The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 91 to 105.
-
Mapping Digital Humanities in India - Concluding Thoughts
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/mapping-digital-humanities-in-india-concluding-thoughts
<b>This final blog post on the mapping exercise undertaken by CIS-RAW summarises some of the key concepts and terms that have emerged as significant in the discourse around Digital Humanities in India. </b>
<p><em> </em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The present exercise in mapping Digital Humanities (henceforth DH) in India has brought to the fore several learnings, and challenges in trying to locate the domain of enquiry even as our understanding of what constitutes new objects, methods and forms of research and pedagogy constantly undergo change and redefinition. Even as we wrap up this study, some of the key questions or problems of definition, ontology and method remain with us, as the 'field' as such is incipient in India, as with other parts of the world and the term itself is yet to find a resonance in many quarters, other than a few institutions and a number of individuals. However, what it does do for us immediately, is throw open several questions about how we understand the idea of the 'digital', and what may be the new areas of enquiry for the humanities at large.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We began with the understanding that DH is a new space of interdisciplinary research, scholarship and practice with several possibilities for thinking about the nature of the intersection of the humanities and technology. The term was a little more than a found name of sorts, which since then has taken on various meanings and undergone some form of creative re-appropriation. The ubiquitous history of the term in humanities computing in the Anglo-American context has helped in locating and defining the field globally within the ambit of certain kinds of practices and scholarship in the contemporary moment. As most of the literature around DH even globally has pointed out, the problem with arriving at a definition is ontological, more than epistemological. The conditions of its emergence and existence are yet to be completely understood, although if one is to take into account the larger history of science and technology studies or even cyber/digital culture studies, these 'epistemic shifts' have been in the making for some time now. In India particularly, where a clear picture of the 'field' as such is still to emerge in the form of a theorisation of its key concerns, areas of focus or object of enquiry, it is only through a practice-mapping that one may locate what are at best certain discursive shifts in the way we understand content, structures and methods in the humanities, within the context of the digital. The fundamental premise of the nature of the digital and its relation to the human subject still lacks adequate exploration which would be required to define the contours of the field. The inherited separation of humanities and technology further makes this a complex space to negotiate, when the term may now actually indicate the need to decode the rather tenuous relationship between the two supposedly separate domains.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The question of methodology then comes in as the next most important aspect here, as the method of DH is yet to be clearly defined. At present it looks like a combination and creative appropriation of methodologies drawn from different disciplines and creative practices. The change in the methodology of the humanities and social sciences itself as now longer remaining discipline-specific has been a contributory factor to the evolving methodology of DH. The practice itself is still evolving, and while DH in the Anglo-American context can trace a history in humanities computing, with now an active interest in other spaces where the digital is an inherent part of the discourse, in India there has been little work in mainstream academic spaces such as universities or research centres, and some interest from the information and technology sector. As such the skills and infrastructure needed to work with large data sets and new technologised processes of interpretation and visualisation still remain outside the ambit of the mainstream humanities. This mapping exercise largely relied on interviews as part of its methodology, without any engagement with the actual practice, mainly because of a lack of consensus on what constitutes DH practice. However, through an exploration of allied fields such as media, archival practice, design and education technology, the study tries to locate how certain practices in these areas inform what we understand of DH today.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The archive, media and now to a certain extent art and design have become the sites for most of the discussions around DH in India, primarily because of the nature of institutions and people who have engaged with the question so far. Archival practice has seen a vast change with the onset of digitisation, and the growth of more public and collaborative archival spaces will also bring forth new questions and concepts around the nature of the archive and its imagination as a dynamic space of knowledge production. At a more abstract level, the nature of the text as an unstable object itself, now increasingly being mediated and negotiated in different ways through digital spaces, tools and methods would be one way of locating an object of enquiry in DH and tracing its connection to the humanities, which are essentially still seen as 'text-based disciplines'. What has been a definite shift is the emphasis on process which has become an important point of enquiry, and one of the many axes around which the discourse around DH is constructed. The rethinking of existing processes of knowledge production, including traditional methods of teaching-learning, and the emergence of new tools and methods such as visualisation, data mapping, distant reading and design-thinking at a larger level would be some of the interesting prospects of enquiry in the field. The method of DH is however, necessarily collaborative and distributed at the same time, as evidenced by its practice in these various areas and disciplines.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While in the Anglo-American context the predominant narrative or <em>raison d'etre</em> of DH seems to be the so-called 'crisis' in the humanities, it may after all be just one of reasons, and not a primary cause, at least in the Indian context. Moreover, in a paradoxical sense the emergence of DH has been seen as endangering the future of the traditional humanities, in terms of a move away from certain conventional methods and forms of research and pedagogy. While this may be relevant to our understanding of the emergence of DH, understanding the emergence of the field as resolving a crisis also renders the discourse into a uni-dimensional, problem-solving approach, thus making invisible other factors, such as the technologised history of the humanities or several other factors that have contributed to these changes. The complex and somewhere problematic history of science and technology in India and the growth of the IT sector also forms part of this context, and will inform the manner in which DH grows as a concept, area of enquiry or even as a discipline. DH is yet another manifestation of changes that we have seen in the existing objects, processes, spaces and figures of learning, particularly the open, collaborative and participatory nature of knowledge production and dissemination that has come about with the advent of the internet and digital technologies. More importantly, they also point towards the larger changes in what where earlier considered unifying notions for the university, namely that of reason and culture, which have now moved towards an idea of excellence based on a certain techno-bureaucratic impulse, as noted by Bill Readings in his work on the rise of the post-modern university<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">If one may try to locate within this the debates around DH, the subject of this new discourse around the digital is also now rather unclear. One could explore the notion of the digital humanist, or in a more abstract manner the digital subject as one example of this lack of clarity or the distance between the practice and the subject, which is also why it has been of much concern for several scholars. As Prof. Amlan Dasgupta, with English Department at the University of Jadavpur says, it is difficult to identify such a category of scholars, although a person who is able to situate his work in the digital space with the same kind of ease and confidence that people of a different generation could do in manuscripts and books would perhaps fit this description, and he is sure that such a person may be found. For example someone who knows Shakespeare well and can write a programme, and he is sure a day will come when this is a possibility. It is a familiarity in which the inherent distance between these two pursuits becomes lesser - DH is at that moment - a composite of these two approaches rather than the difference.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While many scholars concur with this explanation, others find the term misleading - humanities scholars do not call themselves 'humanists'. Also, by virtue of being a digital subject, anybody engaged with some form of digital practice is already a digital humanist of some sort. The problem also is in the rather unclear nature of the practice, all of which is not unanimously identified as DH, as a result of which not many scholars would want to identify with the term. As Patrik Svensson (2010) points out "The individual term digital humanist may be problematic because it may seem both too general in not relating to a specific discipline or competence (thus deemphasizing the discipline-specific or professional) and too specific in emphasizing the "digital" part of the scholarly identity (if you are scholar) or giving too much prominence to the humanities part of your professional identity (if you are a digital humanities programmer or a system architect). The more general and non-personal term digital humanities is more inclusive, but somewhat limited because of its lack of specificity and relatively weak disciplinary anchorage. For both variants, there is also a question of whether "the digital" needs to be specified at all, and it is not uncommon <a href="http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/4/1/000080/000080.html#N10309">[9]</a> to encounter the argument that technology and the digital are part or will be part of any academic area, and hence the denotation "digital" is not required" <a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a>. Svensson further points out that since the term, like digital humanities, has proliferated so much in academic spaces, through publishing and funding initiatives that it has become a term of self-identification, but it could be a reference to the digital as 'tool' rather that the object of study itself. However, he also speculates that given digital humanists work across several disciplines, their understanding of humanities as a construct is stronger as the identity is linked to it at large. <a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This debate is importantly, symptomatic of a larger conflict over the authority of knowledge, because of what seems to be a move away from the university to alternate spaces and modes of knowledge production. As Immanuel Wallerstein (1996) suggests, such a conflict of authority has already been documented earlier, in terms of the displacement of theology first and then Newtonian mechanics as dominant sources of knowledge, and the now in the manner in which the separation of disciplines is being challenged. The potential of technology in general and the internet in particular in democratising knowledge has been explored in several cases, with many such online spaces now becoming a suitable 'alternate' to the university mode of teaching and learning. What they have also given rise to are questions about the authenticity of knowledge produced and disseminated and who are the stakeholders in the process. The debates over MOOC's and the Wikipedia, and at some level the criticism that DH and certain methods like distant reading have attracted from traditional humanities scholars are a case in point. However, many of these alternate or liminal spaces have always existed; they are perhaps becoming more visible and acknowledged now. DH, with its emphasis on interdisciplinarity and different kinds of knowledge drawn from a diverse set of practices definitely opens up space for a new mode of questioning; whether all of these different modes of questioning can coalesce as a new discipline or interdisciplinary field in itself will remain to be seen.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>References</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Patrik, Svensson, "The Landscape of Digital Humanities". <em>Digital Humanities Quarterly</em>,4:1 <a href="http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/4/1/000080/000080.html">http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/4/1/000080/000080.html</a> 2010.</li>
<li>Readings, Bill, <em>The University in Ruins</em> Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, pp 1-20.</li>
<li>Wallerstein, Immanuel, "The Structures of Knowledge, or How Many Ways May We Know?" Presentation at "Which Sciences for Tomorrow? Dialogue on the Gulbenkian Report: <em>Open the Social Sciences</em>," Stanford University, June 2-3, 1996 http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/iwstanfo.htm </li></ol>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em> The author would like to thank the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) programme at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore for support towards the fieldwork conducted as part of this mapping exercise, and colleagues at CIS and CSCS for their feedback and inputs<strong>. </strong> </em></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Concepts/Glossary of terms </strong></p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;"> Ontology - A lot of the work being done to define DH is in fact to understand its ontological status, the nature of its being and existence. As pointed out in the part of this section, the difficulty in arriving at a consensus on a definition is largely due to a lack of clarity over the ontological basis of such a field, rather than its epistemological stake, which one may already be able to discern in a few years. There is a slippage due to a lack of connection between the history of the term and its practice, particularly in India, where DH is still a 'found term' of sorts. See <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/a-question-of-digital-humanities"> http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/a-question-of-digital-humanities</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Humanities - The predominant discourse in the Anglo-American context on DH seems to have set it up in a conflict with or as a threat to the traditional humanities disciplines, the causal link here being the 'crisis' of the disciplines. While there is such a narrative of crisis in the Indian con text as well, anything 'digital' is understood in terms of a problem-solving approach, and at another level seeks to further existing concerns of the humanities themselves, such as around the text. The important shift that DH may open up here is in terms of thinking about the inherited separation of technology and the humanities, and if it indeed possible now to think of a technologised history of the humanities.See <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/a-question-of-digital-humanities"> http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/a-question-of-digital-humanities</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Digital - the debate around and interest in DH has reinforced the need for a larger and more elaborate exploration of the 'digital' itself, and as mentioned in an earlier post, deciphering the nuances of the current state of digitality we inhabit will be key to understanding the field of DH much better. This is challenging because India is a mutli-layered technological landscape, which is also quite dynamic, ever-changing and in a period of transition to the digital. Taking this back to more fundamental questions of technology and its relation to the subject would also provide more insights into DH.See <a href="http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/digital-humanities-problem-of-definition"> http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/digital-humanities-problem-of-definition</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Subject - DH is a manifestation of the relationship between technology and the human subject, and provides different ways to negotiate the same. The 'digital humanist' as the likely subject of this discourse has remained largely undefined in this series of explorations, partly because of the lack of resonance with the term among humanities scholars and the fact that everybody at some level is already a digital subject, and therefore a digital humanist. An exploration of how the digital constitutes or constructs a subject position is likely to reveal better the nuances of this term and the reason for its relation to or distance from the practice.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Method - the methodology of a discipline is the connection between theory and field of practice, and the method of DH is still being developed. Whether it is data mining, distant reading, cultural informatics, sentiment analysis or creative visualisations of data sets drawing from aspects of media, art and design, the methodology and interests of DH are necessarily diverse and interdisciplinary. In many a case the distinction among methods, content and forms do blur as newer modes or approaches to DH come into being. This becomes a particular problem in understanding DH in the context of pedagogy and curricular resources, and would therefore require a rethinking of the understanding of a singular methodology itself.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Archive - A large part of the DH work in India seems to be focussed around the archive - both as a concept and practice. With the digital becoming in a sense the default mode of documentation across the humanities disciplines, and the opening up of the archive due to more public and digital archival efforts, the concept of the archive and archival practice have undergone several changes in terms of becoming now more networked and accessible. As mentioned earlier, we are living in an archival moment where there is a transition from analogue to digital, and it is in this moment of transition that a lot of new questions around data and knowledge will emerge. See http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/living-in-the-archival-moment.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Text - the text has been one of significant aspects of the DH debate, given that the academic discourse on DH in the West and now in India is primarily located in English departments. The understanding of the text as object, method and practice as mediated through digital spaces and tools is an important part of the discourse around DH, and has implications for how we understand changes in the nature of the text, and reading and writing as technologised processes in the digital context. See http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/reading-from-a-distance.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Process: An important point of emphasis in DH has been that of process, perhaps even more than content or outcomes. Given that the method of DH is collaborative and peer-to-peer, the processes of doing, making or teaching-learning etc become increasingly visible and important to understanding the nature of the field and knowledge production itself. More importantly, it also seeks to bring in the practitioner's experience into the realm of research and pedagogy.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Liminal : DH is a good example of a liminal space; which is a space that is on both sides of a threshold or boundary, and is therefore at some level undefined and transitional. The liminal space is often located at the margin of a body of knowledge or discipline, and it is at the margins of disciplines that new knowledge is produced. The discourse and even criticism around DH highlights the difficulties with defining the present nebulous nature of these liminal spaces and what they could transform into in the future. See http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/digital-humanities-and-alt-academy.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Interdisciplinarity - Closely tied to the notion of liminal spaces is the notion of interdisciplinarity. DH by nature is interdisciplinary, given that it draws upon methods and concerns from the other disciplines, but instead of limiting the definition to just this, it also provides a space to understand the challenges of negotiating and using an interdisciplinary approach to the humanities and other disciplines and develop these questions further. See http://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/digital-humanities-and-alt-academy. </li></ol>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="100%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> See Bill Readings, <em>The University in Ruins</em> Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, pp 1-20.</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> See Patrik Svensson. "The Landscape of Digital Humanities". <em>Digital Humanities Quarterly</em>,4:1 <a href="http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/4/1/000080/000080.html">http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/4/1/000080/000080.html</a></p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> <em> Ibid.</em></p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/mapping-digital-humanities-in-india-concluding-thoughts'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/mapping-digital-humanities-in-india-concluding-thoughts</a>
</p>
No publisher
sneha-pp
Digital Knowledge
Mapping Digital Humanities in India
Research
Featured
Digital Humanities
Researchers at Work
2015-11-13T05:36:10Z
Blog Entry
-
Rethinking Conditions of Access
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/lila-inter-actions-october-14-2014-rethinking-conditions-of-access
<b>P. P. Sneha explores the possibilities of redefining the idea of access through the channels of education and learning. </b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The advent and pervasive growth of the internet and digital technologies in the last couple of decades have caused several changes in the way we now imagine education and processes of learning, both within and outside the classroom. The increasing use of digital tools, platforms and methods in classroom pedagogy, and the access for students to resources through online and collaborative repositories such as Wikipedia have led to a change in not just teaching practices, but also in the learning environment, which has now become more open, iterative and participatory in nature. While increased access to the internet may be one factor contributing to this change, the conditions of such access – how it is made available, to whom and for what purpose – still remain contentious. As per recent statistics, India has more than 200 million internet users, but as several studies on online users have illustrated, the numbers are hardly indicative of the nature of online engagement. The problem of the ‘digital divide’, though much debated and addressed, still persists in India, as in several other countries, with lack of infrastructure and low broadband speed being two among several reasons for the slow move in bridging this gap.</p>
<div><a class="hasimg" href="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/digital_inclusion_index_map_thumb.jpg"><img src="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/digital_inclusion_index_map_thumb.jpg" alt="null" height="199" width="335" /><img class="himage" src="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/digital_inclusion_index_map_thumb-bw.jpg" alt="null" height="199" width="335" /></a></div>
<div>Last year, the Digital Inclusion Index map indicated India as only BRICS country ‘at extreme risk’ on the ‘digital divide’</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The problem of the digital divide itself has largely been understood as one of access to the internet and/or broadly digital technologies, but the conditions of this access, in terms of the nature of its use and adaptability to a dynamic and ever-changing technological landscape is something that needs to be looked at critically, in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of the problem itself, and its inherent conflicts. The technological landscape we inhabit today is quite diverse, and rather multi-layered, as a result of which conditions of access also differ across spaces and in degrees. The problematisation, therefore, will need to be more qualitative and nuanced, to take into account several variables spread over social, cultural and economic categories.</p>
<p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-4133" src="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/quote-internet-speed-ps-1.png" alt="quote internet speed ps 1" height="580" width="195" /></p>
<div class="hyphenate">
<p style="text-align: justify;">The assumption of the internet, as an open and accessible, therefore neutral space, has also been questioned time and again, with the latest debates around net neutrality being illustrative of this conflict. Though there is a growing interest in exploring and using the democratic potential that the internet offers, as demonstrated by several forms of online social activism and the growth of open access digital knowledge repositories and public archival spaces, there are also pertinent concerns about privacy, accessibility and the quality of online interaction and content. A large part of this uncertainty and the conflicts we see around access and regulation may be attributed to the fact that the nature of the internet, or the digital itself as concept, method or space has not been adequately explored or theorised. As a public sphere, it often reprises certain systemic forms of injustice and marginalisation seen offline, and conflates them with notions pertaining to the personal. As such, social, economic and linguistic barriers mediate the access we have to certain kinds and forms of discourse online, thereby making physical access the first step towards being part of the labyrinthian world that is the internet.</p>
<div><a class="hasimg" href="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/maharashtra_farmers_computers_20060821.jpg"><img src="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/maharashtra_farmers_computers_20060821.jpg" alt="null" height="231" width="335" /><img class="himage" src="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/maharashtra_farmers_computers_20060821-bw.jpg" alt="null" height="231" width="335" /></a></div>
<div>How can e-learning start, when the general access is very fragmented?</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">These conflicts are present in the classroom and other spaces and processes of learning as well, where traditionally there has been resistance to the use of technology, and particularly the internet as it is seen as a disturbance or a deterrent to learning. But technology has always been a part of the classroom, and now with the mobile phone becoming ubiquitous, it is indeed difficult to imagine that a student who has access to such a device would be disconnected from the internet, or not look toward other digital tools and methods to engage with, for educational or recreational purposes. However, indeed, how much of this engagement is effectively connected to learning is still a bone of contention, and is yet to be explored adequately.</p>
</div>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-4134" src="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/quote-internet-speed-ps-2.png" alt="quote internet speed ps 2" height="430" width="195" /></p>
<div class="hyphenate">
<p style="text-align: justify;">What are the changes in the learning environment that the advent of digital technologies has produced? What challenges do they pose for both teachers and students? And what are the possible solutions that these areas of research are opening up? A more integrated and inclusive approach in designing methods and tools for use in the classroom could be one way of making issues and conflicts in this space more transparent. Several efforts in education technology and experiments in digital learning have focused precisely on this aspect. The sheer visibility and vastness of the internet offers several possibilities in terms of access to materials, tools and resources online. Several large-scale efforts in digitisation made by both the state and public organisations are attempts to utilise this potential, and they speak of the growing interest in making material available online for both classroom teaching and research.</p>
<div><a class="hasimg" href="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Mooc-vs-University-in-2013-584x1024.jpg"><img src="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Mooc-vs-University-in-2013-584x1024.jpg" alt="null" height="587" width="335" /><img class="himage" src="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Mooc-vs-University-in-2013-584x1024-bw.jpg" alt="null" height="587" width="335" /></a></div>
<div>The MOOCs are slowly challenging the universities<a title="MOOCs vs. Universities" href="http://www.lilainteractions.in/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Mooc-vs-University-in-2013-584x1024.jpg" target="_blank">. See the image full screen</a></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The growth of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is an example of the fervour of online platforms of learning, which provide students across the world with an access to teaching and course material from some of the best institutions. However, there have been, at least in their earlier versions, several critiques of these platforms, as well, precisely because they replicate a certain classroom teaching model that is not accessible to students everywhere. This urges us to revisit the premise of such structures.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The ‘digital turn’ in the last couple of decades has engendered several changes in the way knowledge is now produced, disseminated and consumed by people located in different areas. It has also created a need to constantly rethink existing systems of learning we have in place, to plug the gaps that develop between people, skills and resources. It is only through more attempts to problematise the notion of access qualitatively, and to better understand the role of digital technologies and the internet in terms of changes in learning environments, that we may be able to understand and utilise its potential to the best.</p>
</div>
<hr />
<div style="text-align: justify;" class="hyphenate"><strong>P.P. Sneha</strong> works with the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. She has a Master’s degree in English, and has previously worked in the area of higher education. This essay is a reflection on some of the learnings from projects on the quality of access to higher education and a mapping of the digital landscape and the growth of Digital Humanities in India, conducted by the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) programme at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (with support from the Ford Foundation), and the CIS. The original post can be <a class="external-link" href="http://www.lilainteractions.in/internet-slowdown-day/">read here</a>.</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/lila-inter-actions-october-14-2014-rethinking-conditions-of-access'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/lila-inter-actions-october-14-2014-rethinking-conditions-of-access</a>
</p>
No publisher
sneha
Digital Knowledge
Mapping Digital Humanities in India
Research
Digital Humanities
Researchers at Work
2015-11-13T05:35:00Z
Blog Entry
-
Consultation on Figures of Learning in the Digital Context - Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/consultation-new-figures-of-learning-in-digital-context
<b>The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society organised a consultation on ‘Figures of Learning in the Digital Context’ on September 22, 2014 in Bangalore. </b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Conducted as part of its ‘Making Methods for Digital Humanities’ project, the discussion was an attempt to examine changes in the learning environment with the advent of digital technologies and new modes of knowledge production by mapping concepts and changes around a set of figures of learning, old and new, to understand the discursive shifts that produce and locate them in the contemporary moment. (See the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/events/consultation-on-new-figures-of-learning-in-digital-context" class="external-link">concept note here</a>).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Making Methods project seeks to make specific interventions in structures of learning, methods of storing and documenting information, and processes of interaction and interface design, in an effort to describe and queer the contours of what we understand as the field of Digital Humanities today.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The consultation brought together a small but diverse set of people from different fields. Participants presented on figures of learning drawn from their own fields of research and practice. Archana Prasad, artist and founder of <a href="http://jaaga.in/">JAAGA,</a> Bangalore spoke about the organisation and its growth as an alternative space for learning through collaborative processes in art, design and technology – the studio space made of pallet racks, its various projects and groups that converge at JAAGA reflect this diversity and interdisciplinarity. She spoke about changes in her own role from being a facilitator for diverse groups to come together, to becoming more of a mentor in the later years, the problems of sustainability of such a space and the efforts made through different projects in emphasising learning though peer-to-peer methods. Interesting projects in focus were the participatory artwork and reality game called <a href="http://investmentzone.info/">Investmentzone</a> which is an effort to collaboratively work and transform public spaces and the JAAGA residential study programme. The discussions were useful in understanding processes that can be used to foster alternative and participatory learning environments.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Asim Siddiqui, Ph.D. student at the <a href="http://barefootphilosophers.wordpress.com/">Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities</a>, used the figure of the ‘performer’ to talk about his research enquiry into the philosophy of performative art traditions and the role of the body, performance and practice in learning. He spoke about the relative passivity of the body in the classroom, and the predominance of certain normative discourses within which teaching-learning practices operate and therefore produce a sort of instrumental form of knowledge, which he found problematic. He drew from examples of embodied action in dance, theatre and music to look at how some of these nuances and conflicts may be brought into classroom pedagogy to make it more illustrative and inclusive. This led to an interesting discussion around problems with current teaching-learning practices and the lack of adequate measures to make them contextual and relevant to students’ lived experience. The digital now bringing in a different dimension to learning and the lack of an understanding of the body in the digital space as preventing the possibility of a somatic element to knowledge was also discussed. The problem of disciplinary constraints and the separation of humanities and social sciences came up with reference to technology becoming more prominent in classrooms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Bitasta Das, instructor and coordinator of the <a href="http://www.iisc.ernet.in/ug/">UG Humanities programme</a> at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore spoke further on this issue of separation of the disciplines from her experience of teaching in the UG programme. Her presentation on the ‘distracted inventor’ focussed on the role of technology in the classroom, and how there is a need for teachers to constantly innovate to keep students engaged, particularly in a course such as this. The notion of distraction was a useful contrast to the attention economy debates that have become increasingly prevalent. The possibility of distraction as serendipitous and productive, particularly in science which is also a space of invention and discovery was discussed as one way of taking the idea forward. Some of the work done by students in the programme, under the larger rubric of integration of disciplines, was also presented in the consultation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Nishant Shah presented on the idea of the production of error in computing, which is also the result of a deliberate and long process or history which can be traced from scribes copying texts to print culture and now to the machine itself, which also produces or re-produces error. He spoke about the gap between the interface and the information that a person consumes in the digital context, which is contrary to what is understood by abbreviations such as Garbage In Garbage Out (GIGO). He sought to critically examine this notion of transparency that the digital supposedly provides, when in effect the notion of error is as much present, but is being effectively effaced in various ways. The production of error therefore is an interesting process in signifying the limits of knowledge, and he proposed the idea of using the figure of the hipster to further explore this process of error or the glitch as a productive one.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Ekta Mittal , media practitioner and one of the founder-members of the media and arts collective <a href="http://maraa.in/about/our-team/">Maraa</a> presented on the figure of the worker, drawing on her research and work on a film on the Bangalore Metro construction workers. The attempt was to break through the existing discourse and simple binaries to present multiple meanings of the city, migrant labour, development, and new narratives of freedom and pleasure. Through documentation of the lives of labourers who belong to different parts of the country and their stories of migration, some of them illegal, and the question of identity and livelihood the film tries to dislocate the figure of the worker from a certain predominant discourse of the marginalised and invisible. The figure of the worker as a ghost, poet, wanderer, and now a lurker who often favours his condition of anonymity and invisibility is something that the presentation also focussed on as a way to take these ideas forward.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The consultation brought together a small but interesting set of people and ideas, this time specifically looking at diverse art and classroom teaching - learning practices. It also brought to the fore several unconventional processes of learning such as gamification, distraction, performance and embodied action that are outside the traditional notion of learning in the context of digital technologies. These ideas would contribute to further initiatives in engaging with larger questions about technology and processes of knowledge production.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/consultation-new-figures-of-learning-in-digital-context'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/consultation-new-figures-of-learning-in-digital-context</a>
</p>
No publisher
sneha
Research
Researchers at Work
Digital Knowledge
Figures of Learning
2015-11-13T05:37:04Z
Blog Entry
-
Consultation on Figures of Learning in the Digital Context
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/consultation-on-new-figures-of-learning-in-digital-context
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society welcomes you to a consultation on new figures of learning in the digital context at its office in Bangalore on September 22, 2014 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>The increasing prevalence of the internet and digital technologies today has engendered a new kind of learning environment, which is connected and collaborative, yet also focussed on the individual, with an emphasis on practice. The pervasive influence of technology in teaching-learning practice has also resulted in new tools, processes and platforms, which have added dimensions to learning, and led to the creation of new bodies of knowledge in the digital context. These new figures, spaces, objects and processes, often challenge and inflate given notions of expertise and authority, increasingly locating them outside the familiar framework of the university and a traditional classroom-based approach to learning.</p>
<p>While the processes of knowledge production have been rapidly changing in the last couple of decades, some examples being data mining, distant reading, cultural mapping and design thinking as new ways of parsing, organising, curating and processing information or knowledge, traditionally the point of reference for authoritative ‘figures’ of learning remains the same. These are that of the teacher, facilitator, reader, student, participant etc. However, with the emergence of such new processes of knowledge-making which are largely located in the digital context, one can see the presence of some non-traditional figures of knowledge as well – such as the geek, hacker, blogger, story-teller, worker, designer, activist etc. There are figures which, consciously or unconsciously subvert and redefine certain conventions of knowledge-making practices, by inventing new terms or redefining old ones. More importantly, the emergence of this nomenclature is symptomatic of a change in the predominant discourse that constitutes a particular kind of ‘digital subject’ or entity that inhabits the digital in a particular way.</p>
<p>The present consultation is an exercise to map these concepts and changes around a set of figures of learning, old and new, to understand the discursive shifts that produce them and locate them in the contemporary moment. Participants from diverse areas of research and practice would be invited to make a short ten minute presentation on one such figure, drawn from their area of interest and work, and examine the concepts or notions behind them. This will be followed by group discussions and a 30 minute writing sprint at the end of the consultation to consolidate the discussion.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/consultation-on-new-figures-of-learning-in-digital-context'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/consultation-on-new-figures-of-learning-in-digital-context</a>
</p>
No publisher
praskrishna
RAW Events
Digital Knowledge
Research
Figures of Learning
Researchers at Work
Event
2015-11-13T05:39:00Z
Event
-
Digital Humanities and the Alt-Academy
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/digital-humanities-and-alt-academy
<b>The emergence of Digital Humanities (DH) has been contemporaneous to the ‘crisis’ in the humanities, spurred by changing social and economic conditions which have urged us to rethink traditional methods, locations and concepts of research and pedagogy. This blog post examines the emergence of the phenomenon of the alt-academy in the West, and examines the nuances and possibilities of such a space in the Indian context.</b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">From a brief exploration of the problem of new objects and methods of research in the digital context, we have come to or rather returned to the problem of location or contextualising DH, and whether it may be called a field or discipline in itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As some of the previous <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/digital-humanities-problem-of-definition">blog posts</a> have illustrated, most of the prominent debates around DH have largely been within the university context, or have least focussed around the university as the centre, and therefore emphasise the move away from more traditional ways of doing humanities, or at a larger level the more established and disciplinary modes of knowledge formation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In the context of pedagogy, DH seems to be developing in a very specific role, which is that of training in a certain set of skills and areas which the existing disciplines have so far not been able to provide. The university or more specifically the traditional classroom offers a specific kind of teachinglearning experience which may not always have within its ambit the necessary resources or strategies to foster new methods of knowledge production, and a lot of DH work has been posited as trying to plug knowledge gaps in precisely this area.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The notion of a ‘digital classroom’ has been made possible by the proliferation of new digital tools and the internet; with increased access to open access archives and dynamic knowledge repositories such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a>, there is a move towards a more open, participatory and customised model of learning based on collaboration.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">DH has been characterised by many as a space, or method that intervenes in the traditional ‘hierarchies of expertise’ <a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a> —– not only in terms of people but also spaces, methods and objects of learning — to present a significant ‘alternative’ that is now slowly becoming more mainstream. A rather direct example of this is the growth of a number of ‘alt- academics’ <a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a> who now inhabit what previously seemed to be a rather nebulous space between academics and an array of practices in computing, art and community development among many others. However, it is the in-between, or the liminal space that holds the potential for new kinds of knowledge to be generated. The connotations of this notion however are many and problematic, as seen particularly in the emphasis on new kinds of skills or competences that is now required to inhabit such a space, as also the narrative of loss of certain critical skills that are part of the disciplinary method and the resistance from certain quarters to the university to acknowledge such a trend. Conversely, it is also reflective of how certain kinds of skills in writing, reading, visualisation and curation have now become essential and therefore visible. It may be useful to explore this change further to arrive at some idea of whether such a space exists in the Indian context, and how it informs the way we conceptualise DH; as practitioners, researchers, teachers or the lay person.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This state of being within and to a certain extent outside of a certain predominant discourse is a peculiar one with several possibilities, and DH, owing to its interdisciplinary content and methods, seems to be a suitable space to foster these new and alternate knowledge-making practices.While the early DH debates in the Anglo-American context seemed to be dominated by certain disciplines like English, media studies and computational and information sciences, practitioners and researchers alike have branched out significantly, with research focussing more on questions of data-mining, mapping and visualisation with an increasing focus on processes and design, and using a diverse range of texts or objects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In India, which significantly borrows the discourse from the same context, and also is still a multi-layered technological space very much in a moment of transition to the digital, the debates remain largely confined to the English and History departments and to some extent library and archival spaces. Outside of the academic circle however, there are a number of initiatives, such as online archival efforts, media, art and design practices and research (some discussed in the earlier blog posts as well), which would be likely spaces where one may see DH–related work being done. An important part of the discourse in the context of education is the access to and a more substantial and critical engagement with technology in the classroom. Educational or instructional technology has grown by leaps and bounds in the last decade or so in India, as evidenced by the number of initiatives taken to introduce ICTs in the classroom, and this has been supported by several large-scale digitisation projects as well but the digital divide still persists, as a result of which these initiatives come with a peculiar set of problems of their own (as discussed in the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/living-in-the-archival-moment">earlier blog post</a> on archival practice) the most important being the lack of connection among such practices, research and pedagogy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While education technology is a separate field which works on better interactions between teaching-learning practices and technology, it does form part of the context within which DH is to develop either as a discipline, practice or a pedagogic approach, and the two areas are very often conflated in some parts of the discourse in India. While moving beyond the ICTs debate — which is premised primarily around access to knowledge, DH has been posited as making an intervention into prevailing systems of knowledge — so that the mode of understanding both technology and the humanities, and the interaction between the two domains (assuming that they are separate) undergoes a significant change.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">What then goes into promoting more institutional stability for DH, in other words, in teaching and learning it — will be a question to contend with in the years to come, as more universities take to incubating research around digital technologies and related components and incorporating this into the existing curricula.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Dr. Abhijit Roy, Assistant Professor at the Department of Media, Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University speaks about the changes he sees in pedagogy and research with the advent of digital technologies, particularly in traditional humanities disciplines like History and languages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While some of these changes are elementary, such as the use of digital technologies in classroom teaching and learning exercises, it is in the practice of research, which he sees even with his students now, through the use of blogs and social media and the possibilities to publish and engage in discussions with other researchers through platforms like Academia.edu or <a href="http://scalar.usc.edu/scalar/">Scalar,</a> that he finds a vast change. It not only makes the process more transparent but also encourages an ethos of constant sharing, dissemination and a network of usage and storage online. This has transformed the way research and pedagogy can be imagined now, and opened up several possibilities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It is in realising this potential for new research and pedagogical models that universities have slowly begun to adopt digital technologies but the institutional efforts at building curricula specifically around DH-related concerns have been few with the prominent ones in India being the courses at Jadavpur University and Presidency University in Kolkata.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Curriculum development in DH comes with its own issues too, and they stem largely from the fact that one is still unable to understand fully the nature of the digital and its facets — we also inhabit a time when there is a transition from analogue to digital — but the rate of change is faster than with other domains of knowledge, so much so that the curricula developed may often seem provisional or arcane, which makes it doubly challenging to demonstrate its various facets in practice, particularly in the classroom. A useful distinction would be between DH being brought in as a problem-solving approach to address the extant issues of the humanities (thus also seen as a threat to the disciplines themselves), and having its own epistemological concerns which may be related to but also distinct from the humanities - in short to help us ask new questions, or provide new ways of asking old ones.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">What this essentially refers to is the alternate modes of knowledge production that an increased interaction with digital and internet technologies now engenders. Wikipedia is an existing example of this, and illustrates some of the core concerns of and about DH as it calls into question notions about authorship, expertise and established models of pedagogy and learning. Lawrence Liang describes this as a larger conflict over the authority of knowledge, <a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a> the origins of which he locates in the history of the book, and specifically in the print revolution and pre-print cultures of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. He likens the debate over Wikipedia’s credibility, or more broadly over technologies of collaborative knowledge production ushered in by the internet to similar phenomena seen before in early print culture and how it contributed to the construction and articulation of the idea of authority itself. He says: “The authority of knowledge is often spoken of in a value-neutral and a historical manner. It would therefore be useful to situate authority in history, where it is not seen to be an <em>inherent </em>quality but a <em>transitive </em>one 6<a name="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a> located in specific technological changes. For instance, there is often an unstated assumption about the stability of the book as an object of knowledge but the technology of print originally raised a host of questions about authority. In the same way, the domain of digital collaborative knowledge production raises a set of questions and concerns today, such as the difference between the expert and the amateur, as well as between forms of production: digital versus paper and collaborative versus singular author modes of knowledge production. Can we impose the same questions that emerged over the centuries in the case of print to a technology that is barely ten years old?”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">He further goes on to elaborate that the question of the authority of knowledge should ideally be located within a larger ‘knowledge apparatus’, comprising of certain technologies and practices, (in this case that of reading, writing, editing, compilation, classification and creative appropriations) which help inflate the definitions of authority and knowledge even more.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The above argument throws into sharp relief the notion of the ‘alternate’— often posited as the outlier or a vantage point, or even as being in resistance to a certain dominant discourse or body of knowledge.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While resistance itself is discursive; the ‘alternate’ has also always existed in various forms, such as the pre-print cultures illustrated in the argument above, and particularly in India where several kinds of practices and occupations are but alternatives — from alternative medicine to education — to the already established system in place. As mentioned earlier, these practices may just be increasingly visible and acknowledged now.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The attempts to subsume these alternate practices, which began as and may perhaps have been relegated to the status of a sub-culture for long within academia then seem to be one way of trying to circumvent the authority of knowledge question. Another aspect of this is the invisible ‘technologised’ history of the humanities, which therefore prompts us to rethink the separation between the humanities and technology as mutually exclusive domains. By extension then, the term DH itself therefore may be a misnomer or yet another creative re-appropriation of various knowledge practices already in existence. This is perhaps the underlying challenge to the ontological and epistemological stake in the field.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">At best then DH may be seen as the result of a set of changes in the last couple of decades, the advancements in technology being at the forefront of them, whereby certain new and alternative modes of knowledge production have been brought to the foreground, which have also challenged the manner in which we asked questions before to a certain extent. As the field gains institutional stability, it remains to be seen what the new areas of enquiry that emerge shall then be in the years to come.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> References: </strong></p>
<ol>
<li># Alt-Academy: 01 - Alternative Careers for Humanities Scholars, July 2011 Accessed July 27, 2014 http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/ </li>
<li>Davidson, Cathy N. & David Theo Goldberg, <em> The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning) ( Cambridge: </em> MIT Press, 2010) Accessed March 15, 2014 http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/future-thinking</li>
<li>See Liang, Lawrence “A Brief History of the Internet from the 15<sup>th</sup> to the 18<sup>th </sup>century” in INC Reader#7 Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader, Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz (eds), Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011, p.50-62 </li></ol>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<hr />
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> . See Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo. Goldberg, <em> The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning Cambridge: </em> <em> </em> MIT Press, 2010</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> . For more on this see # Alt-Academy: 01 - Alternative Careers for Humanities Scholars, July 2011 http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-ac/</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> . See Lawrence Liang, “A Brief History of the Internet from the 15<sup>th</sup> to the 18<sup>th</sup> Century” in INC Reader#7Critical Point ofView: A Wikipedia Reader, Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz (eds), Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<p><a name="_ftn4" href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> Adrian John’s as quoted in Liang. See Adrian Johns, <em>The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making</em>, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998.</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/digital-humanities-and-alt-academy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/digital-humanities-and-alt-academy</a>
</p>
No publisher
sneha
Digital Knowledge
Mapping Digital Humanities in India
Research
Digital Humanities
Researchers at Work
2015-11-13T05:29:48Z
Blog Entry
-
Interviews with App Developers: [dis]regard towards IPR vs. Patent Hype – Part II
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/interviews-with-app-developers-dis-regard-towards-ipr-vs-patent-hype-2013-part-ii
<b>The following is a second post within a series reporting on interviews conducted with 10 of Bangalore's mobile app developers and other industry stakeholders. Within this research, CIS attempts to understand how they engage with the law within their practice, particularly with respect to IP. Here we examine how these developers responded to a question on legal protection for their works.</b>
<p align="justify">Before one can identify the solution, one must first identify the problem. Yet, in order to understand the problem, we must first understand the individuals involved and the how the problem affects these individuals. We hope that the findings of this preliminary research initiative will provide sufficient groundwork to understand the problems that exist and the different ways of approaching them before determining the most suitable prospective option in changes at the policy level. In this case, the individuals under study are the key contributors to the mobile app space within India; and the problem, being those faced by them as they attempt to navigate an emerging and ambiguous ecosystem.</p>
<p align="justify">Previously, we looked at responses that were given across these mobile app developers interviewed which revealed how they orient notions of intellectual property within their practice and own products, specifically. Findings that were made included deductions that the majority of those interviewed developed mobile app products for clients, and in turn assigned ownership of their products to their clients. Just as well, they commonly shared an interest in leaving the services sector to create products of their own, with some of them already having made the transition within their business model.</p>
<h3><b>Question 2: “How is your IP protected?”</b></h3>
<p align="justify">Next, we asked how they go about protecting their intellectual property to get a feel of who is protecting their apps and who is not. In asking this question, we hoped to learn how they go about protecting their work via legal means. Across their various responses, we observed many patterns and contradictions which are conveyed here with reference to comments made across interviews. It is important to note, however, that no causal relations intend for be argued for, only suggested correlations.</p>
<p><b>How they responded</b></p>
<p align="justify">When asked, those interviewed responded with a variance in answers. Some simply stated that their work is not protected, while a few mentioned that they acquired trademark or intend to apply for trademark protection. One interviewee had a patent pending in India and the US, as well. In many of our conversations, developers mentioned that their code for their apps is under open source licenses, and a couple others entailed sharing that the content is under creative commons licenses, “individual licenses,” or joint copyright. Additionally, within one interview, one mentioned the use of encryption tools as a technical means of protection for their work.</p>
<div class="pullquote" style="text-align: justify; ">“The concept of securing IP is relatively new within the Indian context... it becomes a question of priority between innovation and protection" — Aravind Krishnaswamy, Levitum</div>
<p align="justify">Of the developers interviewed, many exhibited some sort of confusion or misunderstanding related to the protection of their works by means of intellectual property rights (IPR). Those interviewed seemed to either express an interest to acquire IPR in the future for their products in the forms of patent or trademark protection, or expressed their appreciation for openness source licensing—or both! Beneath these immediate responses, however, many repeated patterns, as well as contradictions, are revealed. Conversations that followed within these interviewed entailed the opportunity to hear from personal experiences and opinions on different areas within their practice intersecting IPR.</p>
<p><b>Reasons for IPR protection</b></p>
<p align="justify">If a startup or SME is bootstrapped with very little cash flow to begin with, what would provoke or inspire one to pursue the process of acquiring patent protection then? Aravind Krishnaswamy of startup, <a class="external-link" href="http://levitum.in/">Levitum</a>, considers “the concept of securing IP is relatively new within the Indian context.” So if this is the case, why did so many developers interviewed express an interest in IPR?</p>
<p align="justify">For those who did express interest in acquiring IPR as protection for their mobile app products, most seemed to express an interest in proving ownership over their work, or preventing problems in the future. One developer's commented on how the mobile app market is a “new and potentially volatile area for software development.” For this reason, it was imperative that he and his team attempted to avoid trouble in the future, and ensure that they going about mobile app development the right and moral way.</p>
<p align="justify">Within another interview, developer, John Paul of mobile app SME, Plackal, explains his motives for seeking to acquire patent protection, the application for which is currently pending in India and the US: "For us, applying for a patent is primarily defensive. And if it does get infringed upon, it would give us a good opportunity to generate revenue from it." For the company's trademark, they sought to be able to enforce their ownership over their product's brand: “As a precautionary, we've trademarked the app so that should there be a situation where the app is pirated, we can claim ownership for that app.”</p>
<p><b>Security not so easily attainable</b></p>
<div class="pullquote">“To some extent, IPR law is only accessible after moving away from the startup phase."—John Paul, Plackal</div>
<p align="justify">However, for the startup especially, such protection does not come without a cost. For this reason, IPR is generally perceived as a gamble or tradeoff. It becomes a “question of priority between innovation and protection,” says Krishnaswamy. He continues in saying that, "I feel like even if it’s a great idea if someone else copies it, that’s some level of validation, but as a small company I’d rather be nimble in terms of how we build it up and get it to a certain point. We're trying to move fast and get something going, and then figure it out.” For Krishnaswamy and his team, securing a patent on an area where they feel they feel they have unique work is on their list of things to do, “It's something for us to revisit in the future.”</p>
<p align="justify">Paul explains that he and his team didn't always have IPR within reach: “To some extent, IPR law is only accessible after moving away from the startup phase.” So what discourages startups from acquiring IPR, or simply seeking it out?</p>
<p align="justify">Patent attorney and IP consultant, Arjun Bala explains that “there is a lot to figure out. One aspect is filling it out, the other is how you write it so that it is easily granted and gives you the right sort of patent protection you are looking for. It is a very complex process that requires a lot of technical and legal expertise.” But even if one successfully manoeuvres the IPR system, is protection guaranteed?</p>
<p align="justify">Business Financial Strategist of Out Sourced CFO & Business Advisory Services, Jayant Tewari, illustrates the lack of security for the SME in the patent system, specifically, in saying, “Since a patent becomes public domain on filing, it can be effectively infringed based on the filing, even before it is granted.” Tewari continues in stressing the irrelevance of patents for SMEs due to the difficulty of enforcement: “the infringement will be adjudicated after 2 years at an immense cost to the SME patent-holder, who will go commercially belly-up due to the infringement. The regime does not protect the SME at all.”</p>
<div class="pullquote" style="text-align: justify; ">“It is easy to say 'this is the method and no once can copy', but unless the look and feel is the same, it is very hard to demonstrate that you have been infringed on.” <br />—Samuel Mani, Mani Chengappa & Mathur</div>
<p><b>Nevermind enforcement...</b></p>
<p align="justify">Not only did our interviews shed light on the difficulty for a startup developer to apply for and be granted protection for their intellectual property, but also for the enforcement of such. Partnering Lawyer, Samuel Mani, of technology-focused law firm, <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/www.mcmlaw.in" class="external-link">Mani Chengappa & Mathur</a>, speaks to us about the extensive procedure required to prove one's ownership over their IP: “To demonstrate copyright infringement, it requires going into millions of lines of code—unless it is the interface that is copied, which is easily visible.” Mani continues on the enforcement of patent protection by saying, “For a patent, the scope is even wider. It is easy to say 'this is the method and no once can copy', but unless the look and feel is the same, it is very hard to demonstrate that you have been infringed on.”</p>
<p><b>Planting the initial seed</b></p>
<p align="justify">If there is arguably so much risk associated with applying for IPR protection, as well with enforcement, what specifically gets startups thinking about IPR initially within their practice? What experiences help them formulate their opinions on the matter, and which forms of IPR do they seek out?</p>
<p align="justify">Across interviews conducted, one particular observation entailed the tendency for developers to have worked in the past for corporate employers that have dealt with cases of infringement or have acquired IP protection. Almost half of those interviewed shared the fact that they worked for a corporate employer and became better familiar with different notions of intellectual property through that experience. It may not be too farfetched to suggest, then, that for the developer the idea of acquiring IPR protection is one that may be reinforced from previous employers or other successful development companies with IPR of their own.</p>
<p align="justify">Cofounder and developer for a medium-sized software development enterprise, Anoop[1] explained that it wasn't until after the success of his enterprise's first application with $1 million in sales, that they started thinking about intellectual property and began to understand the value of it. This newly attained understanding, however, had not been enough to sufficiently equip his team with the knowledge to properly secure protection. For them, going after patent protection turned out to be a pursuit in vain.</p>
<p><b>Loss of faith in patents for SMEs</b></p>
<p align="justify">Anoop shares his disappointing experience after attempting to secure a patent for one of their mobile apps:</p>
<p class="callout"><i>“We burned our fingers with patents. We spent a lot of money for a game we invented about 3 years ago. We had a law firm in the US to help us. We applied for it, and it went through 3-4 revisions, costing us $25-30,000. We finally closed the file when we could not get it due to an existing patent. We were really surprised." </i></p>
<p>After much disappointment from not being successful in their attempts to acquire patent protection, however, Anoop came out of the experience with a new outlook on patents and their role for SMEs:</p>
<p class="callout"><i>“They're meant for large companies as means to bully your competitor. Only big players with the capacity to file for a patent as soon as it takes off benefit. The existing system doesn’t really work for startup companies. In India and anywhere. It’s an expensive process. If you’re a startup who’s just bootstrapping, there’s no guarantee that you will get it. It’s going to take you years.”</i></p>
<p align="justify"><b>Patent hype</b><br />Anoop is a prime example of developers in the startup space that fall victim to the promises of the patent system—only to be spat back out having exhausted their time and earnings. Already being aware of the probability for failure, Mani strongly discourages going after patent protection as a means of staying in the race. “With people spending millions on litigation, it is a recipe for disaster, especially considering the inherent delay of the Indian system.” For this reason, Mani stresses the importance of applying for the <i>right </i>protection.</p>
<p align="justify">Mani also suggests that the patent debate is driven by self-interest—people who simply make money off of application filing, regardless of whether or not the case succeeds. As a lawyer in the IT space, Mani claims to have turned away several prospective clients looking to patent their products when he insisted that such means of protection was not suitable for their product and interests...which brings us to an additional area of heated debate: the patentability of mobile apps.</p>
<p><b>Can mobile apps be patented?</b>[2]</p>
<p align="justify">One concept that seemed to receive contested responses across interviews is that of the patentability of mobile apps in the first place. When asked if mobile apps could be patented, former lawyer and startup founder, Vivek Durai, of HumblePaper, put it blatantly in responding, “absolutely not.” Others offered explanations of the Indian Patent Law nuances regarding when a mobile app is patentable and when one is not.</p>
<p align="justify">While consulting a SME with their own patent application, Bala explains their approach to ensure the mobile app's eligibility for patent protection, while providing some insight into the Indian patent system:</p>
<p class="callout"><i>“One approach that we've taken to getting a patent in India is it's not just a pure software, but a software plus a hardware—as in it requires a specific hardware to function. If [the software] makes the hardware perform better, then it has a technical effect... In which case, we have a better chance of getting a patent in India. If your software is agnostic to hardware, however, it is much more difficult to receive a patent in India.” </i></p>
<p align="justify"><b>To patent or not to patent? (or any IPR for that matter)</b><br />To Tewari, on the other hand, the question of whether a mobile app can be patented is one entirely irrelevant. The question Tewari introduces into the developer's market strategy is not 'can I patent my app?' but instead, '<i>should </i>I do so?' In response to which; he would predominantly reply: <i>No</i>.</p>
<p align="justify">“How [startup] mobile app developers regard IP laws—or better yet, disregard—is fine for their sake,” argues Tewari. Alternatively, he suggests developers learn how to maneuver the laws, to prevent themselves from arriving at any sticky situations after unknowingly using another's code. To his clients who have mobile apps of their own, he advises to use an open source equivalent of a piece of code if they do not have the rights to it. Doing so will help keep infringement upon others at a minimal and prevent litigation against oneself.</p>
<div class="pullquote" style="text-align: justify; ">“How [startup] mobile app developers regard IP laws—or better yet, disregard—is fine for their sake."—Jayant Tewari, Out Sourced CFO & Business Advisory Services</div>
<p align="justify">Not all developers interviewed, however, aspired to acquiring patent protection. In fact, some strongly opposed software patents, while expressing their appreciation for openness across the developer community. The other side to the IPR-Open Source dichotomy will be examined in the blog post to follow, after which, we will then look at accounts of infringement and threats of litigation across mobile app developers interviewed.</p>
<p><b>To recap<br /></b></p>
<p align="justify">By looking closely at the individual experiences across mobile app developers interviewed, we hope to begin to map out the mobile app ecosystem and the ways in which industry players engage with each other regarding their IPR. We also hope to begin to shed light on the different attitudes towards the law within one's practice, and how they shape their decisions related to their work. Only after doing so, may we be able to sufficiently assess how India's current IP laws govern this landscape.</p>
<p align="justify">Stay tuned for the next in this blog series! We hope that you may benefit from our findings in your own practice as a mobile app industry player or enthusiast, as well.</p>
<p align="justify"><b>Notes:</b><br />[1] <i>Name changed to protect the interviewee's identity</i></p>
<p align="justify">[2] In conducting interviews, our goal was not to test the legitimacy of responses, but instead, to map them out across various industry stakeholders. For this reason, this blog series will not be able to sufficiently respond to legal question, such as whether or not mobile apps are patentable to begin with. We intend to, however, undergo legal analysis of the Indian IPR system at its intersection with the mobile app space in India at a later stage in this project.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/interviews-with-app-developers-dis-regard-towards-ipr-vs-patent-hype-2013-part-ii'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/interviews-with-app-developers-dis-regard-towards-ipr-vs-patent-hype-2013-part-ii</a>
</p>
No publisher
samantha
Access to Knowledge
Copyright
Pervasive Technologies
Research
Patents
2014-08-19T03:51:39Z
Blog Entry
-
Reading from a Distance — Data as Text
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/reading-from-a-distance
<b>The advent of new digital technologies and the internet has redefined practices of reading and writing, and the notion of textuality which is a fundamental aspect of humanities research and scholarship. This blog post looks at some of the debates around the notion of text as object, method and practice, to understand how it has changed in the digital context. </b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The concepts of text and textuality have been central to the discourse on language and culture, and therefore by extension to most of the humanities disciplines, which are often referred to as text-based disciplines. The advent of new digital and multimedia technologies and the internet has brought about definitive changes in the ways in which we see and interpret texts today, particularly as manifested in new practices of reading and writing facilitated by these tools and dynamic interfaces now available in the age of the digital. The ‘text’ as an object of enquiry is also central to much of the discussion and literature on Digital Humanities, given that many scholars, particularly in the West trace its antecedents to practices of textual criticism and scholarship that stem from efforts in humanities computing. Everything from the early attempts in character and text encoding (see <a href="http://www.tei-c.org/index.xml">TEI</a>) to new forms and methods of digital literary curation, either on large online archives or in the form of apps such as Storify or Scoop it have been part of the development of this discourse on the text. Significant among these is the emergence of processes such as text analysis, data mining, distant reading, and not-reading, all of which essentially refer to a process of reading by recognising patterns over a large corpus of texts, often with the help of a clustering algorithm<a name="_ftnref1" href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>. The implications of this for literary scholarship are manifold, with many scholars seeing this as a point of ‘crisis’ for the traditional practices of reading and meaning-making such as close reading, or an attempt to introduce objectivity and a certain quantitative aspect, often construed as a form of scientism, into what is essentially a domain of interpretation. But an equal number of advocates of the process also see the use of these tools as enabling newer forms of literary scholarship by enhancing the ability to work with and across a wide range and number of texts. The simultaneous emergence of new kinds of digital objects, and a plethora of them, and the supposed obscuring of traditional methods in the process is perhaps the immediate source of this perceived discomfort. There are different perspectives on the nature of changes this has led to in understanding a concept that is elementary to the humanities. Apart from the fact that digitisation makes a large corpus of texts now accessible, subject to certain conditions of access of course, it also makes texts ‘ <em>massively addressable at different levels of scale</em>’ as suggested by Micheal Witmore. According to him “Addressable here means that one can query a position within the text at a certain level of abstraction”. This could be at the level of character, words, lines etc that may then be related to other texts at the same level of abstraction. The idea that the text itself is an aggregation of such ‘computational objects’ is new, but as Witmore points out in his essay, it is the nature of this computational object that requires further explanation. In fact, as he concludes in the essay, “textuality is addressability” and further...this is a condition, rather than a technology, action or event”. What this points towards is the rather flexible and somewhat ephemeral nature of the text itself, particularly the digital text, and the need to move out of a notion of textuality which has been shaped so far by the conventions of book culture, which look to ideal manifestations in provisional unities such as the book.<a name="_ftnref2" href="#_ftn2">[2]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The notion of the text itself as an object of enquiry has undergone significant change. Various disciplines have for long engaged with the text - as a concept, method or discursive space - and its definitions have changed over time that have added dimensions to ways of doing the humanities. With every turn in literary and cultural criticism in particular, the primacy of the written word as text has been challenged, what is understood as ‘textual’ in a very narrow sense has moved to the visual and other kinds of objects. The digital object presents a new kind of text that is difficult to grasp - the neat segregations of form, content, process etc seem to blur here, and there is a need to unravel these layers to understand its textuality. As Dr. Madhuja Mukherjee, with the Department of Film Studies, at Jadavpur University points out, with the opening up of the digital field, there are more possibilities to record, upload and circulate, as a result of which the very object of study has changed; the text as an object therefore has become very unstable, more so that it already is. Film is an example, where often DVDs of old films no longer exist, so one approaches the ‘text’ through other objects such as posters or found footage. Such texts also available through several online archives now offer possibilities of building layers of meaning through annotations and referencing. Another example she cites is of the Indian Memory project, where objects such as family photographs become available for study as texts for historiography or ethnographic work. She points out that this is not a new phenomenon, as the disciplines of literary and cultural studies, critical theory and history have explored and provided a base for these questions, but there is definitely a new found interest now due the increasing prevalence of digital methods and spaces. One example of such a digital text perhaps is the hypertext<a name="_ftnref3" href="#_ftn3">[3]</a>. George Landow in his book on hypertext draws upon both Barthes and Foucault’s conceptualisation of textuality in terms of nodes, links, networks, web and path, which has been posited in some sense as the ideal text. Landow’s analysis emphasises the multilinearity of the text, in terms of its lack of a centre, and therefore the reader being able to organise the text according to his own organising principle - possibilities that hypertext now offers which the printed book could not. While hypertext illustrates the post-structural notion of what comprises an open text as it were, it may still be linear in terms of embodying certain ideological notions which shape its ultimate form. Hypertext, while in a pragmatic sense being the text of the digital is still at the end of a process of signification or meaning-making, often defined within the parameters set by print culture.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">But to return to what has been one of the fundamental notions of textual criticism, the ‘text’ is manifested through practices of reading and writing <a name="_ftnref4" href="#_ftn4">[4]</a>. So what have been the implications of digital technologies for these processes which have now become technologised, and by extension for our understanding of the text? While processes such as distant reading and not-reading demonstrate precisely the variability of meaning-making processes and the fluid nature of textuality, they also seem to question the premise of the method and form of criticism itself. Franco Moretti, his book Graphs, Maps and Trees talks about the possibilities accorded by clustering algorithms and pattern recognition as a means to wade through corpora, thus attempting to create what he calls an ‘abstract model of literary history’. He describes this approach as ‘within the old territory of literary history, a new object of study’...He further says, “Distant reading, I have once called this type of approach, where distance is however not an obstacle, but a <em>specific kind of knowledge: </em>fewer elements<em>, </em>hence a sharper sense of their overall interconnection. Shapes, relations, structures. Forms. Models.” The emphasis for Moretti therefore is on the method of reading or meaning-making. There seem to be two questions that emerge from this perceived shift - one is the availability of the data and tools that can ‘facilitate’ this kind of reading, and the second is a change in the nature of the object of enquiry itself, so much so that close reading or textual analysis is not engaging or adequate any longer and calls for other methods. An example much closer home of such new forms of textual criticism is that of ‘ <a href="http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/index.php">Bichitra’</a>, an online variorum of Rabindranath Tagore’s works developed by the School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University. The traditional variorum in itself is a work of textual criticism, where all the editions of the work of an author are collated as a corpus to trace the changes and revisions made over a period of time. The Tagore varioum, while making available an exhaustive resource on the author’s work, also offers a collation tool that helps trace such variations across different editions of works, but with much less effort otherwise needed in manually reading through these texts. Like paper variorum editions, this online archive too allows for study of a wider number and diversity of texts on a single author through cross-referencing and collation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">As is apparent in the development of new kinds of tools and resources to facilitate reading, there is a problem of abundance that follows once the problem of access has been addressed to some extent. Clustering algorithms have been used to generate and process data in different contexts, apart from their usage in statistical data analysis. The role of data is pertinent here; and particularly that of big data. But the understanding of big data is still shrouded within the conventions of computational practice, so much so that its social aspects are only slowly being explored now, particularly in the context of reading practices. Big data as understood in the field of computing is data that is so vast or complex that it cannot be processed by existing database management tools or processing applications<a name="_ftnref5" href="#_ftn5">[5]</a>. But if one were to treat data as text, as is an eventual possibility with literary criticism that uses computational methods, what becomes of the critical ability to decode the text - and does this further change the nature of the text itself as a discursive object, and the practice of reading and textual criticism as a result. Reading data as text then also presupposes a different kind of reader, one that is no longer the human subject. This would be a significant move in understanding how the processes of textuality also change to address new modes of content generation, and how much the contours of such textuality reflect the changes in the discursive practices that construct it. Most of the debate however has been framed within a narrative of loss - of criticality and a particular method of making meaning of the world. Close reading as a method too came with its own set of problems - which can be seen as part of a larger critique of the Formalists and later American New Criticism, specifically in terms of its focus on the text. As such, this further contributes to canonising a certain kind of text and thereby a form of cultural and literary production. <a name="_ftnref6" href="#_ftn6">[6]</a> Distant reading as a method, though also seen as an attempt to address this problem by including corpora, still poses the same issues in terms of its approach, particularly as the text still serves as the primary and authoritative object of study. The emphasis therefore comes back to reading as a critical and discursive practice. The objects and tools are new; the skills to use them need to be developed. However, as much of the literature and processes demonstrate, the critical skills essentially remain the same, but now function at a meta-level of abstraction. Kathleen Fitzpatrick in her book on the rise of electronic publishing and planned technological obsolescence dwells on the manner in which much of our reading practice is still located in print or specifically book culture; the conflict arises with the shift to a digital process and interface, in terms of trying to replicate the experience of reading on paper. Add to this problem of abundance of data, and processes like curation, annotation, referencing, visualisation, abstraction etc acquire increased valence as methods of creatively reading or making meaning of content. <a name="_ftnref7" href="#_ftn7">[7]</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Whether as object, method or practice, the notion of textuality and the practice of the reading have undergone significant changes in the digital context, but whether this is a new domain of enquiry is a question one may ask. Matthew G. Kirschenbaum in his essay on re-making reading suggests that perhaps the function of these clustering algorithms, apart from serving to supplant or reiterate what we already know is to also ‘provoke’ new ideas or questions. This is an interesting use of the term, given that the suggestion to use quantitative methods such as clustering and pattern recognition in fields that are premised on close reading and interpretation is itself a provocative one and has implications for content. The conflict produced between close and distant reading, the shift from print to digital interfaces would therefore emerge as a space for new questions around the given notion of text and textuality. But if one were to extend that thought, it may be pertinent to ask if the Digital Humanities can now provide us with a vibrant field that will help produce a better and more nuanced understanding of the notion of the text itself as an object of enquiry. This would require one to work with and in some sense against the body of meaning already generated around the text, but in essence the very conflict may be where the epistemological questions about the field are located.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> References: </strong></p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Fitzpatrick, Kathleen, “Texts”, Planned Obsolescence – Publishing, Technology and Future of the Academy, New York and London: New York University Press, 2011. pp.89 – 119.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Kirschenbaum, M.G, “The Remaking of Reading: Data Mining and the Digital Humanities”, Conference proceedings; National Science Foundation Symposium on Next Generation of Data Mining and Cyber-Enabled Discovery for Innovation, Balitmore, October 10-12, 2007, <a class="external-link" href="http://www. cs. umbc. edu/hillol/NGDM07/abstracts/talks/MKirschenbaum. pdf">http://www. cs. umbc. edu/hillol/NGDM07/abstracts/talks/MKirschenbaum. pdf</a>. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Landow, George. P, Hypertext: The Convergence of Critical Theory and Technology, Balitmore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992 pp 2-12</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Moretti, Franco, Graphs, Maps and Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History, Verso: London and New York, 2005. p.1</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Whitmore, Michael , “Text: A Massively Addressable Object”, Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Mathew K. Gold, University of Minnesota Press: 2012 pp 324 – 327 <a href="http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/24">http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/24</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Wilkens, Mathew, “Canons,Close Reading and the Evolution of Method” Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Mathew K. Gold, University of Minnesota Press: 2012 pp 324 – 327 <a href="http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/24">http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/24</a></li></ol>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="100%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<p><a name="_ftn1" href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> For more on cluster analysis and algorithms see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<p><a name="_ftn2" href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> See Witmore, 2012. pp 324 - 327</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<p><a name="_ftn3" href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> A term coined by Theodor H. Nelson, which he describes as “a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways” ( As quoted in Landow, 1991. pp 2-12)</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<p><a name="_ftn4" href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> Barthes, 1977. pp 155 - 164</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<p><a name="_ftn5" href="#_ftnref5">[5]</a> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<p><a name="_ftn6" href="#_ftnref6">[6]</a> See Wilkens (2012). pp 249-252</p>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<p><a name="_ftn7" href="#_ftnref7">[7]</a> See Fitzpatrick (2011), pp 89 -119</p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/reading-from-a-distance'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/reading-from-a-distance</a>
</p>
No publisher
sneha
Digital Knowledge
Mapping Digital Humanities in India
Research
Digital Humanities
Researchers at Work
2015-11-13T05:29:12Z
Blog Entry
-
Living in the Archival Moment
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/living-in-the-archival-moment
<b>The archive has been and continues to be a key concept in Digital Humanities discourse, particularly in India. The importance of the archive to knowledge production in the Humanities, the implication of changes in archival practice with the advent of electronic publishing and digitisation, and the focus on curation as a critical and creative process are some aspects of the debate that this blog post looks at. </b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In a rather delightful essay titled ‘Unpacking my Library’, published in 1968, Walter Benjamin dwells upon the many nuances of the art of collecting — books in this particular case — on everything from the sometimes impulsive acquisition to the processes of careful selection and classification which go into creating a library. This figure of the collector and practice of collecting are important to our understanding of a central concept in Digital Humanities - the archive - particularly as it occupies a predominant space in the imagination of the field in India, and processes of knowledge production and the history of disciplines in general. The influx of digital technologies into the archival space in the last decade has been an impetus for the large scale digitisation of material, but it has also thrown up several challenges for traditional archival practice, including the preservation of analogue material, the problems of categorising and interpreting large volumes of data, and the gradual disappearance or re-definition of the traditional figure of the collector — a concern echoed across several spaces extending from private online archival efforts to large collaborative knowledge repositories like the Wikipedia. With the questions that the Digital Humanities seems to have posed to traditional notions of authorship or subject expertise, the ‘digital humanist’, when we imagine such a person, can be seen as a reinvention of this figure of the collector — a curator of materials and traces, here of course, digital traces.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The concept of the archive has been important to knowledge production and particularly the development of academic disciplines; whether driven by concerns of the state or the impulses of the market, there have been different ways of defining and understanding the archive, not only as a documentary record of history, but as a metaphor for collective memory and remembrance which includes technology in its very imagination. One of the most elaborate formulations of the archive has been in the work of Jacques Derrida, where apart from proposing the death and preservation drives as primary to the archival impulse, he also highlights the process of archiviation, or the technical process of archive-building that shapes history and memory. Michel Foucault in his concept of the archive looks at it as ‘a system of discursivity which establishes the possibility of what can be said’,<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a>thus pointing to the archive as a space not just of preservation but also production, with an impact on the process of knowledge creation. There is today a consensus, at least in its academic understanding that archives cannot be relegated to being self-contained linear spaces of objective historical record, but that archival practice itself has political implications in terms of how collective memory and history, or as indicated by Foucault, <em>histories</em> are preserved and retold through a process of careful selection. Disciplines themselves may therefore be seen as archives of knowledge, and one may stretch this analogy to say that they may also appear as self-contained spaces with restrictions on entry for different ways of remembering and reading. More importantly, the question of what constitutes the archive and what objects or materials may be archived reflects a larger debate about problems with the definition of disciplines and shifting disciplinary boundaries.<a name="fr2" href="#fn2">[2]</a>The issue of access is what several archival and digitisation projects in the early phase of Digital Humanities in the West seemingly sought to address, by ‘opening up’ and animating the archive in some sense through the use of digital technologies, which has allowed one to envisage a model of the networked or conceptual archive developed through a process of sharing and collaboration. However, as is apparent, the conditions of access to such archives and their interpretation have not been problematised enough, if at all, particularly with respect to how they contribute to generating new kinds of knowledge or scholarship. (For more on a theoretical overview of the concept and function of the archive, see the post on ‘Archive Practice and Digital Humanities’ by Sara Morais).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While the focus of Digital Humanities debates in the West now seem to primarily encompass methods of visualising data that the archive is an important source for, in the Indian context it is the ‘incompleteness of the archive’ that still seems to be a bone of contention. Many scholars and practitioners we spoke to see archive creation as one of the key questions of Digital Humanities as it has emerged in India, and the possibilities and challenges that this brings to the fore, (particularly in terms of access to rare materials and extending these debates to regional languages) as something that the field will need to contend with at some point. The role of digital technologies in fostering this activity of archive-building is stressed in these debates. In an earlier monograph titled Archives and Access produced as part of CIS-RAW, Dr. Aparna Balachandran and Dr. Rochelle Pinto trace a material history of archival practice in India, specifically looking at conflicts and debates surrounding state and colonial archives, and the politics of access, preservation and digitisation. The monograph also points towards in some way the move of the archive from being solely the prerogative of the state to now being within the reach of the individual, engendered by increased access to technology, and the ‘publicness’ that the visual nature of the internet fosters. However they also talk of the possibility of continuing forms of state or market control over the archive precisely through the internet and digital technologies, with the nature of individual access and use again being mediated through digitisation. Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Documentation Officer with the archives at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata who was also part of the Archives and Access project, speaks about this change. From a time even twenty years ago, when it was difficult to define the archive, it has slowly transformed into a practice that encompasses various methods of digitisation and has become increasingly personal. While digitisation may have resolved the problems of physically accessing archives to a large extent, it may not always be the best option, as the archival or analogue material needs to be in good condition so as to make for good digitised copies, thus emphasising the need for preservation. The growth of private collections, which create new kinds of intellectual and nostalgic spaces, have also been important in this shift to archiving the personal and the everyday, though in many instances such material may not be available for public use or consumption. The publicness or hyper-visibility that the visual nature of the internet and digital technologies accords to the archive is seen tied to a narrative of loss here, and against the rhetoric of preservation which is still in many spaces deemed to be the primary function and imagination of the archive.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The increased availability of space for data accumulation due to digital technologies also contributes to a ‘problem of excess’, and that is where curation and building new kinds of tools come in as a critical and creative exercise. Dr. Amlan Dasgupta, Professor of English and director of the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University reiterates this opinion. He talks about the internet as fostering an ‘age of altruism’, where the proliferation of technological gadgets has brought about a culture of voluntarily sharing materials online. This of course challenges notions of authority and brings forth the problems of the unarranged library which Benjamin’s essay also points towards, but the archive can be used as a metaphor to understand how notions of authorship and authority are being challenged as is apparent in the Digital Humanities discourse. The theory-practice divide is also something that ails this particular domain like many others; not only is there an inadequate understanding of how to access and use the archive on the part of students and researchers alike, but there is a lack of standardisation of the practice of archive management and the science itself, in terms of metadata, problems of ownership and copyright, and most importantly inadequate infrastructure, training and expertise on preservation of analogue materials. While it may not be within the ambit of digital humanities to address all of these questions, the renewed interest in archival practice and the diversification of its modes is something is that would continue to be an integral aspect of its practice. In fact what digitisation has also led to is diversity in the modes of documentation itself, and the larger process of archiving, which has important implications for the kinds of questions one may ask within certain disciplinary formations, history being an important example. The nature of material in the archive is never quite the same, so is the manner of working with and interpreting them. Dr. Indira Chowdhury, historian and faculty member at the Srishti School of Art, Media and Design, Bangalore and the Centre for Public History (CPH) speaks of the changes that digital technologies have produced in studying oral history, specifically in terms of recording and interpretation of interviews. The mode of documentation, particularly the digital, adds a new layer to the manner in which the voice, sounds or even silence is recorded or interpreted. Although there are still some basic but crucial obstacles such as with transcription, the digital space may allow for tools that help with more nuanced interpretation of recorded material, and large volumes of it; a possibility that CPH is looking into at the moment. One of the approaches of Digital Humanities may be address these knowledge gaps through critical tool-building, in terms of how one may work with different ways of reading and interpreting material.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The digital archive is one space where many of these questions about the process of archive-creation and the separation between preservation and production that is often made in the existing discourse come into conflict, thus inflating the definition of the term much more. New technologies of publishing, the proliferation of electronic databases and growth of networks that in turn encourage production and the increasing amount of born-digital materials then present new questions for the concept of the archive and scholarship.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The role of technology has been significant in the development of the concept of the archive; in fact the archive, in its very nature would be a technological object, or a space where one can trace a history of the disciplines in relation to technology. The introduction of the digital has added yet another dimension to this question. Dr. Ravi Sundaram, Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, who also initiated the Sarai programme speaks of how the advent of the digital has brought about several shifts in the imagination of the archive, which he sees as two distinct phases. Sarai was one of the early models of a concept driven, networked archive, based on a culture of ‘mailing lists’ that built conversations around topics which in themselves constituted the archive. The shifts came with Web 2.0 with which archiving the everyday became a possibility, given the access to inexpensive gadgets and the pervasiveness of social media. While the model of the networked, curated and public archive still has valence today, a significant next step would be to see how one can extend these questions to thinking differently about the archive, by developing new protocols for entering, sharing and circulation of material, and producing new knowledge or concepts around these ideas. This would be crucial in terms of generating research and scholarship around the archive itself as a concept, and realising the full potential of network-generated information. Another pertinent question is that of infrastructure, which is a political question as well. The investment on infrastructure for the archive is determined by different kinds of interests and will play an important role in how archival efforts will ultimately develop. As Dr. Sundaram reiterates, the point to note is that new archival efforts are not only general repositories, but critical interventions in themselves. They foster new kinds of visibilities, like the Pad.ma archive for example which works with existing footage and reinvents or adds new layers of meaning to it through annotations and citations. This also opens up possibilities for new kinds of questions to be asked about existing material. Private archival efforts, many initiated by individuals are also becoming more niche and specific, driven by a specific research agenda, public interest in conservation or as critical and creative interventions in a particular area. Some examples of this are the Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW), Pad.ma and Indiancine.ma, the Indian Memory project and Osianama. In some of these examples, the archive may be used as more of a metaphor rather than a description or classificatory term, because of the layers of meaning that they generate around an existing object or ‘trace’. However, while entering the digital space may have enabled more sharing and dissemination of material, how much of these efforts also make their way into larger civil society and policy debates, scholarship and pedagogy is a crucial question. Arjun Appadurai, in an essay titled ‘Archive and Aspiration’, which was also reproduced as part of a research art project,<a name="fr3" href="#fn3">[3]</a> traces the growth of the migrant archive and how electronic mediation shapes collective memory and aspiration. He points out that ‘The archive as a deliberate project is based on the recognition that all documentation is a form of intervention and, thus, that documentation does not simply precede intervention, but is its first step. Since all archives are collections of documents (whether graphic, artifactual or recorded in other forms), this means that the archive is always a meta-intervention. This further means that archives are not only about memory (and the trace or record) but about the work of the imagination, about some sort of social project. These projects seemed, for a while, to have become largely bureaucratic instruments in the hands of the state, but today we are once again reminded that the archive is an everyday tool. Through the experience of the migrant, we can see how archives are conscious sites of debate and desire. And with the arrival of electronic forms of mediation, we can see more clearly that collective memory is interactively designed and socially produced." In another essay reproduced as part of the same project, Wolfgang Ernst talks about the change in the notion of archive from ‘archival space’ to ‘archival time’, in a digital culture, in which the key is the dynamics of the permanent transmission of data. Cyberspace or the internet, according to Ernst produces a new kind of memory culture, which is devoid of organisational memory that is essentially the premise of the traditional text-based archive. He says "In cyber ‘space’ the notion of the archive has already become an anachronistic, hindering metaphor; it should rather be described in topological, mathematical or geometrical terms, replacing emphatic memory by transfer (data migration) in permanence. The old rule that only what has been stored can be located is no longer applicable.13 Beyond the archive in its old ‘archontic’ quality, the Internet generates, in this sense, a new memory culture. Digitalization of analogous stored material means trans-archivization. Linked to the Internet rather than to traditional state bureaucracies, there is no organizational memory any more but a definition by circulating states, constructive rather than re-constructive. Assuming that the matter of memory is really only an effect of the application of techniques of recall, there is no memory. The networked data bases mark the beginning of a relationship to knowledge that dissolves the hierarchy associated with the classical archive."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">One can therefore trace the definite shift in the concept and nature of the archive from being a static repository to a critical intervention and creative exercise, and technology being quite integral to its imagination. Most significantly perhaps, the change has been one from the notion of record to that of affect. Archive-building as an affective practice, which has an impact on how knowledge is produced, organised and disseminated is a crucial aspect of meaning-making practices. Related to this is another issue in terms of the amount of data that is available in the archives, which demands new protocols of access and collaboration, and the role of curation in making such data relevant and comprehensible. The notion of the archive or as in this case data as an affective object becomes pertinent here. The problem of excess mentioned by many of the scholars and practitioners would be relevant to the question of big data or big social data; accessing or interpreting such large volumes of information would require critical tools and new kinds of architecture. These shifts also relocate the figure of the collector from traditional practices to new ways of visualising collections and the art of collecting itself, which are now beyond the scope of the human subject. The matter of immediate import here would then be the changes in modes of reading and writing that are brought about by the proliferation of and engagement with big social data. How do we read data, what are changes in reading practices, how do they affect writing and visualisation and what is the nature of the reader thus constructed form some of the areas of exploration for the Digital Humanities, and will be taken up in the forthcoming blogs.</p>
<p>[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">1</a>]. Foucault quoted in Manoff (2004), p.18.</p>
<p>[<a name="fn2" href="#fr2">2</a>]. Ibid.</p>
<p>[<a name="fn3" href="#fr3">3</a>]. Archive Public is a research art project that looks at bringing together archival art and solidarity actions. See http://archivepublic.wordpress.com/ for more on this.</p>
<hr />
<h2>References</h2>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Benjamin, Walter, “Unpacking My Library”, in Illuminations, trans.Harry Zohn, Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schoken Books (1969) pp 59 - 67.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Derrida, Jacques: “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”, trans. Eric Prenowitz. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press (1995).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Manoff, Marlene:” Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines.”<em> </em>In: <em>Libraries and the Academy</em>, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2004), pp. 9–25. Copyright © 2004 by The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD 21218. accessed May 5, 2014 :<a href="http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/35687/4.1manoff.pdf?sequence=1">http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/35687/4.1manoff.pdf?sequence=1.</a></li></ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/living-in-the-archival-moment'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/living-in-the-archival-moment</a>
</p>
No publisher
sneha
Digital Knowledge
Mapping Digital Humanities in India
Research
Digital Humanities
Researchers at Work
2015-11-13T05:27:34Z
Blog Entry
-
Not a Goodbye; More a ‘Come Again’: Thoughts on being Research Director at a moment of transition
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/not-a-goodbye-more-a-come-again
<b>As I slowly make the news of my transition from being the Research Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, to taking up a professorship at the Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Germany, there is a question that I am often asked: “Are you going to start a new research centre?” And the answer, for the most part, is “No.”</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Not because I don’t see the value of creating institutional spaces like these or that starting and running CIS has been anything short of a dream, but because I don’t how to. When I tell people I don’t know how CIS came into being, they suspect that I am being either facetious or dismissive. But I am not. If somebody asked me to write an Origin Story for CIS, I would be baffled – or probably sum it up by saying that it happened. There was the germ of an idea, a whole lot of people who responded to it, and like the great Tolkienian epic, it was a story that grew in its telling.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I was 27, when Sunil Abraham, the now Executive Director and I met together in New Delhi, to talk about what a research organisation that represents the public interest at the intersections of Internet & Society would look like. We spent three days in the Delhi heat, coming up with the most fantastic ideas about methods, structures and core areas of interest. It was one of those divine exercises where you build the template for your dream work and then, like a fairy-tale, we had incredible people who came and supported us to make that dream a reality. In six months of that first conversation – I had just turned 28 and was completing the last drafts of my Ph.D. dissertation – CIS got officially registered and with some of the most incredible people, who have been with us, both in their generous affective investment as well as in their intellectual and professional support, we kicked-off a research centre, that has become not only hard to ignore but also significantly important in bringing about scholarly and practice based research around the different facets of how the emergence and widespread reach of the Internet is changing the ways in which we become human, social and political in emerging information societies of the Global South.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the 7 years since that first conversation started, I have learned so much from CIS and the networks that built around it, that it would be impossible to write an exhaustive account of it. However, as I now take up a new position at the CIS as a member of its board, and continue to collaborate with the on-the-ground teams intellectually, from my new position as a Professor, there are five things I want to dwell upon, more to remind myself of important lessons learned, but also as approaches that the new director and team might want to reference:</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Research cannot be individually focused</b><br />One of the things that academic training does is that it promotes the idea of an individual researcher. We write, publish, seek grants and present our work, taking individual credit and building a body of work that is centred on us. True, we collaborate and we participate and we are opening up more distributed modes of learning and research, but at the end of the day, there is still an imagination of a research community that is built of individual scholars who work in a happy symbiosis and synthesis.<br /><br />The biggest lesson I learned with the CIS was that research requires collectives – peers, supporters, and critics – that can help materialise a vision. Instead of trying to do ‘my’ research, it was the first time that I was enabling others’ research. I had a say in building the research vision, and establishing protocols of rigour and review, but to have a dream, and then to share it with others, so that it becomes a collective dream was an incredible experience. It was the beginning of a method that I hope informs all my work, where research methods are constantly going to accommodate for and be shaped by collective visions and approaches rather than just the individual as a lone warrior. More than anything else, it reassures us that we are not alone, either in our triumphs or our road-blocks, and it builds a community of thinkers that is more important than just the single authored outputs that we bring out.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Research requires infrastructure</b><br />Institutions are infrastructure. However, our jobs are so segregated, that we don’t always realise the incredible effort that goes into building such institutions and then making them work as efficient infrastructure to support research. It is very rare, in research publications that we thank our everyday office staff, the accounts team that processes the complicated bureaucracies of research funding, the programme managers who create networks and evaluation formats, or the numerous people who perform ‘non-research’ jobs so that we can do the research. <br /><br />I had worked in project and programme manager positions before CIS. I had also worked as an independent researcher and consultant before that. But this was the first time I actually took the dual responsibility of not only initiating research but also providing the infrastructure for it. And I know that I am a wiser person for it. The intricate world of fund-raising, managing and developing networks, of implementing and monitoring research projects and contracts, and the need to constantly find sustainable options for the research programmes is something that requires an incredible amount of effort and resources. The researchers often are kept away from this world, or we often just ignore the intense quotidian activities that give us the privilege of doing our work, and my time with CIS taught me not only to appreciate this, but also to recognise these tasks as research.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>All research must try and answer the ‘So What?’ question</b><br />Within academic circles, research has inherent value. We do have the freedom to develop new frameworks and ideas that might not have any immediate relevance and might in fact even fail without seeing the light of day. Academia is privileged because as long as we perform our pedagogic tasks, we have the space to experiment and often work on areas that might not benefit anybody outside the disciplines that we are located in.<br /><br />At CIS, working at such close quarters with colleagues who are experts in policy and regulation, research became critical for me. It wasn’t research for research’s sake. It was research with a cause. At the same time, making the research relevant was not an exercise in dumbing it down so that it can be reduced to easy implementation. The effort required at making academic and intellectual research accessible, while still retaining its complexity has been a heady experience for me. Since CIS, I have tried to make sure that all research is able to answer the ‘So What?’ question, and every time, it has made the research more robust, more rigorous and having a greater audience and impact than it would otherwise have. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>To be a research organisation is to be unafraid</b><br />One of the most fantastic things about being a young research organisations was that we were not afraid to voice our opinions and voice them loud. In the last 6 years, CIS has evolved into a strong voice that is not unanimous, but is still clear. We have had disagreements with established research and policy actors. We have critiqued decisions taken by policy and development institutions when we felt that they were flawed. We have provided a critical commentary to different instruments of law and regulation when necessary. We have challenged academic researchers in their methodology as well as in their disconnect from the ‘real world’. And we did it, because early on, the people who guided us, taught us, that research organisations have to be unafraid. <br /><br />Unafraid, not just to ask tough questions of those outside, but also of asking tough questions internally. The team, as it has grown, has been a smorgasbord of disciplinary and stakeholder locations. We don’t necessarily speak the same language. We don’t also, agree on many critical points. But we never tried to be a consensus generation institute. Instead, we learned to coexist and even collaborate in our differences – it was something that external partners often had problems with. How can one set of people work towards critically opposing a phenomenon when others might actually write in favour of some of the aspects of that same phenomenon? How is it possible that some in the institute have great collaborations with a network that the others critique persistently in their work? These tensions, for me, have been generative and I hope that they continue, both in the institution but also in my future work.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Researchers are people too</b><br />This is one of the strangest things to realise, but it is a good lesson to remember. Academia and research work through abstractions. At some point, the researchers become names. They become only a body of work, a certain number of words. But dealing with researchers is to deal with human beings. We have to remember that researchers, while they are often driven and passionate and unable to extricate their lives from their work, do have lives and bodies and socialities that need to be managed. Institutions often get driven by matrices of measurement and politics of promotion and evaluation, at the neglect of the people who actually build it. The constant push at CIS was to recognise that we are all too human in our everyday lives. And to build work environments, relationships and spaces that nurture the people we work with is the primary responsibility of all research. <br /><br />These points are probably too vague, but this blog post is already too long. I just wanted to take this opportunity to write some ‘Notes to the self’ about things that have been the most important to me in being the co-founder and Research Director at the Centre for Internet and Society. And now, it is time for me to move on. I want to place myself in an academic setting where I learn, I get some headspace to think and write, and do the one thing that I enjoy the most – teach. Starting 1st October 2014<a href="#fn*" name="fr*">[*] </a>I am stepping down as the Research Director and taking up a professorship in a new and exciting university, designing courses and research agendas at the intersections of internet studies, media studies, culture studies and aesthetic studies, bringing together some of my most passionate areas of interest. However, I continue to be interested and invested in CIS’ institutional growth. I shall be a part of the search committee as we invite a new Research Director in the Bangalore office, I shall be a part of the Board that governs the CIS, and I shall always think of CIS as my home, continuing mentoring and implementing existing collaborations but also building more, especially towards the pedagogic and knowledge production side of things.<br /><br />When the final decisions about this transition were made last week, I had thought I would be emotional and heart broken. Instead, I only feel excited. I have a wonderful set of colleagues in Bangalore, and they, in turn, are at the centre of networks of support, love, empathy and trust. CIS will benefit from having a new Research Director who will bring new visions, new methods, new processes and infrastructure to the table, and I hope that as my own academic career grows, I shall find myself returning to CIS in different capacities and roles, both for what I could contribute to it, but also for what I continue to learn from the rich range and variety of activities that it anchors.</li>
</ol>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a href="#fr*" name="fn*">*</a>].For me, this is not a goodbye, but just a change in roles at the CIS. I will continue to use my CIS credentials and email address, and will be found on the existing contact details there for any queries or interactions with and on behalf of the CIS. So no need to change your address books, just yet.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/not-a-goodbye-more-a-come-again'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/not-a-goodbye-more-a-come-again</a>
</p>
No publisher
nishant
Researchers at Work
Featured
Internet Studies
Research
2014-06-15T02:17:06Z
Blog Entry
-
Reaping the Benefits of Gamification
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/reaping-the-benefits-of-gamification
<b>As a part of the Making Change blog-post series, in this post we will identify a new technique: gamification. This technique is being used for sustainable environment conservation by modern day change-makers. We interview two out of three co-founders of Reap benefit- Kamal Raj and Gautam Prakash who believe in the adoption of more sustained environmental practices that induce social change towards conserving the environment.</b>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<div align="left">
<pre style="text-align: justify;"><strong>CHANGE-MAKER:</strong> Kamal Raj,Gautam Prakash and Kuldeep Dantewadia
<strong>ORGANISATION:</strong> Reap Benefit
<strong>METHOD OF CHANGE: </strong>Gamification and Human centric systems for consistent behavior change towards better waste-water-energy management.
<strong>STRATEGY OF CHANGE:</strong> Building a new era of environmentally conscious youth in India through technology and an interdisciplinary approach to change.</pre>
</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We depend on the environment and the resources that it provides us, but surprisingly we are unaware of the effects of its depletion and the need to save these resources. A few of the problems that people now face are with resources like- water,waste and energy because we do not acknowledge the fact that we are wasting them unconsciously. This only triggers the need for more and more solutions which would change the way people perceive the resources and realize the need to conserve. While trying to start an initiative to come up with some solutions to manage these resources, we are approached by the question of the <strong>accessibility, affordability and sustainability</strong> of those solutions. The solutions and the practice of that solution is a two-way process for any sustainable making-change initiative.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;">In this post I will be introducing to you Reap Benefit and the technique of Gamification. I will bring out a comparative analysis of the various definitions by renowned gaming authorities across the world who are involved in the process of using games in non-game contexts to bring out change in the offline space. Only after this, will I be acknowledging the importance of the strategies used by Reap Benefit for making these solutions sustainable. The strategies will be- human centric solutions and gamification. Then, I will bring out the connection between these two strategies to provide you an inter-disciplinary understanding of the making change process. Next, these strategies will be coupled with the discussion on the use of technology to speed-up the process. Also, throughout this post we will be referring to the blog-<strong> Methods of Social Change</strong> written by Denisse Albornoz and we will also make an attempt to answer the questions- 'Who,Where,How' of this making change project in relation to Reap Benefit. The blog post can be accessed <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/methods-for-social-change/">here. </a></p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;">Before the journey of the post, I would like you to read this little success story narrated by Kamal Raj in the interview that led Reap benefit a step higher in its aim for making change:</p>
<p class="callout">Reap benefit went to a school which received only 400 litres of water supply a day resulting in poor health and care conditions. This water would be used for washing their plates after the mid-day meal and also for sanitation systems. This would only make the place a platform for water, food and breeding mosquitoes all together. Since the students usually consumed food with their right hand, while taking the plate to wash it, they would leave the plates at one side; they would open the tap with their left hand, would take their plates again and start washing them. During this time interval, they would waste a lot of water. <br /><br />As, a solution to this, Reap Benefit changed the taps which would discharge 60% less of water. They also created a clean water purification system. Now, with the same 400 litres of water, students washed their plates and adopted better sanitation practices. The challenges that they faced actually made them innovate better systems for remarkable change.</p>
<p align="left"><strong> <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/tapswithoutaerators.jpg/image_preview" title="taps without aerators" height="157" width="159" alt="taps without aerators" class="image-inline image-inline" /> <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/tapswithaerators.jpg/image_preview" title="taps with aerators" height="157" width="160" alt="taps with aerators" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /></strong></p>
<p align="left"><strong>Think about these questions for a minute..<br /></strong></p>
<div align="left">
<ul>
<li>Does this story relate to <strong>physical needs?</strong></li>
<li>Does this story relate to <strong>creative problem solving?</strong></li>
<li>Is it a story that brings out<strong> better affordable solutions?</strong></li>
<li>With this solution were the <strong>students benefited</strong>?</li>
<li>Was this a <strong>successful idea?</strong></li></ul>
</div>
<h2>Reap Benefit</h2>
<p>First of all, take a look at a brief introduction of Reap Benefit given by Kamal Raj:</p>
<p></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout"><strong>Kamal: </strong><em>"Reap Benefit works to implement affordable solutions, enabling quantifiable waste-water-energy management systems, as a way to facilitate behavioural change by engaging the head, hand and heart of the user. Having worked with many people, we have realized that behaviour modification allows for more sustained adoption of environment sustainability practices. We take them through a 4-stage behavioural change process – <strong>‘Unconsciously Wrong’, ‘Consciously Wrong’, ‘Consciously Right’ and ‘Unconsciously Right’ </strong>(we will understand this process later in the post). A link to the website is here- <a href="http://reapbenefit.org/">Reap Benefit</a>."</em></p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;">Reap Benefit is bound together by the deep concern for the environment they have and the dead-lock issues that it faces. They aim for affordable solutions with maximum impact in the least time. Kamal marks that they work only with the students within the age group 10-16, because the use gamification is most effective in this age group. Also, he makes an addition to that by saying the rewards the older age groups demand are not as easy-to-meet as those of the age group they work with. It also aims to co-create experiences by working hands on with the youth: their target audience for creating change.</p>
<p align="left" style="text-align: justify;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_reapbenefit.jpg/image_preview" title="Reap benefit" height="175" width="234" alt="Reap benefit" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It is said that the more you practice the better you get. By this, I would like to introduce you to the concept of<strong> quotidian activism</strong>. Reap Benefit deeply believes in this concept. But, what does quotidian activism mean? A working definition is: <em>the form of activism occurring everyday.</em> This form of activism may lead to people making actions sustainable and achieve consistent behavioural change, supported by products and innovations provided by Reap Benefit (later in this post, I will introduce you to some of these innovations).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Finally, Reap Benefit highly focuses on the need to answer the <em>‘</em><strong>why’</strong> behind the problem. This answer would provide a more personal understanding of the problem for creating change. By engaging the participant with the 'why', he will also be able to evaluate the impact and the benefits of his actions, take ownership of the problem and comprehend the need for innovation.</p>
<h3 align="left">What is 'change' for Reap Benefit?</h3>
<p align="left">Presuming every organization has its own design to making change, Reap Benefit's understands it in the following way:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout"><strong>Gautam: </strong><em>“Change for us is a very sub-conscious part of your life. (It is also a) two stage process- <strong>knowledge:</strong> which will tell us we need solution and the<strong> solution.</strong> The knowledge will tell you that you are <em>unconsciously </em>doing the wrong thing. Then when you realize it, you go to a stage of consciously wrong. When you keep doing this you reach a stage when you know that you are consciously doing right, and soon, you are doing it every single day and then you unconsciously do it.”</em> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">I will attempt to understand their process of change by adding that this 'to be good' drive in the individual or the need for public approval is what makes them do <em>unconsciously right </em>everyday, and then it is only the last stage what makes it a habit. Gautam also mentions that each of these stages has an impact of its own and altogether, they become more powerful. This change process will lead to sustainable change according to him.</p>
<div style="text-align: justify;">We have seen the change agents that are vital to create change, but how is this change executed? In the next section we will look at two strategies used for making change: <em>gamification</em> and <em>human-centred design</em> and later, we will only try to produce a connection between them.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>
<h2>Discovering Gamification</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In this section, we will unpack the first part of the<strong> 'how' </strong>question. First of all, we will compare the various definitions of the technique given by people involved in understanding the use of game elements in the non-game contexts, to create change in the emotional and social behaviour of people. The definitions of these three people in the big list of so-called gamification authorities will be used provides us with keywords for a comparative understanding of what the technique means. These three people are:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>JANE McGONIGAL: </strong>She is an American game designer and author who advocates the use of mobile and digital technology to channel positive attitudes and collaboration in a real world context.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>GABE ZICHERMANN:</strong><em><strong> </strong></em>He is an author, public speaker, and self-described "serial entrepreneur." He has worked as a proponent of leveraging <a title="Game mechanics" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_mechanics">game mechanics</a> in business, education, and other non-entertainment platforms to increase user engagement through gamification.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><em><strong>JESSE SCHELL</strong>:</em> He is an American video game designer an acclaimed author, CEO of Schell Games and a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of <a title="Entertainment Technology" class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Technology">Entertainment Technology</a>.</p>
<h3>Definitions</h3>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>JANE McCONIGAL</strong><br /></td>
<td><strong>GABE ZICHERMANN</strong><br /></td>
<td><strong>JESSE SCHELL</strong><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr style="text-align: justify;">
<td>“It is a blissful <strong>productivity</strong> acquired by the flourishing feeling,<br />that is, accomplishments in a game but only with a <strong>volunteering<br />attribute </strong>of the participant.” </td>
<td>“Games are the only<br /><strong>force</strong> in the universe<br />that can get people to take actions <strong>against their self-interest</strong> in a <br /><strong>predictable</strong> way without using force.” </td>
<td>“It is a <strong>problem solving situation</strong><br />that you enter into because <strong>you want to</strong>.” </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="left">I would be like to bring points of intersections between these three definitions.</p>
<div align="left">
<ol>
<li>
<div align="left">
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>VOLUNTEERING ATTRIBUTE VS. USE OF FORCE</strong>: The volunteering attribute is an efficient way to foster sustainable participation, as opposed to the use of force which makes a campaign less appealing.</div>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div align="left">
<div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS</strong>: Games are a very responsive way of trying to accomplish problem solving as the person is engaged with the problem and willing to solve it.</div>
</div>
</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><strong>PRODUCTIVITY</strong>: There problem solving skills leads the participant to a desired outcome. </li></ol>
These points also give you a clear understanding of Reap Benefit who works along the same lines with the volunteer or participant to solve the problem of conservation.<br />But, does the usage of games actually produce behavioral change? If so, how do games provide this function? These are some of the questions we will try and attempt to answer in the next section.</div>
<h3 align="left"></h3>
<h3 align="left">Games as a Tool to Influence Behaviour</h3>
<p id="docs-internal-guid-9cb641a5-daab-08be-6d01-b8f612949133" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Playing games results in obtaining rewards in some form of the other. These rewards psychologically induce a positive emotional feeling in the participant. When the participant learns something through games and when that emotional feeling arises, he tries and incorporates the same solutions in the games to solving the real life problems. This brings out an improved result and problem solving ability. But what about the affordability of that solution? We need to understand ways to make it affordable because any task once done will not induce consistency in the behavior change. But the task repeated many times will improve or change the behavior over a long period of time. So, when the question of affordability (financial fear) is answered then the emotional feeling primarily can bring out change in the behavior of the individual. (Yongwen Xu, 2011).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">There are also some game mechanics that are to be kept in mind to change behavior while designing games apart from just the element of fun and affordability. So, we will now look at another authority involved in gamification in the upcoming section to explore these mechanics. We will also try and understand these mechanics in relation to Reap Benefit.</p>
<h3>Game Mechanics</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Seth Priebatsch is the creator of <a title="SCVNGR" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCVNGR">SCVNGR</a> and <a title="LevelUp" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LevelUp">LevelUp</a> social gaming sites. He has provided a list of game mechanics which could be necessary to understand games and why they produce particular changes for a better environment. These are:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><em><strong>Appointment Dynamics</strong></em>: to bring players to do something at a pre-defined time and place.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>Influence and status</em></strong>: any participant or group that is involved in the change-making process, is influenced by the presence of others because of the competition and the envy that leads them to carry forward the task</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em>Progression Dynamics:</em></strong> the success of the student is measured through the tasks by giving rewards. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"> <strong><em>Communal Discovery</em></strong>: the entire group or community works towards making change. </li></ul>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Seth's model could be applied to the process of creating change that Reap Benefit uses, and this is illustrated through their experience of a student-run energy audit in the field. A set of students were assigned the task of doing an audit for the energy conservation and the energy usage of a Puma store. They were just given the base for the audit but the criteria for the audit was planned by them. The students were encouraged by the thought of <strong>getting rewards </strong>for the task. Kamal recalls that they had used games to make the children understand it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Relating this to Seth's Model, the children were given a <strong>pre-defined time and place</strong> for doing the task and were influenced both, by the element of<strong> competition</strong> between the students and also the idea of receiving a reward once the task is completed. The task only ends by obtaining a sense of <strong>communal discovery</strong> that, all together they can make change on a personal and team level. We understood Seth's model but we will try and comprehend deeper, the use of rewards for inducing behavioral change in the next section.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Rewards Mechanism</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Kamal commented on Reap Benefit's 2-3 months periodic reward mechanism. He believes that this makes students equal in position before starting every task.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout"><strong>Kamal:</strong> <em>"We use a lot of things like rewards to motivate them to play a game (with us) and we personalize all these rewards based on the questionnaire that we do at the beginning where we subtly understand what they like." </em></p>
<p>This information which gives ideas of how to encourage each student to get the best performance out of them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>a) Extrinsic rewards: </strong>The extrinsic reward here, for example would be allotting points to various participants/ teams. Michael Wu, a chief scientist in subjects like digital technologies, says extrinsic rewards are like a jump start to intrinsic rewards.Once the student acknowledges them, they acquire a sense of ownership and innovation and are empowered to create new solutions. Hence, awareness is not created before the task but an output from the task.</p>
<p>Refer to Gabe Zichermann's video for more on the importance of gamification and the rewards mechanism.</p>
<p>.<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SwkbuSjZdXI" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">b) Intrinsic rewards: Apart from producing behavior change, gamification's can also indicate learning. One of the elements that facilitates learning would be:</p>
<dl>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Player Control</strong><em>: </em>A participant will have certain amount of control while gaming which would lead to a sense of responsibility and accomplishment. Learning could be intrinsic only if there is responsibility of gaining a reward through a task.</p>
</dl>
<p>There are many other elements that produce learning and they could be accessed <a href="http://www.yukaichou.com/">here.</a></p>
<h2>Human-Centric Model</h2>
<div class="pullquote">Human-centred systems aim to preserve or enhance human skills, in both manual and office work, in environments in which technology tends to undermine the skills that people use in their work<em>.</em></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We will now answer the second part of the 'how' question and show another strategy for making change. Human centric systems do not use machines to create solutions to the problems but rather design the game with the importance of the 'user-friendly' element. This has been explored in a past post by Denisse. Access it <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology" class="internal-link">here.</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Reap Benefit's ‘transparent dustbin’ is a great model to illustrate this. The dustbin is transparent for people to see and then throw the waste in according to different types of waste. It is kept at an eye-level so that the waste already thrown inside can help the person perceive and throw his waste in the exact dustbin and to make it easily accessible for the public.</p>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/dustbin.jpg/image_preview" alt="transparent dustbin" class="image-inline image-inline" title="transparent dustbin" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">These human-centric approaches provide a consistent change in the behaviour of the individual because the method is user-friendly and make segregation easy. The objectives is to engage in unconscious behavioural change. The transparent dustbin is better explained by this audio byte of Kamal Raj:</p>
<p><br /><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/147205714&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p>Another innovation of Reap Benefit, is the compose mixture</p>
<p class="callout">Kamal says: <em><strong>"The idea was to throw something with it, like the degrade compost product we innovated and the waste would compost, without smell, without taking 3 months." </strong></em></p>
<p>This mix, by giving visual feedback could be accessible by anyone due to its low cost and easy-to-use method. So, these innovations justify and explain the benefits of human centric models and also produce many new ideas in the minds of the students( James,2010). I would like to explain this by a chain of ideas that arise while segregating plastic and non-plastic waste.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">The participation in the structure (waste segregation model)</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_arrowdown.jpe/image_preview" title="arrow" height="28" width="33" alt="arrow" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /> The negatives of the model (harmful effects of mixing plastic in the model)</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_arrowdown.jpe/image_preview" title="arrow" height="28" width="33" alt="arrow" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /> Realizing the need for another mechanism (dustbins for different types of waste)</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_arrowdown.jpe/image_preview" title="arrow" height="28" width="33" alt="arrow" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /> Another idea to support the new mechanism (dustbins should be transparent and named)<br /> <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_arrowdown.jpe/image_preview" title="arrow" height="35" width="33" alt="arrow" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /> The need to spread this (start campaigning for the system)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Explaining this model in brief: the waste segregation model is the segregation of plastic and other waste. During this process the three ideas that arise are: a) the harmful effects of plastic, b) the need for a plastic waste dustbin and a non-plastic waste dustbin, and the last one, b) the transparency of the dustbin. Then the major question of <strong>spreading the model by using technology</strong> arises. This would be the model thought by the participant during the discussion of the usage of technology for sustainability.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">But what is <strong>sustainability</strong> and how is it important? Complementing the technique of gamification and the human- centric approaches with technology to make it a sustainable solution is a challenge. This system may be adopted by all. But the aftermath of implementing this apparatus is a challenging question. In the next section we will comprehend the role of technology adding a more positive result to Reap benefit.</p>
<h2>The Role of Technology and Media</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This section will look at how Reap Benefit uses technology and media and then try and understand how the use of technology can make these solutions sustainable.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="callout"><strong>Kamal:</strong> <em>"There are two aspects that are already existing- knowledge and the products. So, when someone starts the journey, technology enables us to be with them in this journey without us being there. Without the sharing of photos through digital media like facebook, keeping track of the journey would not be possible. We need technology to bridge the gap."<strong> </strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Information access is facilitated by the use of technology and digital media or social networking, as they share the systems with their online community. But, when this access is denied the only solution is to be a part of the in-tutor system and realize the positives of the same through experience. Technology takes Reap Benefit a step higher in its aim to make sustainable change by targeting youth, the main users of social network platforms.</p>
<h2>Making Change</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We started this post with an introduction to a very strong initiative- Reap Benefit. Techniques such as gamification and human-centric systems are used effectively by this organization to create maximum benefits. It focuses highly on the use of these strategies to induce behaviour modification in youth. We attempted to build a relationship between these techniques to answer whether they are sustainable, intelligible and accessible solutions to making change.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Summing up the 'WHO,WHERE AND HOW' question- We have only understood that, to use the opportunity and take charge before others do so, we need a 3-stage plan. We understood that the WHO means the target, the change agents who will lead the initiative and comprehend the need for change by themselves. The question of WHERE focuses on the idea of making change in the public space rather than in the private sphere which limits the extent of the change. We have summarized this only by bringing out the importance of technology to make change the largest priority of youth. The question of HOW is understood in this post by the use to affordable solutions.</p>
<p id="docs-internal-guid-9cb641a5-daab-ddf5-183f-233098a5b65d" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The problems faced by the environment call for solutions that are affordable and accessible. These two qualities of the solution would only make it sustainable.These solutions are met by various game elements in a game and the human centric approaches that engage the individual in problem solving by disseminating knowledge to them and informing them about the problems. This makes those solutions to problem-solving evaluatable through quantity and the quality of the result of the problem. Behavior change will be only possible by solutions that break the existing schemas in the society and create new innovations. (James,2010). Now, through sustainable, innovative solutions through these techniques we can make the dream of a clear and clean environment a reality.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While this blog may help you gain a positive understanding about gamification it would certainly lead you to many more questions. In this digital age, we would surely have to ‘re-game-think’ the methodologies for change again and agai,n not only in terms of using unique techniques such as gamification but also in terms of accessibility of such techniques for change in the structural divisions in society.</p>
<h3>Footnotes</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Reward is one of the elements that drives the individual to adopt the gamification technique- the reward/feedback mechanism. You can acquire a profound reading on more of these elements that leads to further making-change here- http://www.yukaichou.com/.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">A few more elements like the player control and communal discovery that indicates learning through Gamification could be found here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">More information on persuasive messages, strategies for changing behavior, rules for effective delivery, and how to manage the participants/audience in the making change initiative can be found-http://sustainability.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Promoting_Sustain_Behavior_Primer.pdf</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">To hear a talk show of Yukaichou on TEDx about Gamification- check it here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Qjuegtiyc</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">To hear another talk show of Gabe Zichermann on TEDx about Gamification- check here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2N-5maKZ9Q</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The process of creating sustainability through gamification and technology, according to Rachel James, goes as follows: </li></ol>
<ol></ol>
<ul>
<li>Attracting attention by breaking the existing schemas (mental structures of preconceived idea, Jean Piaget,1926) This can be done by creating a mystery for them and then involving the individual in complex thought processing to change the schema. Story-telling could also induce emotional reactions to inspire or simulate them.</li>
<li>Persuade them through gamification </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Make the strategies for change very rigid which cannot be changed often and acknowledge what you deliver to your audience. </li></ul>
<h3>Sources</h3>
<ol>
<li>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">James, Rachel. “Promoting Sustainable Behavior- a guide to successful communication”. Web. August 2010. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Xu, Yongwen. ” literature review on web application Gamification and analytics”. Web. August 2011. </li>
<li>http://www.yukaichou.com</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Albornoz, Denisse. 'Methods for Social Change'. Web. February 2014. The link for the same is here- http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/methods-for-social-change. </li></ol>
<p>*******************************************</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">About Dipali Sheth:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Studying in my 3rd year at Christ University gave me the opportunity to intern at Centre for Internet and Society. This post has been a result of my internship for a month under the Making Change program at CIS. My interest in Research and New Media started the journey here and has only added to making Research my zeal in the near future.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/reaping-the-benefits-of-gamification'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/reaping-the-benefits-of-gamification</a>
</p>
No publisher
dipali
Researchers at Work
Net Cultures
Making Change
Research
2015-10-24T14:24:55Z
Blog Entry
-
From Taboo to Beautiful - Menstrupedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful
<b>On this post, we take a look at 'menstrual activism' -a movement that despite its trajectory in feminism, remains unnoticed in most accounts of traditional and digital activism. We interview Tuhin Paul, the artist and storyteller behind Menstrupedia, an India-based social venture creating comics to shatter the myths and misunderstandings surrounding menstruation around the world. </b>
<p> </p>
<pre><strong>CHANGE-MAKER:</strong> Tuhin Paul, Aditi Gupta<em> </em>and Rajat Mittal<em>
</em><strong>ORGANIZATION:</strong> Menstrupedia
<strong>METHOD OF CHANGE:</strong> Storytelling and comics
<strong>STRATEGY OF CHANGE:</strong> To shatter the myths and misunderstandings surrounding
menstruation, by delivering accessible, informative and entertaining
content about menstruation through different media.</pre>
<p align="justify">Most of us think we know what menstruation is; except...we don’t. Many of my male friends still cringe at the mention of the phrase “I’m on my period”, or use it as a derogatory justification for my occasional cranky mood at the office: “It’s that time of the month, isn’t it?” Poor menstruation has been the culprit of femininity; always bashful, tiptoeing for five days straight, trying its best to remain incognito. The social venture Menstrupedia is committed to change this. Aditi, Tuhin and Rajat want to shift how we look at menstruation and remove the stigma that haunts the natural, self-regulation process women undergo to keep their bodies healthy and strong to sustain life in the future.</p>
<p align="justify">Now, if you are already wondering what menstruation has to do with internet and society, just wait for it. This post manages to bring art, punk, menstruation <em>and</em> technology together, all within the scope of the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/whose-change-is-it-anyway.pdf">Making Change</a> project! Before though, we shall start with some definitions. Let us first lay conceptual grounds about menstruation and Menstrupedia, to then locate and unpack their theory of change.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>What is menstruation?</h2>
<p>It can be defined as:</p>
<blockquote><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstruation">Menstruation</a></strong> is the periodic discharge of blood and mucosal tissue (the endometrium) from the uterus and vagina. It starts at menarche at or before sexual maturity (maturation), in females of certain mammalian species, and ceases at or near menopause (commonly considered the end of a female's reproductive life).</blockquote>
<p>And it looks something like this:</p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/physiologymenstruation.jpg/image_preview" title="Cycle" height="243" width="292" alt="Cycle" class="image-inline image-inline" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p>But, I believe, most women will agree the following are much more accurate depictions of the spectrum of thoughts, emotions and sensations that menstruation spurs:</p>
<h3>The Beauty of RED</h3>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/qf4TulXdNXY" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<h3>My Periods: A Blessing or a Curse</h3>
<p><strong>By Naina Jha</strong></p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>My periods<br /> Are a dreadful experience<br /> Because of all the pain.<br /> Myths and secrets make it a mystery<br /> What worsens it most though, are members of my family<br /> Especially my mother, who always make it a big deal<br /> They never try to understand what I truly feel<br /> I face all those cramps and cry the whole night long<br /> None of which is seen or heard or felt by anyone.</td>
<td>
<p>Instead of telling me, what it is,<br /> They ask me to behave maturely instead.<br /> Can somebody tell me how I am supposed to<br /> Naturally accept it?<br /> My mother asks me to stay away from men<br /> And a few days later, she asks me to marry one!<br /> When I ask her to furnish<br /> the reason behind her haste<br /> She told me that now that I was menstruating,<br /> I was grown up and ready to give birth to another.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>I don’t know whether to feel blessed about it<br /> Or consider it to be my curse.<br /> For these periods are the only reason for me to be disposed.<br /> Since my childhood, I felt rather blessed to be born as a girl<br /> But after getting my periods now,<br /> I’m convinced that it’s a curse...</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Find it in <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/blog/my-periods-a-blessing-or-a-curse/">Menstrupedia's blog</a>.</p>
<p align="justify">Despite all this, it is still perceived as a social stigma in society. There is clearly a dissonance between the definition, experience and perceptions around menstruation, that calls for a reconfiguration of the information we are using to define it.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Stigma as a Crisis</h2>
<p align="justify">However, re-defining 'menstruation' is no popular or easy task. The word belongs to a group of contested terminology around womanhood and is the protagonist of its own breed of feminist activism: <strong>menstrual activism</strong>. <a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a> Although I would consider many of the stigmas surrounding menstruation to be quite self-explanatory (we've all experienced and perpetuated them in one way or another -and if they are not, then you are the product of an obscenely progressive upbringing for which I congratulate your parents, teachers and all parties involved), I will still outline the main reasons why menstruation is a source of social stigma for women, and refer to scholarly authority on the subject to legitimize my rant.</p>
<p align="justify">Ingrid Johnston-Robledo and Joan Chrisler use Goffman's definition of stigma <a name="fr2" href="#fn2">[2]</a> on their paper: <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-0052-z#page-1">The Menstrual Mark: Menstruation as a Social Stigma</a> to explain the misadventures of menstruation:</p>
<pre><strong>Stigma: </strong>
stain or mark setting people apart from others. it conveys the information
that those people have a defect of body or of character that spoils their
appearance or identity</pre>
<p align="justify">Among the various negative social constructs deeming menstruation a dirty and repulsive state, this one made a particular echo:<em> “[menstruation is] a tribal identity of femaleness”.</em> Menstruation is the equivalent of a <em>rite of passage</em> marking the lives of girls with a 'before' and an 'after' on how the world sees them and how they see themselves. From the dreaded stain on the skirt and the 5-day mission to keep its poignant color and smell on the down low, to having to justify mood and body swings to the overly inquisitive; menstruation is imagined as inconvenient, unpleasant and unwelcome. As Johnston-Robledo and Chrisler point out: the menstrual cycle, coupled with stigmas, pushes women to adopt the role of the<em> “physically or mentally disordered”</em> and reinforce it through their communication, secrecy, embarrassment and silence (Kissling, 1996).</p>
<p><em> </em></p>
<h2 dir="ltr">Why does it matter?</h2>
<p align="justify">Besides from strengthening attitudes that underpin gender discrimination and attempting against girls' self-identity and sense of worth, there are other tangible consequences for their development and education. I'm going to throw some facts and figures at you, to back this up with the case of India.</p>
<p align="justify">An <a href="http://www.wsscc.org/resources/resource-news-archive/menstruation-taboo-puts-300-mln-women-india-risk-experts-0">article</a> published by the WSSCC, the Geneva based Water supply and Sanitation Council, shows the Menstruation taboo, consequence of a<em> “patriarchal, hierarchical society”</em>, puts 300 million women at risk in India. They do not have access to menstrual hygiene products, which has an effect on their health, education (23% of girls in India leave school when they start menstruating and the remaining 77% miss 5 days of school a month) and their livelihoods.</p>
<p align="justify">In terms of awareness and information about the issue, WSSCC found that 90% didn't know what a menstrual period was until they got it. Aru Bhartiya's research on <a href="http://www.ijssh.org/papers/296-B00016.pdf">Menstruation, Religion and Society</a>, shows the main sources of information about menstruation come from beliefs and norms grounded on culture and religion. Some of the related restrictions (that stem from Hinduism, among others) include isolation, exclusion from religious activities, and restraint from intercourse. She coupled this with a survey where she found: 63% of her sample turned to online sites over their mothers for information, 62% did not feel comfortable talking about the subject with males and 70% giggled upon reading the topic of the survey. All in all, a pretty gruesome scenario</p>
<h2>Here's where Menstrupedia comes in</h2>
<p align="justify">The research ground work attempted above was done in depth by Menstrupedia back in 2009 when the project started taking shape. They conducted research for one year while in NID and did not only find that awareness about menstruation was very low, but that parents and teachers did not know how to talk about the subject.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2caqzHWk2r8" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td>Facts about menstruation awareness in India. Video courtesy of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/menstrupedia">Menstru pedia</a> Youtube channel.</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">Their proposed intervention: distribute an education visual guide and a comic to explain the topic. They tested out the prototype among 500 girls in 5 different states in Northern India and the results were astonishing.</p>
<table class="plain" align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/194053_426937890752368_1403341955_o.jpg/image_preview" title="workshop 1" height="267" width="177" alt="workshop 1" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/1102736_426937754085715_534486559_o.jpg/image_preview" title="workshop 2" height="266" width="402" alt="workshop 1" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">A workshop conducted by MJB smriti sansthan to spread awareness about mensuration. <br />Find full album of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.538044002975089.1073741837.277577839021708&type=3">Menstrupedia Comic being used around India</a> on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Menstrupedia">Menstrupedia's Facebook page.</a><br /></span></span></p>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"><em>"To my surprise, they [the nuns] all agreed that until they read the information given in the Menstrupedia comic,</em><em> even they were of the opinion that Menstruation was a ‘dirty’ and 'abominable' thing and they wondered 'why</em><em> women suffered from it in the first place'?</em><em> But after reading the comic book, their view had changed…now they felt that this was a 'vital' part of</em><em> womanhood and there's nothing to feel ashamed about it!</em><em> The best part was while this exercise clarified their ideas, beliefs, concepts about menstruation, it also</em><em> helped me to get over my innate hesitancy to approach such a sensitive issue in ‘public’ and boosted</em><em> my confidence for taking this up as a 'mission' to reach out to the maximum possible girls across the</em><em> country." </em><br />
<div align="right"><strong>Ina Mondkar,</strong><br /> on her experience of educating young nuns about menstruation.</div>
</blockquote>
<p align="center">Testimonial after a workshop held in two Buddhist monasteries in Ladakh.</p>
<p align="justify">Their mandate today reads:<strong> ‘Menstrupedia is a guide to explain menstruation and all issues surrounding it in the most friendly manner.’ </strong>They currently host a <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/">website</a> with information about puberty, menstruation, hygiene and myths, along with illustrations that turn explaining the process of growing up into a much friendlier endeavour than its stigma-ladden alternatives.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Comic.jpg/image_preview" alt="Comic" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Comic" /></p>
<p align="center">Snipbit of the first chapter. Read it for free <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/comic/">here</a>.</p>
<p align="justify">Through the comic and the interactions around it, Menstrupedia strives to create a) <strong>content </strong>that frame menstruation as a natural process that is inconvenient, yes; but that should have no negative effects on their self-esteem and development; and b) <strong>an environment</strong> where girls can talk about it openly and clarify their doubts.</p>
<h3>Technology's role in the mix</h3>
<div class="pullquote"><strong>"</strong>We want to reach out to as many girls as possible”. Tuhin, Menstrupedia</div>
<p align="justify">The role of digital technologies basically comes down to <strong>scalability</strong>. Opposite to <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user742107957/scalingup">The Kahani Project's views</a> on scaling up, Menstrupedia makes emphasis on using technology<strong> to reach a larger audience</strong>. Currently they have a series of communication channels enabled by technology that include: a visual <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/quickguide">quick guide</a>, a <a href="http://questions.menstrupedia.com/">Q&A forum</a> (for both men and women), a <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/blog">blog</a> (a platform of self-expression on menstruation), a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/menstrupedia">you tube channel</a> (where they provide updates on their progress) and the upcoming comic.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NRosnGzkg9Y" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">Upon the question of the digital divide and whether this expands the divide between have and have nots, Tuhin was very set on the idea of producing the same content in both its digital and print form. <em>“parents or schools should be able to buy the comic and give it to their daughters, so whenever they feel like it, they can refer to it”</em>. The focus is on making this material as readily available as possible, in order to overcome the tension between new and old information: <em>“workshops are conducted but the moment they go back home, their mothers impose certain restrictions. It becomes a dilemma. But if you provide [The girl] with a comic book, she has something she can take home and educate her mother with”</em></p>
<h2>And here's why it works</h2>
<p align="justify">More than the comic book itself, what is truly remarkable about Menstrupedia is Tuhin, Rajat and Aditi’s guts to pick up such a problematic theme in the Indian social imaginary and challenge the entrenched, stubborn beliefs surrounding the issue. The comic book, asides from being appealing to the eye and an accessible format of storytelling (a method we have unpacked in <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/@@search?SearchableText=storytelling">previous posts</a>), fits right into the movement of menstrual activism and what it stands for.</p>
<div align="justify" class="pullquote">“We thought of creating something: a tool that can help girls understand menstruation without having to rely on anybody else”. Tuhin, Menstrupedia</div>
<p align="justify">First, it is a <strong>self-reliant resource.</strong> Once the comic book leaves Menstrupedia's hands and lands on those of kids and adults, it takes its own journey. The format of the comic is accessible enough for someone to pick it up and learn about menstruation without the intervention or the support of a third party. This makes Menstrupedia's comic <strong>highly flexible and mobile</strong>. It can be shared from teacher to child, from mom to daughter, from peer to peer: “[it should teach] <em>how to help your friends when they get their period”</em> (Tuhin) However, it has the autonomy to also take roads less travelled: from mom to dad, from child to teacher, from boy to girl. The goal at the end of the day: a self-reliant, solidarity-based community where information circulating about menstruation highlights its capacity to give life and overshadows its traditional stigmatized identity.</p>
<p align="justify">This self-reliance is characteristic of previous manifestations of menstrual activism. Back in the 80s, the feminist movement, tightly linked to punk culture, embraced the<strong> do it yourself movement,</strong><a name="fr3" href="#fn3">[3]</a> that enabled women to materialize personalized forms of resistance. They published <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org.advanc.io/wiki/Zine">zines</a> promoting<em> “dirty self-awareness, body and menstrual consciousness and unlearning shame” t</em>hrough <em>“raw stories and personal narratives” </em>(Bobel, 2006). According to Bobel using the<strong> self as an example</strong> is a core element in the “history of self-help” within the DIY movement. The role of the Menstrupedia blog is then crucial to sustain the exposure and production of “raw narratives”. Tuhin adds: <em>“We don't write articles on the blog. It is a platform where people from different backgrounds write about their experiences with menstruation and bring in a different perspective”:</em> For example,<em><br /></em></p>
<p><strong>Red is my colour</strong> by Umang Saigal</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Red is my colour,<br /> To make you understand, I endeavour,<br /> Try to analyse and try to favour.<br /> It is not just a thought, but an attempt,<br /> To treat ill minds that are curable.</p>
<p>When I was born, I was put in a red cradle,<br /> I grew up watching the red faces for a girl-children in anger,<br /> Red became my favourite,<br /> But I never knew,<br /> That someday I would be cadged in my own red world.</p>
<p> </p>
</td>
<td>Red lover I was,<br /> All Love I lost,<br /> When I got my first red spots,<br /> What pain it caused only I know,<br /> When I realized, Red determined my ‘class’
<p>I grew up then, ignoring red,<br /> At night when I found my bedsheet wet,<br /> All day it ached,<br /> All day it stained,<br /> And in agony I would, turn insane.</p>
<br /></td>
<td>
<p>At times I would think,<br /> Does red symbolize beauty or pain?<br /> But when I got tied, in the sacred knot,<br /> I found transposition of my whole process of thought,<br /> When from dirty to gold, Red crowned my bridal course.</p>
<p>As I grew old,<br /> All my desires vanished and got cold,<br /> My mind still in a dilemma,<br /> What more than colour in itself could it unfold?<br /> What was the secret behind its truth untold?</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Is Red for beauty, or is it for beast?<br /> It interests me now to know the least,<br /> All I know is that Red is a Transition,<br /> From anguish to pride<br /> Red is a sensation.</p>
<p>Red is my colour, as it is meant to be,<br /> No matter what the world thinks it to be,<br /> No love lost, one Love found,<br /> Red symbolizes life and also our wounds,<br /> I speak it aloud with life profound,<br /> That red is my colour, and this is what I’ve found.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="center">Submission to the <a href="http://menstrupedia.com/blog/red-is-my-colour/">Menstrupedia blog</a></p>
<p align="justify">'Self-expression' is not a concept we usually find side by side with 'menstruation'; however, if we look at what has been done in the past, we find that Menstrupedia is actually contributing to a much larger tradition of resistance. For instance, <a href="http://menstrala.blogspot.in/">Menstrala</a>, by the American artist Vanessa Tiegs. Menstrala is the name of a collection of 88 paintings <em>“affirming the hidden forbidden bright red cycle of renewal”.</em></p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KJ5-_zegKSU" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
<th><br /></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">Another interesting example is American feminist Gloria Steinem's<a name="fr4" href="#fn4">[4]</a> text <a href="http://www.mylittleredbook.net/imcm_orig.pdf">If Men Could Menstruate</a>.</p>
<blockquote>“What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not? <br />The answer is clear:<br /> Menstruation would become an enviable, boast worthy, masculine event: <br />Men would brag about how long and how much. <br />Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed- for proof of manhood,with religious and stag parties.”<br />
<div align="right"><strong>Gloria Steinem</strong><br />[excerpt]</div>
</blockquote>
<p align="justify">Opportunities like these, enable Menstrupedia's community to actively participate in the reconfiguration of 'menstruation' as a concept and as an experience. By exposing new narratives and perspectives on the issue and by disseminating menstrual health information, the community is able to crowd source resistance and dismantle the stigma together.</p>
<h2>Making Change through Menstrupedia</h2>
<p align="justify">The case of Menstrupedia reminds us of <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/blank-noise-citizenship">Blank Noise</a> because of its approach to change. Both locate their crises at<strong> the discursive level</strong> and seek to resolve them by creating new forms of meaning-making. They advocate for a reconsideration of 'givens', for a self-reflection on our role perpetuating these notions and for resistance against conceptual status quos: be it socially accepted culprits like 'eve-teasing', or more discrete rejects like 'menstruation'. Both seek to dismantle power structures that give one discourse preference over others, and both count with a strong gender dynamic dominating the context where these narratives unfold. They are producing a revolution in our system of meaning making, yet only producing resistance in the larger societal context they inhabit.</p>
<p align="justify">On the question of where is Menstrupedia's action located, Tuhin replied by pinning it at the<strong> individual level</strong><em><strong>: </strong>“if a person is aware of menstruation and they know the facts, they are more likely to resist restrictions and spread awareness”. </em>However, they still acknowledge the historicity behind menstrual awareness (as knowledge passed down from generation to generation) that precedes the project. While the introduction of Menstrupedia, to an extent, does shake up household dynamics in terms of content, it also provides tools and resources to sustain the traditional model of oral tradition and knowledge sharing within the community.</p>
<p align="justify">In terms of their role as change-makers ,Tuhin stated that the possibility to intervene was a result of their socio-economic status and the resources they had at hand as “<em>educated members of the middle class with access to information and communication technologies”</em>. Is this the role the middle class should play? I asked. To which he gave a two fold answer: First, in terms of <strong>responsibility of action</strong>:<em> “it is a role that anyone can play depending on what kind of expertise they have. It comes to a point where [intents of change] cannot be sustained by activism if you want to achieve long term impact” </em>And second, in terms of setting up a <strong>resilient infrastructure: </strong><em>“I believe we can create an infrastructure people can use and create models that can help low income groups overcome their challenges and become self-sustainable.” </em>Both answers highlight the need for sustainability in social impact projects, hinting a retreat from wishful thinking upon the presence of technology and a more strategic allocation of skills and resources by middle class and for-profit interventions.</p>
<p align="justify">As far the relationship between art, punk, menstruation and technology goes; that was just a hook to get you through the unreasonable length of my blog post, but if anything, it represents an effort to portray the importance of <strong>contextuality and interdisciplinary</strong> we have been exploring throughout the series. Identifying the use of various mediums and language systems, such as different art forms and modes of self-expression, as well the acknowledgement of the theoretical and social contexts preceding and framing the project, as is feminist activism and the cultural and religious backdrop in India, contribute immensely to fill gaps in the stories of how we imagine change making today; especially at the nascence of new narratives, as we hope is the case for menstruation in a post-Menstrupedia era.</p>
<h2 align="JUSTIFY">Sources:</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Bhartiya, Aru: “<em>Menstruation</em>, <em>Religion and Society”</em> IJSSH: International Journal of Social Science and Humanity. Volume: Vol.3, No.6.</p>
<div id="gs_cit2" style="text-align: justify;" class="gs_citr">Bobel, Chris. "“Our Revolution Has Style”: Contemporary Menstrual Product Activists “Doing Feminism” in the Third Wave." <em>Sex Roles</em> 54, no. 5-6 (2006): 331-345.<br /><br />Johnston-Robledo, Ingrid, and Joan C. Chrisler. "The menstrual mark: Menstruation as social stigma." <em>Sex roles</em> 68, no. 1-2 (2013): 9-18.</div>
<h2>Footnotes</h2>
<p>[<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>] Refer to Chris Bobel's work including New Blood: Third-Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation. Access it <a href="http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/New-Blood,113.aspx">here</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>] Johnston Robledo and Chrisler made reference to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org.advanc.io/wiki/Erving_Goffman">Erving Goffman</a>'s 1963 work:<strong> Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity<em>. </em></strong><em>"According to Goffman (1963), the word stigma refers to any stain or mark that sets some people apart from others; it conveys the information that those people have a defect of body or of character that spoils their appearance or identity Goffman (1963, p. 4) categorized stigmas into three types: "abominations of the body” (e.g., burns, scars, deformities), “ blemishes of individual character” (e.g., criminality, addictions), and “tribal” identities or social markers associated with marginalized groups (e.g., gender,race, sexual orientation, nationality)".</em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful#fr3" name="fn3">3</a>] For a short run through on DIY as part of the Punk Subculture, refer to Ian P. Moran's paper: Punk - The Do-it-Yourself culture."Punk as a subculture goes much further than rebellion and fashion as punks generally seek an alternative lifestyle divergent from the norms of society. The do-it-yourself, or D.I.Y. aspect of punk is one of the most important factors fueling the subculture." Access it <a href="http://repository.wcsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&context=ssj">here</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">[<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful#fr4" name="fn4">4</a>] Gloria Steimen is a journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970. Visit her official website <a href="http://www.gloriasteinem.com/">here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/menstrupedia-taboo-beautiful</a>
</p>
No publisher
denisse
Making Change
Net Cultures
Research
Featured
Researchers at Work
2015-10-24T14:25:59Z
Blog Entry
-
Multimedia Storytellers: Panel Discussion
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/multimedia-storytellers
<b>This post brings three storytellers together to find points of intersection between their methods. The format will be that of a panel discussion and it features: Arjun Srivathsa from Pocket Science India, Ameen Haque from the Storywallahs, and Ajay Dasgupta from The Kahani Project. They discuss technology, interpretation and action in storytelling. </b>
<pre>CHANGE-MAKERS: Arjun Srivathsa, Ameen Haque and Ajay Dasgupta
ORGANIZATIONS:Pocket Science India, The Storywallahs and The Kahani Project
METHOD OF CHANGE: Storytelling</pre>
<p align="justify">Over the last couple of weeks, I had the privilege of interviewing three storytellers. What struck me the most, besides from their fascinating ideas about storytelling, was how many of their ideas overlapped. As much as I would love to sit all of them in the same room and enjoy the fireworks, there are a number of logistical constraints that shut my storyteller reunion daydreams down; so for this post, I decided to be a self-appointed liaison between you and them. I will mimic this discussion by putting my conversations with them side by side, in the format of a panel discussion. Their interaction will have to happen in the realm of your imagination.</p>
<p align="justify">The questionnaire I used for my interviews was open-ended. I was curious to hear what they wanted to share about their work, as opposed to filtering and steering the conversation in a certain direction; so I let them take their own turn. While I clearly inquired about the relationship between storytelling and making change, it was fascinating to see each storyteller reach the question of ‘social impact' through different channels; testimony of the influence of their education and professional backgrounds in their work.</p>
<p align="justify">If I were to bring them together, the topic of the discussion would be: '<strong>Technology, Interpretation and Action in Storytelling</strong>'. We briefly discussed mediation and semiotics<strong><a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a></strong> in the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance#pre-production">Pre-Production</a> section of the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance">Storytelling as Performance</a> post. We mentioned then:</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout"><em>"mediums are combined to enhance the visibility of the message and the power of the experience of stories. [...] Each medium: video, audio, text, music, etc.- becomes “a new literate space” or “symbolic tool” storytellers use to portray narratives about the self, community and society (Hull, 2006)”</em></p>
<em>
</em>
<p align="justify">These thoughts were triggered by the work of the French philosopher, <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/">Paul Ricoeur</a>, who considers our self-identity a result of sign mediation and interpretation. Other themes in his work include: discourse and action, temporality, narrative and identity; also useful and relevant when exploring how storytelling and reality intersect. For example, how does building a narrative develop into a discourse that mirrors our context and existence? How does the medium chosen to carry this narrative define the language system of our discourse? Finally, let’s not forget this discussion is happening amid the digital question: how does the mediation of digital technologies enable or constrain our narratives of change?</p>
<p align="justify">Against this background, I would like to propose a discussion around five points of intersection that came up organically* during my conversations with them.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a)<strong> The power of storytelling</strong>: <br />What makes it a powerful vehicle of communication? How does this practice break from more traditional strategies of information dissemination?</p>
<p>b) <strong>Storytelling as a vehicle to make change: <br /></strong>How does the practice of storytelling intervene in the social imagination of its audience? Is it the experience or the content of stories what drives the message of change forward? Where does change happen: at the value, behavioral, community or macro level?</p>
<p>c)<strong> The role of technology in storytelling:</strong> <br />What is the part technology plays in storytelling vis-a-vis traditional storytelling? Is it a static infrastructure or does it shape the force and direction of the story? How does technology influence and impact their work</p>
<p>d) <strong>Translating awareness to action through stories: </strong><br />Can you guarantee the ideas and values imbued by the story will translate into action in the public space?</p>
<p>e)<strong> Influence of stories on citizenship and political participation:</strong> <br />Can the power of stories be leveraged to instill a sense of responsibility in the audience?</p>
<p align="justify" class="discreet">* With the exception of Arjun Srivathsa, who addressed these points in a conference I attended. He later responded to a questionnaire in which I inquired about the intersections specifically.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 align="justify">Introductions<br /></h2>
<p align="justify">We first have <strong>Arjun Srivathsa</strong>. He has a Masters in Wildlife Biology and Conservation and currently works as a Research Associate for the Centre for Wildlife Studies (CWS India). In tandem, he started Pocket Science India, an initiative that combines wildlife science with art and cartoons to promote conservation in India and disseminate information from scientific journal articles. He aims to bridge the gap between the work of scientists and people using art and humour.</p>
<p class="callout">
<strong>Arjun:</strong> I find the world of science and scientists very cool. Finding new things, discovering and inventing ways to understand the world better is an awesome way of life. I chose a career in science for this reason, second only to my love for nature and wildlife. But the essence of science, according to me, is not just to discover, but also to communicate. Even though wildlife research in India has progressed massively in the past few decades, the only notion people have is that of exaggerated scenes from television documentaries. When I discovered that most of the work by Indian scientists on wildlife and conservation of India is making no difference to people (mostly because they are unaware), I decided to use the easiest way to bridge the gap: through humour and art.</p>
<p align="justify">Second speaker<strong> </strong>is<strong> Ameen Haque</strong> from <a href="http://www.thestorywallahs.com/">The Storywallahs</a>. In what he calls his past life, he worked for 18 years in Advertising and Brand Strategy Consulting. Ameen also has a background in theatre and now works as as storyteller for The Storywallahs.</p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/F8U5HAI-0TI" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420">&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/center&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;</iframe></p>
<p align="justify">Finally, we have <strong>Ajay Dasgupta</strong>, the founder of <a href="http://thekahaniproject.org/">The Kahani Project</a>, who also has a background in theatre and believes listening to stories is a fundamental right of children. His team works to capture stories in audio format and make them accessible.</p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633144&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<p>I will now invite them to share their thoughts on the points described above. Each panelist will respond to the questions using<strong> a different medium</strong>: Arjun will comment with text and images, Ameen will comment with video and Ajay will comment using audiobytes. The idea is for each storyteller to use the medium and language they use for their own storytelling: cartoons, body language and audio respectively, as we explore how this choice mediates how they conceptualize change. I will act as a moderator and comment on common themes in the light of Paul Ricoeur’s characteristics of narratives.</p>
<h2>1. The Power of Storytelling<br /></h2>
<h3>What makes it a powerful vehicle of communication?</h3>
<p> </p>
<h2></h2>
<div class="pullquote"><span id="docs-internal-guid-10dcb36e-642b-76be-1e09-54a2a3103a5c">“narrative attains full significance when it becomes a condition of temporal existence” Time and Narrative<br /></span></div>
<div><span id="docs-internal-guid-10dcb36e-642b-76be-1e09-54a2a3103a5c"></span></div>
<p align="justify">The first characteristic of narratives according to Ricoeur is:<strong> the ability to bring independent elements and episodes together into a plot within a specific context and time</strong>. The relationship between time and narrative is addressed by the philosopher in his work <em>'Oneself as Another</em>,' in which he frames narratives as the most 'faithful articulations of human time'. This leads to an understanding of time as a framework where we can locate unique events and patterns, trajectories and sequences. Our three storytellers comment on how stories are an effective mean to communicate information, and how this information resonates because it can be located in the frame of our human existence.</p>
<p class="callout">
<strong>Arjun:</strong> Storytelling really is the nascence of any communication technique. As kids we were all told stories with bees and birds, which spoke and thought. The moral life lessons and similar “information” were served to us on these fascinating platters.</p>
<div align="center"> <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/1524964_614398581930298_1037858013_n.jpg/image_preview" alt="Pocket Science 1" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pocket Science 1" /></div>
<div align="center">
<div align="center"><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption"><em>Dugongs are closely related to whales and dolphins. They are peaceful mammals that swim around gracefully and feed on sea grass. <br />They are categorized as “VULNERABLE” because there are not too many of them left in the world. </em>
</span></span></div>
<span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">
<p align="center">Find full cartoon <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=614398581930298&set=a.614397888597034.1073741836.609687355734754&type=1&theater">here</a></p>
</span></span></div>
<p class="callout">At some point in life, we all seem to stop appreciating the power of storytelling. Plain reporting of information has been done to death. Even an amazing discovery written as a formal report will fail to excite audience. It is time we all get back to appreciating stories. They sell. Movies generally do better than documentaries don’t they?</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ameen:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Q5fphRoT-2k" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p align="justify"> </p>
<p><strong>Ajay:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633135&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<h2>2. Storytelling as a vehicle to make change</h2>
<h3> How and where does change happen?</h3>
<p> </p>
<div class="pullquote">“All action is in principle interaction [...] change happens through interaction, as others are also encouraged to change” From Text to Action</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The second characteristic of narratives is how the <strong>episodes in our narratives involve contingencies that will be shaped and reformulated through the development of the story</strong>. The narratives are constructed in such a way that induce us to imagine possible events in the future and how we would act in said circumstances. This characteristic is supported by Ricoeur's understanding of the <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/#3.2">'self' as an 'agent'</a>, who can act and influence causation by taking initiative or interfering<strong><a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[2]</a></strong> in the story. Even if the listener cannot necessarily influence the outcome of the story (unless it is participatory storytelling), it triggers thoughts about its capability to act and its ability to change future realities, as he imagines himself n the situation of its characters. This out-of-body experience is what turns story into experience.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Our storytellers comment on how stories can influence and activate our agency and enable listeners to act towards creating change.</p>
<p class="callout"><strong>Arjun: </strong>Of course! Like I said, it is easier to influence people when you are not being preachy. Storytelling sidesteps the moral high ground that change makers are often blamed to occupy and takes a pleasantly shrewd path, as silly as it may sound.</p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>
<div align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/PS.jpg/image_preview" alt="Pocket Science 4" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pocket Science 4" /></div>
</th>
<th>
<div align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/PSI2.jpg/image_preview" alt="PSI2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="PSI2" /></div>
</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<em> </em><em><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">#2:
Increase in wildlife tourism has been brought about by the increasing
population of the ‘Tourist’. This species is easy to recognize (see
figure). The species has created an ecosystem of its own. It eats any
kind of high or low profile food. Lives in resorts. Seeks charismatic
animals like the tiger. Its daily activity involves excessive use of its
camera. This species facilitates wildlife tourism </span></span></em></td>
<td><span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption"></span></span><em>#9: Wildlife tourism is an excellent way to
expose people of India and abroad to its rich natural heritage [...] We
definitely need to regulate the number of tourists to avoid crowding in
the forests, but we also need to educate tourists, especially the
first-timers, about wildlife and its conservation. The tourist can be an important tool in conservation –
let’s not let it go waste!</em>"<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="center">Find full cartoon <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=609780439058779&set=pb.609687355734754.-2207520000.1396426793.&type=3&theater">here</a>.</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout">To the question of where we locate change, it depends on what this change is. Through my work, I often target <strong>individuals and smaller communities</strong> (say students, villagers etc.). I don't necessarily grab my paintbrush and declare that I will change the world. My idea of change is a tailored, targeted and therefore an efficient influence on individuals.</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ameen:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GJpeQMltaT4" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ajay:</strong></p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633137&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2>3. The role of technology in storytelling</h2>
<h3>How does technology influence and impact your work?</h3>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Ricoeur’s thoughts on the relationship between text and action, makes us reconsider how we think about ‘<em>text</em>’ and how this reading can be applied to technology. According to him, the distinction between text and action is not at the linguistic, but at the discursive level. This is how he differentiates language from discourse:</p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th><br /></th>
<th>Language<br /></th>
<th>Discourse<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Structure</td>
<td>A system: timeless and static<br /></td>
<td>Located at a given time and moment<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Composition</td>
<td>A sequence of signs<br /></td>
<td>A sequence of events that describe, claim and represent the world<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Meaning</td>
<td>Refers to signs<br /></td>
<td>Refers to the world<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Communication</td>
<td>Provides codes for communication. <br />Necessary but not sufficient<br /></td>
<td>Communicates</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">Using these working definitions, we can understand the medium as <strong>a language:</strong> a system that provides us with signs and codes for communication. A creative use of language and mediums will hence, enable us to create narratives and produce meaning (which will be generated and negotiated by the audience). Technology is in this case our language, and how each storyteller uses it determines new ways to create meaning: experiences, connections and associations with and within their stories. We now ask them if/how the use of this 'language' mediates and impacts their work.</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout"><strong>Arjun:</strong> Technology is the best facilitator in the realm of my science-art-communication. I depend on it extensively, to first educate myself. Then to create artwork (computer, tablet, smartphone). And then eventually I depend heavily on social media to broadcast my work. I will definitely credit the power of technology for fostering and enabling effective communication.</p>
<div align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/PSI3.jpg/image_preview" alt="PSI3" class="image-inline image-inline" title="PSI3" /></div>
<p align="center"><em># 11: The story of Ajoba was carried far and wide in newspapers, television news and the internet</em>. Find full cartoon <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=610114332358723&set=pb.609687355734754.-2207520000.1396426793.&type=3&theater">here</a>.</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout">In my capacity, I feel most confident targeting students and urban youth. But thanks to the power of social media, putting my work out there has grabbed the attention of change-makers who are capable of things that is beyond my scope. This has led to collaborations through which the reach has become wider. Teachers use my art work in their classes, some organisations are using it in forest department buildings to educate visitors, some local groups have translated my work into regional languages.</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ameen:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/25EAnt1yi94" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ajay:</strong></p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633141&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<h2><br /></h2>
<h2>4. Translating awareness into action through stories<br /></h2>
<h3>Can you guarantee the ideas and values imbued by the story translate into action in the public space?</h3>
<p> </p>
<div class="pullquote"> “what must be the nature of action...if it is to be read in terms of change in the world?” From Text to Action</div>
<p id="docs-internal-guid-10dcb36e-6935-a65e-1136-120c46ff2174" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">So far they have told us about the power and content of stories. However, we have yet to find out what is it in stories that make listeners translate fiction into real life action. Ricoeur's final characteristic of narratives points us in the direction of empathy and interpretation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Like discourse, action is open to interpretation. He posits t<strong>hat characters of our stories rise to the status of ‘persons’ when we evaluate their actions, including their doings and sufferings</strong>. This ethical verdict determines the identity of the character in the eyes of the audience (above any other physical or emotional characteristics) and this is what ultimately adds meaning to the events of the story, as it inspires the audience to emulate or reject this behavior through their actions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We asked our storytellers their thoughts on how to translate stories' messages into meaningful action, or if it was even possible to guarantee this transition to begin with:</p>
<p align="justify" class="callout"><strong>Arjun:</strong> I don’t [know]. One never does, I feel. But a lot of good awareness programs have made me change little things in my life. The people or groups who initiated those campaigns don't know of this, do they? This is somewhat similar. I believe that even if ONE person in the thousand who view my work gets influenced into making little changes, then it was worth my time and effort.</p>
<p align="justify"><strong>Ameen:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/neFe7kj8dIc" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p align="left"><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p align="left"><strong>Ajay: </strong>(Ajay commented on the impact of stories while we were discussing how to gauge the impact of his work. In our first conversation he said:<em> "Change is happening but there are no tests that can measure it and quantify it.</em>" and he elaborates on this idea below:)</p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633138&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h2 align="left">5. Influence of stories on citizenship and political participation<br /></h2>
<h3>Can the power of stories be leveraged to instill a sense of responsibility in the audience?</h3>
<div class="pullquote"><br />"You can only achieve power in common by including the opinions of as many people as possible in the discourse"</div>
<p align="justify"> </p>
<p align="justify">Finally, as stated in the brief of the project on methods for change, we are also interested in defining how political participation should be manifested in the public space. Ricoeur frames political action as a result of discourse and political deliberation.For a brief discussion of the relationship between storytelling and our political identity visit <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2">Part 2 of Storytelling as Performance</a>.)</p>
<p align="justify">This last section captures the storytellers' point of view on how stories may affect our sense of citizenship and political responsibility.</p>
<p align="left" class="callout"><strong>Arjun</strong>: We are living in a society which is becoming increasingly insensitive and arrogant. There seems to be no time to stop and see the big picture: what are we doing? are our demands and lifestyles sustainable? Is the future generation secure? Impacts of our actions on the natural world.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/1511040_609776472392509_490391694_n.jpg/image_preview" alt="Pocket Science 2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pocket Science 2" /></td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_1533944_609777242392432_1081033930_n.jpg/image_preview" alt="Pocket Science 3" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Pocket Science 3" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> <span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">#1: Most of us love seafood. And why shouldn't we? It tops the charts as some of the most delicious delicacies in the world! It so happens that we rarely think about what goes on
“behind-the-scenes” and take many things for granted. The story behind
how food reaches your plate is quite a scary one!</span></span></td>
<td> <span id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption"><span class="hasCaption">#12: So next time you feel like a getting a seafood dinner, do it with some perspective.</span></span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<div align="center">Find full cartoon <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.609776052392551.1073741831.609687355734754&type=1">here</a></div>
<strong>Ameen:</strong>
<p> </p>
<p align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/lO0y0QZ3vhQ" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>Ajay</strong>:</p>
<iframe src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/144633136&color=00aabb&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_artwork=true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" height="166" width="100%"></iframe>
<p> </p>
<h2>Closing Remarks</h2>
<p align="justify">I hope you enjoyed reading, watching and listening these three wonderful storytellers share their ideas on technology, interpretation and action. The question that remains unresolved is whether the effect of the story is shaped by the use of technology or not. At the end of the day it is the interpretation of stories -more than what it is said and how it is being said- what will determine the sustainability of these intents for change. The answers of our storytellers reinforce the notion that technology is a system, a language, a medium that transports our messages and intentions, but that inherently lacks the ability to provide guarantees for action and sway users into a lifestyle of responsible citizenship the second they pull out from their cartoon, screen or mp3.</p>
<p> The box below includes a quick run through the main ideas discussed throughout the post:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>1. <strong>On the power of storytelling: </strong></p>
<ul><li>Arjun argues that storytelling is the origin of all communication techniques, and this makes it extremely attractive for the public. <br /></li><li>Both Ajay and Ameen bring up the ability to influence behavior, shape the minds of people and transmit experiences, values and beliefs.</li><li>Both also brought up how dominant religions, ideologies, markets governments use storytelling to build movements and sustain their support</li><li>Finally Ajay comments on the issue of access: stories are powerful yet only a small share of stories are being told Hence, the need for this method to become more pervasive.</li></ul>
<br />
<p>2. <strong>Storytelling as a vehicle for change:</strong><br />Each storyteller locates change in different yet complementary spaces:</p>
<ul><li>Arjun believes it must occur at the community level and hence the approach (stories) must be tailored and targeted in order to achieve an effective influence. His approach to change is very contextual.</li><li>Ameen locates it at the behavioral level; in our ability to make decisions and choices. His approach to change is based on how we use information from stories to interact with our surroundings.</li><li>Ajay locates it at the value level: He believes stories should influence us to adjust our values and only then, we will shape our behavior accordingly.</li></ul>
<br />
<p><strong>3. Role of technology:<br /></strong>We approached technology as a 'text' and as a 'language' that creates new possibilities for meaning and interpretation.</p>
<ul><li>For Arjun and Ajay, technology enabled them to connect with other organizations and increased possibilities for partnerships and collaborations. </li></ul>
<ul><li>The three of them believe technology is an accelerator of the journey of stories and that it enables them to reach a larger audience.</li><li>Ameen argued that each medium requires different fluencies, and that the language of each medium should be adapted for the story. For example, a story will be told in different ways if using body language, video, audio, etc. He uses the example of the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/Twitter">Twitter adaption of the Mahabharata.</a><br /></li><li>Ajay closes by noting that although technology enables, it cannot replace the storyteller. <br /></li></ul>
<br />
<p><strong>4. Translating awareness into action</strong></p>
<ul><li>Arjun and Ameen comment on the power of effectively and positively influencing <em>one</em> person. They believe the impact will exponentially spread and grow through that person's network or community.</li><li>Arjun believes you can guarantee it will turn into action.</li><li>Ameen believes you need to move them and inspire them through your characters to the point they feel they can be the hero of that story and act accordingly.</li><li>Ajay takes a more pragmatic approach towards action and shares some of the activities The Kahani Project uses to complement his storytelling sessions, such as: story-thons, story-booths and interactive storytelling, where they engage the audience in the production of their own stories.</li></ul>
<br />
<p><strong>5. Impact of storytelling on citizenship and political participation</strong></p>
<ul><li>Arun and Ajay believe this will come as a result of self-reflection and an evaluation of our impact in the world.</li><li>Ameen believes effective stories transmit the 'responsibility of action' through rhetoric. He uses the example of the popularity of India Against Corruption movement.</li><li>Ajay believes storytelling is a humanizing force that has the power of healing. He recommends institutions should utilize this method to spread confidence and inclusion among society and particularly with excluded groups. <br /></li></ul>
</blockquote>
<h2>Footnotes</h2>
<p align="justify">[<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/multimedia-storytellers#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>] Semiotics is defined as the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. It is the study of making meaning and is essential to understand communication processes. While we will not look at any specific semiotics theory, we will focus on how stories create meaning through different signs and mediums, and how this meaning can be leveraged for making change.<br /><br />[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">2</a>] Refer to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ricoeur/">page on Paul Ricoeur</a> and the section on ‘Selves and Agents’ to learn more about how action is mediated by causation, interference and intervention. Some interesting thoughts that inspired the above post</p>
<p dir="ltr">“What must be the nature of the world … if human beings are able to introduce changes into it?. Ricoeur adopts the analysis of interference or intervention that G. H. von Wright gives in Explanation and Understanding, and shows that for there to be interference, there must be both: an ongoing anterior established order or course of things and a human doing that somehow intervenes in and disturbs that order. Moreover, interference is always purposeful. Hence an interference is not merely ascribable to an agent. It is also imputable to the agent as the one whose purpose motivates the interference.”</p>
<p>
“The second crucial question about action is “What must be the nature of action … if it is to be read in terms of a change in the world?” Ricoeur argues that every action involves initiative, i.e., “an intervention of the agent of action into the course of the world, an intervention that effectively causes changes in the world” (Oneself as Another, 109, translation modified). Initiative requires a bodily agent possessing specific capabilities and vulnerabilities who inhabits some concrete worldly situation.”</p>
<h2>Sources:</h2>
<p> </p>
<p>Dauenhauer, Bernard and Pellauer, David, "Paul Ricoeur", <em>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy </em> (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/ricoeur/>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/multimedia-storytellers'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/multimedia-storytellers</a>
</p>
No publisher
denisse
Making Change
Net Cultures
Research
Featured
Researchers at Work
2015-10-24T14:26:51Z
Blog Entry
-
Bridging the Information Divide - Political Quotient
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient
<b>On this post, we will unpack 'information poverty'- a problem lying at the very foundation of the crises that inspired this project and a barrier impacting political action. We interview Surabhi HR, the founder director of the political consulting firm Political Quotient, an initiative that seeks to change how youth interacts with politics in India</b>
<pre><strong>CHANGE-MAKER</strong>: Surabhi H R
<strong>ORGANIZATION</strong>: Political Quotient
<strong>METHOD OF CHANGE</strong>: Building an information service for citizen grievances, designed to keep elected representatives accountable for what happens in their constituency.
<strong>STRATEGY OF CHANGE</strong>: Building a new breed of politically conscious youth in India through technology and an interdisciplinary approach to change.</pre>
<p align="justify">The deeper we delve into this project, the more the ‘information question’ rises to the surface as the decisive factor shaping political participation in democracies. Most of the initiatives we have learned about are focused on providing spaces, resources and opportunities to enable voices, participation and richer exchanges of information and knowledge. Yet, framing these as ‘empowering’ overlooks citizens who are trapped in an information gap or suffocated by an information overflow. People who find themselves in either side of the spectrum, are for the most part discouraged from engaging with this information, participating in public discussions (Jaeger, 2005), and do not have the same political opportunities as people with wider and freer access to information.</p>
<p align="justify">As we continue to explore how youth is redefining civic action in digital and information societies, we must thoroughly understand the different ways in which information barriers are affecting political action. On this post, we will go over a short glossary of terms that will help us understand <strong>information poverty</strong> better- a problem lying at the very foundation of the crises that inspired this project. These terms will be somewhat similar to each other, but will be unpacked from three different points of view, describing the implications of information poverty for social justice, technology disparity and democracy. The glossary will be coupled by our conversation with Surabhi HR, the founder director of the political consulting firm <a href="http://politicalquotient.in/">Political Quotient</a>, an initiative that seeks to change how youth interacts with politics in India. Her background in Economics added new nuances to our analysis, as we explore the workings of political action through the lenses of economic theory.</p>
<h3>Political Quotient</h3>
<p align="justify">Political Quotient wants to “<em>build a new breed of politically conscious youth that engages with the political system and equips them with the necessary skills to do so”. </em>They have been running two programs: the <strong>‘Political Internship Programme’</strong> where young people have the opportunity to join party lines and support with legislative research, performance auditing, media management and event organization. And the second program is <strong>‘Politicking’</strong>, in which they organize Google hangouts and panels between student leaders, political commentators, and party heads to debate and discuss policy-making and politics.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Politicking.jpg/image_preview" alt="Politicking" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Politicking" /></p>
<p align="justify">Now PQ is moving on to a new phase, in which they recognize it is not only youth who must be empowered. Similarly to <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-structures-janaagraha">Janaagraha</a>, they also believe there must be an information structure in place to support elected representatives, who have been chosen to govern without the resources to effectively do so. <em>“Things are changing, elected representatives are being held accountable, asked to be more transparent and to be more active, but the honest truth is they don’t have the necessary support to do this” </em>comments Surabhi on the situation that led her and her team to develop a set of services and products to engage people in direct conversation with their elected representatives. These including the following:</p>
<p align="justify">a) A <strong>grievance addressing service:</strong> designed to keep elected representatives accountable for what happens in their constituency. Citizen grievances can be sent by e-mail, smartphone, sms, etc. to the elected representative’s office, where it will reach a multi-platform software that redresses the grievance to the right department; (for example, if the grievance is related to a tree fall, it will be redressed to the forestry department as opposed to staying in the MLA office). The whole process will be transparent, as both the citizen and the MLA will be able to track the status of the complaint, from the day it was issued to the day it was implemented, using technology.</p>
<p align="justify">b) A <strong>government schemes and subsidies information service: </strong>Citizens will have access to information about schemes through digital technologies, and find out if it is reaching the right beneficiaries.</p>
<h2>Glossary:</h2>
<p align="justify">
(or crash course on concepts we should be familiar with when discussing making change in information societies)</p>
<p align="justify">To understand what information poverty is and how Political Quotient’s intervention in the information landscape will impact political action, will refer to the work of Johannes Britz, Doctor in Information Science and that of Anthony Downs, Economist specialist in public policy and public administration. This choice is inspired by a natural tension in our research as we continue to negotiate: what change ‘should’ look like from the lens of social justice and sustainable development, and what the ecosystem of change actually looks like when we deconstruct the political and economic structures enabling and constraining intents of change.</p>
<pre>
<div style="text-align: center;">1.<strong>Information poverty:</strong></div>
According to Johannes Britz, : “the situation in which individuals and communities do not have the skills, abilities or material means to obtain efficient access to information, interpret it and apply it.”</pre>
<p align="justify">Britz believes that information poverty must be addressed from a social justice perspective that considers the social, political and economic consequences of lack of information for our ability to fulfill our capabilities and freedoms. He posits a 'fair information society' as an ideal, in which social institutions work towards eradicating the four main characteristics of information- poor societies (See box below)<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient#fn1" name="fr1"></a><a name="fr1"></a></p>
<blockquote style="float: right;">
<p align="center"><strong>Characteristics of information-poor societies</strong></p>
<p>
1. Lack of essential information<br />2. Lack of financial capital to access information<br />3. Lack of technical infrastructure to access information<br />4. Lack of intellectual capacity to filter and evaluate<br /><strong> </strong>the benefits of information</p>
</blockquote>
<p align="justify">The third characteristic: <strong>'inefficient information infrastructures'</strong> is the main gap, both Janaagraha and Political Quotient, are addressing in urban India. They are both providing services to connect the citizen with their elected representatives; establishing a reliable exchange of information between parties, and as a consequence, more autonomy, transparency and accountability in the governance process.</p>
<p align="justify">How does Political Quotient brings us closer to a fairer information landscape in governance? Surabhi responds: <em>“The [grievance addressing] system is using the benefits of filling the information gap to create tangible assets: greater accountability, interaction, participation in the citizen-elected representative relationship and thereby fundamentally changing the way they interact.” </em></p>
<p align="justify">Following Britz's reading of John Rawls' categories of justice<a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a>. PQ’s work addresses social justice in the following ways:</p>
<ul><li>
<strong>Recognition and participation:</strong> Enhancing the citizen’s ability to file a complaint is in itself an act of recognition of the citizen’s power to affect its own environment and his possibility to participate in the governance process. <br /></li><li><strong>Reciprocity: </strong>The system enables interaction between the elected representative and the citizen, setting forth reciprocity, transparency and a horizontal platform for exchanges where both parties manage the same information. <br /></li><li><strong>Development of capabilities: </strong>Assuming a successful implementation, grievances addressed imply the realization of the power of the citizen and a more functional infrastructure that enables their development as individuals. <br /></li><li><strong>Distribution and enablement: </strong>Assuming all citizens in Karnataka have access to ICTs, this service distributes power and bridges the distance between them and the government.</li></ul>
<div align="justify" class="pullquote"><br />"In a society where we depend on the creation, access and manipulation
of information, [lack of information] questions the fundamental freedoms
of people”. Britz, 2004</div>
<p> </p>
<p align="justify">While all these are highly idealistic assumptions, the last one is the most problematic (in a country where the Internet and mobile penetration rate remain as low as <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/With-243-million-users-by-2014-India-to-beat-US-in-internet-reach-Study/articleshow/25719512.cms">16%</a> and <a href="http://www.iamwire.com/2013/06/indian-mobile-landscape-2013/#_am76us06">26%</a> respectively). While information and communication technologies do play an important role in bridging the gap between those who have access and produce information and those who don’t, as Britz outlines, the growth of ICT’s takes information poverty to a <em>“whole new dimension”</em>; in most cases dividing the info-haves and the info-have nots even further. Britz ideal of an fair information society is what we aspire to, yet there are structural limitations in place which might prevent information-based initiatives, such as Political Quotient, from achieving its social justice objectives.</p>
<pre>
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>2.Information Poverty</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Information poverty can also be thought of as ‘information inequity’, which for the last 20 years has been strongly correlated to the digital divide. From this perspective, we can define it as the “economic inequality between groups in terms of access to and use of knowledge and ICTs.” </div>
</pre>
<p align="justify">Analyzing information precariousness from the technology perspective brings us to the elements contributing to the digital divide and how they are affecting our ability to be informed by and of digital technologies. According to Britz, the three main elements contributing to the divide are the following:</p>
<blockquote>
<div align="center"><strong>Factors Contributing to Digital Divide</strong><br /><br /></div>
a) <strong>Connectivity: </strong>Lack of infrastructure and material access to ICTs
<br />b) <strong>Content:</strong> Inability to access content because it is unaffordable, unavailable or unsuitable.<br />c) <strong>Human approach:</strong> Lack of education and digital literacy to understand and use information and data as knowledge.<br /></blockquote>
<p align="justify">This is a paramount consideration for Political Quotient if they aspire to reach all the constituencies in Karnataka; both rural and urban. Surabhi recognizes the firm will have to overcome the socioeconomic barriers that impede a pervasive adoption of her product. <em>“When one travels between rural and urban, the differences are many. Nothing has been done on the ground and there is a lot of potential. What is encouraging is that they want to learn.” </em>This limitation is conflicting with the amount of information the stakeholders of this project need to handle in order to successfully bridge the information gap (between the elected representatives and the citizens) and have it be a<em> “mutually beneficial relationship between the voter and the voted” </em>as they envision:</p>
<div align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/Capturadepantalla20140414alas15.jpg/image_preview" alt="Information Gaps" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Information Gaps" /><br />Information stakeholders need in order to use this service<br />Infographic generated using <a href="https://infogr.am/">info.gram</a><br /><br /></div>
<p align="justify">While the service PQ is developing seeks to leverage technology to bridge this gap, digital illiteracy might not only prevent citizens from using the system, but could potentially exclude them further from the democratic process. As Shah posits in the project’s <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/whose-change-is-it-anyway.pdf">thought piece</a> (on increasing the access to ICTS): <em>“the analogue citizen is expected to transition to the emerging new paradigms: earlier categories of discrimination or exclusion are now replaced by technology exclusion.”</em> The team plans to work with their clients (representatives) in digital technologies and organizational skills capacity building, yet an information inequity strategy needs to be put in place in order to guarantee the fulfillment of all the stakeholders’ capabilities -particularly equitable participation from the citizen’s front.</p>
<pre>
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>3. Information Poverty:</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">Information poverty can also take the economic avatar of ‘imperfect knowledge’. According to Anthony Downs, “lack of complete information on which to base decisions is a condition so basic to human life that it influences the structure of almost every social institution”.</div>
</pre>
<p align="justify">Downs' perspective is based on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice">public choice theory</a>, which is <em>“the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems in political science”</em>. This is a subset of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_political_theory">positive political theory</a>, that models voters, bureaucrats and politicians as self-interested. He posits in his work <a href="http://www.hec.unil.ch/ocadot/ECOPOdocs/cadot2.pdf">‘Economic Theory for Political Action in a Democracy’</a> that political parties in democracies formulate policy and serve interest groups merely as a means to gaining votes.</p>
<p align="justify">Surabhi and her team align with this thinking: <em>“Politics is not benevolent; ours is a for-profit model that seeks to engage with the elected representative in providing him a mechanism to ensure that he gets more votes. At the same time, we also engage with citizens in ensuring that their interests and issues are looked into. Our basis is that politicians work for votes and the same should be leveraged to solve problems”</em>. Downs’ thesis is that given these assumptions, a democracy –a political system where the parties compete for the control of the government –can only function to its fullest potential when there is perfect information and information is costless. This is what makes democracy the gold standard of governance and the great model on paper that promises to secure our equality and freedoms.</p>
<p align="justify">Yet, democracy does not cease to bring disappointment and a sense of helplessness towards politics amongst youth. The advent of digital technologies has been a glimpse of hope for their political engagement, and this entire research is grounded on the question of how is it they can renew trust and mobilize youth towards civic engagement. A first step towards this direction is assuming the inherent faults in the system, as opposed to focusing on citizen apathy. Democracy has been implemented in a system where there is imperfect knowledge and where there is a high degree of both voluntary and involuntary ignorance <a name="fr2" href="#fn2">[2]</a>,. This, according to Downs, means that:</p>
<blockquote>
<div align="center"><strong>Consequences of imperfect knowledge in governance</strong></div>
<ul><li>Parties do not know what citizens want </li><li>Citizens do not always know what the government is doing or should be doing </li><li>Information to overcome this gap is costly</li></ul>
</blockquote>
<div align="left" class="pullquote"> “Ignorance of politics is not a result of unpatriotic apathy, rather it
is a highly rational response to the fats of political life in a large
democracy” Downs, 1957</div>
If information is costly, so is democracy. The highest risk of deeming citizens apathetic is ignoring the information barriers that prevent them from participating fairly in decision-making processes. Political Quotient cannot intervene by encouraging citizens to be informed, but it can provide them with tools to bring them closer to constituency related information, bringing down the costs of both participation and information. As put by Surabhi: <em>“We want to be an ally of the political system. They need to do good. They are there for 5 years and need to do something.”</em>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Making Change</h2>
<p align="justify">While my glossary of terms may seem repetitive (I did define the same term three times), I want to make an emphasis on how important it is to unpack our concepts through various lens of analysis. We started this project exploring multi-stakeholderism and partnerships on the ground, however we are naturally moving on to spaces of knowledge collaboration where change is conceived through the amalgamation of different disciplines. These convergences do not necessarily happen in the most visible ways though, and one of the project’s objectives is to identify undocumented yet significant interventions to make change in the landscape of information societies.</p>
<p align="justify">Political Quotient’s initiative breaks the following paradigms in the discourse of 'change in the digital era':</p>
<blockquote>
a) It removes the spotlight from the <strong>citizen:</strong> while the focus of the project is to level citizens-citizen and citizen-government power relations (in terms of access to information), the political firm is focusing on improving the efficiency of the government apparatus, which brings new light to how 'citizen action' unfolds in the context of urban governance. <br />
<div> </div>
<div>b) Political Quotient’s <strong>methods</strong> are far from what we see in the ‘spectacle imperative’ where the intent for change is scaled up through visibility in the public sphere. The firm was conceived in the private sector and its work will take place from within the elected representative’s offices. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>c) The firm, in the same way as Vita Beans, applies an i<strong>nterdisciplinary approach </strong>to the design of its technology. (Fun fact: Political Quotient is working alongside Amruth’s team to create mobile applications for the service; which means the infrastructure will include both behavioural science and economic thinking behind its design. Read <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology">one of our previous posts</a>, to learn more about Amruth's approach to change and digital design)</div>
<div> </div>
d) <strong>Technology</strong> is indeed framing their understanding of change, but in this case, the question is how technology can be amplified by human behaviour and education, as opposed to how technology determines or amplifies our ability to make change as it is commonly conceived.<br /></blockquote>
<div> </div>
<p align="justify">Not including an analysis of information poverty, and how it both inspires and limits intents of change, devoids the project from understanding the dynamic nature of information and how it interferes in social justice and political action. Furthermore, info-poverty is not a condition characteristic of digital and information societies. Our ability to access information has always determined our dexterity to navigate institutions and infrastructures; indistinctive of what technologies are available at the time. We hope that Political Quotient’s initiative locates not only the information gaps, but also the inherent obstacles the digital divide might represent for their work, and as stated by Surabhi in their theory of change, take them <em>“as an opportunity for a solution. Going from mere ideas to action”.</em> We wish them the best and will follow up on them after June, once the new elected representatives are in office, to see the extent to which information poverty has been addressed through their service. </p>
<h2 align="justify">Footnotes:</h2>
<p align="justify">[<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient#fr1" name="fn1">1</a>] Britz based his categorization in John Rawls work on principles of
justice. Particularly on 'A Theory of Justice' a work of political
philosophy and ethics where he discusses inequality, distributive
justice and his theory of <a title="Justice as Fairness" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_as_Fairness">Justice as Fairness</a>.
We did not refer to his work for this post, but it is worth a read in
the context of the digital divide and the question of fair
redistribution of digital technologies. </p>
<p align="justify">[<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient#fr2" name="fn2">2</a>] Read more on voluntary or involuntary lack of knowledge in Downs' work on <a href="http://www.hec.unil.ch/ocadot/ECOPOdocs/cadot2.pdf">economic theory and political action</a>. Particularly his reading on persuasion, ideologies and rational
ignorance -in a context of imperfect knowledge and democracy. Some
interesting ideas on persuasion: "<em>Persuasion can only occur in the
midst of ignorance; reality is: there are votes who are less informed
than others and they need more facts; and we are mostly approached by
biased versions of facts" </em>and on rational ignorance:<em> "when
information is costly, no decision-maker can afford to know everything
[...] ignorance of politics is not a result of unpatriotic apathy;
rather it is a highly rational response to the facts of political life
in a large democracy"</em>.</p>
<h2 align="justify">Sources</h2>
<div id="gs_cit2" class="gs_citr"><br />1. Britz, Johannes J. "To know or not to know: a moral reflection on information poverty." <em>Journal of Information Science</em> 30, no. 3 (2004): 192-204.<br /><br />
<div id="gs_cit2" class="gs_citr">2. Downs, Anthony. "An economic theory of political action in a democracy." <em>The Journal of Political Economy</em> (1957): 135-150.<br /><br />3. Jaeger, Paul T., and Kim
M. Thompson. "Social information behavior and the democratic process:
Information poverty, normative behavior, and electronic government in
the United States." <em>Library & Information Science Research</em> 26, no. 1 (2005): 94-107.</div>
<br />
<div id="gs_cit2" class="gs_citr">4. Norris, Pippa. <em>Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide</em>. Cambridge University Press, 2001.<br /><br />5. <span class="reference-text"><span class="citation journal">Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.</span></span></div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-divide-political-quotient</a>
</p>
No publisher
denisse
Researchers at Work
Net Cultures
Making Change
Research
2015-10-24T14:28:06Z
Blog Entry
-
Information Structures for Citizen Participation - Janaagraha
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-structures-janaagraha
<b>In our efforts to understand how change is conceptualized in the digital era, we find a growing emphasis on the role of effective information structures to empower the citizen and the government. We interview Joylita Saldanha from Janaagraha to answer questions around information, participation and e-governance. </b>
<pre><strong>CHANGE-MAKER:</strong>Interview with Joylita Saldanha
<strong>ORGANIZATION</strong>: Janaagraha - I change my city
<strong>METHOD OF CHANGE: </strong>Online platforms to enable communication between the citizen and the government.
<strong>STRATEGY OF CHANGE:</strong>Empower the government -create resources to help them do what the citizens expect them to do.</pre>
<p align="justify">10 posts into the project, we are identifying the most outstanding patterns between processes of change. One of the themes that comes up often is<strong>: information management.</strong> How do we translate data to information, and information to knowledge? What is the best way to produce, consume and disseminate information? How does visible information lead to better mechanisms of participation in democracy? As the topic recurs in my conversations with change-makers, I have even reflected about the way that I display the research outputs of this project, and have adapted the format of these articles to make them as interactive and accessible as possible. Why? Because we believe this research is an entry point for a wider conversation around different ways to understand ‘making change’, and in order to produce this knowledge we need different actors to take part in the conversation. Hence, the format of our information must be (visually) persuasive enough to sway the readers into at least reading the article, and encourage their engagement, interaction and participation.</p>
<p align="justify">This is also the rationale behind digital information platforms, including <strong>e-governance.</strong> Governments, authorities and organizations are devising new ways of presenting their information and making their services more accessible and interactive for the public. According to the <strong>UNESCO’</strong>s <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=3038&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html">definition</a>, e-governance is the public sector’s use of information and communication technology with the aim of:</p>
<ol><li>Improving information and service delivery</li><li>Encouraging citizen participation in decision-making processes</li><li>Making governments accountable, transparent and effective<br /></li></ol>
<div align="center"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9lk9SDji2kk" frameborder="0" height="315" width="420"></iframe></div>
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">What is e-governance?<br />By the IDRC and IdeaCorp</div>
<p align="justify">India has its own <strong>National e-governance plan</strong> in place. It’s ambitious in scope:</p>
<blockquote>
<h3 align="center">“a massive country-wide infrastructure reaching down to the remotest of villages is evolving, and large-scale digitization of records is taking place to enable easy, reliable access over the internet. The ultimate objective is to bring public services closer home to citizens”. </h3>
</blockquote>
<div align="center"> Read more on the plan <a href="http://india.gov.in/e-governance/national-e-governance-plan">here</a>.</div>
<p align="justify"><br />However most of the online services offered on this platform are focused on tax returns, citizenship/visa/PAN/TAN applications or train bookings. The communication direction remains uni-lateral, going strictly from <strong>government to citizen</strong>. They also host a portal for citizen grievances (link below), in an effort to also tackle<strong> citizen to government </strong>communication. While the portal has some fancy tools like a 4 colour palette to customize the theme of the site; the interface seems outdated and the ‘Guidelines for Redress of Public Grievances’ has not been updated since 2010.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>Communication</strong><br /></td>
<td align="center"><strong>Government to Citizen</strong></td>
<td align="center"><strong>Citizen to government<br /></strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>Portal</strong><br /></td>
<td align="center">Aadhar Kiosk<br /></td>
<td align="center">Portal for Public Grievances<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>Link</strong></td>
<td align="center">http://resident.uidai.net.in/</td>
<td align="center">http://pgportal.gov.in/</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong>Interface</strong></td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/AdhaarKiosk2.jpg/image_preview" alt="ak2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="ak2" /></td>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/PublicGrievances2.jpg/image_preview" alt="pg2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="pg2" /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">At this point, I should probably add much needed disclaimers: my online search might not have been exhaustive enough. There might be other e-governance services (hosted by the government for citizens) I did not cover in my quick google run, or as a foreigner I might be unaware of the right places to look. Having said that, I have been trying to use my newbie experience throughout these posts, to explore the digital immigrant from a different angle. The digital immigrant is not only who was born before the 1990s, but also includes those of us who are technologically challenged and for whom the more complex sites are still wild, undiscovered territories. If these information structures are not accessible enough for someone who intentionally scouted for them for about an hour, it will not be for the user who does not have the time to spare and needs a more reliable and resilient bridge to connect with the government. This problem is at the core of civic participation and as a result, change actors are devising new modes to interfere, facilitate and engage with government information.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Information and Urban Governance<br /></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;" class="discreet" dir="ltr">(This section will be revised)</p>
<p align="center" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The question on information management is key in the analysis of citizen action in emerging information societies. This project acknowledged from its inception that the information flow of networks is changing and shaping the dynamics of state-citizen-market relationships (Shah, 2014). I will refer to Yochai
Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, to revisit the information economy, as it has been a recurrent reference in my analyses throughout the project, and it will be a useful benchmark to cross-reference findings in the future. On this opportunity, I would like to highlight his views on the role of information flow in democratic societies:</p>
<div align="center">
<blockquote>
<h3 align="center" style="text-align: center;">“The basic claim is that the diversity of ways of organizing information production and use, opens a range of possibilities for pursuing the core political values of liberal societies-individual freedom, a more genuinely participatory political system, a critical culture, and social
justice” Benkler, 2006<br /></h3>
</blockquote>
<p align="left">Enabling
a smoother and more transparent information flow, according to his work,
has the following effects on citizen’s participation:</p>
</div>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>1. Autonomy:
</strong>Access to information enables citizens to perceive a wider range of
possibilities and options against which they can gauge their choices.
This is particularly important when the citizen participates in
decision-making processes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>2. Democracy</strong>: The
emergence of an information economy, creates information structures
that are not only an alternative to mass media, as Benkler states, but I
would like to add are also alternative to government-run e-governance platforms that cannot fully cater to citizens' need
for participation and debate. Creating an accessible and participatory
information structure also creates a space
that fosters public discussion, and hence, the expression of our
political nature. (Visit <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2">Storytelling as Performance Part 2</a> for a larger exploration of the political in the public space)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>3. Human justice</strong>: The
freedom to access basic resources and services, allows us to fulfil
our capabilities in society, including producing our own information, as
well as improving our well-being by accessing information about health,
education, public infrastructure, etc.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">These three characteristics can be very well tied up with the three objectives of e-governance outlined above: wider information delivery, citizen participation and government accountability. Citizens aspire to access information that
enables them to make good choices and participate in conversations that
affect their livelihoods. For this reason, we find a
common goal among the change actors (interviewed in the series), is
devising new modes to engage with government-related information that complement or replace government-owned platforms.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Civil Society' and E-governance<br /></h2>
<p align="center" style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">One
of the best known examples of these initiatives have been spearheaded by the Bangalore-based NGO: <strong><a href="http://www.janaagraha.org/">Janaagraha</a></strong>. the Centre for
Citizenship and Democracy.</p>
<div align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Logohorizontal.png/image_preview" alt="logo h" class="image-inline image-inline" title="logo h" /></div>
<p align="center">Image courtesy of Duke University website</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The organization works to improve the quality
of life in Indian cities and towns, by improving the information around infrastructure and services; and citizenship. We
interviewed Joylita Saldanha, who works for the NGO’s leadership team to
learn more about Janaagraha’s views on the role of information for
urban governance, based on the experience of platforms such as <a href="http://ichangemycity.com/">I change my city</a>. Her perspective c
aught me off guard, as she framed the problem in urban governance from a
somewhat unconventional angle:</p>
<blockquote style="float: right;">
<h3 align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Joylita.jpg/image_preview" style="float: right;" title="Joylita" height="170" width="138" alt="Joylita" class="image-center image-inline" /><strong>Joylita Saldanha</strong></h3>
<div align="center"><strong>Janaagraha's Leadership Team</strong></div>
<br />
<ul><li>Experience conceptualizing and<br /> building Mobile and Web products in Los Angeles and Bangalore<br /></li></ul>
<ul><li>Believes technology is a great lever and enabler.</li><li>Sees potential in technology to drive community action at the ground level</li></ul>
</blockquote>
<p align="justify">Whenever we talk about social change, participation and democracy, we root for the discourse that works to empower the citizen. Janaagraha finds this assumption incomplete. Saldanha suggests it is our role to find <strong>new ways to empower <em>the government </em>and help <em>them </em>do their job:<em> "</em></strong><em>One citizen cannot be always an agent of change so we need communities coming together [...] We want to look at how to get citizens involved, because we can’t keep blaming the government if we don’t participate. We need to help them do what they do".</em></p>
<p align="justify">Read this short interview to get a glimpse of the information structures Janaagraha is building to empower the government.</p>
<h2 align="justify">Interview:<br /></h2>
<p>In order to gauge the extent to which Janaagraha is empowering and enabling the government to make information accessible for the public, we will look at how their <em>online</em> platforms are improving e-governance, based on the three characteristics outlined in the <strong>UNESCO </strong>definition and the three characteristics of effective information economies outlined by Benkler.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy2_of_copy_of_egovernance2.jpg/image_preview" alt="e-gov" class="image-inline image-inline" title="e-gov" /></p>
<h3><strong><span id="docs-internal-guid-f0a0d708-b685-3928-7ef6-460803e1d0da">Stage 1: Improving information delivery</span></strong></h3>
<p class="callout"><strong>How does I change my city tackle this information crisis?
</strong></p>
<p><strong>JS:</strong> Janaagraha wants to improve the quality of life in two ways:</p>
<ul><li>
Improving the quality of infrastructure. <br /></li><li>Improving the quality of citizenship and citizen engagement. <br /><br /></li></ul>
<p>We look at I change my city as something that enables citizens and governments to be more transparent for each other. Janaagraha can’t be everywhere, but technology crosscuts all the programs to allow us to roll it out to other cities.</p>
<p class="callout"><strong> How does Janaagraha know what information people need?
</strong></p>
<p><strong>JS:</strong>We have a<strong> Net Plus Roots</strong> approach:</p>
<table class="plain" align="center">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Stage<br /></th>
<th align="center">Roots: Information transactions at the grassroots level<br /></th>
<th align="center">Net: Information transactions through technology<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Process<br /></td>
<td>
Reach out to communities and engage with them
<ul><li>Community outreach and advocacy teams contacts the government </li><li>Get the government and the citizen connected</li><li>Send out citizen reports to government<br /></li><li>Follow up with the government to get responses</li><li>Share responses with the citizens<br /></li></ul>
</td>
<td>We take all learnings from the grassroots and apply them to technology.<br />
<ul><li>The design/product team in place does customer
research.</li><li>Look at google keywords and try to understand what people are searching for <br /></li><li>Disseminate that content with citizens </li></ul>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> Example</td>
<td><strong>Crisis:</strong> Low voting turn out.<br /><strong>Roots intervention:<br /></strong>Look at where people go to enroll for voting and how we can clean up the electoral role at the grassroots level.<br /><strong>Net intervention:<br /></strong><a href="http://www.jaagteraho.net/">Jaagte Raho</a>: A portal People can register online to vote.<br /><br /><br /></td>
<td><strong>Crisis: </strong><span id="docs-internal-guid-f0a0d708-b69c-4271-222a-07b477f84d1b">How
to get a driving license in Bangalore.<br /><strong>Roots intervention: <br /></strong>People were not getting them
because they don’t know the correct process or what to do. They don’t
know the hows or the whys. <br />N<strong>et intervention<br /></strong>We created a section called How To and put
the process of<br />a) How to get a driving license<br />b) why do you go and get
a driving license<br />c) what are the documents you need to carry.</span><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Right now we are
playing the role of facilitator, but eventually we don’t want to be
those facilitators. We want these platforms to be bridges between the
citizen and the government.</p>
<p class="callout"><strong>My only problem with this is that an information structure based and reliant on digital technologies will only allow the interests of the middle class to permeate the system. How will information from other groups feed into the structure?</strong></p>
<p align="justify"><strong>JS:</strong> We definitely want to enable access for everyone, but we don’t want a duplication of efforts. If the road is broken; even if one person complains and gets that pothole fixed then the road will be good for everyone to use. At the end of the day what we want people is to participate. From then we can take it to the next level and ask: ok what are we really missing in terms of planning? where are we missing participatory budgeting? where can we involve everybody: not only the urban but everybody. That’s what it takes it to the next level.</p>
<h3>Stage 2: Encouraging citizen participation in decision-making processes</h3>
<p class="callout"><strong>How does access to information improve urban governance?
</strong></p>
<strong>JS: </strong>A very basic important aspect of where you live is to find which is your ward who is your electoral representative and what does he do. People don’t even know which ward they are living in, which is their assembly constituency, etc. Engaging with the electoral representative, then engaging with civic agencies. These are things you need to have in place before we start looking beyond this.
<strong><br /><br /></strong>
<p class="callout"><strong> And you are facilitating this information?</strong></p>
<strong>JS: </strong>Yes, we are trying to map out services in the neighborhood and give more information about this. We have Municipal Commissions in Bangalore, and most people don’t know where these agencies are located, so our survey team went out found the offices and mapped them.
<p> </p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/map2.jpg/image_preview" title="map 2" height="270" width="400" alt="map 2" class="image-inline image-inline" /> </p>
<p>We use maps a lot because we make a lot of emphasis in spatial data. We want people to participate: tell us where their the park or playground is, locate it and then we take this information and find out: what is the budget allocated for this park, when was the last clean up, what is the future of this park, etc. At the same time, we want the citizen to tell us about its state and their wish-lists for this park.</p>
<p class="callout"><strong>You mention spatial data. What is the best way to use it? and who should manage it?</strong></p>
<p align="justify">One thing we see when we interact with civic agencies or electoral, is that most of them don’t have a grasp of the analytics to understand what is the ground level situation, and that is where we come in. We have an information structure in place and we make data accessible. This helps representatives understand what are the patterns: a) what are the trends, b) where are their successes, c) where are their failures. Data needs to play a major role in how we take our decisions. It cannot be intuitively thought out.</p>
<h3>Stage 3: Making governments accountable and transparent</h3>
<p class="callout"><strong>How can these resources make the government more accountable?</strong></p>
<p align="justify">We need more [information] systems in place to identify what is accessible in terms of services and infrastructures. First step is making things transparent; and making elected representatives, civic agencies, citizens -all these people accountable. We believe that accountability and participation goes hand in hand. You need to participate in order to make it accountable. The process of engagement is empowering for the citizen once they realize they can bring about change."</p>
<p align="justify">It takes time to get things done; change happens very slowly. And we can’t keep blaming the government if we don’t participate. We don’t lend them a hand, and let’s be honest, we probably don’t have the resources. So, how do we enable the government? How do we empower them? That’s something Janaagraha works for: helping the government do what they need to do.</p>
<p>***********</p>
<p>The next interview will feature Surabhi HR from <a href="http://politicalquotient.in/">Political Quotient</a>, an organization working to redefine how youth engage with politics in the digital era. We will refer back to the characteristics about information economies and e-governance outlined on this post and use Janaagraha's experience as a backdrop, to explore the work PQ is doing: organizing spatial data, improving information structures for the government and bridging communication between citizens and their elected representatives.</p>
<p><strong>Sources:</strong></p>
<p>Benkler, Yochai. <em>The wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom</em>. Yale University Press, 2006.</p>
<p><span class="reference-text"><span class="citation journal">Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.</span></span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-structures-janaagraha'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/information-structures-janaagraha</a>
</p>
No publisher
denisse
Researchers at Work
Net Cultures
Making Change
Research
2015-10-24T14:28:47Z
Blog Entry
-
Digital Design: Human Behavior vs. Technology - Vita Beans
http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology
<b>What comes first? Understanding human behavior and communication patterns to design digital technologies? Or should our technologies have the innate capacity to adapt to the profiles of all its potential users? This post will look at accessibility challenges for digital immigrants and the importance of behavioral science for the design of digital technologies. We interview Amruth Bagali Ravindranath from Vita Beans. </b>
<pre><strong>CHANGE-MAKER:</strong> Amruth B R
<strong>
PRODUCT</strong>:
Vita Beans and Guru G
<strong><strong>
METHOD OF CHANGE</strong>:
</strong>Borrow elements from behavioral science and social marketing to make technology more intuitive.
<strong>
STRATEGY OF CHANGE:
</strong>Make technology easy to use, fun and effective.</pre>
<div align="center"><embed align="middle" width="400" height="200" src="http://chirptoons.vitabeans.com/chirplet.swf?chirpfile=60" quality="high" name="chirptoons" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" base="http://chirptoons.vitabeans.com/" wmode="transparent"></embed></div>
<div align="center"><strong>Chirptoons: </strong>Create Cartoons in a Jiffy. Designed by <a href="http://www.vitabeans.com/">Vita Beans</a><br />(The animation seems to be skipping a few lines. Check box below for a transcript)<br />Design your own here: <a href="http://chirptoons.vitabeans.com/createchirplet.php">http://bit.ly/1dOEpPo</a>
<br /><br /></div>
<blockquote style="float: right;">
<div align="center"><strong>Transcript of animation:</strong></div>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Ajoy</strong>: Hi!<br /><strong>Usha</strong>: Hi! What will we talk about today?<br /><strong>Ajoy:</strong> We will learn to design digital stories!<br class="kix-line-break" /><strong>Usha:</strong> What do you mean by digital stories?<br /><strong>Ajoy: </strong>What we are doing right now!.<br /> Telling a story through a digital medium.<br /><strong>Usha: </strong>Oh! But what is so complicated about that?<br />You write a story and then you post it online What’s<br />the big deal?<br /><strong>Ajoy:</strong> This is true. But you want everyone to access <br />your story right?<br /><strong>Usha:</strong> Yes! Of course!<br /><strong>Ajoy:</strong> Then you need to think about your audience! <br />Are you sure they all know how to use this technology?<br class="kix-line-break" /><strong>Usha:</strong> Well...no, not really.<br /><strong>Ajoy:</strong> Do you know what makes it challenging for them? <br />Or how to adapt technology to make it easier?<br /><strong>Usha:</strong> Eh, no...no clue :(<br /><strong>Ajoy: </strong>Then read on.Today we will take a step back.<br />We must think about human behaviour first!<br class="kix-line-break" />and then design our technology accordingly.<br /><strong>Usha: </strong>Sounds good! Let's do it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p align="justify">First off, apologies for such a feeble and sad animation. When I was given access to Chirptoons, I was quite confident I would be able to produce a somewhat interesting introduction to this post and get you excited about our next interview. However, between first-time user friction and a couple of glitches in the program, I found myself -a semi-savvy digital native who has been using technology, almost every day of her life, for the last 15 years- struggling to create the cartoon and clearly failing at it. The biggest challenge was translating what I had in mind into a digital format (The demo was very straightforward. I was just particularly inept), and it was frustrating to the point I decided to drop it, leave it as is, publish my unfinished cartoon and turn this post into a reflection on 'design challenges behind digital storytelling', so I could move on with my life.</p>
<p align="justify">What I experienced with Chirptoons is what many users: both digital natives and immigrants constantly face due to the pace at which new digital technologies are emerging. While the privileged demographic who has physical access to technology has a decent knowledge of basic web browsing and document processing features, there is still a very large gap in accessibility in terms of how to navigate more complex formats. At the end of the day, producers retain the creative power and determine the functions and flexibility of the technologies we use in the day to day. Just think of Facebook and its constant interface updates. We have all felt the wrenching need for that 'dislike' button to make our interactions a tad more honest, yet we have no power to create it or change Facebook's format to one that enables our needs better.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">So far, we have explored information from different angles: as activism, as visual design, as stories; and how digital technologies have been used strategically to disseminate it. However, our analysis is lacking a better understanding of the <em>digital</em>. We have been focusing on citizens as technology 'consumers', and we have not looked at whether digital infrastructures are accessible enough for users to become 'producers'. The question is<em>: how</em> do we do this: how do we engage different users with different digital literacy levels, skills and aptitudes in the production of digital content? With this post we bring a new topic into our series: accessibility and Information infrastructures. This one will focus on design and the role of behavioural science. Our interview with Amruth Bagali Ravindranath, brought a very unique perspective into the conversation, from
which I would like to highlight three points:</p>
<p align="justify">a) The importance of <strong>behavioral science</strong> for
design. Amruth stressed why we need a thorough understanding of
behavioral and cognitive science in the design of digital technologies
and how crucial it is to investigate the decision processes and
communication strategies of humans to make technologies user-friendly
and context appropriate.</p>
<p align="justify">b) How<strong> public relations and social marketing</strong>
concepts can also provide insight on how to target and engage potential
users more effectively. This point starts to answer some of the
questions we raised on the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/tactical-technology-design-activism-1">Information Design post</a>: thinking about the citizen as a consumer. This point also works as
an alternative take on how to target civic engagement through
technology.</p>
c) How to engage<strong> different type of users: </strong>not
only the digital native, but also digital immigrants<a style="text-align: justify;" href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#fn1" name="fr1">[1]</a>
<p> who
still play crucial roles as information gatekeepers in fields such as
education or urban governance.</p>
<p> </p>
<h2 align="justify">Vita Beans<br /></h2>
<h3></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">We interviewed <strong>Amruth Bagali Ravindranath</strong>,<strong> </strong>Founder of <a href="http://www.vitabeans.com/">Vita Beans</a> to answer some of these questions. Vita Beans’ mandate is to create inspiring, easy-to-use applications in areas of education and human resources, to share knowledge in innovative, fun an effective ways.
The logic behind their technological framework is trying to mimic the profile of the human brain linked to decision making -including economic, evolutionary, emotional, and psychological elements- and design their applications based on these patterns. Some of the products they offer are cognitive skill development applications, game based learning applications, educational technology research, among others, and their latest educational product: <strong>Guru G</strong> was chosen by the <a href="http://unreasonableatsea.com/overview/">Unreasonable at Sea</a> program (by Unreasonable institute & co-founder of Stanford d.school) as one of the <a href="http://unreasonableatsea.com/companies22/">11 companies changing the world</a>.</p>
<div align="right" style="text-align: left;" class="pullquote" dir="ltr"><strong>"We are trying to adapt to how the user wants to use something, rather than expecting the user to learn. This is essential in the education space to make things work".</strong></div>
<p align="justify"><a href="http://unreasonableatsea.com/vita-beans/">Guru G</a> is a "gamified teaching, teacher training & open certification platform", that aims to democratize access to technology for quality teachers. Rather than focusing on the student as most education technologies do, Guru G believes that teachers are the most important element of the education system. Enabling teachers, means quality education will reach the lives of hundreds of students during their professional life time, and with this in mind, Vita Beans designed a platform that is engaging, easy to use and intuitive, designed specifically with teachers, schools and governments in mind.</p>
<div align="center"><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/65920949" frameborder="0" height="281" width="500"></iframe></div>
<p align="center"><a href="http://vimeo.com/65920949">Unreasonable Barcelona: Anand Joshi, Guru-G</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/unreasonable">Unreasonable Media</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<h3 align="left">Inspiration <br /></h3>
<div align="right" class="pullquote"><em>"Teachers don't use and don't like to use technology" </em></div>
<p align="justify">The idea came from the products Vita Beans had already developed for the education space, such as their text2animation & text2game prototypes. They had produced over 80 collaborative games teachers were using in the classroom. Students play together in teams and learn about different topics through the process of gaming. However, suddenly they realized teachers had great ideas they didn't know how to translate into a<em> </em>digital form because they did not have the knowledge or the skills to create digital content. This is, according to Amruth, the crisis they are trying to solve in the education space: the quality of teachers, access to good teachers and the difficulty for teachers to adopt new technologies were the biggest challenges.<em> "</em></p>
<h3 align="left">The design challenge<br /></h3>
<p align="justify">Their initial prototypes were designed with assumptions based on their gamification experiments with students. <em>"We miserably failed with teachers and we discovered what a good gamification system for teachers looks like by prototyping with teachers and looking at the small things. It was an interesting learning experience." </em> They identified two common reasons why they hesitated to adopt anything new in the classroom.</p>
<ul><li>Teachers don't want to feel like they can't use something a student can.</li><li>Teachers can't visualize themselves using that tool, this there is an element of uncertainty and lack of confidence. </li></ul>
<p align="justify">It was imperative for Vita Beans to switch focus:<em> "Any tool you design, you expect to train the user to understand your tool, and if they refuse to do that; you blame them." </em>They used their behavioural science background to come up with infrastructural solutions that solve the limitations from the outset. </p>
<h3>The solutions</h3>
<p align="justify">They started prototyping with <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing">natural language processing</a></strong> for their text2animation & text2game projects. NLP is a branch of computer science concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages. Teachers articulated their ideas in simple English and the program used NLP to take what they said, try to understand what they were trying to visualize and convert into programming language to build an animated movie out of it (like what we used to open this article -but with hopefully better results). Amruth was very confident about the potential of this prototype and shared with us that UNICEF might take it up and implement it as an open source animated video and game creation tool in Africa.</p>
They also developed an <strong>adaptive navigation engine</strong> for one of their game based learning platforms; a tool that adapts to what you are trying to do: <em>"There is no fixed way to navigate from one task to another. It tries to learn the closest action that each teacher is trying to do and it executes that. It tries to learn how the teacher wants to use it."' </em>This was a success. They incorporated touch screens to make the product more intuitive and the teachers picked it up quickly.<em> </em>
<p>Amruth claims they are the first in the world to develop a gamification platform specifically for teachers and the reason was their solution to the navigation issue. This experience also indirectly helped in designing Guru-G.</p>
<p> </p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bf_rwl6JTMc" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe></div>
<p style="text-align: center;">"Amruth Bagali Ravindranath talks about text2animation & text2game prototypes"<br />Amruth B R, at TedxMcGill. Courtesy of YouTube</p>
<p align="justify">These design solutions and the learnings from each project inspired the team to come up with products which have been adopted commercially across 10 states in India, reached 4000+ schools & over 3 million kids internationally through partners in India & North America. They have helped education companies build their primary and secondary school education products, (including one of India's top classroom technologies), have been covered by the media and won several entrepreneurship awards. More information <a href="http://unreasonableatsea.com/vita-beans/">here</a> and on <a href="http://www.guru-g.com/">their website.</a> Our question is: what is it about behavioral science that helped Amruth's team arrive to this epiphany in tech design? </p>
<h2 align="justify">Behavioral Science and Social Marketing<br /></h2>
<p align="justify">Comparing marketing to advocacy is bound to be met by resistance and perhaps controversy. I raised this question when we interviewed Maya Ganesh for the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/tactical-technology-design-activism-1">Information Design post</a>, and stated the following in our conclusion: "<em>Our consumption habits in the market are shaping how we process and interact with information in the public space. The possibility of
'consumer behavior' permeating modalities of activism, reinforces the need
to explore more interesting strategies for information
dissemination</em>." Now that we are starting to look closely at the infrastructure supporting information, I will stubbornly return to the same question: to what extent should we borrow tactics for advocacy from marketing? and add: how much of it should permeate the design of digital technologies?</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Amruth made a casual reference during our interview that triggered this thought. We were discussing the importance of understanding behavior patterns, when he brought up <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays">Edward Bernays</a>. </strong>This man used psychoanalysis, psychology and social science to design public
persuasion campaigns and could get masses to choose what he wanted them to without them realizing it. While this sounds awfully dangerous and manipulative, I would like to rescue the idea of understanding human behavior well enough to design technology around it and I will entertain this thought in the context of
social change -please, don't judge.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Pillip Kotler, S. C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, wrote a paper bringing marketing and social change together: <em>“Can social
causes be advanced more successfully through applying principles,
concepts and techniques of marketing?”. </em>He defines marketing as:</p>
<blockquote>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">"a sophisticated technology, that draws heavily on behavioral science for clues to solve communication and persuasion related to influencing accessibility. [...] Most of the effort is spent on discovering the wants of a target audience and creating goods and services to satisfy them" (Kotler, 1971)</h3>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<p align="justify">This definition is a useful bridge to link marketing with accessibility of digital technologies. G.D. Wiebe wrote an influential paper on social marketing, that coined the question: "<em>Why can't you sell brotherhood and rational thinking like you can sell soap?</em>", that later influenced public information campaigns by USAID, the WHO, and the World Bank <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#fn1" name="fr1">[2]</a> . While he recognized how these models can to an extent <em>commodify </em>human behavior and social principles, he stressed that knowledge of behavioral science is a useful framework for product planning, that must be given a socially useful implementation. He developed the following criteria of considerations:</p>
<table class="plain">
<thead>
<tr>
<th align="center">Criteria<br /></th>
<th align="center">Description<br /></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td> <strong>Force</strong></td>
<td>The intensity of the person's motivation toward the goal -a combination of his predisposition prior to the message and the stimulation of the message<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Direction</strong></td>
<td>Knowledge of how or where the person might go to consummate his motivation.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Mechanism</strong></td>
<td>The existence of an agency that enables the person to translate his motivation into action.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Adequacy</strong></td>
<td>The ability and effectiveness of the agency in performing its task.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>Distance</strong></td>
<td>Estimate of the energy and cost required (by the user) to consummate the motivation in relation to the reward<br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p align="justify">Considering this framework is part of recognizing how knowledge circulating market networks affects our behavior. Nishant Shah addressed two ideas along these lines in the thought piece. First, he suggests us to recognize the negotiations that take place in the state-citizen-market ecosystem, and how they affect our rights, demands and responsibilities in society. Second, how this leads to a different understanding of the citizen as an "embodiment of these state-market negotiations". Keeping consumer behavior, and the forces shaping, enabling and constraining it in mind, is an interesting framework when we think of ourselves as information consumers -and as Yochai Benkler posits in The Wealth of Networks- in an ongoing transition to information producers. This also depends on how we think of information. We usually define content as information, but the structure and infrastructure are also pieces of 'information' we continuously shape through our interaction with technology. Hence, when we talk about making information accessible, we are also talking about producing legible and intelligible infrastructures. </p>
<h3>Linking it back to digital technology</h3>
<p align="justify">I am aware that the relationship we are trying to draw seems little far-fetched, but Amruth and the Vita Bean's team experience shows this behavioral-science approach, not only has a lot of potential, but is seldom explored in the education technology market. He told us about his success story with a <strong>behavior simulation engine.</strong> They used neuroscience as a base to build computer based activities and games to predict the behavior of its users on specific situations. They had an accuracy of 86%, which according to Amruth, is larger than every known psychological framework, and according to their <a href="http://www.vitabeans.com/case-studies.php">testimonial</a>, above most behavioral tests in the market (which only yield 20-40% of accuracy). Amruth said: <em>"That
was the first behavior research connection that brought us into the
start-up space. Exploring games, exploring human behavior."</em></p>
<blockquote style="float: left;">
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>Design challenges in<br /></strong><strong><strong>mobile applications**</strong></strong></div>
<li>Make it noticeable </li><li>Make it useless if not shared </li><li>Manufacture peer pressure</li><li>Easy to personalize </li><li>Must evolve constantly </li>(static stories die)</blockquote>
<p align="justify">We can also link these ideas back to storytelling. Amruth and I discussed what is the best way to use technology to engage users with digital stories. He made a good point at pairing up both processes:<em> "What makes a storytelling session effective is how you contextualize a story for the person you are sitting with. As kids we are used to a one way process. As adults, stories are more interactive, so you may bring a new dimension, and the story might go in a very different direction. The technology must enable and reflect that." </em>Compelling narratives must motivate the audience to interact with the stories, and digital devices must perform the same function. The infrastructure and interface of technologies must be intuitive, familiar and persuasive enough to sway users into interacting with it. </p>
<p align="justify">A way to do this is by pairing up technologies with the criterion above. In terms of functionality: provide them with a <strong>mechanism</strong> that translates the users ideas into action, that is <strong>efficient</strong> at enabling them, and that reduces the '<strong>distance </strong>(the<strong> </strong>cost or amount of energy needed) to perform a task -as has been accomplished with Guru G in India. As for the <strong>force </strong>and<strong> direction</strong> of motivation, Amruth brought up some design challenges when discussing adoption of mobile applications [**"<em>by analysing what increases the probability of a solution / campaign
growing organically by word of mouth, going viral, and specifically what make something fashionable</em>". See box on the left]. These challenges may vary from one application to the other but, at the end of day, the analysis and conceptualization of the product must be persuasive and empathetic with its users.</p>
<h3>Making Change</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">To close our interview, Amruth and I talked about what it means to 'make change' through digital design. He believes 'making change' is composed of three elements:</p>
<ul><li><strong>Empathy: </strong>Your attempt to make change will depend on the amount of empathy you feel towards the people you are trying to create change for.<em> "We spend time interacting with teachers, classrooms, just to get an idea of how the teacher thinks, empathize with prospective users".</em></li><li><strong>Imagination:</strong> How you translate this empathy into solutions. <em>"Imagination helps you think of as many solutions as you can to solve the design and adoption challenges"</em></li><li><strong>Action: </strong>The most challenging stage according to Amruth: <em>"If your technology is too hard to use, you will lose audience. If it's not impactful enough, it is trivialized. How do you reach a balance in making it effortless and yet, impactful?"</em></li></ul>
<p align="justify"><br />This post took a step back in our analysis of citizen action, to uncover a less visible space where change is also taking place: the intersection of the user with the machine. We seldom look at the relationship: producer-machine-consumer (and its multiple combinations) and how our behavior is being reconfigured by new digital technologies (in this project). The pace at which we need to upgrade our own operation systems, requires a degree of digital literacy that is not being facilitated by the state, the market or even civil society. Vita Beans, is one of the few examples of market actors working towards cutting the middle-man between users and digital technologies. If widely adopted, this model has the potential of re-organizing the state-citizen-market dynamic: from how citizens interact with the technology market to how new ways of producing and using technology might shape citizens' negotiation with the state.</p>
<div>This was also a set of explorations. It is a fairly new area in our research that will lead to more conversations with people who understand technology as an infrastructure and as material, as opposed to us- who often understand it as a practice, a space or an actor. Our goal is to bring content and infrastructure closer together, and make a stronger emphasis on inter-disciplinarity and multi-stakeholderism as a strategy to leverage change.
<div>
<div> </div>
<h2><strong>Footnotes:</strong></h2>
<p><span style="text-align: justify;">[</span><a style="text-align: justify;" href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#fr1" name="fn1">1</a><span style="text-align: justify;">] Refer to Marc Prensky's Digital Native, Digital Immigrant, for more on the limitations of digital immigrants in the education space; "</span>It‟s very serious, because the single biggest problem facing <span style="text-align: justify;">education today is that our Digital Immigrant instructors, who speak an outdated </span><span style="text-align: justify;">language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks </span><span style="text-align: justify;">an entirely new language". Access it here: </span><a href="http://bit.ly/IMBu0j">http://bit.ly/IMBu0j</a> <br /><br />The CIS book : Digital Alternatives with a Cause, is also an interesting and comprehensive read of what comprises a digital native or digital immigrant today: <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook">http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook</a><br /><br /><span style="text-align: justify;">[</span><a style="text-align: justify;" href="http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-performance-2#fr1" name="fn1">2</a><span style="text-align: justify;">] </span>The World Bank makes reference to G.D. Wiebe's thinking on their blog: <a href="http://bit.ly/1jNZVZA">http://bit.ly/1jNZVZA</a>. Also refer to: Baker, Michael (2012). The Marketing Book. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. p. 696 and <span class="mw-cite-backlink"><span class="reference-text"><span class="citation book">Lefebvre, R. Craig. Social Marketing and Social Change: Strategies and Tools to Improve Health, Well-Being and the Environment\year=2013. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p. 4. for examples of these interventions. Finally, the Wikipedia page on Social Marketing explains the role of G.D. Wiebe in the field: <a href="http://bit.ly/1lw4jPV">http://bit.ly/1lw4jPV</a></span></span></span></p>
<h2><strong>Sources:</strong></h2>
<div id="gs_cit1" class="gs_citr">Kotler, P., & Zaltman, G. (1971). Social marketing: an approach to planned social change. Journal of marketing, 35(3).</div>
<p><span class="reference-text"><span class="citation journal"><br />Shah, Nishant “Whose Change is it Anyways? Hivos Knowledge Program. April 30, 2013.</span></span></p>
<p><span class="reference-text"><span class="citation journal">Wiebe, G.D. (1951-1952). "Merchandising Commodities and Citizenship on Television". Public Opinion Quarterly <strong>15</strong> (Winter): 679.</span></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology'>http://editors.cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/digital-storytelling-human-behavior-vs-technology</a>
</p>
No publisher
denisse
Making Change
Net Cultures
Research
Featured
Researchers at Work
2015-10-24T14:29:23Z
Blog Entry