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Uganda Bans Social Media Days Before Presidential Election

In a letter, Uganda’s communications regulator ordered internet service providers to block all social media platforms and messaging apps until further notice.

Kampala: Uganda banned social media and beefed up security in the capital on Tuesday, two days ahead of a presidential election pitting Yoweri Museveni, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, against opposition frontrunner Bobi Wine, a popular singer.

Campaigning ahead of the vote has been marred by brutal crackdowns on opposition rallies that have left scores dead and the repeated intimidation and arrest of some opposition candidates, their supporters and campaign staff.

Videos posted on social media on Tuesday showed a convoy of armoured military vehicles heading towards Kampala and then moving slowly through various streets in the heart of the capital, which typically votes against Museveni.

In a television address on Tuesday evening, the 76-year-old leader who took power in 1986, said he had met with the security forces and they were ready to defend any Ugandans worried about coming out to vote because of intimidation by the opposition.

“There is no threat we cannot defeat,” said Museveni, wearing a military camouflage jacket. “We have got all sorts of means, simple and complex.”

The European Union said on Tuesday it expected Uganda to provide a level-playing field for all voters to exercise their democratic rights without fear of intimidation or violence.

“The excessive use of force by law enforcement and security agencies has seriously tarnished this electoral process,” said Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat. He said the bloc’s offer to deploy a small team of electoral experts was not taken up.

Museveni apologised for the inconvenience caused by the ban on social media and messaging apps but he said Uganda had no choice after Facebook took down some accounts which backed his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.

“If you want to take sides against the NRM, then that group should not operate in Uganda,” he said. “We cannot tolerate this arrogance of anybody coming to decide for us who is good and who is bad.”

Also read: QAnon and the Storm of the US Capitol: The Offline Effect of Online Conspiracy Theories

Social media blackout

In a letter seen by Reuters to internet service providers dated Jan. 12, Uganda’s communications regulator ordered them to block all social media platforms and messaging apps until further notice.

Internet monitor NetBlocks said its data showed that Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, Skype, Snapchat, Viber and Google Play Store were among a lengthy list of sites unavailable via Uganda’s main cell network operators.

Facebook said on Monday it had taken down a network linked to Uganda’s ministry of information for using fake and duplicate accounts to post ahead of this week’s election.

At 38, Wine is half Museveni’s age and he has attracted a large following among young people in a nation where 80% of the population are under 30.

Wine is considered the frontrunner among 10 candidates challenging Museveni, who brought stability to the country after the murderous reigns of dictators Milton Obote and Idi Amin.

While security forces have intimidated the opposition at previous elections, the run up to this year’s vote has been especially violent. In November, 54 people were killed as soldiers and police quelled protests after Wine was detained.

The authorities say opposition rallies break COVID-19 curbs on large gatherings in some parts of the country. Rights groups say the restrictions are a pretext for muzzling the opposition.

On Tuesday, Wine said soldiers raided his home in Kampala and arrested his guards while he was giving an interview to a Kenyan radio station. He also said a team member who works mainly as a mechanic was shot dead by the military overnight.

Reuters was not immediately able to verify the claims and a military spokesmen did not respond to a call seeking comment.

Patrick Onyango, police spokesman for Kampala, denied Wine’s home had been raided or that anyone was arrested.

Also read: ‘Big Tech’s Intolerance’: BJP Leaders Decry Donald Trump’s Twitter Suspension

‘Unacceptable breaches’

The International Press Institute, a global media watchdog, called on Uganda to reinstate social media networks.

“Any efforts to block online access to journalists or members of the public are unacceptable breaches of the right to information,” it said in a statement.

South African telecoms company MTN Group, the leading mobile operator in Uganda with 60% of the market, said it had complied with the blocking order and was working with the authorities to limit the scope and duration of the disruption.

Wine has been using Facebook to relay live coverage of his campaigns and news conferences after he said many media outlets had declined to host him. Most radio and TV stations are owned by government allies and Uganda’s leading daily is state-run.

Museveni has won every election since the first under his presidency in 1996, though they have been tarnished by intimidation of the opposition and accusations of vote rigging.

Uganda is a Western ally, a prospective oil producer and is considered a stabilising force in a region where war has plagued some neighbours. It also contributes the biggest contingent of an African Union force fighting Islamist insurgents in Somalia.

Redesigning Social Media Platforms to Reduce ‘FoMo’

New research has identified the main triggers of this psychological phenomenon, the contexts in which it happens and the types of fears involved in it.

Fear of missing out, or FoMO, is commonly described as that anxious feeling you get when you think other people might be having a good time without you. Excessive FoMO is closely related to symptoms of behavioural addiction. It often leads to undesirable behaviour such as the constant checking of social media, even in an inappropriate context, like while driving, and becoming overly preoccupied with reactions to online posts and messages.

Our new research has identified the main triggers of this psychological phenomenon, the contexts in which it happens and the types of fears involved in it. We have also suggested new design features which social media platforms could introduce to minimise this most modern form of social anxiety.

Humans are fundamentally social creatures. Our identity, beliefs and behaviours come from and are shaped by our interactions with others. From those we know well, to fleeting moments of eye contact with the strangers we walk past on the street. Previous generations may have had periods of respite from the social world. But the emergence of social media platforms and smartphones means access to social information and interaction, 24 hours a day, has never been easier.

This constant flow of interaction has an effect, and despite the adage that nothing on the internet ever goes away, social information can expire and become less meaningful after time. For example, ongoing group chats, live streaming and direct messages which expect an immediate answer. When people fail to keep up with all these battling messages and streams, FoMO rears its ugly head.

FoMO sub-categories

In our research, we looked at the situations and contexts in which FoMO may be triggered and what fears are encountered.

FoMO as a singular concept is an oversimplification. In contrast to the common idea of FoMO happening due to disconnection from the internet and social media (like losing signal or a dead battery), we found that it often happens when people are indeed connected. For example, when people have multiple devices and social media accounts and have little time or desire to check them all, they may fear missing important messages and events.

FoMO can also happen when people get frustrated by others not responding, despite receiving and reading messages. They may fear that they have missed out on previous interactions and missed out on the chance to show empathy. In addition to these, we discovered a number of sub-fears, such as:

fear of missing the opportunity to gain popularity. This happens if one is late in responding to others and in expressing empathy when needed
fear of missing valuable information
fear of being excluded from social groups due to lack of timely engagement
fear of inciting negative reactions

FoMO has been associated with feelings of stress and anxiety and concerns around how we relate to each other online and what our expectations are. This is why social networks in their current designs are seen by many as antisocial tools, aiming mainly to attract people’s attention but focusing less on a healthy and humanised interaction.

FoMO also leads to questions about the role of technology in harming people’s wellbeing and the limited availability of tools and design features to help them regulate and shape their online social presence and identity. The Google Digital Wellbeing initiative is an example of efforts in that direction, with a focus on screen time awareness and management and novel ways for managing notifications and cool-off times.

Also read: Everything Wrong With Social Media Call-Out Culture

In our assessment of social media platforms we noted how design features may trigger FoMO in users. For example, the basic feature of showing how many likes a post has received may create a fear that the user is missing out on indicators of social approval – something that has been demonstrated to be linked to emotional wellbeing.

Other features, such as the double tick delivery and notification feature in WhatsApp, may create a preoccupation with social relationships. So FoMO can be triggered when a user begins wondering why friends are not responding, despite reading the message. This can be a risk since, as demonstrated within social psychological research, people often make mistakes in their explanation and interpretation of the behaviour of others.

A message left on “unread” or unanswered, for instance, may be interpreted by the sender as a snub, when in reality the recipient could have intended to do so but then lost their wifi connection or entered a meeting.

Design solutions

Technology can enhance existing problems, but it can also be used to bring about positive change. It can do so in an intelligent and interactive way. From the discussions we have had with people experiencing FoMO, we have identified a number of possible designs that could be implemented in a way that cross cut all their social media accounts, including:

Setting priority lists so that a person receives messages and notifications only for important events and topics and from selected sources, groups and contacts that they care about.
Allowing easy filtering, event recording and recapping so that a person can come back to social media in their own time without missing the temporarily available information and – at the same time – without being overwhelmed with pending notifications, content and interactions.
Enabling people to specify their social interaction protocol. For example, similar to setting privacy settings, users can specify that they do not always respond to comments and their presence online is sporadic so that others should not expect them to be fully engaged all the time.

Tech companies are conflicted between their goal of having as many users as possible on the one hand and their need to balance that with user wellbeing on the other. As an alternative, we propose a liberal and open model that allows applications and services – developed by third parties that are trusted and authorised by the user – to access their social media accounts and online usage data with the aim of helping them to regulate FoMO and the problematic attachment to digital media in general.

Featured image credit: Shutterstock/Rawpixel.com

Raian Ali, Professor, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University and John McAlaney, Associate Professor in Psychology, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Times of Unrest, Social Media Shutdowns Endanger Public Safety

Internet shutdowns are often enforced with the intent to reduce violence. But research shows they might increase risks for the public.

In the wake of a series of coordinated attacks that claimed more than 250 lives on April 21, the government of Sri Lanka shut off its residents’ access to social media and online messaging systems, including Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Snapchat and Viber. The official government concern was that “false news reports were spreading through social media.”

Some commentators applauded the move, suggesting the dangers of disinformation on social media justified shutting down communication networks in times of crisis. Five years of research on the impact of shutdowns and other information controls on societies worldwide have led me to the exact opposite conclusion.

A diverse community of academics, businesses and civil society groups shares my view. The blackouts deprived Sri Lankans of impartial news reports and disconnected families from each other as they sought to find out who had survived and who was among the dead and injured. Most strikingly, recent research suggests that the blackouts might have increased the potential for protest and violence in the wake of the attack.

A constellation of control

Sri Lanka’s latest social media shutdown was not an isolated incident. The first time Sri Lanka took a similar action was amid violent unrest in 2018. It was one of 188 network shutdowns or large-scale disruptions to digital communication that year all around the world, according to digital rights advocacy organization Access Now.

Overall, since the Arab Spring began in 2010, governments have carried out at least 400 shutdowns across more than 40 countries. Those include hundreds of ephemeral shutdowns in India, where they first emerged as a localised response to unrest in the northern region of Kashmir and subsequently spread to most other states.

The number also includes so-called “digital sieges,” which last for weeks or months at a time. For example, long-lasting, government-imposed blackouts have ravaged burgeoning digital economies such as that of Anglophone Cameroon and have disconnected businesses, relatives and communities in Chad for more than a year.

In study after study, civil society organisations have documented the human rights problems caused by internet shutdowns and the economic damage they produce.

Only recently have researchers begun to ask a more fundamental question: Do massive disruptions to digital communication achieve their intended purposes? Sri Lanka’s government is one of many to publicly claim that their goal in severing communication links is to prevent the spread of disinformation and decrease violence based on those falsehoods – but not a single one has followed a shutdown with any sort of evidence that it worked to protect public safety.

Exploring the (dis)connection

Of course, the coexistence of social media and social turbulence does not necessarily imply that one causes the other. Many scholars have tried to figure out if there is a link between access to social media and violence, but it’s an extremely difficult task.

For one thing, social media websites and services are always changing how their systems work, making them hard to study over time. Connectivity also advances at a lightning-fast pace: In 2018, for instance, internet penetration in rural India increased at an annual rate of 30%, connecting hundreds of millions of people for the first time. Today, roughly three Indian citizens are introduced to the internet every second.

Shutdowns, however, are fixed in time and space, and their effects blanket large swathes of an area’s population. This lets scholars study their effects with more confidence. Paradoxically, then, one of the best methods of evaluating technology’s effects on society may be to examine what happens when communications are suddenly cut off.

Research on early blackouts has shown that Egypt’s disappearance from the global internet in 2011 backfired spectacularly, spreading protesters away from Tahrir Square and into numerous decentralised pockets of resistance. Coordination of the demonstrations swiftly moved from Facebook event pages to individual efforts in each neighbourhood. This proved impossible for security forces to subdue. Ten days later, the Mubarak regime fell.

In the Syrian Civil War, the government used shutdowns as a weapon of war, following up with increased violence against civilians. In Africa, authoritarian governments that own the communication infrastructure and leaders who rule in virtual perpetuity are more inclined to pull the plug, but there is no evidence to suggest that shutdowns are effective in discouraging street protest or violent unrest.

Also read: The Worst Aspect of India’s Internet Shutdowns Is the Official Secrecy About It

Indeed, official explanations for shutdowns – if the government acknowledges them at all – are often at odds with their likely true motivations, which include silencing opposition figures and ensuring a state monopoly on information during contentious elections. In the midst of a crisis, this leaves the government as the only official gatekeeper of information. That becomes especially problematic when the government itself becomes a conduit for false and potentially harmful news, as was the case when Sri Lankan media circulated police reports that falsely identified a student at Brown University as a terrorist following the recent attack.

What happens without a connection?

Protests are not monolithic forces, and their participants can adapt to changing circumstances – including a sudden lack of information and even a blockage of communication and coordination. The global proliferation of shutdowns and rapid improvements in data about protests and conflicts enable researchers to analyse not only whether protests continue during internet blackouts, but also how they shift and change.

In India, state governments have faced thousands of peaceful demonstrations, as well as episodes of violent unrest. The country has become by far the world’s most prolific executor of deliberate internet blackouts over the last several years.

To find out the role of internet access in these events, I used precise, daily-level data on thousands of protests that occurred in the 36 states and Union Territories of India in 2016, as well as data tracking the location, timing and duration of shutdowns from a variety of cross-referenced news sources and civil society groups.

The results were striking: Under a blackout, each successive day of protest had more violence than would typically happen as a protest unfolded with continued internet access. Meanwhile, the effects of shutdowns on peaceful demonstrations, which are usually more likely to rely on careful coordination through digital channels, were ambiguous and inconsistent. In no scenario were blackouts consistently linked to reduced levels of protest over the course of several days. Instead of curtailing protest, they seemed to encourage a tactical shift to strategies that are less orderly, more chaotic and more violent.

Darkness is a phone call away

Recent events only seem to confirm these dynamics. The regimes of Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria and Omar al-Bashir in Sudan both resorted to shutdowns before imploding. The drastic measures did nothing to rein in the protests in either country. Instead, shutting off internet access may have accelerated their downfalls.

Even if shutdowns are ineffective, they can be tempting for governments that need to be seen taking action. Vague and often antiquated laws let them implement drastic measures like shutdowns easily and quickly, with a written order or even a simple phone call. But every time a government uses the tactic, it makes others more likely to follow suit – in the same country and around the world. The evidence shows that this takes a heavy toll on their citizens, both economically and in terms of human rights, without offering them any additional protection or safety.

Jan Rydzak, Research Scholar and Associate Director for Program, Global Digital Policy Incubator, Stanford University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Law Against Indecent Representation of Women on Digital Platforms in the Works

The amendments, which would widen the scope of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, are based on the observations made by a parliamentary standing committee and recommendations from the National Commission for Women.

New Delhi: Indecent representation of women on digital messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Skype has been proposed to be made illegal, according to amendments mooted by the ministry of women and child development.

The amendments to widen the scope of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, are based on the observations made by a parliamentary standing committee and recommendations from the National Commission for Women (NCW).

The amendments have been proposed keeping in mind the recent technological advancement in the field of communications.

“Since the enactment of the Act, technological revolution has resulted in the development of new forms of communication, such as internet, multi-media messaging, over-the-top (OTT) services and applications like Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, Chat On, Snapchat etc,” a ministry statement read.

“Keeping in mind these technological advancements, it has been decided to widen the scope of the law so as to cover such forms of media on one hand and to strengthen the existing safeguards to prevent indecent representation of women through any media form on the other.”

“The reformulated draft bill proposes amendment in definition of term advertisement to include digital form or electronic form or hoardings, or SMS, MMS etc,” it added.

The ministry “proposed amendments in definition of distribution to include publication, license or uploading using computer resource, or communication device and amendment in Section 4 to include that no person shall publish or distribute or cause to be published or cause to be distributed by any means any material which contains indecent representation of women in any form”.

The draft bill also proposes penalty similar to that provided under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and creation of a centralised authority under the aegis of the NCW.

This authority will be headed by Member Secretary, NCW, having representatives from Advertising Standards Council of India, Press Council of India, ministry of information and broadcasting and one member having experience of working on women issues.

“This centralised authority will be authorised to receive complaints or grievances regarding any programme or advertisement broadcast or publication and investigate/ examine all matters relating to the indecent representation of women,” the statement read.

The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act (IRWA), 1986 prohibits indecent representation of women through advertisements, publications, writings, paintings, figures or in any other manner.

The Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Amendment Bill, 2012 was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in December, 2012 which referred the Bill to the department-related Parliament Standing Committee for consideration.

Confused Netizens Uninstall Snapdeal App Instead of Snapchat

Netizens reacting to the Snapchat CEO’s alleged comments intended to give the app a bad review, but some ended up accidentally taking it out on Snapdeal.

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, who has drawn widespread ire for his alleged comments about India. Credit: Reuters

New Delhi: In a case of mistaken identity, many people downgraded and uninstalled the mobile application of e-commerce platform ‘Snapdeal’ instead of social networking app ‘Snapchat’ to mark their protest against certain unverified comments of Snapchat CEO about the Indian market.

Social media on Sunday was abuzz with criticism against Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel after a report quoted one of the company’s former employees as saying that the top executive told him that the “app is only for rich people” and that he (the CEO) was not interested in expanding the business to “poor countries” like India and Spain.

Snapchat, on its part, has rubbished the allegations.

However, soon after the controversy erupted, #BoycottSnapchat became one of the top trending topics on Twitter with over 69,000 tweets. People began to uninstall the app and give it poor ratings and reviews on various app stores.

“Dear CEO of Snapchat…why don’t you come to India and check out Indians’ phones,” wrote a user while reviewing Snapchat’s app. Many also went on to highlight that CEOs of top tech firms like Microsoft and Google are Indians.

Interestingly, a section of internet users mistook Snapchat to be Snapdeal and uninstalled the e-commerce app of the latter. This came to light after netizens started posting pictures of the blunder on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl tweeted, “Ppl asking us to make a statement that @snapdeal is not @snapchat was possibly the last thing I thought I would ever need to do”.

Many users also explained how the two apps were different.

“Time to balance the ratings…guys its Snapchat’s CEO who said bad things. You are making Snapdeal pay for that…please change your ratings,” wrote one of them.

The incident also brought out the creative side of many.

A certain meme being circulated said “hum James Bond se gutka bikwate hai” (we make James Bond sell gutka – a mix of tobacco, areca nut and other ingredients).

Snapdeal, which has been in news for a potential sellout to larger rival Flipkart, faced a similar downgrade in 2015 when its then brand ambassador Aamir Khan made a comment on growing intolerance in the country.

Name-Place-Animal-Thing: Long Distance, Rich Friends and Wild Animals

This week’s column is about the hurdles of maintaining friendships across long distances, changes in financial status and language barriers.

Name-Place-Animal-Thing is The Wire’s culture newsletter. If you’d like to receive regular updates from this column, please consider subscribing here.

Name-Place-Animal-Thing. Credit: Vishnupriya Rajgarhia

The calendrical change tends to bring about a bout of introspection and reflection about all the things that happened and didn’t happen in the past year. Each year, I find myself charting personal progress through my friendships – the ones I kept, the ones I failed at, the friends who were with me for the Big Events of the year gone by. Given that friends are a big part of our lives, this week’s column is about the hurdles of maintaining friendships across long distances, changes in financial status and language barriers.

Long distance friendships

How do we hang on to friends as our lives and contexts change? After graduating college last year and moving back from the US, navigating long distance friendships has become an important question in my life. Some friendships have survived nearly intact, unscathed by the pressures of time differences and different lifestyles, others have morphed into occasional Facebook messages and a profusion of Facebook likes and Snapchats and some have been the victims of busy schedules and quietly faded away.

We put a lot of emphasis on romantic relationships and familial ones since they seem to be the big shaping forces in our lives but platonic friends, the ones who you grow up with and spend the majority of your time with, rarely earn that place on a mental pedestal of ‘most important relationship’. A while ago, a New York Times article on long distance friendships pointed out that we’d move place for a job, a significant other, a family member, but not a friend – those are somehow expendable or simply more flexible.

The article, which basically explored the different ways in which people maintain their long distance friendships, focused on social media such as Facebook, Skype and paid particular attention to Snapchat. Since the app offers “raw unedited footage” of what’s going on with your friends in other places, it makes you feel like you’re there with them or partially recreates the experience of being with them. While it could never stand in for actually being there, the (almost) real-time quality of the medium allows you to be in the loop, which is a lot more desirable than being entirely out of it.

Snapchat, Facebook messenger, Whatsapp, iMessage all make it incredibly easy to enable private conversations and also larger ones among groups and since all of these platforms allow for instant video calling, you can practically have the same experience as your friend who is actually very far away from you. That’s the point of all this, right?

But these platforms still produce a curated, selective context – you still have total control over what you tell your friends, send them or show them. While there’s nothing wrong with sharing only the important, entertaining highlights of your life (why clutter other people’s lives with the mundane bits of yours) sharing context, in a physical sense, also enables your friends to see things about you and your surroundings that you may be missing. It allows other people to notice things about you in their own way. And isn’t that a part of friendship too? To have someone that you trust and rely on that you can reflect on your life with, someone who can tell you when you’re making a mistake or have behaved poorly? Those crucial parts of friendship just don’t transfer well when two friends no longer share the same circumstances or context.

Ta-Nehisi Coates. Credit: Gerard R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan/Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0

Money in friendship

“Well, I made more money, right?” Ta-Nehisi Coates, celebrated author, asks his best friend Neil Drumming in an episode of ‘This American Life’. They’re talking about how Coates has changed since his book, Between the World and Me, hit the New York Times Bestseller list, bringing fame and fortune with it.

Sometimes, a change of context doesn’t just mean physical place, it can also mean a change in status. And here Drumming tries to have a conversation with Coates about his friend’s new lifestyle which involves lunches with prominent people, soldout speaking engagements, living in Paris, having a personal trainer at a “really nice gym” and snobbery of other kinds. Drumming, who still cuts his own hair, just quit Tinder and has been divorced for two years, has a hard time figuring out where he fits into Coates’ life.

But the way that he expresses this sentiment is to fixate on all the ways that Coates has changed. At one point, Coates asks him how much of the displacement Drumming is feeling is down to his divorce and the question surprises Drumming since he hadn’t even stopped to think that he’s changed too.

The piece doesn’t really end in resolution but it highlights the challenges of keeping in step with people you love but might not relate to if you met them for the first time at this particular moment in time. It also helps Coates and Drumming identify what they do retain from their lifelong friendship – their intellectual connection. However, Drumming somberly notes towards the end of the act,

“He (Coates) and I talked for two more hours, and it felt like it always has. But we’ve lost a lot of the other stuff, the stuff that makes most friendships work. We don’t go to the same parties or eat in the same restaurants. We don’t share as many friends. He’s raising a kid, and I just quit Tinder. We don’t even live in the same country. Without all of that, what we have left feels more delicate.”

The conversation doesn’t really leave Drumming feeling more comfortable with the changing nature of his friendship with Coates. And the issue is not one that can be solved by Snapchatting each other religiously either because that would only emphasise the inaccessibility of the other’s experiences to both of them.

So in the end, Drumming is left anxious. “I worry that the conversation that I just forced us to have, where I made such a big deal out of our differences, has in some way screwed with that friendship even more.”

If you’re looking for new and interesting reading material for 2017, check out my colleagues’ newsletters and do consider subscribing to them.

Vasudevan Mukunth is always on-point in his columns about the world of science and brings his readers quirky, interesting bits of science news and analysis through Infinite in All Directions. In his latest column, he wrote about the value of non-American long reads from 2016, Einstein’s first wife and the evolution of elves. How could you not want to read that?
Jahnavi Sen’s Collidoscope is an engaging and thought-provoking read to keep on top of new developments in social science research. In this column, she looks at how the diversity of social science researchers impacts their work and the field itself.
Amant Khullar’s weekly coverage of gender and sexuality related news in the Gender Beat ensures you don’t miss out on the important things happening inside as well as outside India. Here she writes about Kochi getting the country’s first transgender school.
Titash Sen’s great column on rights-related issues, Freedom Under Fire, is always a good read for getting some perspective on the political issues of our time and also widen our ideas of what falls under the category of ‘rights. Here, she considers the sanitary rights of man.

A fox. Credit: Richard Towell/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Wild friends

Their inability to communicate clearly with each other is what makes Drumming and Coates’ friendship so fragile, something that brings Drumming much anxiety. However, for David Sedaris, that precarious act of reading someone else without the aid of language and forming a bond seems to be a joyful, thrilling activity. Towards the end of last year, he wrote a piece called ‘Untamed’ for the New Yorker which is an endearing account of his friendship with a fox named Carol that visits his backyard in Sussex, England. It isn’t just his adoring descriptions of Carol – her walk, mannerisms, colouring – that make Sedaris’ piece cute but also his recollection of the differences between how him and his partner Hugh approach interacting with animals – pets or untamed.

As Sedaris puts it, “I’m of the “Let’s-fatten-you-up-until-you’re-too-obese-to-do-much-of-anything” school, while he’s more practical, or “mean,” as I’m apt to call it.”

He also admits to buying Carol’s attention and affection by offering her food from their home and always on the patio with him around, never just left in the backyard for Carol to scavenge for unseen. As Sedaris admits, it’s more about his need to be acknowledged as a generous giver than anything else. He wants Carol to know it is he who provides her with food, and so, affection.

“The second problem with throwing food into the pasture is one of perception. It would allow Carol to feel, if not like a huntress, then at least like a successful scavenger—Look what I found, she’d think. This as opposed to, Look what David gave me.“

It’s hard to tell if Carol is equally awed by Sedaris, though he’s under no illusions about the fact that she’s a wild animal and acknowledges as much.

“Wild animals do not give a damn about our little feelings. They’re incapable of it. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” we say.

What they hear is senseless noise. It’s like us trying to discern emotion in the hum of a hair dryer, or the chortle of an engine as it fails to turns over.”

And yet we look for signs of reciprocation. Sedaris’ describes walking home one night and finding Carol slinking along next to him. He writes, “No cars approached or passed. The road was ours, and we marched right down the center of it, all the way to the front of the house and then through the garden gate to the kitchen door. Just me and my wild friend Carol.”

Pets are great companions, and dogs are supposed to be man’s best friend but really, the gratifying part of having a pet is feeling needed by another creature who adores you in return for everything that you do for it. There isn’t much equality there, we are rarely awed by our pets but when it comes to humans, we grapple with their inner lives, trying to understand each other completely but also resigned to the impossibility of achieving that goal. Although Sedaris warns of our need to anthropomorphise animals, especially wild ones, to me, it seems like the thrill of his friendship with Carol arises from the fact that she is ultimately indecipherable. That’s a good thing to look for in friendship.

Want to suggest a piece that should be included in this column? Write to me at nehmat@cms.thewire.in
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Will Pokemon GO be a Tipping Point for Augmented Reality?

Three factors have added to the extraordinary success of the game: the blending of the virtual and the real, geo-location and the success of existing Pokémon culture.

Pokémon Go players gather in Union Square in New York, USA. Credit: Justin Lane/EPA

Technology often needs a “killer app” to gain mass market appeal.

For the touch screen, it was the iPhone; for wearables, the Fitbit. Augmented reality games have been around for more than a decade, so what was it about Pokémon GO that allowed it to become a global phenomenon?

We believe it can be attributed to three core social components of the game: the blending of the virtual and the real, geo-location and the success of existing Pokémon culture.

Smile for the camera

The first time we heard about Pokémon GO was via a few Facebook posts with screenshots of Pokémon on the streets or sitting beside friends. This is the core strength of augmented reality apps, the ability to alter the physical world by adding virtual components.

Millions of dollars have been spent on technology for aligning the physical world and virtual contents. Tracking issues have taken up 20% of the research effort in the augmented reality community around the world for the past decade.

Microsoft’s latest augmented reality headset, the Hololens, uses a series of cameras to physically map out the entire environment around the user to accurately place virtual objects.

Pokémon GO does not have this level of sophistication. When players come across a Pokémon character in Pokémon GO, the game superimposes it over the camera view.

We tested the feature and noticed we needed to play around with the phone to get the perfect angle for the screenshot. So although the tracking may not be sophisticated, a user can, with minimal effort, quickly make the Pokémon appear as if they are part of the physical world.

Some players get creative with these poses, which are shared widely on social media platforms. We believe the “shareability” of these images contributes hugely to the success of the game.

Snapchat, the phenomenally successful messaging application with more 100 million users, also taps into the social “shareability” of images that blend the virtual and the real.

Gather some teenagers in a room together and it will not be long before the room will be filled with giggles and cries as they swap “snaps” with augmented features overlaid over theirs via Snapchat Filters.

Although there has been keen research interest in augmented reality as a means of treating phobias and the pain associated with phantom limbs, to date there has been little research focus on the psychological aspects of our fascination with blended imagery.

Researchers studying the customisation of avatars, a graphical representation of a person’s alter ego or character in computer games, have found that the ability to manipulate physical features such as hair colour, or to superimpose animal features over human forms, is critical for an avatar to appeal to a user.

There are clear parallels here to the success of augmented reality app features such as Snapchat filters. Pokémon GO screenshots also seemingly tap into this desire for a personal connection to the virtual world.

Pokémon GO, you go!

Pokémon GO requires you to walk around to hunt down Pokémon. This aspect of the game is not new, as similar games in the past have utilised this, including Niantic’s own Ingress. In fact, Pokémon GO uses the same Ingress platform.

Many see this as a positive example of games that encourage people to exercise. We see it more as a social success as it highlights the power of an augmented reality platform as a shared, social experience.

The success of this aspect of the game can be gauged by following the various reports of organised Pokémon GO events with thousands of registered participants.

Virtual reality, by comparison, is a very personal experience. There have been many previous attempts at introducing social interactions into a virtual reality environment. Second Life was released in 2003 and after a decade had more than 1 million users.

Pokémon GO has already dwarfed this user count within 48 hours of release. Reports suggest it has eclipsed the daily user counts of major social network and dating services such as Tinder and Twitter.

A money earner

A final aspect of the success of Pokémon GO is undoubtedly its ability to tap into an established pop culture phenomenon.

According to Nintendo, as of the end of May 2016, it had sold more than 280 million units of Pokémon-related software, earned box office revenue of 76.72 billion yen, and shipped over 21.5 million cards (as of September 2015).

The company estimates the total worldwide market size of the Pokémon franchise to be more than 4.8 trillion yen.

With a market this big, there was an eager community of Pokémon fans waiting for an app such as Pokémon GO to launch.

There are clear parallels here to another smash hit smartphone game, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. This game traded on the celebrity credibility of the Kardashians and used social gaming methods and the promise that you might even become one of Kim’s friends, at least within the confines of the game.

A March Forbes article estimates that Kim Kardashian: Hollywood has earned the star around US$20 million.

Given the success of Pokémon GO, Nintendo executives can be assured that the Pokémon franchise’s level of success, and its share price, is set to continue upward.

This ability to tap into the established worldwide community of Pokémon fans was the final ingredient necessary to establish Pokémon GO as the “killer app” for augmented reality gaming.

So to make a killer app, just add social.

Thuong Hoang is a research fellow at University of Melbourne and Steven Baker is a research Fellow, Microsoft Centre for Social Natural User Interfaces at University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How Early Picture Postcards Were the Edwardian Equivalent of Instagram

New research shows that for our ancestors, the early 20th century saw a social networking technology that was unrivalled until the digital revolution a hundred years later.

Around the world more than three billion people regularly log on to the internet, and more than two billion are active on social media. Most internet users have at least five social media accounts – with the number of users tapping into social networks worldwide increasing by 176 million in the last year alone.

With social networking apps, such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat rapidly increasing in popularity, it can be hard to remember a time when these platforms weren’t a part of everyday life. And although Instagram didn’t actually get going until 2010, people have been sharing photos and images of themselves for a long time – especially since the birth of the camera phone.

But now it seems this type of social networking, could actually date back to much earlier than initially thought, to more than a hundred years ago. New research shows that for our ancestors, the early 20th century saw a social networking technology that was unrivalled until the digital revolution a hundred years later. Because around 1894, the picture postcard arrived in Britain.

Wish you were here

People loved postcards because they could keep the messages short and send them whenever they wanted. They could be sent and received extraordinarily quickly – with up to six deliveries a day in large towns and cities, and even more in central London. A postcard could drop onto your mat anytime between six in the morning and ten at night – and there were even deliveries on Sundays.

Every popular actress came to have a postcard contract as part of her drive towards becoming better known and as an element of her income. And if you did not like any of the images on offer you could even commission a “selfie” from your local photographer or produce your own.

At the very beginning of the 20th century, the Post Office was still insisting that the whole of one side had to be used for the address, which meant the sender only had a very small space to write their message.

But in 1902, the post office relaxed its rules, making Britain the first country to introduce the “divided back” – the same format we use to this day.

This saw the picture postcard become even more popular – with the Postmaster General’s report revealing that six billion postcards were sent between 1902 and 1910. This is roughly the equivalent of every person in the UK sending 200 postcards during that time.

Travelling tales

Postcard users received, as well as wrote, cards while travelling, just as we use social media to share snaps of our holidays today. When writing their cards, some drew on letter writing conventions they had been taught at school, beginning their cards with their own address followed by “Dear Mr or Mrs”, but far more people took the opportunity to free themselves from those constraints and wrote informally.

In the same way we use social media today, many postcard senders, didn’t bother to sign off their name at the bottom of the card, as the receiver would already know who the card was from. And many of the card messages were brief, because they were dashed off quickly, just as we might send a text or WhatsApp message nowadays to let someone know where we are.

Fading memories

Over time, the postcard gradually declined in use, because of higher costs, fewer deliveries and, it must be said, improved working conditions for the severely overworked postal carriers and their horses. But it would be many more decades before the telephone became accessible to the masses and people could easily speak to one another at a distance.

There was nothing comparable to the Edwardian picture postcard in the period between 1910 and the dawn of electronic social media. And no similarly accessible and attractive form of fast written communication was possible until the development of digital platforms.

Despite the decline in popularity of postcards today, they continue to be a significant part of British seaside tourism. Sold by newsagents and souvenir shops, modern postcards often feature photographs of the resort in beautifully sunny weather, with deckchairs a plenty – and echo of a bygone era of early social media.

Julia Gillen, Senior Lecturer in Digital Literacies, Lancaster University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Snap, Chat and Democracy in India

Apart from understanding what it means for the artist himself and the future of comedy or political satire in this country, it is pertinent to consider if we have fathomed the power that lies in these fast means of disseminating information. And if yes, then by whom and how can this power be appropriated.

Apart from understanding what the Tanmay Bhat episode means for political satire in this country, it is pertinent to consider if we have fathomed the power that lies in these fast means of disseminating information.

It’s nearly impossible to take a snap story seriously; its very nature is ephemeral. Credit: Adam P, Flickr, CC By 2.0

Tanmay Bhat’s spoof on Sachin Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar occupied space on prime time debates for far more time than it did as a snapstory on the Snapchat application.

While the Shiv Sena urged the Maharashtra chief minister to take strict action against Bhat, a MNS leader thought it would be right if he was also additionally “caught on the road and beaten up”. Arguably the censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani wanting Bhat to be arrested under the draconian Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (created to combat organised mafia crime and terror) topped the absurdity chart.

A popular news anchor leaves us with a question whether it is probable that Bhat wanted to set a precedent that our celebrities and icons are not above questioning. Although, he clarifies that manner of “presentation” of the same is liable to be open to condemnation due to the kind of content posted. This could be a rhetorical question, but there is another definite learning that we can take from this episode. Such as how interpretation of the limitations of freedom and speech, and expression this time was left to the mob, disregarding Bhat’s right to speak and a how strong warning of sorts, in a way, was issued to all and sundry regarding the acceptable manner in which individual heroes should be addressed.

But the most glaring revelation of all from this episode is that most of us still do not know how we should deal with information relayed through social media platforms like Snapchat.

Changing nature of social media platforms

That there was a national outrage because of content – that had no political significance or national emergency potential – shared on the ephemeral Snapchat platform is telling of the fact that there is a huge gap, generational or otherwise, in adapting to the changing nature of the emerging social media platforms. The government and Mumbai police, in particular, and large parts of society, in general, who did not shy away from condemning the ‘horror’ Bhat unleashed, revealed their failure in understanding the intended audience of this application and how the content shared here is to be viewed.

The Mumbai police, who have accepted their ability to use technology to catch criminals, asked Google and YouTube to remove the controversial video from Orkut. Not only was Orkut a popular social networking site of Google at least a decade ago, it was retired by the search engine in 2014. And further, there would have been no locus for YouTube (another Google product) to ask Orkut (if it were to exist) take down the video. This conduct of the police speaks volumes of their awareness of understanding of how aware they are of the workings of online and social media communication.

What is more disturbing, however, is the furore created by political parties on this issue, filing FIRs against Bhat for posting the video; which if not downloaded and circulated by the media or the political parties involved, would have ‘disappeared’ within 24 hours, as snap stories always do on Snapchat.

The ephemeral nature of Snapchat seems to have gone unaccounted for. It is highly unlikely that anybody (including Bhat) who puts up a single snap story is looking to engage in debate regarding the status of Indian icons, or looking to impart knowledge about the legends of Indian cricket and the Bollywood industry, let alone create public disorder.

Taking a step back, we must ask ourselves: Are we making the best of these changing social media platforms? From what we see of the reactions to a snap story, the answer to the above question would be no.

Relatively new sharing platforms like Twitter and Snapchat allow users to have quick opinions and thoughts and share them even quicker. A recent survey found that Snapchat has 150 million daily users, making it more popular than Twitter in that regard. Even though exact number of daily Indian users is not available it is uncontested that the application has gained currency with Indian teens and millennials.

Why then did political parties consider it appropriate to take up this issue? One answer probably lies in the fact that such controversies help political leaders and parties in hitting headlines; especially valuable in this case as municipal elections are around the corner in Maharashtra.

Snapchat, a political campaigning tool?

It is being widely debated if 2016 will be the year of ‘Snapchat Election’ in the US, which is in the middle of a heated presidential election campaign. The role of Snapchat in the election cycle and the overall social media ecosystem is undeniable, with a substantial chunk of 18-24 year olds following the Republican debate through the app rather than television. While Twitter is fast, with updates every second, Snapchat is fast and ephemeral; allowing only the most attractive bits of information to stay behind.

Snapchat caters perfectly to the new-age short attention span for understanding political debates and news. An incident may garner attention today and will be lost tomorrow as it is pushed aside by another new and interesting event. Politicians who understand how to capitalise on this kind of churning of information and policy updates have the maximum to gain. Specifically designed election filters are being used to troll other political candidates or to advance one’s own campaigning in agenda in the US.

Snapchat is tailor-made for disseminating information to the younger generation of voters, who form a majority of its user base. This can be crucial for turning the outcomes of election, especially in India as was evident from the way 2014 elections panned out banking on the aspirational youth vote.

We have already had Prime Minister Narendra Modi borrow campaign ideas from the US to lead him to election victories in Gujarat; the idea of Modi masks worn by his supporters as he campaigned for the chief ministerial position was borrowed from masks made for Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush as they campaigned in 2007. A strategy, which he perfected in an almost-Presidential-style campaign, in 2014. Thus, it would not be surprising if he capitalises on what Snapchat has to offer for the next national elections in 2019 or even the assembly elections in 2017.

With the love for clicking selfies among people and politicians, desirability of having the youth vote keeping the demographics in mind and the current endeavours of digitising India it wouldn’t be far-fetched to envisage a situation when politicians buy their own custom made filters from Snapchat in order to fight the 2019 elections in India.

What next?

The major take-away from the Bhat spoof episode is far more than him offending the sensibilities of a particular few. It is how volatile information sharing platforms have now become. They lie like open mines, waiting to be utilised by the first person who understands them.

Should we then be focussing on the content of the Snapchat video that has caused this furore? Or should we take our lesson from how it is being used as a campaign tool in the current US elections and be on alert? For whoever captures this space, and uses it to their advantage surely will have a better chance at connecting with young voters.

Will the government be able to control the information that is shared on these social media platforms? The striking down of the controversial Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 last year is telling of the fact that society will not accept strait-jacket rules over the Internet.

It would be prudent for political parties and civil society activists to go beyond evaluating and judging what they consider to be offensive content on these new-fangled information-sharing platforms. It would be better to understand the concerns and advantages these platforms can bring if they are used for important causes. Surely, none bigger than democracy?

Niharika Bapna is a policy research assistant at Rajiv Gandhi institute for Contemporary Studies.