Futures of Learning

India

New Media Practices in India, Part 1: Introduction

Welcome to the next country in our blog series on New Media Practices in International Contexts. Over the next two weeks, I will be providing overviews of the use of new media, specifically mobile phones, the internet and games, in India, and I invite you to share your thoughts on what you read, as well as fill in the gaps that invariably exist in a summary like this one.

This is especially true for the country under consideration, which, with almost 1.2 billion people, is the second most populous country in the world. India is also a country of marked contrasts, where ancient and modern practices coexist and the chasm between the rich and the poor is visible and palpable to all. The 2007/8 Human Development Index places India 128th out of 177 countries (http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_IND.html). While a third of India’s population is urban, and divided between a growing middle class and vast slums, the great majority live in rural areas. The country has experienced strong economic growth, with growth rates of close to 10 percent in 2006 and 2007 (which are expected to slow down with the global recession (http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/002200902051923.htm). In spite of these economic advances, India’s social inequalities persist; indeed, the drop in poverty reduction since the 1990s, as compared to the 1980s, has shrunk and personal and regional inequality are increasing (Jha 2008).

About 17% of the population is between 15 and 24 years old (http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mdg/SeriesDetail.aspx?srid=656&crid=356), and it is these young people that are experiencing the changes brought by new media technologies most dramatically, both in their personal and professional lives. The focus of my posts will mainly be on the new media practices of these young people, practices that need to be situated however within the larger framework of the role played by ICTs in India’s economic, political and socio-cultural contexts. In this regard, Ravindran (2008) talks about a cultural politics of new media modernity in India, including the policing of proliferating new media technologies use among young people. Specifically, a discourse of moral danger is generated by “self-styled guardians of morality and culture” (8), who use especially India’s vernacular newspapers to create a moral panic among the population at large about new media technologies. I will elaborate on this cultural politics in my mobile phone and internet posts; suffice to say here that young people are using these very technologies to counter the moral panic discourse by presenting technological progress as unstoppable.

In this introductory post, I will lay out the Indian ICT landscape and infrastructures and present a brief overview of the academic literature on the topic.

The ICT Landscape

Despite India’s prominent role in the technology industry, there continues to be a vast gap in the use of technology in the country. Leung (2008) suggests that India’s relationship with internet technology falls into two stark dichotomies: Indians are represented as either technically-savvy techno-elites or as poverty-stricken subjects who need help to bridge the digital divide.

The rise of the Indian technology industry, which was facilitated by the government’s deregulation of the telecom industry from the mid 1990s onwards and generated US $64 billion in annual revenues in 2008 (5.5 percent of the national GDP (http://www.nasscom.org/upload/Annual_Report07-08.pdf), has contributed to India’s global economic success. It has also “creat[ed] a new generation of young professionals who are often the first in their families to have a debit card, benefits, to live alone or with roommates” (McKenzie 2007). These changes are accompanied by transforming generational relationships, sexual mores and power shifts, all of which are contributing to the moral panic discourse. Furthermore, India’s software industry has been rocked by the Mumbai attacks and revelations of massive accounting fraud at Satyam Computers, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7818220.stm, once considered a poster child of corporate citizenship. Nevertheless, it will continue to be the destination of thousands of young Indians, fulfilling their, and their families’ aspirations, of a better life.

ICT is also seen as benefiting those who remain excluded from these high-tech dreams, by harnessing the power of these technologies for development purposes. There are thousands of so-called ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) initiatives underway in India, funded by a wide variety of actors, ranging from governments (national and state) to corporations to NGOs and foundations inside and outside the country (cf. Schwittay 2008). New technologies are deployed to provide e-government services, improve education and healthcare and foster economic development, and are thought to overcome gender and caste inequalities. Initial unbridled enthusiasm over the impact of ICTD programs has given way to a more nuanced view of their potentials, and to an awareness of the need to situate them in the political, economic, socio-cultural and technological contexts of their places of application (Brewer et al 2007, Sreekumar 2006).

Technology Infrastructures

Until the mid-1990s, ownership of a telephone was considered a luxury in India, with waiting periods of up to several years for a landline, even after paying hefty application fees (Kumar and Thomas 2006). In 2007, 3.37 per hundred inhabitants had fixed phone lines (http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/DisplayCountry.aspx?code=IND), paying an average of US $3.30 per month for its maintenance (World Bank 2006).
Mobile phones, by contrast, have become a consumer item embraced by a broad segment of the population. As of October 2008, there were a little over 32 million mobile phone subscribers, which is about 26 percent of the total population (http://www.india-cellular.com). Many more Indians have access to mobile phones through sharing arrangements of various kinds. I will devote Wednesday’s post to a closer look at mobile phone practices in particular.

Similar to landlines, only 3.17 per hundred inhabitants had personal computers at home in 2007
(http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/DisplayCountry.aspx?code=IND), which are heavily concentrated in more affluent households. However, the lower middle class is beginning to embrace computers enthusiastically, driven by status ambitions and especially by aspirations of a better future for the young through access to technology and technology skills leading to technology jobs (Rangaswamy 2007b). Correspondingly, the demand for purchasing a home computer is mainly driven by high school and college age children, especially those who attend schools with low-quality ICT facilities. Computers are a compulsory subject in Indian schools, adding to the pressures to own a home computer, and children become the de-facto teachers of their parents.

Recognizing this as an emergent market opportunity, there are a number of high-tech companies developing products and pricing models to target the lower classes. One example is Intel’s and Microsoft’s pay-as-you-go computer purchase program, which was unveiled in May 2006 and piggybacks on the popularity of pay-as-you-go mobile phone cards (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/may06/05-21EmergingMarketConsumersPR.mspx).
A recent initiative by India’s Human Resource Development Ministry should also assist the lower classes in owning their own computers. A laptop computer costing as little as US $10, developed by the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, is currently being tested and expected to become commercially available in June 2009 (http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Jan302009/national20090129115438.asp).
One of the targets of this government program are educational institutions, which would receive the computers at a subsidized price. In conjunction, the program envisages to provide broadband connectivity to about 20,000 institutions. This is important given that the number of broadband internet subscribers is minuscule, at 0.37 per hundred (http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/DisplayCountry.aspx?code=IND. The ultimate aim is to create a virtual technological university, and to this effect, the government also plans to produce e-content on every subject, which would be made available free of cost.

Schools are indeed one of the places where innovative practices are put in place to connect young people to computers and the internet. In October 2008, the government of Andhra Pradesh (AP), the most populous state in Southern India that has long invested in ICTs, contracted the Silicon Valley company nComputing to outfit computer labs in 5,000 schools with a virtualization software that allows multiple users, all working on their own stations, to connect to one computer. (The deal provides 50,000 computing seat, in a state with 1.8 million children, which shows the magnitude of the undertaking).
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/ncomputing-provides-18m-andhra-pradesh-students-with-computer-access-72200.php
Another initiative is the multi-mouse developed by Microsoft Research India, whereby children, each with their own mouse, can play games on one computer, leading to higher student engagement (Pawar, Pal and Toyama 2006).

There have also been efforts to provide children with access to computers outside the formal school setting, such as the Hole in the Wall project established by Dr. Sugata Mitra. In 1999, when he was a research scientist at NIIT, Mitra installed a computer in the wall separating NIIT’s headquarters from an adjacent slum of Kalkaji in New Delhi, in order to observe how children taught themselves how to use the computer (Mitra 2005, Mitra and Rana 2001, Mitra et al 2005). The project was scaled across India with the help of the International Monetary Fund, and has also been emulated in other countries, for example through the Digital Doorway program in South Africa.

Another important way in which many Indians, especially young men, access new technologies is via public access points. In urban areas, internet cafes are the primary space where first-time technology users become initiated (Rangaswami 2007a). These cafes are run on a commercial basis, and chat rooms, stock trading and networked gaming are among the most popular uses. In his study of Bangalore internet cafes, Nisbett (2005) found that while members of different socio-economic classes frequent them, many used them for such mundane tasks as email and internet-related chat (IRC). Furthermore, the young people that were the immediate focus of Nisbett’s study actively appropriated and shaped ICT spaces in ways that went beyond communication agendas and lead to the acquisition of a broad range of IT skills.

Between half and three quarters of the users of internet cafes are male, often students, which shows that unless specific steps are taken to ensure that women and lower castes also have access to the technologies provided there, the marginalization of these groups will increase further (Sreekumar 2006). It is here where of internet kiosks established and maintained by governments or NGOs aim to bridge this gap. These kiosks are often found in slums or rural areas; one study estimated that rural internet kiosks could provide the first experience with ICT for as many as 700 million Indians (Rangaswamy 2007a). However, another study of rural internet kiosks in Tamil Nadu found that they too were mostly used by male school and college students, from higher socio-economic status (Kumar 2004). Thus, there specific development aims need to be actively shaped and pursued, rather than merely stated.

The Literature on New Media Practices in India

My blog posts are based on various sources: information gleaned from journalistic and popular sources; a growing, but still limited, academic literature on the topic, and personal research findings of myself and colleagues. The academic literature is produced mainly by Indian scholars, mainly of whom study or teach at U.S. or English universities and maintain strong research ties to India. (In parallel, many technology initiatives work with engineers and scientists of Indian descent, sometimes trained in Western universities, who are familiar with Indian contexts.)

There are a number of themes found throughout most of this literature. One is the emphasis on the larger context of technology production and consumption, especially its relation with opportunities for economic development, questions of access and digital divide, and integration with social concerns. There is also much attention paid to non-resident Indians and the (virtual) ties they maintain with their homeland. This diaspora is not only a research subject, but also funds some of the ICTD projects mentioned above. Another unique aspect is the active participation of Microsoft Research India, a corporate emerging market research lab, in the production of the academic literature (Toyama, Rangaswamy and Donner, who will be cited frequently, are all part of the lab). The extensive literature produced by this group, for example around rural internet kiosks, is produced with an eye towards the commercial potential of new media technologies, which does not stand in the way of providing detailed analyses of their use.

Over the next two weeks I will examine in-depth new media practices of predominantly, but not exclusively, young people centered on mobile phones, gaming, the internet and digital media production. As you read these blogs, I invite your comments and suggestions for further research.

References Cited:

Brewer, E. et al (2007). The Challenges of Technology Research for Developing Regions. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 5 (2), 15-23.

Jha, R. (2008). Economic Reforms and Human Development Indicators in India. Asian Economic Policy Review, 3 (2), 290-310.

Kumar, R. (2004). Social, governance, and economic impact assessment of information and communication technology interventions in rural India. Thesis submitted to the MIT department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Kumar, K. and A. Thomas (2006). Telecommunications and Development: The Cellular Mobile ‘Revolution’ in India and China. Journal of Creative Communications 1: 297.

Leung, L. (2008). From “Victims of the Digital Divide” to “Techno-Elites”: Gender, Class, and Contested “Asianness” in Online and Offline Geographies. In Gajjala, R. and V. Gajjala (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces, 36, 7-24.

McKenzie, D. (2007). Youth, ICTs and Development.” Paper published by the World Bank Group. Available at http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,contentMDK:21698394~pagePK:64165401~piPK:64165026~theSitePK:469382~isCURL:Y~isCURL:Y,00.html

Mitra, S. (2005). Self organizing systems for mass computer literacy: Findings from the hole in the wall experiments. International Journal of Development Issues, 4(1), 71 – 81.

Mitra, S. et al (2005). Acquisition of Computer Literacy on Shared Public Computers: Children and the “Hole in the wall.” Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 21(3), 407-426.

Mitra, S. and V. Rana (2001). Children and the Internet: experiments with minimally invasive education in India. British Journal of Educational Technology, 32(2): 221-232.

Nisbett, N.(2006). Growing up Connected: The role of Cybercafés in widening ICT access in Bangalore and South India, Paper presented at the Development Studies Association Annual Conference 2006.

Pawar, U., J. Pal and K. Toyama (2006). Multiple Mice for Computers in Education in Developing Countries. Paper presented at 2006 ICTD conference Berkeley.

Rangaswamy, N. (2007a). ICT for Development and Commerce: A Case Study of Internet Cafes in India. Paper presented at the 9th international conference on social implications of computers in developing countries. Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Rangaswamy, N. (2007b). The Aspirational PC: Home Computers and Indian Middle class Domesticity. Unpublished paper prepared for Microsoft Research India.

Ravindran, G. (2008). The Cultural Politics of New Media Modernity in India: Reading the Roles of Moral Panic Agents and Mobile Phone Users. Paper presented at International Workshop on ICTs and Development: Experiences from Asia. National University of Singapore.

Schwittay, A. (2008) A Living Lab: Corporate Delivery of ICTs in Rural India. Science, Technology and Society, 13(2), 175-210.

Sreekumar, T.T. (2006). ICTs for the Rural Poor: Civil Society and Cyber-Libertarian Developmentialism in India. In G. Parayil (Ed.), Political Economy and Information Capitalism in India: Digital Divide Development and Equity. (pp 61-87). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

World Bank (2006) ICT Indicators. Available at http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:5RQVpZxFaeYJ:devdata.worldbank.org/ict/ind_ict.pdf+price+basket+telecommunication+india&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=firefox-a

New Media Practices in India, Part 2: Mobile phones

Mobile phones first arrived in India in 1995, and since then their adoption has grown exponentially, with average annual growth of 80 percent. Mobile phones have thus become a significant presence in the social, cultural and economic lives of Indians at all levels of society. While young people have embraced mobile phones enthusiastically, corresponding changes in social norms have caused anxieties among some parts of the population. In this post I will explore these issues in-depth, beginning with an overview of phone use, followed by an examination of resulting changes in social dynamics and a brief look at the use of mobile phones for development purposes.

As of October 31, 2008, there were a little over 320 million mobile phone subscribers in the country, which is about 26% of the total population (http://www.india-cellular.com). The great majority, about 24 million use GSM systems. The most important cell phone carriers are Airtel with 25.04 percent of the market, followed by Reliance (CDMA and GSM) with 17.93 percent and Vodafone/Essar with 17.70 percent. There are a wide variety of handsets available, provided by both foreign and Indian companies and catering to every niche of the Indian market. The most expensive GSM handset cost about US $12,000; it is marketed under the Nokia super premium luxury brand Vertu, and shows that mobile phones are status items for Indians of all income classes. Airtel and Vodaphones sell Apple’s 3G iPhones for about US $700, depending on capacity. On the other end of the spectrum, aiming at the so-called bottom-of-the-pyramid (bop) market, the Nokia 1200 costs 1200 rupees, which is about $24. The CDMA handset market is firmly dominated by Reliance, which sells Blackberry smart phones for about $620, while on the low end, Tata Indicom sells a Samsung Model for $20, which is just under 1000 rupees. 60.90 % of the population is covered by mobile signal http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/icteye/DisplayCountry.aspx?code=IND. In any given covered area, between 4 and 7 companies provide mobile phone services, often offering a dozen tariff plans. Although I could not find any definite numbers, more people use prepaid cards than contracts (http://www.gsmap.org/wp-content/uploads/files/prepaid%20connections037215.pdf).

Mobile Social Dynamics

Especially among poor Indians, mobile phone ownership is dominated by men; a study conducted in 2006 found that women had greater access than men to household-owned land lines than to individually-owned mobile phones, but had similar access to public phones and much greater access to phones owned by others (Iqbal 2007). Even when women owned a mobile phone, it was primarily men who made the decision about how much money to allocate to phone use (Iqbal 2007). Similarly, in their study of urban Delhi, Tacchi and Chandola (Heather Horst, personal communication) found that men dominated ownership of mobile phones; women typically had to ask permission to use a mobile and also were monitored while talking. On the other hand, in a recent study of West Bengal, Tenhunen (2008) notes that women who are (increasingly) gaining access to mobile phones also gain greater mobility in general, although stigma associated with female mobility does remain. Gender relations are thus central to the dynamics of mobile phone use. More generally, Tenhunen (2008) argues that mobile phones increase the efficiency of the market, facilitate alternative political patterns, and invigorate traditional networks of kinship and village sociality.

Regional differences also play a role here. Sooryamoorthy, Miller and Shrum’s (2008) study of mobile users in the South Indian state of Kerala, which is known for its well-developed education system and youth and women programs, found that, in contrast to those who use email and other programs, mobile phone use tended to decrease the diversity of geographical ties. Research by Donner et al from Microsoft Research India (2008) also suggest a collectivist ethos, including in middle class households. They note that individuals share across generations (parents and children), with their peers (siblings and, to a lesser degree, friends). In some cases this may involve simply borrowing a phone because someone is nearby (what they term ‘proximate sharing’) or it may involve ‘distributed sharing,’ examples of which are a parent trying to reach a child through their friend’s phone. Others use their phones to contact point people who are relied upon to spread information. Donner (2007) argues that the sending and receiving of missed calls, or beeping, is another way that individuals in India communicate without the outlay of money or minutes.

Many have commented upon the great enthusiasm Indian youth express for the mobile phone, as can be seen in the utube videos posted on the Indian section of mobileyouth.org (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcPoVt--9UU&feature=related ). This enthusiasm is also evident in the growth of game applications for mobile phones, which I will examine in Friday’s post. The academic literature on this usage is only beginning to emerge, however (Kumar and Thomas 2006). Chakraborty (2006) conducted a comparative study among Indian and American university students and discovered that the former relied on their mobiles more frequently as their only phone, and thus developed a different relationship to them than their American counterparts. There were also significant differences in the practice of text messaging.

Swank’s (Heather Horst - personal communication) recent research among Tibetan refugees in North India suggests that mobile phones are contributing to cross-gender forms of communication. In her preliminary analysis of 700 text messages, Swank found that teenagers were exchanging jokes – quite often ‘dirty jokes’ – over text messages that they would not normally utter in person. Steenson and Donner (2009) note that the sharing of mobile phones complicates and is complicated by traditional gender roles. This suggests that the mobile phone is enabling young people (as well as older ones) to subvert established notions of gender relations.

These social transformations do not go unchallenged, especially by “moral panic agents” that seek to police the proliferation of mobile phones, and especially camera phones, among young people (Ravindran 2007, 2008). The impetus for their actions came from the Delhi Public School scandal in November 2004. As described in Ravindran (2008), the scandal centered on 2.37 seconds of video shot by a boy making out with his girlfriend, who were both students at an elite public school in Keshavapuram, New Delhi. A few days later, after the couple had broken up, the boy sold the video clip for Rs. 50 to friends. When this became public, both students were expelled from their school. The video clip was then transformed into a hot-selling CD by the pornographic merchants of Palika Bazaar in New Delhi, and lastly a student at IIT Kharagpur posted the content for sale on Bazee.com, the Indian affiliate of ebay. The media pounced on the story, seeking to associate camera phones and its young users with criminality. As a result, Anna University in Chennai, a top-ranking engineering university, used the scandal to ban the use of cell phones on campus and dormitories and conducted raids to enforce the ban (Rediff.com 2004). This practice was quickly emulated by other educational institutions and in 2006, legislation was introduced in the Indian parliament that sought to regulate the use of mobile phones (Ravindran 2008). Young people, in turn, used new media technologies to debate these developments in blogs and discussion forums, as I will explore in greater detail in my internet post next Monday.

Ravindran (2008) uses this incidence to make a larger argument about moral panics associated with camera phones, focusing his study on the (Tamil) vernacular press that is used by moral panic agents as a mouthpiece. Examples from headlines included: “Cell Phone Revolution: Satan in Palm;” “Tragedy Caused by Cell Phone: College Student Arrested for Killing Co-Student,” “Seller of Cell Phone Memory Cards with Obscene Pictures Arrested” and “TADA for Jeans...POTA for Cell Phone! The Plight of Colleges under Excessive Controls” (TADA and POTA refer to the draconian Indian laws against terrorism, which were repealed after political campaigns against them). As these headlines show, the social changes, including the possibilities to subvert strict sexual norms brought about by the use of cell phones are presented as scandalous and borderline criminal practices by parts of Indian society that see themselves as the guardians of traditional customs. The author argues that these dynamics are part of the emergence of an Indian control society that seeks to contain and police the transformations brought about by new media technologies (Ravindran 2007).

Mobile Phones for Development

A significant part of the research into mobile phone use in India focuses on their deployment for development purposes. Specifically, in the economic domain access to mobile phones helps small entrepreneurs overcome information asymmetries in the market place that have traditionally led to their exploitation through middle men. An often-cited example are Kerala fishermen who find out about the best prices for their catch before landing in a particular port (Jensen 2007, Reuben 2007). Donner and Tellez (2008) have undertaken preliminary studies of the emergence of m-banking among small enterprises. Donner (2009) has also investigated the use of mobile phones among small enterprises in India and found a reliance of voice and text messaging. Besides these economic applications, there are also mobile educational games being developed to assist children (and adults) with nonformal learning, as I will examine in Friday’s post on games. Another growing area is the use of mobile and smart phones for healthcare delivery purposes, as was highlighted in a recent report by Vital Wave Consulting authored for the United Nations Foundation (Vital Wave Consulting 2009).  The report listed a number of Indian projects that used mobile phones for education and awareness; remote data collection; remote monitoring; disease and outbreak tracking, and diagnostic and treatment support.

In sum, mobile phones have become pervasive in all parts of Indian society, and especially their use among young people is resulting in profound effects on social norms and cultural conventions.

References Cited:

Chakraborty, S. (2006). Mobile phone usage patterns amongst university students: A comparative study between India and USA. M.S. thesis submitted to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Donner, J. (2007). The Rules of Beeping: Exchanging Messages Via Intentional “Missed Calls” on Mobile Phones. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1).

Donner, J. et al. (2008). “Express yourself” and “Stay together”: The middle-class Indian family. In J. Katz (Eds.) Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies. (pp. 325-338). Boston: MIT Press.

Donner, J. and C. Tellez. (2008). Mobile banking and economic development: Linking adoption, impact, and use. Asian Journal of Communication, 18 (4): 318-332.

Donner, J. (2009). Mobile media on low-cost handsets: The resiliency of text messaging among small enterprises in India (and beyond). In G. Goggin and L. Hjorth (Eds.) Mobile technologies: from telecommunications to media. (pp. 93-104). New York and London: Routledge.

Iqbal, T. (2007) Gender inequalities in access and use of telecom at the bottom of the pyramid? Findings from a five country study. Paper presented at International Workshop on ICTs and Development: Experiences from Asia. National University of Singapore, April 2008.

Jensen, R. (2007). The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector.  The Quarterly Journal of Economics 72(3), 879-924.

Kumar, K. and A. Thomas. (2006). Telecommunications and Development: The Cellular Mobile ‘Revolution’ in India and China. Journal of Creative Communications 1: 297.

Ravindran, G. (2008) The Cultural Politics of New Media Modernity in India: Reading the Roles of Moral Panic Agents and Mobile Phone Users. Paper presented at International Workshop on ICTs and Development: Experiences from Asia. National University of Singapore, April 2008.

Ravindran,G (2007) Moral Panics and Mobile Phones: The Cultural Politics of New Media Modernity in India. Paper presented at the Living the Information Society Conference. Makati City, Manila, April 2007.

Reuben, A. (2007) Mobile Phones and Economic Development: Evidence From the Fishing Industry in India. Information Technologies and International Development 4 (1), 5-17.

Sooryamoorthy, R., P. Miller and W. Shrum (2008) Untangling the Technology Cluster: mobile telephony, internet use and social ties. New Media and Society, 10, 729 – 42.

Steenson, M. and J. Donner. (2009). Beyond the personal and private: Modes of mobile phone sharing in urban India. The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices, 1, 231-250.

Tenhunen, S. (2008) Mobile technology in the Village: ICTs, culture, and social logistics in India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14 (3), 515-534.

Vital Wave Consulting. (2009). Mhealth for Development: The Opportunity for Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World. Washington D.C. and Berkshire UK: Un Foundation-Vodaphone Foundation Partnership. Available at http://www.unfoundation.org/global-issues/technology/mhealth-report.html

New Media Practices in India, Part 3: Gaming

Although India’s gaming market and associated activities have grown dramatically over the last few years, the research literature on the topic is still sparse. According to Nasscom, the Indian IT industry’s main association, the country’s gaming segment — comprising mobile, computer and console games and development — was estimated to grow from Rs 192 crore (US $3.8 million) in 2006 to Rs 1,700 crore (US $ 34 million) by 2010, equaling an annual growth rate of 72 percent. In spite of this increase, which is sustained by young men gaming in internet cafes and increasingly on mobile phones, the industry has yet to make significant in-roads into the everyday practices of Indians. There is therefore noticeably little in the public discourse about gaming addiction, violence and other concerns, which are so pervasive in other countries.

According to market research companies, the gaming expansion in India is pushed by increasing broadband use, growth of Internet cafes, an increasingly - and increasingly affluent - middle-class, the emerging youth market and inexpensive mobile prepaid game cards http://www.ibef.org/artdisplay.aspx?cat_id=60&art_id=17259&refer=n47. The Indian gaming expansion can also be ascertained from the fact that important gaming events and competitions are starting to be organized from this country. On February 12, 2009, the first-ever ‘World Gaming Day,’ which was marketed as “the largest-ever youth connect initiative to celebrate gaming” by its organizers Sony Ericsson, Zapak.com and Microsoft XBOX 36, was celebrated in Mumbai http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Software/Sony_XBOX_announce_World_Gaming_Day_on_Feb_12/articleshow/4090144.cms. The World Gaming Day culminated four weeks of intense activities, with an estimated 19 million games played predominantly in India, US, UK, Australia, Singapore, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. Later this year, the FIFA Interactive World Cup 2009, sponsored by Electronic Arts and Sony Ericsson and played entirely on Playstation 3 consoles, will take place in India. The flipside to this growth is the gaming industry’s concern about the increasing pirating practices.

Another element in the growth of Indian gaming is its connection to the world of Bollywood, materializing in mobile phone games based on popular Bollywood films. For example, at the World Gaming Day mentioned above, two Bollywood actors were at hand to congratulate the winners and to extoll the fun of playing games. Earlier this month, the Bollywood classic “Devdas” gave rise to “Dev D,” a new mobile phone game that enables gamers to take on the persona of the main protagonist of the film. The hope is that the mass appeal of such classics will translate into mass markets for the games (http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/20090203/740/tnl-second-bollywood-hero-goes-virtual-i.html). Similarly, the country’s first 3D video game is inspired by the Bollywood hit thriller “Ghajini.”

Most games are played in internet cafes, mainly by boys and young men. While networked gaming is one of the most popular activities in urban internet cafes (Rangaswamy 2007a), in rural internet kiosks boys have also been observed to play video games
(Kentaro et al 2007). Most specifically, zapak.com, a leading game provider that is part of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, is building ‘gameplexes,’ which are dedicated cyber cafes that promote online gaming. Zapak is also aiming to expand gaming beyond young males, with a service called zapakgirls.com, branded as “the world’s largest/India’s first ever/ gaming destination for women” that makes available strategy, puzzle and arcade games. The site also has forums with titles such as ‘Career’, ‘Health & Fitness’, ‘Love’, ‘Fashion’, ‘Family’ and ‘Let Loose,’ where the women can exchange their views on these topics (http://girls.zapak.com ). Similarly, Zapak Tiny provides games for 4 to 7 year olds, in order to grow the next generation of gamers (http://www.tiny.zapak.com ).

Educational Games

One important area arising from the development focus of ICTs in India is the development of games for use in mobile phones that help children, and adults, to learn outside the formal educational setting. The Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE) project at UC Berkeley uses such games to teach rural Indian children English; the project is supported by the MacArthur Foundation (http://hub.dmlcompetition.net/profiles/blog/show?id=2044804%3ABlogPost%3A3511).
The same team has also developed and field-tested various other games to help children who may not be able to go to school (Kam et al 2007). Another example is the work of Netika Raval around mobile phone games for water use, developed in part to connect children’s learning to real life experience (http://rdvp.org/fellows/2006-2007/netika-raval/). In virtually all of these design studies and their applications, at least one of the team members is of Indian descent and thus can act as a cultural broker for the design team, as it develops and tests its prototypes. Aside from examining the rural and urban of schools and communities, there is little attention paid to contextualizing these interactions in participants’ everyday experiences. In the formal educational setting, two young Indian bankers from Chennai, in partnership with the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge University, developed the HeyMath game, which provides mathematics textbooks, teaching and assessment tools as well as lesson plans over the internet, with the use of animation tools.

Gaming Discourses

In contrast to countries like Korea, discourses of game addiction do not (yet) seem to have emerged; I could only find one article on general internet addiction (Kanwal and Anand 2003). It might be however that as gaming is taken up by the Indian population in a more substantial way, new dimensions of the moral panic discourse (Ravindran 2007) come to focus on issues of addiction and illness.

In addition, in January 2008, a measure was introduced in the Indian parliament to ban violent video games. Rather than garnering large-scale support, the bill has been controversial because it was introduced by a Bollywood star whose son purchased the game for his son, who wanted a popular game that his friends in the UK were playing. The reaction has been one of outrage against attempts of censorship at the state level, rather than in the video game industry. As one of the contributors to the debate noted, on the blog desicritics.org:

“As with Internet usage, parents need to make their own informed decisions as to which games their kids get to play. In fact, video games can be great bonding activities between parents and their children and I have frequently seen fathers come with their kids to the local pirates and buy games for their children after much entertaining discussions. The Big Brother approach rarely works with Indian citizens, yet people revel in the same nevertheless. When children find creative ways of breaking family rules, how does the state with lax legal institutions and enforcement agencies curb adults from indulging in activities they don’t consider to be illegal in the first place? Does censorship really work in India or is it just a paper tiger? Since when have we let these Bollywood actors and socialites dictate what the citizens of India can or cannot do? Maybe it’s time Mrs Tagore sorted out her own house, paid more attention to the kind of games her grandkids played especially when the games have big letters saying MA printed on them instead of urging the government to babysit the nation’s children at the expense of the tax payers hard earned money. Why should others pay for her blatant ignorance and negligence?” http://desicritics.org/2008/01/09/071938.php

I am quoting this post at length because it provides a good summary of my examination of gaming in India, as it touches upon its connection to Bollywood, the perceived entertainment value of gaming, as well as pirating activities. Most importantly, the post also speaks to a number of larger issues around the use of gaming, and new media technologies in general, and how Indian society is negotiating the issues that arise with their use. Just as for Indians themselves, much remains to be learned for academics wanting to study everyday gaming practices in India.

References Cited:

Friedman, T. (2005). Still Eating Our Lunch. New York Times, September 16, 2005.

Kam, M. et al. (2007). Mobile Gaming with Children in Rural India: Contextual Factors in the Use of Game Design Patterns. Paper presented at Digital Games Research Association Conference (DiGRA), Tokyo September 2007.

Kanwal, N. and A. Anand. (2003). Internet Addiction in Students: A Cause of Concern . CyberPsychology & Behavior, 6(6), 653-656.

Kentaro, T. et al. (2007). Rural kiosks in India. Unpublished paper from Microsoft Research India.

Rangaswamy, Nimmi (2007a) ICT for Development and Commerce: A Case Study of Internet Cafes in India. Paper presented at the 9th international conference on social implications of computers in developing countries. Sao Paolo, Brazil, May 2007.

Ravindran. G. (2007). Moral Panics and Mobile Phones: The Cultural Politics of New Media Modernity in India,’ Paper presented at the Living the Information Society Conference, Makati City, Manila, April 2007.

New Media Practices in India, Part 4: The Internet

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 showed the pervasiveness of new media technologies in India, as Indians flocked to sites like twitter, flickr, utube and blogs to post eye witness and other accounts of the events. CNN argued that ‘social media appeared to come of age and signaled itself as a news-gathering force to be reckoned with’ (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/mumbai.twitter/), and the incident lends itself to examining to creation of an (alternative) public sphere with the help of new media technologies. In this post, I will focus on India’s social networking sites, the virtual spaces created by and around the Indian diaspora, as well as on the use of the internet for economic development purposes.

Social Networking Sites

According to a report released in February 2009, visits to social networking sites in India increased by 51 percent during 2008, to 19 million visitors in December 2008 (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2728 ). Orkut is by far the most popular social networking site in the country, followed by Facebook. Still, academic studies of how young people use these sites are just beginning to emerge.

A comparative study of Indian and US university students showed many common communication patterns in their use of social networking sites (Marshall et al 2008). What was more interesting were the differences, however, as Indian students’ behavior seemed to be significantly more individualistic than that of US students. This was surprising to the researchers, since Americans are thought to live in a more individualistic society than Indians. Concretely, almost 70 percent of Indian students made their profile public/visible for anyone to see, versus only 28.6 percent for US students, who were more likely to make their profile visible to friends only.  Indian students were also more likely to either engage a stranger contacting them, or to tell him/her to leave them alone, which was found to be in contrast with an (Indian) collectivist ethos that is supposed to be less trusting and more evasive of strangers.  Indian students are also more likely to have online friends whom they have never met before, which shows that they use social networking sites to make and sustain friendships, something that is not the case in the US.  In sum, Indian students seem less cautious about online privacy than their American counterparts, and are more forward with strangers they meet on the site (Marshall et al 2008).

Of particular importance in the Indian youth context is the use of new media technologies as a bridge between traditional and modern forms of social networking, such as can be found in dating and marriage sites. Adams and Ghose (2003) discuss the creation and use of ‘matrimonial sites’ wherein parents and (now) individuals themselves place want ads describing their particular attributes and desires for a marriage partner. While in North American contexts, sites like http://www.match.com and other dating websites make the transactional nature of relationships more apparent, sites like http://www.shaadi.com and others have extended and (in some cases) made easier the practices associated with arranged marriages in India. By allowing young people to place their own ads, such social networking sites are enabling them to navigate the tension between arranged and love marriages, providing a sense of choice for Indian youth operating within the constraints of Indian values surrounding education, status, caste, religion and complexion (Sharma 2008).

The internet is also offering a way to express otherwise suppressed issues and desires. Some studies have shown the growth of chat rooms in suburban areas, where they are frequented by predominantly 18 – 22 year-old males who assume an online identity in order to meet new people (Rangaswamy 2007a). There is also a convergence of social networking sites with mobile platforms; recently Virgin Mobile India announced a partnership with MySpace for making its social networking services available on Virgin Mobile WAP-enabled phones in India (http://www.campaignindia.in/feature/all_about_mobile_social_networking).

In regards to blogging, in July 2008, the Indian Ministry of Human Resources and Development issued a report recommending to make blogging, community radio, robotic kits and other technology devices part of public school curricula (http://southasia.oneworld.net/ictsfordevelopment/indian-schools-to-use-new-age-technologies ). The report states that “blogs are powerful tools to support creative writing that can be published and shared not only with the teacher but also with peers and the world, alike. Spreadsheets, databases, concept maps, and hypermedia authoring tools (Web development tools) to encourage critical thinking could also be encouraged.” Blogs are indeed a good way to express critical thinking; the aftermath of the Delhi Public School scandal, described in my mobile phone post last week, led to intense online activity of young people in blogs and discussion fora. While the blogs were more racy and packed with innuendoes against school administrators, the discussion fora raised issues of privacy, freedom, morality and responsibility among the users of the cell phones, the tenor being that new media technologies are an invincible force that are here to stay. Their advance into Indian society cannot be stopped by government bans, which also resonates with the quote that ended my game blog last Friday.

Blogs also played an important support role after the Mumbai attacks, as individuals set them up in order to provide vital information, for example about which hospitals needed blood donations, and to help family members search for each other. Twenty-nine-year-old blogger Harish Iyer published his mobile phone number and email address on a blog he set up soon after the attacks began (http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/). In the following 20 hours, he received around sixty phone calls and 100 emails from people desperate to find loved ones (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/bloggers.mumbai/index.html). It was flickr however that was the preferred medium of the ‘citizen journalists’ that provided instant and constant news feeds and updates about crisis. An article by CNN estimated that 80 tweets were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/mumbai.twitter/. However, the deluge of messages also revealed some of the shortcomings of the medium: on the one hand the lack of proper contextual information by most people sending the messages, and on the other the recycling of (sometimes incorrect) information. As blogger Tim Mallon put it, “I started to see an ugly side to Twitter, far from being a crowd-sourced version of the news it was actually an incoherent, rumour-fueled mob operating in a mad echo chamber of tweets, re-tweets and re-re-tweets.” This ability of new media technologies to spread rumors and support nationalistic and other discriminatory feelings has been commented on already in the China posts. While we have not seen the same extent in India, the BJP-Hindu Nationalist movement is starting to use the internet to spread its message (Chopra 2008).

On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court served a notice to Google for allowing a hate campaign against India, in reference to a community called ‘We Hate India’ created on Orkut, which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2136970.cms). Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut to report the community as bogus to Google, which eventually deleted the community has now been deleted, but not before it had spawned several ‘We hate those who hate India’ communities. In addition, prior to the 60th Independence Day of India, Orkut’s main page was revamped, with a stylized Orkut logo written in the Devanagiri script and colored in the Indian national colors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut). This shows the extent to which new media technologies in general, and social networking sites in particular, are embedded in the offline world of its users. Much more research needs to be done on this in the Indian context. One group of internet users on which academic research is well under way are Indian expatriates.

NRIs in Cyberspace

NRIs, or Non Resident Indians, is an official socio-legal category for Indians living outside of India. There are estimated to be about 25 millions of them, living mainly in neighboring countries, as well as the US, Malaysia and the UK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Indiandiaspora.jpg). Given these numbers, it is not surprising that much of the research on Indian internet practices focuses upon the broader Indian diaspora and their use of the internet.

A recent edited volume by Gajjala and Gajjala (2008) examines the range of ways in which cyberspace helps to build bridges between India and the diaspora, which in turn builds on a 2006 special edition of the New Media and Society journal (Gajjala 2006). The various articles are focusing on the IT industry, entertainment, political movements as well as questions of belonging. What emerges from these studies is the importance of who defines and participates in internet practices in the context of an increasingly flexible global economy.

Mitra (2006) focuses on US South Asian immigrants’ use of “cybernetic safe spaces” to give voice to their Indian (immigrant) identity, which they are unable to express in other contexts. These online spaces are used to recreate cultural and religious practices of identity formation, as immigrants feel increasingly threatened by the sociopolitical and economic backlashes against them in a post-9/11 environment. Relatedly, cybershrines, virtual worship sites as well as cultural and heritage portals allow Indians abroad to access spirituality in a virtual way, and the majority of orders for products and services from these sites come from outside India (Barbar 2001). Mallapragada (2006) looks at the relationship between home, homeland and homepage in the 1990s and the creation of an Indian-American web that reflects the politics of belonging for NRIs. An important aspect of this is to access news from back home, via newspapers and other news sources, also of the ‘nationalist jingoist’ kind (Brosius 1999). On the other end of the political spectrum, Dalits and other low castes are using the internet as a means of organizing (Thirumal 2008, Chopra 2006). This suggests that the internet and other new media can provide the possibilities for establishing an alternative public sphere.

In this regard it is important to pay attention the possible reproduction of existing power dynamics, especially as access to the internet can be barred for already marginalized groups (Sreekumar 2006). Until more research on (local?) Indian participation on the internet occurs (cf. Tacchi 2006), we do not know the extent to which these discourses and practices are part and parcel of everyday Indian’s lives or the extent to which non-elites in India possess space and voice in these networked public cultures. This raises once again the question of the use of new media technologies for development purposes, which is always part of the Indian case.

Internet for Development

In the Indian context, the internet’s macroeconomic effects have been remarkable, with the rise of the country’s software and business processing industries, which have led to improved lives for a growing middle class. Acquiring computer skills are seen as crucial in joining this national destiny, and there are large numbers of private schools training youth in marketable and commercial computer skills (Biao 2007). Biao’s ethnography of bodyshops in Andhra Pradesh and Australia situates the IT business in a rich socio-cultural context, exemplary is his analysis of the increasing importance of dowry to pay the fees for IT schools.

Computers are also a compulsory subject in public schools, and as I stated in my first post, lead to increased computer and internet consumption in Indian homes. Here, e-mailing, chatting, browsing as well as computer game downloads are all subject to censorship and monitoring, especially as they are seen as distractions from learning (Rangaswamy 2007b). On the other hand, youth argue that general internet skills will help them in the work world, such as browsing for information about prospective schools, getting information for job interviews, and communicating with alumni.

Besides the campuses of the likes of Infosys and Wipro, it is call centers that have most forcefully captured the national economic imagination. Shome (2006) theorizes how the cultural politics of Indian call centers, and the global flows of information technology through them, manifest new and emerging frameworks of hybridity and diaspora. Such frameworks point to new relations of race, belonging, and colonialism and unsettle many of the prevailing assumptions through which diaspora and hybridity have been typically understood (Mitra 2008). McMillin (2008) and Mirchandani (2008) look at the ways in which working in call centers structures engagements with new media and technology, and how it affects the family and social life of middle class families.

In talking about the emergence of an (alternative) public or political sphere through the internet, it is also important to mention the many e-government initiatives that have been started in several Indian states in order to bring state and local governments closer to citizens (Sreekumar 2007, Schwittay 2008). As is often the case with the use of technology for development, high hopes and easy assumptions about the possibilities of especially marginalized groups to learn about, apply for and receive government assistance and other services online have given way to more realistic assessments. These show the ways in which new media technologies have to be embedded in people’s everyday lives, and in turn have to take political, socio-economic and cultural contexts into acccount in order to be truly meaningful and to realize their full potential.

References Cited:

Adams, P. and R. Ghose (2003) India.com: the construction of a space between. Progress in Human Geography, 27(4), 414–437.

Barbar, A. (2001). Diaspora, Cybershrines and the Woman’s question in media (review article).  Gender, Technology and Development, 5, 289.

Biao, X. (2007). Global ‘Body Shopping:’ An Indian Labor System in the Global Technology Industry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Brosius, C. and M. Butcher. (1999) (Eds.) Image Journeys: Audio-visual media and cultural change in India. New Delhi: Sage.

Chopra, R. (2008).  The Virtual State of the Nation: Online Hindu Nationalism in Global Capitalist Modernity. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Chopra, R. (2006) Global primordialities: virtual identity politics in online Hindutva and online Dalit discourse. New Media & Society, 8, 187-206.

Gajjala, R. and V. Gajjala. (Eds.) (2008) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Gajjala, R. (2006). Editorial: Consuming/producing/inhabiting South-Asian digital diasporas. New Media and Society, 8, 179.

Mallapragada, M. (2006). Home, homeland, homepage: belonging and the Indian-American web. New Media & Society, 8, 207-227.

Marshall, K. et al. (2008) Social Networking Websites in India and the United States: A Cross-national Comparison of Online Privacy and Communication. Issues in Information Society, 9(2), 87 – 94.

McMillin, D. (2008). «Around Sourcing»: Peripheral Centers in the Global Office. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Mirchandani, K. (2008) Practices of Global Capital: Gaps, Cracks, and Ironies in Transnational Call Centers in India. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Mitra, A. (2008). Working in Cybernetic Space: Diasporic Indian Call Center Workers in the Outsourced World. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Mitra, A. (2006). Towards finding a cybernetic safe place: illustrations from people of Indian origin. New Media & Society, 8, 251-268.

Rangaswamy, N. (2007a). ICT for Development and Commerce: A Case Study of Internet Cafes in India. Paper presented at the 9th international conference on social implications of computers in developing countries. Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Rangaswamy, N. (2007b). The Aspirational PC: Home Computers and Indian Middle class Domesticity. Unpublished paper prepared for Microsoft Research India.

Schwittay, A. (2008) A Living Lab: Corporate Delivery of ICTs in Rural India. Science, Technology and Society, 13(2), 175-210.

Shome, R. (2006) Thinking through the diaspora: Call centers, India, and a new politics of hybridity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9 (1), 105-124.

Sreekumar, T.T. (2007) Decrypting E-Governance: Narratives, Power Play and Participation in the Gyandoot Internet. Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 32 (4), 1-24.

Sreekumar, T.T. (2006). ICTs for the Rural Poor: Civil Society and Cyber-Libertarian Developmentialism in India. In G. Parayil (Ed.), Political Economy and Information Capitalism in India: Digital Divide Development and Equity. (pp 61-87). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sharma, A. (2008). Caste on Indian Marriage dot-com: Presence and Absence. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Thirumal, P. (2008) Situating the New Media: Reformulating the Dalit Question. In R. Gajjala and V. Gajjala, Venkataramana (Eds.) South Asian Technospaces. Digital Formations, 36, New York: Peter Lang Verlag.

Tacchi, J. (2006). Information, Communication, Poverty and Voice. Paper presented at Mapping the New Field of Communication for Development and Social Change, 5-8 July 2006, University of Queensland.

New Media Practices in India, Part 5: New Media Production

The convergence of consuming and producing digital media has been termed “prosuming” (Lim and Nekmat 2008). This practice has been democratized with the increasing availability of technology tools to (young) Indians from all socio-economic strata. While findings avenues for creative expression is at the heart of prosuming, the objectives differ depending on who is doing the prosuming. For more affluent Indian youth it is often tied to commercial ends that try to capitalize on the growing middle-class Indian youth market and its potential for technology and other companies. On the other hand, enabling poorer young Indians to produce digital media is seen as a way of giving them a voice to express their experiences and attitudes about their lives and neighborhoods. While academic research on the commercial use is entirely absent, its development counterpart has given rise to a body of literature that is primarily aimed at practitioners and is often published through development organizations, such as United Nations’ outlets.

Commercial Production

Exemplary of the use of digital media production for market and corporate ends is the Mobile Youth project, (http://www.mobileyouth.org), an international youth marketing and branding company that uses ethnographic research and street interviews as “the art behind youth marketing that is getting the real views of your customers” for paying clients such as Vodafone, Disney, MTV, Telefonica, Intel and the European Commission. The Indian section was shot by a young Indian named Amit in Bangalore in January 2009 and can be accessed on mobile youth’s utube channel (http://www.youtube.com/mobileyouth ) . Head shots of the half-dozen young men, almost always with scooters in the background, talking about their mobile phones, service providers and (dis)satisfaction with both, are interspersed with one-liners such as “By 2012, one in 5 of the world’s mobile owning youth will live in India, “There are more mobile owning Indian youth than people in the UK,” and “500 million Indian youth have yet to buy their first mobile phone.” These statements serve as a constant reminder of the size and potential of the Indian youth mobile, and by extension new media technology, market.

A slightly different example of the commercial application of digital media production is the company Electronic Youth Media (http://www.electronicyouthmedia.com/), which was started by two Indian teenagers last year. At the heart of the company is a ‘productive networking’ web site called youthportal, although the fact that it is still under construction does not bode well for the fate of the company. The site’s aim was to target ‘career-oriented’ Indian youth by providing them with features helping the “betterment of their future.” Once again, new media technologies are regarded by, and presented to, young Indians as a means to economic advancement and livelihood improvement. It is here where the commercial use of new media production intersect with more explicit developmental purposes.

Giving Voice

In the development area, digital media production projects are rarely pursued for their own ends, but are situated within a larger context, where they address questions of social, cultural and political relevance. One such program is Mapping the Neighborhood, an initiative of the Centre for Science Development and Media Studies and funded by the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India. The project uses a customized GIS software for hand-held computers that allows participating children to produce community maps, and in the process gather relevant information about the locality. These information in turn inform decision-making, planning and development purposes at the community level (Asthana 2006). The aim of the project is to combine non-formal, participatory learning with community engagement through the use of ICT. Schools participating in the project have also created their own websites.

Another way to foster children’s online participation is through e-literacy story books (Arora 2008). Arora’s analysis focuses on the books’ narratives and potential for participatory development. Relatedly, there are a number of media programs that aim to give children the opportunity to express themselves, often through more traditional media such as community newspapers, radio programs and theater productions (eg. Butterflies Alternate Media http://www.butterflieschildrights.org/media.asp). The Slum Jagattu Media group publishes a monthly magazine giving young people living in slums the opportunity to make their voices heard. Thanks to a grant from the Adobe Corporation’s Youth Voices program, the group has expanded into visual media, specifically documentary video. Participating students, ranging from 15 to 21 years of age, researched the history of slums in Bangalore as compared to the image of the city as an international destination(http://media.iearn.org/ayv/sites/SlumJagattuMediaGroup).

This project was part of a the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN), which is a “global network that enables teachers and youth to use the Internet and other technologies to collaborate on projects that enhance learning and make a difference in the world” (http://www.iearn.org/). The Adobe Youth Voices videos were screened as part of iEARN’s India national conference, which brought together 130 youth and their teachers in May 2008. IEARN is only one example of a growing number of global sites that use new media technologies to encourage young people to form virtual collaborations for a better world, (see also Taking it Global (http://www.tigweb.org/). These sites combine social networking and digital media production to mobilize young people around the world, and Indian youth are involved in all of these initiatives.

Perhaps the best-known digital media production program is called cybermohalla and was established in 2001 as the result of a collaboration between Sarai, the new media initiative of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, one of India’s leading research institutes, in Delhi, and Akur, an NGO in Delhi (Lim and Nekmat 2008, Asthana 2006). Cybermohalla (hindi for cyberneighborhood) is a network of three locality labs in informal and resettlement colonies in Delhi, which over the past seven years have brought together close to 450 male and female participants, mostly dropouts, between the ages of 15 and 25. These young people work with a variety of traditional and multimedia tools to develop, capture and communicate their perspectives about the locales in which they live, which serve as metaphors for “publicness” (Asthana 2006: 48, Lim and Nekmat 2008). The young people chronicle their lives in the neighborhoods in blogs (for example http://nangla.freeflux.net/blog/). There are also three books collecting conversations, blog entries, an animation CD and post cards. The cybermohalla website has a section called Tech Conversations, where young people reflect on their encounters with technology and how it shapes their relationship with the neighborhood around them (http://www.sarai.net/practices/cybermohalla/commoning/tech-manuals). Participants also make videos using digital cameras and mobile phones, animation and animated stories using GIMP (a GNU Image manipulation program), and recordings of conversations and sounds.

Cybermohalla has been analyzed as the emergence of a cyber-public imagined community within the Indian cultural context (Nayar 2008) and as a way to teach media literacy skills through raising cultural competencies (Lim and Nekmat 2008). More broadly, it has been used to sketch a theory of new media that addresses the potential of digital technologies as “a staging space for activism and protests,” not only represented in a “de-materialized realm of free floating information” but in a very immediate and material context (Asthana 2007). While the spaces for dialogue that have been created for the young, disenfranchised Cybermohalla participants are thought to create a forum for collective action (Asthana 2006), this potential seems to be subverted by the ways in which these participants have been cordoned off from their wider society. Apparently, outsiders have been denied access to the labs because they would disrupt their creative energy (Lovink 2006), and even the larger Sarai community has not been included into the dialogue of the cybermohalla youth.

The use of digital media production as a way of giving voice to disenfrachised people can be seen most directly in the Finding a Voice: Making Technological Change Socially Effective and Culturally Empowering project by Jo Tacci and her colleagues from Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Finding a Voice examined, through the use of ethnographic action research and participatory content creation, “how creative engagement with ICT can be both effective and empowering for positive social change” in marginalized communities across Asia (http://www.findingavoice.org/). The project was funded in part by UNESCO and the UNDP and had five sites in India, ranging from public computer centers in Kerala to a TV station in Andhra Pradesh to the Gender Resource Center in Delhi and two community radio stations in Uttarakhand. The publications resulting from the project have been mainly aimed at practitioners, policy strategists and decision makers (Tacci and Kiran 2008, Watkins and Tacci 2008, Skuse et al 2007). This attention to the empowerment potential of new media production is the focus of most academic publications analyzing its use towards development ends, and can partly be explained by many of these project being funded by government and development organizations, with an eye toward achieving concrete social ends. However, emerging explorations of their potential to inform the academic discourse of new media studies provides promising examples for further research and analysis (Nayar 2008, Asthana 2007).

References Cited:

Arora, P. (2008). Instant Messaging Shiva, Flying Taxis, Bil Klinton and More: Children’s Narratives from Rural India. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 11 (1), 69-86.

Asthana, S. (2006). Youth Media: A research study on 12 initiatives from around the developing and underdeveloped regions of the world. New York: UNESCO. Available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001492/149279e.pdf

Asthana, S. (2007). Sketching a Theory of New Media: The Case of Cybermohalla from India. Paper presented at MiT5 conference.

Lim, S. and E. Nekmat. (2008). Learning through Prosuming: Lessons from Media Literacy Programs in Asia.” Science, Technology and Society, 13(2), 259-278.

Lovink, G. (2006), Revisiting Sarai: Five Years of New Media Culture in India.” Sarai Waag Exchange Platform. Available at http://waahsarai.waag.org/?p+71

Nayar, P. (2008). New Media, Digitextuality and Public Space: Reading Cyber-mohalla. Postcolonial Text 4(1). Available at http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/786/521

Skuse, A. et al (2007) “Poverty and Digital Inclusion: Preliminary Findings of Finding a Voice.” New Delhi: UNESCO.

Tacci, J. and MS. Kiran (eds.) (2008) Finding a Voice: Themes and Discussion. New Delhi: UNESCO.

Watkins, S. and J. Tacci (eds) (2008) Participatory Content Creation for Development: Principles and Practices. New Delhi: UNESCO.

New Media Practices in India, Part 6: Conclusions

While undertaking research for my blog posts, I came across Ingene, which calls itself the “first-ever Indian youth trend research blog” (http://ingene.blogspot.com/2008/08/indian-youth-lifestyle.html). Here is how the researchers in Ingene categorized Indian youth:

“with the first ever non-socialistic generation’s thriving aspiration & new found money power combined with steadily growing GDP, bubbling IT industry and increasing list of confident young entrepreneurs, the scenario appears very lucrative for the global and local retailers to target the “Youngisthan” (young-India). But, the secret remains in the understanding of the finer AIOs of this generation. The Indian youth segment roughly estimates close to 250million (between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five) and can be broadly divided into three categories: the Bharatiyas, the Indians & the Inglodians (copyright Kaustav SG 2008). The Bharatiyas estimating 67% of the young population lives in the rural areas with least influence of globalization, high traditional values. They are least economically privileged, most family oriented Bollywood influenced generation. The Indians constitute 31.5% and have moderate global influence. They are well aware of the global trends but rooted to the Indian family values, customs and ethos. The Inglodians are basically the creamy layers and marginal (1.5% or roughly three million) in number though they are strongly growing (70% growth rate). Inglodians are affluent and consume most of the trendy & luxury items. They are internet savvy & the believers of global-village (a place where there is no difference between east & west, developing & developed countries etc.), highly influenced by the western music, food, fashion & culture yet Indian at heart” (http://ingene.blogspot.com/2008/08/indian-youth-lifestyle.html).

I am quoting this characterization at length because in spite of its obvious commercial slant, it speaks to a challenge of writing about new media practices among young Indians. This group encompasses several hundred million people, and is marked by geographical, socio-economic and gender differences. It is therefore impossible to study, or talk about, them as one group. Market segmentation exercises, however dubious they might be to academic researchers, are usually the first to studying and understanding (as well as commercially exploiting) these differences. In spite of their generalizations, they can provide a baseline for orientation purposes.

Taking into consideration the heterogeneity of Indian youth, there are three overarching themes that can be ascertained from my (popular and academic) literature review of their new media practices. Firstly, there is precisely the intersection of new media technologies with commercial interests that has been apparent in most of my blog entries. This corporate presence is visible in the existence of Microsoft Research India (MRI), which is producing numerous studies of especially poorer Indians’ technology consumption with an eye towards Microsoft’s interests; to the rapidly growing gaming and mobile markets that entice tech companies with the promise of millions of new customers, from the growing middle class to the bottom of the (economic) pyramid, and to corporate sponsorship of technology programs such as HP’s i-community and Adobe’s Youth Voices program. As a BRIC country, India is a powerful emerging economy, and technology production and consumption are important ingredients in the country’s economic growth. Academic literature on these dynamics, however, has been scarce (except the studies produced by MRI’s researchers), which might be due to a certain academic disdain for all things commercial.

Secondly, new media technologies are one of the areas in India where the old meets the new, and where the tensions around this encounter play out. Descriptions like “school kids on the street corners swarming around the mobilewallah pushing his cart and generator peddling the latest Nokia N Series amidst a backdrop of chickens, cows, temples, noise, dirt and traffic (http://www.mobileyouth.org/post/indian-mobile-youth-by-2012-one-in-5-of-worlds-mobile-youth-will-live-in-india-video/) are often capturing the scenes in journalistic and popular accounts. In the academic literature, especially the occurrence of critical incidences such as the Delhi Public School scandal (see Part 2), has led some Indian scholars to think about a moral panic emerging around new media technology consumption by the country’s young, especially when it comes to its potential to subvert or outright challenge traditional norms of gender, sexuality and family relations. Such public fears, and their materialization in government attempts to restrict or ban new technologies, are countered by claims about the inevitable advance of technological progress, claims that are usually made and broadcasted via the same new media technologies.

Thirdly, given the vast social inequities existing within India, the country has also been a laboratory for experiments with new technologies for development purposes. These can be found across all technology and media types – indeed, the convergence between different platforms is found in India as much as in other countries under study - and aim to harness the power and potentials of new technologies to improve economic situations, education, health and government services, among others. It is here where the majority of the academic literature is concentrated, which is often based on case studies and aimed at scholar-practitioners or development experts. Given the initial hype that surrounded ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development), it is not surprising that studies that critically examine the use of new technologies through situating this use in its socio-cultural, political and economic contexts, are also beginning to emerge in this area.

In general, research embedding technology consumption and production in young Indian’s everyday lives is one of the most promising avenues for future scholarship. Others are studies of localization, that is of the creative uses Indian youth make of new media technologies in appropriating them to their own life experiences and circumstances. Because the prosumption of new media technologies in India is so dynamic, its analysis can also yield important insights for advancing more theoretical studies of new media. If the present record is anything to go by, Indian scholars will participate in this scholarship in equal measures to non-Indians, and because the former publish in English, their analysis of the multifaceted and creative ways in which Indian youth engage with new media technologies is accessible to a broad audience.

Given the slowness of the academic publication mill, many interesting findings exist so far in conference papers and more informal publication venues, which thanks to these same technologies are just as, and sometimes even more public, than traditional peer-reviewed journals and edited collections. I hope that it has become obvious, from my overview of this literature as well as popular and journalistic sources of information, that new media practices in India constitute an exciting terrain for future insights into the ways these technologies articulate with all of our lives. Thank you for coming with me on this exploratory journey, and please stay tuned for its next destination, Brazil, presented by my colleague Heather Horst starting next Monday.