Archive for the ‘India’ Category Category RSS

OpenNet Initiative Releases Results on Filtering in Asia

From the Great Firewall to the Myanmar Wide Web, Asia is well-known for its practices in Internet filtering. China has long taken the lead in blocking Web sites, filtering sites across the spectrum - from social to political content, pornography to Internet tools. The OpenNet Initiative (full disclosure: I'm involved) ...

Caste Based Communities on Orkut Mirror India's Splintered Society

I have written before about Shiv Sena's militant approach towards Orkut communities critical of the party, its leader Bal Thakeray, or its Hindutva ideology. Caste-based communities on Orkut are another disturbing example of online communities mirroring the splintered nature of Indian society.

Video Interview With Gaurav Mishra About Digital Activism and Social Media in India

In this video I interviewed, Gaurav Mishra, our colleague at Global Voices and the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University, about the role of social media and digital activism in India. From the right-wing Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena's Orkut Campaign to the more liberal Pink Chaddi Facebook Campaign, Gaurav explores in this interview how problems of religious conflicts are being reflected online, in a country where caste, class and religious divides remain very strong despite the secular nature of the state.

Case Study: The Report Card on Vote Report India Version 1.0

The 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections have come to an end and so has version 1.0 of Vote Report India. We have had our successes and failures and I have talked about some of them before. I think we did a lot of things well -- - We were able to get the ...

Build Your Own Alltop For Advocacy With Wordpress and OneNews

Now, you can build your own Alltop-like dashboard for your advocacy project, using Wordpress and OneNews. While I won't encourage you to make a dashboard just because you can, I can see many applications for such dashboards.

The Perils of Facebook Activism: Nisha Susan Locked Out of Pink Chaddi Campaign's Facebook Group

The Pink Chaddi Facebook Group has been getting hacked throughout last month, and, instead of dealing with the hackers, Facebook suspended both the group and Nisha's account last week. In an open letter to Facebook, Nisha wondered if the first rule of Facebook activism is to not use Facebook.

The Story Behind Vote Report India: Citizen-Powered Election Monitoring

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-powered election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections.