As a kind of journalism that emerges in response to and within the digital media ecosystem, slow journalism is seen as a disruption of the temporal regimes of digital journalism. Breaking away from the radically accelerated time cycle of online journalism, it is associated with journalistic forms, genres and publications like narrative journalism, documentaries, features, portraits, magazines, that are, as Henrik Bodker argues, at a “greater temporal distance” from the present. Slow journalism grounds itself in a sense of commensality, intending to pay close attention to people’s stories, often taking participatory and collaborative forms. Matt Norman writes that slow journalism is not merely a reaction to “toxic speed” but emerges at “the complex intersection of speed and slowness that’s emerging in our dizzying, contemporary world.”
Pulitzer winning journalist Paul Salopek’s ambitious, decade-long, multimodal Out of Eden project, invariably mentioned in any analysis of slow journalism, engages with and manifests the intricate and layered temporalities of media production and consumption in the digital age. Salopek’s project aspires to take digital storytelling to epic dimensions. He traces, on foot, one of the earliest routes of human migration from Ethiopia to Chile and narrates the stories of the communities that he encounters on his way. His narrative combines long-form with short-form, and verbal elements with images, videos, podcasts, interactive maps, virtual walks, and other tools in order to create an ‘immersive’ experience.
In its attempt to adjust online writing to offline temporality, his work is situated at the cusp between a corporeal experience of the material world and the virtuality of the digital space. His representation of the inhabitants of the global south as participants in the digital revolution takes into consideration disparities of access but also rewrites the general discourse of the ‘temporal lag’ between the global north and south. This paper intends to perform a postcolonial reading of Salopek’s travel narrative to probe at questions of representation, address and appropriation that are thrown up as it attempts to capture ‘offline’ rhythms in a digital narrative.
Akshata Pai is an assistant professor at the department of English, SNDT Women’s University Mumbai. She counts St. Xaviers College, Mumbai and Mumbai University as her alma mater. Her interests include digital literature, cultural studies, new media and post-colonial studies.
The advent of digital life has, like everything else, transformed the way political campaigning occurs. Today almost no political campaign – regardless of the size of the constituency – can ignore the influence of digital communications. A significant effort in a campaign may be devoted to digital media strategies which supplement the traditional ‘offline’ campaign techniques. I am interested in understanding the altering nature of the strategies and reception of both ‘offline’ and ‘online’ campaigns in an increasingly digitised world.
The focus of my study is on educational campuses. In a pre-digitised environment campus politics would be marked by intense personal contact programmes, marked by door to door and class to class campaign offline campaigns relied heavily on person to person contact and real-life networks and feedback mechanisms. Influence from outside the campus would be restricted to the role of larger political forces who would operate through ideological affiliation and extra-legal forms like money and physical force. In the online world such person to person networks are supplemented by social networks groups – both open and closed. These networks may be open to influence of individual participants from outside the immediate electorate who may not be strategically linked to the campaign as well as troll armies and social media campaign teams which seek to work to a strategy.
The focus of this work is not the various methods and means used for campaigning in offline and online worlds but on the operations of the mind of both the campaign team and the electorate. For instance, though rumours and fake information form may form an essential feature of both modes – are rumours circulated in-person more effective than those delivered through smart phone apps? Does the electorate in the online era consider that they have superior understanding of the candidates or contesting platforms? or do they feel that the campaign process is more participative? Do campaigners on the other hand have to adopt different strategies for offline and online campaigns? For instance, in the online era do campus campaigners also have to engage with non-students and other external respondents during a campaign? Do strategies differ between election, agitations and other events?
Further, is the ‘offline’ of the digital era the same as the ‘offline’ of the pre-digital era or is there significant mediation in behaviour and operations?
The study would need to seek responses from campaigners and students from different eras in the pre-digital and digital periods.
Arjun Ghosh teaches at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Delhi. He was a former fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla where he worked on the monograph Freedom from Profit: Eschewing Copyright in Resistance Art.
The digital age, among other things was supposed to have sounded the death knell for books— the end of books as Robert Coover would put it—and for once (un)settled the hierarchies of textual knowledge production. With the advent of the born digital genres, offline modes of production and dissemination were deemed to have run their course. However, quite contrary to initial estimates, one of the earliest born digital genres, the blog, has often spawned the publication of books. A lot of questions in recent years have been centered around the sociological context of the book, readership etc. Of particular interest has been the text’s “trajectory of internal progression” (an intricate construct of basic formal units) and its outer trajectory of “delivery and reception”. These readings have kindled debates around hybrid forms in relation to the metaphysics of the text.
The digital age, among other things was supposed to have sounded the death knell for books— the end of books as Robert Coover would put it—and for once (un)settled the hierarchies of textual knowledge production. With the advent of the born digital genres, offline modes of production and dissemination were deemed to have run their course. However, quite contrary to initial estimates, one of the earliest born digital genres, the blog, has often spawned the publication of books. A lot of questions in recent years have been centered around the sociological context of the book, readership etc. Of particular interest has been the text’s “trajectory of internal progression” (an intricate construct of basic formal units) and its outer trajectory of “delivery and reception”. These readings have kindled debates around hybrid forms in relation to the metaphysics of the text.
Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. She has been trained in literary studies at Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and Ruprecht Karls Universitat, Heidelberg. Post-colonial studies, culture studies, Digital humanities and emerging literatures are her areas of interest.
The tools provided by the digital age have unfolded a huge potential for feminist scholarship and the movement. Defined by some feminist as the “4th Wave”, digital feminism has created a new body of feminist genealogies harvested from metadata from different search engines and databases and has employed tools provided by the digital age to reach out to heterogenous audiences. The creation of the digital women’s archive in this context has raised vexing questions about the role of traditional and digital archives and the impact of technology on serious scholarship as not a simplistic progressive affair. The creation of digital women’s archive came from the desire to transmit knowledge and create awareness about women’s history in the broadest sense , to expanding the public sphere and innovate debates on digital canon and availability of women writers . Unlike the brick and mortar offline archive, the digital archive enabled by technology has allowed for a kaleidoscopic view, which Donna Haraway has defined to be the maintenance of “contradictory locations and heterochronic calendars”. The ‘difference’ introduced by digital is not simply applying the additive approach to resolve issues around systematic exclusion and mere ‘recovery’. Digital archive located within the feminist space are both repositories and sites of translation. The archiving of unfamiliar voices has not only brought texts into cultural view but has also blurred traditional boundaries. The texts therefore fall into various categories to decolonize grand narratives. The convergence of digital humanities with library science in this case and other expertise has raised questions about production and consumption of texts. The text will now access rare materials and on the same page will juxtapose different viewpoints visually and enable a seamless online presentation. Finally in the age of digital humanities, the project of digital women’s archive will raise questions about women to be equal partners when critical dialogues around collaboration, critique and engagement with new developments are happening.
The paper will focus on the case study of Dr. Avabai Wadia and Dr. Bomanji Khurshedji Wadia Archive for Women housed at Research Centre for Women’s Studies, S.N.D.T. Women’s University, Mumbai. The purpose of the archive is to archive lives of women, who have left an indelible mark in history. The digital archive will one of the many digital historical resources, containing what Antoinette Burton has described as “archive stories”. The digital archive is a cultural object created using algorithms and the process of “digital mediation” has raised questions around information age, archiving women’s voices and enlarging the scope of the public domain. The paper will seek to interrogate the new methods of understanding culture, production of new knowledges and methods of controlling the archive.
Putul Sathe, currently an Associate Professor with the Research Centre for Women's Studies, S.N.D.T. Women's University, Mumbai. Her research interests include Gender, Women's Writing with special focus on Indian literature and Dalit Women's autobiographical writings. She has widely published on gender issues ranging from Candian women’s writing to Dalit narratives in India. She is currently involved in instating the Dr. Avabai Wadia and Dr. Bomanji Khurshedji Wadia Archive.
Criticism and literary criticism in particular have often enjoyed being the preserve of the privileged few. Unlike reading, criticism expects the critic to have been part of polite learning and have mastered the art of grammar and rhetoric. Apart from these prerequisites, it also harbours the reputation of being largely closed owing to its proclivity towards jargon and inbreeding. So critics speak to critics and continue to write in a language often impervious to the people outside its chain of signification.
In Marathi literature, colonial modernity has set certain rules of propriety as it were for criticism which includes the use of a standardised (often ornamental) language and host of literary terms (borrowed from both European and Indic sources). The digital world’s engagement with criticism seems to have upset most of the rules that one has held dear to Marathi criticism. Not only has it upset hierarchies of canon, language, spaces etc., it has altered the role and scope of literary criticism. Online literary criticism seems to veer away from questions of form and aesthetics, and instead seeks to politicise the text. Written in a language that draws upon colloquialisms and popular knowledge, such works of criticism are often excluded from institutionalised literary studies. It can however be argued that such online criticism is drastically transforming offline literary studies. The space of the classroom, for example, is now a site of contested meaning-making rather than a sanctum of canonized and authorized knowledge.
This paper will examine the role that digital media, especially in the form of social media has played to work around certain fundamentals of literary critical practices that have governed Marathi literature since the nineteenth century. It seeks to examine the growing gap between offline and online literary criticism and its interface with the changing nature of Indic literatures.
Rajashree Patil is currently an assistant professor with the department of Marathi, SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. Her interests span across traditional academics associated with literature and allied arts. Apart from having widely published research papers on contemporary Marathi literary practices she has also been trained in Indian aesthetics. She has been a new reader, reviewer and translator for Akashvani, Mumbai. ‘Waman Malhar te Shirish Gopal’ is her published monograph and ‘Aahuti’ a translated book. She is also a regular contributor to the Marathi periodical ‘Shabda Ruchee’.
Science is going through a major crisis at the stages of its production and consumption, in terms of accessibility, transparency, inclusivity, and public engagement. This crisis is even more pronounced in developing countries and places with high levels of inequality, where- at least for a significant part of the population- resources are scarce, journal paywalls are unaffordable, and the practice and communication of science are exclusionary on various socio-economic grounds.
Open science, an umbrella movement that includes other ‘open’ movements such as open access and open source, has been emerging as a response to this crisis. Among other things, it advocates for the incentivisation of all stakeholders in the process of science - including researchers and policymakers - such that production and consumption of science are made more accessible, transparent, and inclusive; public engagement is encouraged at all stages; and social problems receive greater focus. Some advocates argue that open science will be especially beneficial for developing countries where the existing crisis is more critical.
However, a fundamental issue in the conception of open science and other open movements - perhaps because of their Global North-centric origins and perpetuation - is their heavy, and often inherent, reliance on the internet. One can appreciate the negligible marginal costs, speed, flexibilities, and opportunities for engagement made possible by the internet; but it is intrinsically exclusionary to imagine the practice of open science without those that lack complete or partial internet access. While the ‘Open Science Manifesto’ - evolved by OCSDNet after discussion with participants from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia - should be appreciated for recognising the need for a more inclusive understanding of open science, the practicalities of implementing it are unclear.
This presentation will elaborate upon the above-mentioned issues, and discuss the need for the open science movement to shift some of its focus to ‘offline’ avenues such as print journalism, accessible libraries and library networking, and ‘open day’ initiatives in research institutions. Initiatives undertaken in some parts of India regarding simplified and offline communication of science in the interiors of the country will also be highlighted. Moreover, in the spirit of open science, the participants of the conference will be encouraged to think about and suggest ‘offline approaches’ to scientific communication and participation that can make science truly inclusive.
Shreyashi Ray is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Competition (CIIPC) at the National Law University, Delhi. Shreyashi completed her B.A., L.L.B. degree in 2016 from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, and has been a research assistant on projects dealing with film piracy, free speech, and vagrancy. Her interest in socio-economic rights is aligned with the projects she is involved in at CIIPC, i.e., the Open Access Textbook on Competition Law and Open Science for an Innovative India.