{"title":"Perception/Deception: Fictional Selves and the Peculiarly Digital Phenomenon of Catfishing","authors":"Debolina Dey","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10029","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Catfishing is a peculiar digital phenomenon that involves a relationship using a fictional online persona. What distinguishes catfishing from other forms of digital production that deploy ‘misleading’ information or impersonation is that although this phenomenon might include such strategies, it is often employed for romantic scams. This paper looks at the alternative forms of intimacy afforded by digital platforms with their particular set of tools, especially in the context of digital cultures in India. By using catfishing as a lens to read intimacy in the digital, this study looks at unexpected possibilities of the digital as a mediatized space that in turn generates new types of relationalities.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76902411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"#peacemaker: Cultivating Pluralist Dispositions among Bandung’s Peace Communities Online and Offline","authors":"Dayana Lengauer","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10024","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In Indonesia, the national motto of ‘unity in diversity’ is challenged, not least by a hardening of religious identities, coupled with rising levels of religious intolerance. In addition to established proponents of religious pluralism, groups of activists strive to sow the seeds of peace among the tech-savvy generation of young urbanites. By adopting the concept of ‘technology of the community’, I analyze the online and offline practices of peace activists in Bandung in 2018 to educate young #peacemakers and create spaces of empathy and solidarity. To address the emotional deprivation as well as aspirations of young people, peace groups rely on various offline and online technologies that straddle notions of comfort and discomfort, of tolerance and engagement. In creating and maintaining spaces of affective interpersonal exchange, these groups become exponents of local arrangements that are conducive to the cultivation of pluralist dispositions beyond national ideology.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86543620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"#delhimetro on Instagram: Digital Media and Mobility Practices before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"Sonal Sharma","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10032","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000India has the highest number of Instagram users in the world. This article examines Instagram, the mobility, and the digital media practices of Delhi Metro commuters before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, it looks at their photography of everyday lived experiences, their mediated interactions with one another, and the visible-invisible infrastructure in the city. It draws attention to the complexity of digital production, personal archiving, and circulation networks at play. Foregrounding the changing ‘geographies of social media’, a qualitative, digital ethnographic approach analyses these images’ visual, social, and contextual aspects. Also, a range of convergent practices related to individuals, places, and socio-cultural-political-economic-technological realities influence the images. Eventually, a narrative emerges on how these metro travellers inhabit offline and online public spaces, exchange cultural capital, and perform the affective, mediated negotiation of the city.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"124 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77458830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transnational Hallyu: The Globalization of Korean Digital and Popular Culture, written by Dal Yong Jin, Kyong Yoon, and Wonjung Min","authors":"Ji-Hyun Ahn","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10025","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80744625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jugaad Infrastructures: Platforming Habituated Ecologies during the Kerala Floods of 2018","authors":"Gayas Eapen","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10030","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Infrastructure has often been approached through the built, and yet hidden, substrates that facilitate modern life. In postcolonial contexts, the rise of platformized solutions tasked with performing infrastructural functions has introduced complexity in theorizing infrastructure. However, provisional and temporary solutions that bring together networks, relationships, and habitations as jugaad (informal or workaround) infrastructure have the potential to address crises beyond neoliberal capture enabled through platformization. This paper uses theories on alternative ways of assembling infrastructures to analyze a rescue portal built during the Kerala floods in 2018. It argues that these complex forms of assembling an infrastructure, even during the moments of imminent existential crisis, face the risk of platformized capture, surveillance, and governance.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"54 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73895813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Digital Platforms in Contemporary India: The Transformation of Quotidian Life Worlds","authors":"R. Mukherjee, Fathima Nizaruddin","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10026","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The introduction to the special issue on ‘Digital Platforms in Contemporary India: Transformation of Quotidian Life Worlds’ focuses on the ways in which everyday interactions in contemporary India have changed since the arrival of digital platforms. Locating these changes within their specific contexts, the essays in the special issue examine the new circulatory assemblages and representational tropes that emerge through interactions between diverse platforms and their various users. In particular, the essays trace the different ways in which bodies, mobilities, and platforms are entangled in everyday life in an unfolding phenomenon. This introduction outlines the new spatiotemporal shifts catalyzed by the platformization of everyday activities in India, drawing connections among the various essays in the special issue. The introduction attempts to map these shifts as part of a two-way process, which acknowledges that the resulting transformations also have the potential for reimagining the existing logic of platforms.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84180399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Old Conflicts in New Media Assemblages: India’s Cow Vigilantism and YouTube","authors":"Gowhar Farooq","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10027","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Since 2014, when the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party took power, India has witnessed attacks by cow vigilantes (gaurakshaks), who have beaten up and lynched people – mostly in the Muslim community – accusing them of smuggling cows for slaughter. Although vigilantes claim to protect cows, considered sacred in Hinduism, scholars argue they are ‘shadow armies’ and ‘foot soldiers’ in a politically motivated campaign against minorities and marginalized populations. India has a long tradition of cow-related iconography, songs, and music. However, some of these forms and practices have been used by right-wing groups to further their agendas. The rise in cow vigilantism has been accompanied by a surge in digital media that support and further violence, including music videos. This paper focuses on YouTube music videos to investigate how various sociotechnological components form a complex assemblage that enables the articulation and circulation of a highly polarized majoritarian narrative about cows.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74889444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Moral Economy of Platform Work","authors":"Noopur Raval, Simiran Lalvani","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10031","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Gig Economy platforms have become enmeshed in the fabric of urban sociality. While they have substantially disrupted conditions of labouring, participating in the platform economy has also changed social and moral norms globally. Importantly, what constitutes normative moral and prosocial interpersonal behaviour is key to making platforms function as social environments, but these norms are also constantly challenged and rearticulated through everyday practice among different stakeholders. By drawing on long-term fieldwork across gig economy platforms in urban India, we offer a typology of dynamic social and moral norms around tipping, gratitude, politeness and more that sustain platform interactions. The paper’s aim is to re-centre the vitality and dynamism of everyday media practice, social relationships, and cultural values in shaping platforms. Relatedly, moving beyond binaries of exploitation/empowerment, we show how negotiations between agents with differential power contribute to shifts in platform culture that cannot be fully explained through notions of intentionality.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74007931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Institutionalized Riot Networks in India and Mobile Instant Messaging Platforms","authors":"Fathima Nizaruddin","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10028","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article uses the context of the Northeast Delhi riots in 2020 to examine how mobile instant messaging platforms have changed the nature of riot networks in India. What role does the state’s partisan approach play in aiding the use of these platforms by the constituents of such networks? Does the lack of adequate mechanisms to hold technology companies accountable contribute to how their platforms are used to aid the circulation of extreme speech, misinformation, and violence? The article explores these questions and argues for a framework to govern mobile instant messaging platforms that goes beyond attempts at self-regulation as well as efforts by national governments to regulate them. The complications that arise when such platforms are used by networks that favour majoritarian rulers are analyzed to examine the need for placing issues related to the governance of platform ecosystems within the framework of the protection of human rights.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73889318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Whose Country Is Digital India? Unpacking Dominant Power Relations Mediated by the Digital India Campaign","authors":"Archana Singh","doi":"10.1163/22142312-bja10020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/22142312-bja10020","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article unpacks the material and cultural implications of the Digital India programme’s rhetoric of social transformation and digital empowerment by asking the question ‘How and whom does digital empowerment seek to empower?’ Through an analysis of the discourse on the Digital India website, this article concludes that the recurring depoliticization and dehistoricization of social differences deliberately make the programme’s intended beneficiaries vague. By flattening structural differences among caste, class, gender, and ethnicity, Digital India’s technopolitics recasts empowerment as an individual issue and naturalizes the myths of meritocracy, castelessness, and genderlessness. Furthermore, in a Hindutva regime, Digital India’s depoliticized technopolitics becomes a tool for managing citizenship that reinforces the status quo. This article argues that, by declining to define a process of empowerment that considers cultural complexities and structural hegemonies, Digital India’s call for digital empowerment remains an empty signifier.","PeriodicalId":52237,"journal":{"name":"Asiascape: Digital Asia","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87108334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}