl><dt><br /></dt><dt>Name(s)</dt><dd>Mike Hickey</dd><dt>Location</dt><dd>Oswego, United States</dd><dt>Age</dt><dd>21</dd><dt>Profession</dt><dd>I am a full time student who is also a part-time filmmaker.</dd>
<h3>Video Proposal</h3>
</dl>
<p>My video proposal would be centered on my involvement in the electronic music scene. Over the last couple of years I have gained a large following across numerous platforms, including YouTube and Facebook, that puts me as one of the top promoters of this genre. I am an admin on several Facebook pages that total around 200,000 fans. I am a very influential in the music links I post and help shape this music scene to what it is. My video will revolve around this aspect of networking online.</p>
<b>Video Genre</b><br />Documentary</div>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/promoting-life'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/promoting-life</a>
</p>
No publisherstorytellerdubstepDigital Natives2012-03-14T08:38:51ZPageAlternate Visions: Accessing Leisure Through Interfaces
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/alternate-visions-accessing-leisure-through-interfaces
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<dl><dt>Name(s)</dt><dd>Noopur Raval</dd><dt>Location</dt><dd>Delhi, India</dd><dt>Age</dt><dd>23</dd><dt>Profession</dt><dd>Student, researcher</dd>
<h3>Video Proposal</h3>
<p>The video is about a group of kids with different kinds of disabilities (blind, hearing impaired, physical disabilities) wanting a fun day of learning and exploration at their neighborhood Natural
History Museum. The group of 6-year-olds and some older kids have heard that it''s a cool place to
check out first-hand several aspects of nature, biology, physics, evolution, history and culture. However, once they step inside
the museum's premises, they realize that soaking up "learning" isn't as
easy or fun as it seemed. The video narrative will demonstrate how the kids
solve the problem of "access" to the museum's collection, with a little help from digital technology.<em></em></p>
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<dl><dt>Video Genre</dt><dd>Animation</dd></dl>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/alternate-visions-accessing-leisure-through-interfaces'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/alternate-visions-accessing-leisure-through-interfaces</a>
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No publishernoopurDigital Natives2012-02-18T15:18:34ZPageDigital Coverage in a Digital World
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-coverage-in-a-digital-world
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<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XJ0L_X6aPvU" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
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<dl><dt>Name(s)</dt><dd>Thomas Burks</dd><dt>Location</dt><dd>Birmingham, AL USA</dd><dt>Age</dt><dd>26</dd><dt>Profession</dt><dd>Cinematographer</dd>
<h3>Video Proposal</h3>
<p>We have a small production company in Birmingham, Alabama. I was hired on a year ago to do film and commercials for them as they expand into advertising and video coverage of events. We only have about three employees including myself, working out of our homes. We recently acquired a space to open a studio and retail location downtown where we live. We use Facebook, blogs, and viral marketing all the time to get our name out there. Our account executive is constantly monitoring our Facebook for client orders and bookings. We are beginning to use twitter to provide information more fluidly to people. We believe this might be a year of growth for our small company, as we are able to provide better quality content. We're fully digital, constantly updating our websites and blogs, and I believe we would be able to tell a great digital story. We submit numerous small films and skits, we cover awesome concerts, and rely so heavily on the digital world to show our content. This will be the gist of our video.</p>
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<dl><dt>Video Genre</dt><dd>Film</dd></dl>
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<h3>Interview</h3>
<p><strong>What do you understand by the term Digital Native? Do you consider yourself one?</strong><br />The term digital native, I understand, is any person living a lifestyle dominated by technology. It is a facet in their day to day lives and a staple in <br />their structure and organization. I do consider myself a digital native; I spend more time a day dealing with technology than not. I don't think your background could have anything to do with someone's status as a digital native, unless their location and situation would keep them from accessing it. But the beauty of the internet and our way of life is that the world is much smaller today. Our window to the world is becoming a doorway.</p>
<p><strong>There is a perception that a digital native is typical of a young, American geek who’s plugged in to his devices 24x7 and apathetic to social causes. You agree?</strong><br />I agree that this perception exists. Most people's first thought about my country (U.S.) when you think of a techie or a social media addict is a hipster in a coffee shop with an indie band and a hemp beanie. But this is only in my country; I see people of all cultures and creeds flourishing with technology all the time, involved with causes and doing their bit for society, whether they come from America or other countries.</p>
<p><strong>Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?</strong><br />Absolutely! Take the Kony 2012 campaign. Although it ended badly for the director, it caused a major buzz in less than a week. It's only a matter of time before pop culture takes a hold of it and we see it in major media like sitcoms and cartoons. I try to stay involved with film making endeavors going on around my town through Facebook and Twitter. I did a digital ad for "Operation Warm", a charity that provides coats to children in need.</p>
<p><strong>Activism has changed in the last decade. How effective are online campaigns in raising awareness about an issue vis-à-vis onsite deployment?</strong><br />I think it's much more effective than it was five years ago, and seems to still be growing, especially where the younger generation is involved. The only drawback to the effectiveness of digital activism is that it discourages educating yourself about an issue in its entirety. Once again, take Kony2012, so many people took it at face value. But it raised ire with many due to the Foundation's shaky background and vague details. It's easy to get your message to the masses, but it's also easy to not see the whole picture.</p>
<p><strong>Are digital natives taking the easy way out by what critics say is ‘slacktivism’: tweeting, linking and liking about grave social issues?</strong><br />Unfortunately, yes I think so. Some get so wrapped up in "getting their message out" that they don't remember to ACT. You'll affect more lives out there on the street, than you ever will behind a computer. You have to find balance in the two.</p>
<p><strong>A recent example of digital native activism is the Get Kony video campaign. What are your thoughts on the criticism it received?</strong><br />I honestly thought the video was well edited and shot, and delivered a message strongly. But further digging led to details that were not so noble about the Invisible Children’s organization; the possibility that Joseph Kony has not been heard from in years and may be dead. It's just important to step back and say, "Okay, they seem to have a strong argument here, but what if..."</p>
<p><strong>Are we seeing a trend where digital natives are more involved with local causes than with global issues?</strong><br />It's just easier for most people to tackle things close to home, and that's okay. Imagine if EVERYONE focused on their own community and well being, everyone would be better off. That's no reason to try and help someone who's far away, but you can do more good in person than you can do over the internet. It's good to incorporate it into your strategy, but remember it's you actions that count.</p>
<p><strong>Your thoughts on Citizen Action and the use of ICT</strong><br />I think we're going through a transition, people are learning more and more through the internet, and have access to such powerful tools. It's going to be a renaissance of knowledge and creativity. I have learned more technical details for my trade off the internet in a year, than I have during my time in school. It's an exciting time to be alive.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-coverage-in-a-digital-world'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-coverage-in-a-digital-world</a>
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No publishertjburks90Digital Natives2012-04-04T10:53:19ZPage