----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
[Continued]
Twitter seems to have currency among urban, middle-class, and
English-using circulators but it is yet to bridge the urban-rural
divide in India. Facebook worked better for translocal/transnational
collaborations among the anti-nuke activist teams from Koodankulam,
Chennai, Delhi, and from Japan and Germany. Some anti-nuclear
activists are aware of the existence of Twitter Trends and News Feed
algorithms and have received offers to buy services from social media
and crowdsourcing companies in order to increase visibility of their
blogs and campaigns. One organizer acknowledged that the
?me-centricity? of the Facebook interface for ordinary users was a
limitation. Other than financial constraints and the me-centricity of
certain social media platforms, these activists emphasize that they
are not city-based NGOs working on urban issues that have social media
led PR campaigns. The anti-nuclear issue is not particularly an urban
issue and thus does not have similar resonance on Twitter, which is
populated by urban users. Thus, one activist reasoned, conversations
about rural issues do not endure on Twitter: momentous spikes are
possible, steady circulation is difficult. Based on discourses of
nuclear nationalism and energy security, being anti-nuclear in India
is sometimes considered anti-national, and hence some activists,
fearing governmental surveillance, prefer to work anonymously on
social media.
To move to my last vignette. Online advocacy websites in Web 1.0 and
Web 2.0 versions have been constructed since the nineties demanding
compensation for the survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984.
This very month, a form of disaster commemoration emerged. On Dec 3,
2014, 30 years since the tragedy, a Twitter handle (@1984Bhopal) began
live-tweeting the gas disaster as if it was unfolding in the present.
The tweets were based on stories of survivors. Social media as
emergent archive might make a contribution to social justice
- rahul
Rahul Mukherjee
Assistant Professor, Television and New Media Studies
Cinema Studies Program, Department of English
University of Pennsylvania
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