“Knowledge is a practical assemblage, a ‘mechanism’ of statements and visibilities.” — Deleuze People often ask why I bother learning the algorithms and technologies that drive today’s AI innovations – I am a digital anthropologist after all and not a hard-baked computer scientist. Should I just not focus on the bread-and-butter of qualitative research – thick description, deep contextual knowledge of cultures, in-depth understanding of the nuances of language –
Rajeshwari (RJ) Shastri, MA Global Media and Postnational Communication, explores Bollywoodization of Indian weddings. 2018 was the year of ‘big, fat Indian weddings’, from Bollywood-sweethearts Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh’s destination wedding in Italy, to actor Priyanka Chopra and musician Nick Jonas’s ‘intimate’ wedding with only 200 closest friends and family, which naturally included the Indian Prime Minister. However, the year ended with the biggest Indian wedding: oil-and-telecom conglomerate,
For somebody who has been following digital politics globally for more than a decade now, it is sometimes uncanny how hateful, violent and misleading communication – or at least the public and political controversies and moral panics around them – now dominates the global political landscape. Digital media, it seems, is imagined in mostly terms of the dangers it poses: violent extremist propaganda run amok; democratic processes corrupted by disinformation
There is a disturbing trend in India. Post last month’s re-election of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister and the return of his right wing Hindu national Party, BJP, to power, the attacks on journalists critical of the administration have increased with a terrifying intensity. A vernacular language journalist was arrested at the beginning ofJune on the flimsy charge of defamation because he shared negative comments of the Chief Minister
In the summer of 2000, I was posted in West Bengal as a Correspondent for NDTV. Mr Buddhadev Bhattacharya, member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was the Chief Minister and he had just brought his party back to power after the resignation of Jyoti Basu, who, it seems had ruled West Bengal for decades. I knew Mr Bhattacharya cursorily during his reign as the Home Minister of the
