Examining positive and negative dimensions of social media
India International Centre will present the launch of Quarterly Winter 2018 – Spring 2019 on April 27, 6.30pm in Multiprpose Hall, Kamaladevi block. Titled 'Social Media in a Networked World', it is edited by Omita Goyal and Pratik Kanjilal, the quaterly will be released by Dr Karan Singh, followed by a discussion.
This issue of the IIC Quarterly focuses on Internet in a crisis of confidence, as the very technology that was hailed as a force of freedom, progress and transparency eight years ago, when Arab Spring broke out, was revealed to have been used to vacuum up psychological and behavioural data on tens of millions of social media users, which was allegedly used to influence elections and a referendum in two of the world's most important democracies.
About the time this issue was planned, in response to privacy concerns, the Supreme Court restricted the use of Aadhaar data to welfare delivery.
As the journal went to press, Brexit loomed, without the stakeholders having any idea of the extent to which the referendum in the UK had been influenced by overseas entities. A decade ago, there was public concern that harvested data was being used to condition individual consumer choices. Now, we know that aggregate choice can be tinkered with to delegitimise elections, the very basis of democracy.
In the last few years, concerted social media campaigns have been used to mislead voters and subvert elections, to undermine the institutions on which democracy stands, including educational institutions, and to demonise minority communities and vocal dissenters.
These essays examine some aspects of this field, both the positive and negative dimensions of social media.
With contributions by Amber Sinha, Amit Sen, Andreas Mattsson, Apar Gupta, Bedavyasa Mohanty, Debajani Mohanty, Govindraj Ethiraj, Harsh Raman Singh Paul, Jyoti Panday, Kiran S Karnik, Mahima Kaul, Osama Manzar, Prabir Purkayastha, Samir Saran, Shashi Shekhar Vempati, Tobby Simon, Udita Chaturvedi, Vibodh Parthasarathi, Vinton G Cerf; and Vrinda Bhandari
