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Hi All,
Thanks to Renate and Tim, for the invitation to think, share and discuss with
this remarkable group.
This has been such a rich and illuminating discussion around social media,
“untruths,” algorithms, and surveillance capitalism. Am particularly grateful
to find out about such remarkable art projects and conceptual art that have
critiqued social media surveillance practices. In India, governmental
surveillance of, and clampdown on, protestors, journalists, and activists
criticizing state policies has been a concern. There have been spirited
protests against the recent problematic bills enacted by the state such as the
Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA, Dec 2019) and some specific farm bills (that
aim to deregulate the agricultural sector). Some apps like WhatsApp have been
used for anonymous encrypted communication earlier by protestors, and now there
is a limited shift toward the apps Signal and Telegram ever since concerns
regarding WhatsApp’s new policies related to data sharing have emerged in
public debates. While WhatsApp has helped anonymous communication for
progressive causes in the last six years, it also has been used by problematic
populist right-wing outfits including cow vigilante groups in India.
I want to now discuss a somewhat related point about misinformation campaigns
in India, particularly those that are amplified by the majoritarian Hindutva
(nationalists) network collectives. Social media platforms and apps have
offered Hindutva nationalism propagandists an extended media sensorium to
create a communal atmosphere (“mahaul” in Hindu or Urdu). Such misinformation
campaigns use a variety of platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp,
and perhaps are most reliant on WhatsApp forwards (on mobile phones) in order
to spread. While considerable work has been done on Twitter trolls in India,
less research has been carried out on WhatsApp forwarding of objectionable
messages with the notable exception of the comprehensive report prepared by
Shakuntala Banaji and Ram Bhat titled “WhatsApp Vigilantes.” This is because of
two reasons: a) being more used in urban India, Twitter receives more attention
compared to media forms and technologies used in villages; b) there are
mechanisms to publicly search keywords, hashtags, and URLs on Twitter, but such
tracking is not often possible on WhatsApp. In India and elsewhere, while
discussing or sharing news, people are moving from relatively open (Twitter,
Facebook) to closed (WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger) social media.
An event, which could be as graphic as a live-streamed shooting incident or
video of a lynching mob of cow vigilantes attacking a Muslim cattle farmer (or
an image, meme or Twitter storm) keeps getting forwarded and circulated drawing
Hindutva nationalist supporters into a variety of digital media platforms
powered by the cell phone, thereby mobilizing sensing, affect, and multiple
sites of attachment. Ravi Sundaram calls this phenomena “event chains” in a
“distribution engine,” an engine which is an affect machine and a crisis
machine dependent on the habitual micro-actions of likes and forwards. There
are several reasons for the unabated WhatsApp forwarding tendencies: habit,
pressure to participate, prejudice, and more… I have written elsewhere that the
easy camera recording technologies of today’s mobile phones and the cheap
circulatory affordances of WhatsApp make acts of cow vigilantism seem like
performative rituals, very much ready and available for “mobile witnessing.”
Fathima Nizaruddin has discussed how in certain public WhatsApp groups, the
narrative of “CoronaJihad,” which blames the minority Muslim community for the
spread of the virus in India, was being spread. While WhatsApp often gets
singled out (because of its widespread use by mobile phone users in India),
misinformation campaigns indeed are transmedial/intermedial as a range of
material moves across platforms/apps like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok,
ShareChat and Helo.
WhatsApp has taken some steps to limit the number of users who can be added to
a group, to limit the number of forwards to five (in India and it seems, some
restrictions have been implemented in Brazil as well), and there is an option
(though not default option) provided to WhatsApp users to not be added to
groups without their consent. That said, the scope of algorithmic tweaks are
limited given WhatsApp’s self-imposed encryption barrier (which might change in
the future). I wish there was an artwork tactic or an obfuscation technique
around the WhatsApp forwards. There may indeed be one in the works that I do
not know about…on another note, I remain interested like many others about the
“Five Year Plan."
References:
Shakuntala Banaji and Ram Bhat, “WhatsApp Vigilantes” -
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/104316/1/Banaji_whatsapp_vigilantes_exploration_of_citizen_reception_published.pdf
Ravi Sundaram, “Hindu Nationalism’s Crisis Machine” -
https://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/1485
Rahul Mukherjee, Mobile Witnessing on Whatsapp -
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14746689.2020.1736810
Fathima Nizaruddin, Role of Public WhatsApp groups within the Hindutva
Ecosystem of Hate and Narratives of “CoronaJihad” -
https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/16255
Rahul Mukherjee
Associate Professor of Television and New Media
Cinema Studies Program, Department of English
University of Pennsylvania
On Feb 22, 2021, at 1:56 PM, Renate Ferro
<rfe...@cornell.edu<mailto:rfe...@cornell.edu>> wrote:
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Many thanks to our Week 3 guests who joined us: Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Robby
Collins, Domenico Barra, Paul O'Neill, Kerry Guinan and Ricardo Castellini. I
invite you to stay on this week if your schedule permits. It has been so
generous of you to share your work, research, and thoughts. I will also welcome
warmly Justin Blinder, Rahul Mukherjee, David Quiles Guilló, and Ulises Mejias
for joining us this week. We look forward to their own contributions as we
head into the end of this month's discussion, Social Media: algorithms,
untruths and insurrection
To those of you who have been following all of the contributions have extended
our thoughts on surveillance capitalism, but I would like to lead us into next
week particularly thinking about Alex's insightful post from a few days ago.
Here is the link to Guattari's article he cited, Towards a Post-Media Era.
https://www.metamute.org/editorial/lab/towards-post-media-era
Thanks for that Alex. I also reposting the last sentence of your post which I
think might be interesting to think about as we head into next week,
<snip>There is no perfect Big Brother in surveillance's mechanical function,
but many potential resistances within them because its control always fails.
This is the reason why we should organize the possible resistance against
mechanical governmentality. <snip>
I want to also nod to our colleague and friend in Western Canada, Arthur Kroker
and Marylouise Kroker who passed away last year. Their collaborative work on
these issues and more have been seminal to me. I share their edited collection
published in 1987, Digital Delirium. If you have a university connection you
may be able to link in to this https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/7131
or pick it up via the internet. It is really worth the read from beginning to
end.
In a nod to both Marylouise and Arthur I will quote this substituting in my
mind's eye social media for mass media:
"Mass media have never been about reciprocity, exchange, interaction, or even
communication. They replace reciprocity with false simulation, exchange, with
the tyranny of information overload producing a numbed culture that shuts down
for self-protection, interaction with a dense operational network substituting
polls and focus groups and high -intensity marketing warfare for genuine
solidarity, data for communication and speed for meaning."
So, hoping that the juxtaposition between Guattari and the Krokers will incite
all of you who have joined in so far to comment as well as those of you lurking
from afar.
Best,
Renate
Biographies
Justin Blinder is a Brooklyn-based artist, technologist, and researcher. His
work examines how bottom-up, immersive, and poetic approaches to technology can
help us to better understand socio-political institutions, built environments,
social networks, and others’ lived experiences. His work has been included in
exhibitions at the MoMA, New York, NY; Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York,
NY; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany; the Collection Museum,
Lincoln, England; Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI;
Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, New York, NY; and BRIC, Brooklyn, NY.
Selected personal projects of his have been featured in online publications
such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, BBC, The
Guardian, and The Verge among others Justin is currently a Research Assistant
in the City Science group at the MIT Media Lab. He was previously a Creative
Technologist at The New York Times R&D Lab, Eyebeam Honorary Fellow, and NEW
INC member. He holds a BFA in Design and Technology from Parsons.
https://justin.work/
Rahul Mukherjee completed his doctoral studies in Film and Media Studies at
University of California, Santa Barbara, with graduate emphases in ‘Technology
and Society’ and ‘Global Studies’. His academic preoccupations often meander
into imaginings about media’s role with(in) alternative futures for/of politics
and technology. He has been a fellow at the Center for the Humanities, Utrecht
University and Atkinson Center for Sustainable Future fellow at the Society for
the Humanities, Cornell University (2017-18). Drawing on the conceptual lenses
of cultural studies, media theory, and science studies, he has written on
database management systems, advertising cultures of mobile telephony,
Bollywood thrillers, development discourses, chronic toxicity, and translocal
documentaries. He has been part of two collaborative projects related to mobile
media practices: one concerned with the circulation of locally produced SD-card
enabled music videos in parts of India and the other exploring ICT usage in
Zambia. Rahul’s work has appeared in many peer-reviewed journals including New
Media & Society, BioScope, Media, Culture & Society, Science, Technology and
Human Values, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (with Lisa Parks),
and Asiascape: Digital Asia (with Abhigyan Singh). His book titled “Radiant
Infrastructures: Media, Environment, and Cultures of Uncertainty” (forthcoming
from Duke University Press, Apr 2020) involves mediations of
debates/controversies related to radiation emitting technologies such as cell
antennas and nuclear reactors. Rahul’s second book project “Unlimited:
Aspirational Politics and Mobile Digital Practices in India” examines
aspirational mobilities unleashed by mobile media technologies (under review).
He is beginning a third book project on the histories of wireless signals and
plant ecologies interwoven in the work of biophysicist JC Bose. Rahul received
the Nicholas C. Mullins award from the Society for Social Studies of Science in
2014. At Penn, Rahul is part of the Digital Humanities and Environmental
Humanities initiatives. He is part of the editorial advisory board of the
Journal of Visual Culture and Media+Environment.
David Quiles Guilló. born artist in 1973. now also tech entrepreneur, curator,
writer, composer and full publisher at large with a family. right now: working
on a new project, incubated by telefónica's open future alicante, and warming
the jets for the 5th edition of the wrong biennale. founder and director of: -
The Wrong Tv (since 2o2o) live streaming exhibitions & love - 7tNbjV (since
2017) releasing abstract literature graphic novels and art projects as
paperback books - Abstract Editions (since 2o15) publishing house to deliver
the new abstract literature genre printed to the world - The Wrong Biennale
(since 2o13) the most compelling digital art biennale ever - Nova (from 2o1o to
2o12) a contemporary culture festival - Rojo® (from 2oo1 to 2o11) a visual
magazine & platform to promote creativity and visual art lectures & workshops
in many institutions since 2oo1; mis museum for image and sound, sesc paulista,
sesc pompeia and cinemateca brasileira in são paulo, sesc copacabana and eav
parque lage in rio de janeiro, centre d’art santa monica, elisava school for
arts & hangar in barcelona, european cultural foundation in rotterdam,
university of málaga, casino luxembourg, arco art fair in madrid, instituto
cervantes in nyc and casablanca, hagaram design museum in seoul, university of
art in linz, pxl-mad school of arts in hasselt, and saic, school of the art
institute of chicago, to mention a few https://davidquilesguillo.com
Ulises Mejias
Ulises Ali Mejias is professor of communication studies and director of the
Institute for Global Engagement at SUNY Oswego. His research interests include
critical data studies, philosophy and sociology of technology, and political
economy of digital media. Ulises' work has appeared in various journals in his
field and he is the author of "Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World"
(2013, University of Minnesota Press) and, with Nick Couldry, of "The Costs of
Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for
Capitalism" (2019, Stanford University Press). Ulises is co-founder of Tierra
Común (tierracomun.net), a network of activists, citizens and scholars working
towards the decolonization of data, and he is in the process of launching a
Non-Aligned Technologies Movement (nonalignedtech.net). He serves on the board
of Humanities New York, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the
Humanities. ulisesmejias.com.
Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
rfe...@cornell.edu
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