Social Media and Revolution...

                      We need to be acutely aware of the fact that access to this powerful and apparently democratic social media needs large amounts of investment in fiber optic cables, satellites, transponders, antennas, servers, technologists, software’s, steel and land. Throughout the first, second and third world, these investments are largely made by Private Corporation supported and facilitated by respective governments through their taxation and subsidy policies, land allocation rules and even immigration policies to set up these information and communication infrastructure. And since this is the case, profit remains at the center of such endeavors, and the purpose and objective is not to foster protest or social movements. The corporations and governments only invest in technology where it suits its needs and agendas. Therefore, it is not surprising that Egypt can and did shut down Internet access for a week during the recent revolution and that China has the most stringent control over Internet access in the world.



                          In India, the lack of access or the digital divide is the result of general poverty and the traditional rich-poor, urban-rural divide. India has more than 790 million cell phone subscribers as of Feb 2011 but only 100 million internet users  Yes, Internet is mostly accessed through cell phones and 40% of Internet users in India do so from their phones. But India is largely a 2G country making accessing internet over mobile phones painfully slows, not to mention hurtfully expensive. So, it will be a long time before more than 800 million people in India can drag themselves out of the internet black hole.
                 What can create social movements is people’s right and freedom to voice so that they can be heard unadulterated and unmediated. Their ability to participate in the decision- making processes of matters that govern their lives and future. Voice is a funny thing –it is simple to understand (and some of us take it for granted) yet it is not as simple too. For a vast section of Indian population voice is denied to if you happen to be the wrong caste, wrong religion, wrong region, wrong class or wrong gender. And at times, you may have a strong voice but you are so far away from those whose ears matter, that it is as good as not having a voice. This is the case with many indigenous peoples in India merely because they live in very ‘remote’ places or have been pushed back into remoter areas with successive development projects. Some communities, like Dalits, have traditionally no voice in their village administrations. This scenario is fast changing because of Dalit assertion and affirmative action’s (known as ‘reservations’ in India). But such assertions almost always come at a very high price. The cost can be an arm, a leg, a nose or your dear life. In such a scenarios, which unfortunately are not limited to India, there is a need for empowering voices and sometime to build voice-bridges.
The future is and should be what the industry calls user-generated content or consumer-generated-media and what I call community created content. The community video producers, the community journalists and community radio reporters I am working with are doing just that. They are radicalized individuals rooted in their communities, not fearful of questioning the established powers, challenging norms, revealing uncomfortable facts, not afraid of putting their hearts out, with cameras and recorders, sharing their stories of triumph and loss, piercing our very short-spanned attentions and inspiring us to take action for a better world