[after-media] Sarai - Social Media Project - Research Updates

[The Sarai Programme]

Dear all,

Here is the second set of monthly updates from the short-term research
fellows working on topics related to social and digital media:

*Anand Kumar Jha - 'The Camera Membrane'*

"The Image physically remained the product of a chemical reaction, being
non-reversible in character. To reproduce it was also the act of eroding
it, and it was to be distributed along with a story in the print, very
often claimed to be a push medium. Digital photography made the process of
image making reversible. The Image was now generated on a sensor instead of
a film, was now an array of RGB values ready to be copied like any other
data file, to be infinitely replicated, to be analyzed, post-processed, and
to be reconstructed from data."

URL: <http://sarai.net/the-camera-membrane/>

*Darshana Farooq - 'Santosh Pandit: Negative Publicity and Durablity of the
“Superstar of the Poor”'*

"Till the release of the song sequence on YouTube, the name Pandit was
unknown even to the most avid film enthusiasts in Kozhikode, the place from
where he hails. Except a few who knew him as an enthusiastic man in his
forties who was struck by the cinema-bug and attempted to make a few
albums, no one had any clear memory of his talents exhibited otherwise.
But, in no time he mobilized a huge fan following and a strong virtual
presence through fan pages…"

URL: <
http://sarai.net/santosh-pandit-negative-publicity-and-durablity-of-superstar-of-the-poor/
>

*Gowhar Farooq - 'Alternative Media: An Agent and of Change in Kashmir'*

"In conflicts like one in Kashmir, news and information gets buried due to
the pressure from conflicting parties, collusion of the news sources with
the various agencies or simply because of the lack of will to explore.

With the social media, the chances of the burial of the information reduce.
Here, the power of releasing the information does not lie with an
organisation or an individual. And, once the news breaks, it spreads like a
ray of light trapped in a diamond. The internal reflection ensures that
information reaches to a larger audience and with longer retention rate."
URL: <http://sarai.net/alternative-media-an-agent-and-of-change-in-kashmir/>

*Kalathmika Natarajan - 'Postmemories and the Digital Afterlives of
Partition'*

"The digital space is a significant medium through which discourses on
Partition, and thereby a larger South Asian identity, are enacted. This is
in many ways an attempt to move from the amnesias and post-amnesias of the
past by those who are both sufficiently distant from the actual event and
yet strongly feel that they have a direct stake in understanding Partition
and its repercussions… My focus is not as much on the memories of those who
directly experienced Partition (about which there is a vast and fascinating
literature), as it is on the postmemories of new generations who are
spearheading digital archives, oral history projects and online peace
initiatives. I am interested in the ways in which new media and
communication technologies have shaped the postmemories of the
post-Partition generations and the virtual ways in which they choose to
remember, recover and engage with the past of their families and nations."

URL: <http://sarai.net/postmemories-and-digital-afterlives-of-partition/>

*Rashmi M - 'On that small mobile phone shop in your street corner'*

"I began fieldwork in selected market areas … of Bangalore to observe the
mobile phone usage of vegetable vendors, street peddlers etc. I regularly
visit these streets … and build rapport with potential informants. I
document my observations and follow the leads that I gather when speaking
to these users about the types of phones they use, the peripherals and
accessories they buy along with the phone, the costs they pay for accessing
the Internet, their modes of consumption of media content etc."

URL: <
http://sarai.net/on-that-small-mobile-phone-shop-in-your-street-corner/>

*Sandeep Mertia - 'Rural Social Media and ‘Timepass’: Theorising
Non-Instrumentality'*

"[W]e first need a language to entertain the thought of entertainment as a
valid if not serious use of technology which is worth studying… [M]y
preliminary findings have convinced me that the potential banality of terms
like development, e-governance, digital literacy, technology adoption,
innovation and even Jugaad, does not allow one to grasp the wider cosmology
in which digital media is being appropriated in the village."

URL: <
http://sarai.net/rural-social-media-and-timepass-theorising-non-instrumentality/
>

*Shaunak Sen - 'Decoding the Big Indian Sting'*

"I revisit the inaugural moment of Tehelka’s Operation Westend. Journalists
Mathew Samuels and Anirudh Bahal, posing as arms dealers from a fictitious
London-based company called West End International hawked a non-existent
Defense product called ‘hand-held thermal cameras’ to the Indian government
by bribing several ministers and top-level bureaucrats… This post also
contains excerpts of interviews conducted with … [technicians] to outline
common technical practices the ‘industry’ follows in carefully constructing
and packaging sting operations."

URL: <http://sarai.net/decoding-the-big-indian-sting/>

We keenly look forward to your comments.

Very bests,

*The Sarai Programme*
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
sarai.net | facebook.com/sarai.net
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