'Digital Culture in India' | RISJ seminar with technology and culture journalist Shadma Shaikh: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

'Digital Culture in India' | RISJ seminar with technology and culture journalist Shadma Shaikh

Reuters Institute51min

Meera Selva

00:08

Hello, and welcome to the global journalism seminar series at the Reuters Institute for the Study of journalism, really pleased to be going to India today to speak to shacman Shake freelance tech journalist and some brilliant work on the intersection of youth culture and digital platforms in the world's largest democracy that's also facing kind of increasing crackdowns on social media. It's a fascinating, fast moving topic and we're really pleased to have you with us today Fatma Cadmus also the founder of factor daily, a non non profit or newsroom that produces public spirited news and I really want to start with that because I think it's a it's so interesting when, when people try something new and just talk a little bit about why you started it and what it's doing and what you're most proud of.

Speaker 1

00:51

Thank you, me. Well, thank you for having me and I would love to start with that, you know, so factor daily newsroom actually started way back in 2016 by my co founder, Pankaj Mishra and a former college they've been both of them. Brilliant journalists, by the way, and you know, when it started, it was one of the first newsrooms in India doing only tech stories. So after going through multiple pivots, while producing some really good work, we realized last year that you know, the public split admission that we have, you know, we only cared about the impact of our stories, whether our stories are reaching the correct decision makers, policymakers, people. Who could you know, benefit from learning about at reporting, so it's sort of became like a life mission. We are now a nonprofit newsroom. We work on story projects rather than individual stories. For example, you know, some of our current projects our child sexual abuse material on the internet or you know, teams growing with technology, or the handling of electronic waste in India. So we pick these projects knowing well, that you know, they need to be serviced for a longer period of time. One story won't cut it. So we also work with freelancers and you know, factory daily fellows, who have been working with us on some of these projects. I think, you know, one of the larger aim is also to provide a platform for journalists who want to produce some of these public interest stories, but they do require a fair bit of, you know, deep reporting, traveling sometimes weeks or months of, you know, reporting and writing and they want to be compensated for their work fairly. So I'd still, you know, I'd say it's still early days, but we've all been able to, you know, assemble a good team of full time journalists and fellows. All of these people are very passionate about societal journalism, they care about it. We are expanding beyond tech and we're also expanding beyond just text as a format. You know, we're looking at audio, we're looking at comic strips, we're looking at some sort of visual journalism and expanding to various mediums to be able to reach people who, you know, prefer these mediums over just text. So yeah, that's what you're doing.

Meera Selva

02:59

Thanks very much. Let's just talk a little bit about this kind of reaching the audiences and you know, the mediums can you talk a little about who your audiences are, and explain a bit more about what you're doing differently in terms of reaching them?

Speaker 1

03:11

Sure. I think the audience is at at the moment, the audience is also you know, everybody basically, you start off from young people because you know, that, you know, they are going to be your future audience and they are going to be the future of the world. So, you also sort of experiment with formats because you know, that then not everybody is going to read 3000 word pieces that you write, right. So, you you look at formats and you look at experimentation with format, so that, you know a story isn't just a story, it becomes an extension of a product so that you know your story is present across various formats and in various, you know, it can be turned into sort of like an audio story or a podcast it can be turned into a series that people might want to watch. So that's where we are at currently, and that's what we're doing with it.

Meera Selva

03:58

Okay. And let's talk about distribution. And then this will kind of lead into kind of the kind of other parts of the seminar talking about digital culture in India, which is what kind of platforms are you using to reach people are using? Well are using Facebook, Twitter, you know, social media, is it? Do they come to your website? How are you how you find,

Speaker 1

04:16

yeah, it's very interesting. And, you know, this is a discussion that we keep having in the newsroom and in the discussions that we have with other journalists is that you know, sometimes we feel that we are so you know, restricted with our format or our byline that we somewhere don't care about the message as much as the medium, right. So I understand. I mean, I think when we look at social media, it's mostly, you know, a link to a story. Or if you're doing it on Twitter, you probably make a thread out of it and you pick important bits of the story and you add that there. Or if you're posting it on Instagram, you make these visual cue cards that you know, that the Instagram audience will prefer. So you you do that kind of, you know, outreach on social media because you know, your audience lies there. But having said that, I think you know, newsrooms are not fully equipped to handle how to cater to a social media audience because we're not building algorithms right? We're just writing stories. So that's that's where I feel that you know we can do better.

Meera Selva

05:15

Okay, and now let's go to kind of your your other your other hats kind of tech journalist has been looking at this for a long time. What would you say are the kind of biggest trends in India, what are you reporting on? And yeah, where do you see this kind of going?

Speaker 1

05:30

Sure. So I think, you know, when you start talking about India, I think for a global audience, it would be important to understand that media consumption patterns in India cannot be classified into one single bucket. So first and foremost, when you talk about India, it's important to keep in mind that India is very, very diverse, right? I think the Constitution some recognizes some 22 languages, but the deeper you go into India, you will know that there are 1000s of them. And there's also like a major lifestyle difference when it comes to urban Indians versus you know, rural Indians and those living in lower tier towns. So when global internet platforms look at the mere size of the market in India, which is huge, it's it's, I think, 600 million internet users in India alone. So it's a huge market, right, but it's not an easy one, because the language is the kind of media Indians consume differs significantly as you go north to south or you go from east to west. To give you an example, you know, the kinds of media are migrated factory worker, or worker who lives away from his family would want to consume at the end of a very long and hard day at work. Also, keeping in mind his cell phone plan would be very different from what you know, for example, an urban woman might want to watch on her iPad when she's commuting to work in an Uber, so it's very different. And all the global and internet local internet platforms, who look at the Indian market are aware of this. So you would see some platforms now that pick one of these, you know, diversities. So some of these would want to cater to the first time first generation internet users who come from India. There are a lot of these platforms, you know, a lot of which are actually tick tock clones, that provides support and content in you know, multiple Indian languages keeping the demographics in mind. And if you have to extrapolate that behavior to young Indian, so, you know, Gen Z, who have been the digital natives since birth, a lot of work that we do as a part of you don't internet culture reporting is primarily based on the demographics that have an average English proficiency. So, you know, they understand English so I would say, you know, our understanding of Gen Z is a very urban understanding, so they are very active on Reddit. They are active on Discord. They know how to use Twitter for their benefit, they get the news from Instagram so you know, they prefer platforms that summarize news to them. You know, so learning new ways to present your stories can be very beneficial to journalists, data journalism, visual storytelling, you know, Audio Stories, all of these are going to be very important very soon. Unless, you know, we want content creators like the talkers or YouTubers to take over the news.

Meera Selva

08:11

Well, talked about tick you mentioned tick tock. The Indian government has a very fractious relationship with tick tock in particular. Could you talk a little bit about that and how that's perceived, you know, how you perceive that?

Speaker 1

08:26

Yeah, so I think this happened, so picked up was huge, huge in India. It was really big. And I think it was in 2920 20. Sorry, yeah, it was 2020. Right after the pandemic started. I think it was June 2020. There was some growing geopolitical tensions between India and China. And right in the middle of the first lockdown. I think, you know, India sort of launched like a digital strike against China. And I remember a year before that I did this story, where I evaluated the Play Store data Play Store is where Android has all of its apps. And Android is pretty popular in India. So a year before when I did that story, it basically it was a data story on how, you know, five out of the top mobile apps in India are Chinese. And you know, these were tick tock. There was another tick tock clone there was a file sharing app, there was tic TOCs parents and other apps on a lot of, you know, a lot of the, you know, the China Chinese giants right, by Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, all of them, sort of, you know, had like their arm spread out in the Indian market. And back then experts used to compare India's digital market and, you know, the diverse audience to China and they started looking at growth hacks there. So there was a brief period of time when, you know, startups or investors move their focus from the Silicon Valley to eastwards and started doing trips to China to learn from their playbooks. And suddenly all of that, you know, came to a halt, halt once the government banned the apps. I think tick tock and apart from tick tock, there was another gaming app called pub G that was very, very popular here. And then their creators and their users took the biggest hit because overnight, you know, the popularity and all of the work that they've done over the years, got in accessible. Of course, some people found workarounds because there are these APKs or raw versions of the app that you can access through the internet and they get access to these apps. But the whole thing I think, also led to Indian companies who are already in that market to sort of like double down on the opportunity. And in the same year in August, Instagram also launched rails. So Rails is basically again, like a tic tock clone, right? So rails really took off for Instagram, but I think because it was a time of the pandemic and people were locked up. The demand for this short bite sized content really went up. Indian platforms launch their own versions of it, and there was a lot of money that was coming in the market at that time. They also started paying creators a lot. But the audience got split among these apps because there were too many of them. So I would say there still isn't one top player that has replaced Tik Tok in India. Completely. A lot of urban folks and creators have actually moved to Instagram because that's where they see a lot of monetization coming in. And the rural the non English speaking belt. I think that has been split between the Indian apps some of them are called mod Josh. MX de Karthik, etc. And you know, then there's YouTube of course, I mean, they also launched their own shots and YouTube's growth has been phenomenal in India. I mean, among the non English speaking belt, it's like a search engine. So yeah, in absence of Tik Tok, this is what happened. There was like an influx of all of these platforms trying to fill up the space.

Meera Selva

11:39

Thanks very much. I'm gonna go into that into the fellows rooms because I think there's lots of questions stemming from this. And let me start first with pretty Italian maybe

Unknown Speaker

11:51

this is really from Bangalore.

Unknown Speaker

11:54

I'm in Bangalore.

Speaker 2

11:56

So happy to see you. Thank you. Thank you for being yo manga. So um, you were just talking about Instagram reuse being launched almost immediately after Tik Tok was banned. So could you tell us whether it has been one of the platforms that was able to replace Tik Tok successfully? If not, how do you think caste and class come into play?

Speaker 1

12:25

Yeah, that's a loaded question. Yeah, so I first of all, I don't think that it has replaced Instagram completely though. You know? It's done that to a very large extent. If you look at what happened in the after the Tick Tock band, right, it had one 50 million users in India. So and this was the first time that some of these creators will you know, getting the slice of free fame. They were these really really, you know, people from very remote locations who are getting access to a lot of public who are getting fans who are getting all of this popularity. And it was it was it was magical. But you know, once the platform was banned, I think Indian companies like I said, also did a double down and they were present in you know, there were a lot of apps there were at least half a dozen apps that came overnight and they were all trying to pay money to creators to come you know on board and have an exclusive contract with them etc. But I think you know, the rural and English non English speaking creators are still finding it difficult to find ways to monetize their content. I mean, they are very popular creators on Instagram and like you said, class cast all of these issues. When I talked to them I've done a bunch of stories on not not on cast, but the class divide of course, and you know, it's important for them to get recognition. That's the only way for them to make money as creators, which is why they are present on Instagram, all of them would have Instagram pages, because that sort of becomes like their portfolio. That's where people find them. That's where people discover them. So but they're looking for support. They're looking for support in terms of you know, how to get brand deals, how to leverage community, of their community of followers for their benefit, or sort of like, get a blue tick or a verification from the platform, you know, so some of them also want to get discovered by say, a large record label or a movie producer, or some of them want to produce their own videos or you don't go on tours, etc. But because the language of this whole universe of content creation is so English, and so much focused on the urban cloud, right, that these creators are often you know, left holding the short end of the stick, even with 2 million followers. On Instagram, they're not verified on the platform, and they've been sending these repeated emails. They ask people, What is the best way to get this done? You know, how can you help us with this? And in the process, they also get scammed. I mean, that's the I would like to share one of the stories that I do. It's basically how you know these rural creators were being hunted down by some of these so called managers who will just take access to their account. Sometimes just you know, hack the account or never get back to them and you take money from them instead. So all of this has been happening. And if you look at you know, the pay parity between urban creators and rural creators, I think the urban creators get paid way more from the brand deals. It's also sort of, you know, how the market is structured. It depends on the audience that you cater to, etc. It's all like a marketing dollars game. But having said that, there is a lot of demand for non English content on these platforms because people like to see, you know, what they call village life. But unfortunately, these creators are not paid anywhere close to their urban contemporaries. I hope I've answered your question in some way.

Meera Selva

15:51

Thanks very much and then go to Louie. He's sitting right next door.

Speaker 3

15:58

Hi, Louise. I'm from Brazil. Thank you for having us today. I would like to understand the coverage of the social media platforms a little bit more. Each change after the Tick Tock man in India, and are they more or less inclined to work in the country after what what happened with tick tock?

Meera Selva

16:21

So the question is, how how of kind of social media platform has been covered in India and after the Tick Tock ban? Was there a kind of a change and do Did you think that the platforms the international platforms are more or less likely to work in the country?

Speaker 1

16:37

Oh, okay. I think it's the biggest platforms in India are all international platforms, right? It's all meta. It's all Facebook. You know, it's all Instagram. So a lot of these large platforms that are present in India are already global platforms. These are not Indian platforms. So I think apart from China, everybody else is okay to do business in India because it's a very big market. Like I said, the internet market is really huge in India all of you know, Facebook's, you know, stock companies like Instagram, WhatsApp, all of these are pretty huge in India. YouTube has always been phenomenal in India. So I think, globally, I don't see platforms having trouble working in India as such. But to answer the first part of your question, where you mentioned that how has you know that the coverage of social media changed over the last few years? I think it's what has happened in the last few years is that there's been a lot of growth of you know, internet companies and Internet Creators and, and because there was a lot of time on hand with people, they were a lot more on their screens a lot more, you know, wanting to watch content. So a lot of formats have evolved over the years. And I think the coverage of social media is also the coverage of how we live our lives, right? I mean, digital culture is essentially an extension to our actual real culture. So the more it's been growing, the more the coverage has been growing according to how we are living our lives. So I think it's, it's, it's basically just an extension of that.

Meera Selva

18:13

Thanks very much. Thank you. And going to Simon

Speaker 4

18:18

Sharma. I'm Simon from Australia. I was interested in to what extent people the general public are interested in the topics of or concerned about corporate and political surveillance, digital surveillance, and, you know, whether there's a general awareness I'm interested in that from from the audience, and to what extent and how it's covered by media in India.

Speaker 1

18:47

Sure. So it's not an area of my expertise, but I would like to answer your question based on my understanding so I think what you're saying it's, it's a very urban thing in India again, I mean, there will be top 1% of Indians living in urban India who might be concerned about things like surveillance, aerial surveillance practices. It's one of the topics that we used to cover at Factory daily, one of the journalists who was very, you know, passionate about this topic used to cover it for us, but for the most part, you know, privacy is something that is a privilege to Indians because, you know, the way the way the country is structured, the number of people that live in a small space in the country like this, right? I mean, surveillance and privacy comes much later, after your basic needs are fulfilled. So I think it is a cause of concern to some urban Indians, but it's not to the level where you know, you would see organizations or, you know, even NGOs, tracking this or asking questions to people who are responsible for it. It's not gone to that level, even if it's something that is of concern. It's not an immediate concern, I would say.

Meera Selva

19:57

Okay, thanks very much. Thank you. And then I'm going to Hannah. Hey, Hannah. Hi.

Speaker 5

20:06

My name is Hannah. I'm from Norway. I always wondering when you call these issues like the banning of tick tock. How easy is it for you to get access to the platforms themselves to get comments and inputs? It's notoriously hard sometimes to get these big international corporations to talk to us right.

Speaker 1

20:27

Yeah, I think it's it's a journalistic practice that you you know, you get used to after after doing multiple stories. So I think the best way to do it is, you know, you write down in bullet points what you're mentioning about the company what you've heard about the company, what you're putting down in your story, and if they feel that this is something that they want to talk about, they'll respond to you. And if they just don't want to, they won't. So there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, it's easier to talk to, you know, your sources, it's easier to talk to creators themselves, track them down because they are the ones who are willing to tell their story out loud. But when it comes to corporates or companies like you know, by dance, or Instagram, or all of these people, they are willing to answer if they want to answer and that's that's the only way to do it. But mostly, I've seen that, you know, if you write a response, if you write an email saying this is what I'm putting down in the story, they would get back to you.

Meera Selva

21:18

Okay, that's quite a bit better than most journalists most of world get I think. I think your two questions in you

Speaker 6

21:30

from validates a little bit about the states policing of the internet and how that affects people on social media, but also of tech journalism in general.

Speaker 1

21:44

I couldn't hear that bit. Can you repeat that please?

Meera Selva

21:48

So I'll just read it out. And put it here. It's basically asking how how, how the Indian government policing of the internet affects young people on social media, and how it affects tech journalists as well.

Speaker 1

22:07

I will talk about the tech journalist part. That's something I'm more comfortable and I also have personal experience in that. So I think, you know, if you've spent enough time on the internet, you would know that there are people with extreme opinions and you know, no matter how right or kind of just, you think your stand is, there is always going to be you know, people coming in attacking you for even having an opinion so, in my experience, you know, or or even in the experience of some other journalists that I speak to, the minute you call someone out, you know, it can be an organization, a popular figure, a problematic content creator. You know, anybody the fandoms of these people will you know, they will get triggered and they will come at you with the sole purpose of you know, attacking you and bringing your credibility down. So, sometimes you self censor, right, sometimes even when you are reporting a story or discussing a story with a colleague, you know, in your head that you're going to have to be very careful about how you present this. So, and I speak this early on, you know, in my personal experience, I don't say it on behalf of everybody else. You do give up on narratives, because you know, that besides, you know, reporting, writing and, you know, fact checking a story, your job is also going to be to you know, mute block or report people So, you find a way to keep your sanity, because you know, that you know, it's it's online harassment, so nobody's actually going to come to protect you. And, you know, I say this earlier, I'm talking about relatively safe stories. Yeah. We're talking about, you know, online culture and internet culture, which in some way is an extension to our actual culture. But we're not writing about, you know, Lance camps, scandals, corruption, or a government's role in spreading hate or enabling mass killing or that sort of thing. I mean, the journalistic the killing of journalists have gone up in the last few years in India also. And people who've been writing about this have a bigger and scarier beast to fight I mean, journalists like Rana you you know, she's been a target of so many hate campaigns that threats, character assassination, there's just so much more so. You know, having said that, now that we know that our job goes beyond reporting and writing stories, I think journalists have also come to anticipate some of these reactions and find ways to deal with it. So, for example, you know, when I was working on the story on how public WhatsApp groups in India are rife with you know, Child Sexual Abuse material. I took help from someone and use the virtual number to access and verify content on some of these groups. Because you can never be too careful. You know, very often when you do a story calling someone out on the internet, we get these password reset. requests on an email saying are you trying to change your password? So that's basically someone trying to get into your account. So you know that you need to have double factor authentication on across all your social media accounts. Or you know, if there are platforms that also have tools like on Twitter, you have the options of restricting comments to people you follow? Or you know, muting or blocking some of these peoples people because you know, sometimes they will come back to the different account, or you can, you know, choose just to close your DMS until the reaction dies down. And to be honest, I feel a bit ashamed to admit admit this, but sometimes I do you know, pass on an important story, or you share a brief with a male colleague because I think that was probably won't attack him as much as they would come for me. So yeah, that's that's the situation.

Meera Selva

25:39

That's kind of the next question I was going to ask you about, which is the gender differences in this kind of digital and the digital divide that's emerging from it. We've spoken at these seminars and elsewhere about the harassment that women come under online, which is markedly more personal in many ways and are getting the person rather than the idea. How do you think this is playing out? Do you think that women are kind of becoming less likely to put themselves out there online? And then the other line that you just said, struck me, he said, It's online harassment, you know, no one's coming to protect you. That in itself is kind of problem. You just said that. And you know, the fact that you don't feel that there are authorities you can go to and it sounds like you don't also feel that the tech platforms will help here.

Speaker 1

26:26

No, so me know what I mean is that, you know, when it's online harassment, it's happening on your phone right in front of your screen. It's not like you can have guards outside my building to protect me. That is something I understand but how do I deal with something that is happening on my phone every second? Like I speak to other journalists who tell me that every time they phone every time they do a story that's slightly controversial, and their phone dings. They know that, you know, sometimes they're very scared to even look at their notifications. So that's what I'm talking about. I'm not saying that there is no protection at all. But I'm saying, well, it's online harassment, or 80%. Of it is something that you know, you have to find coping strategies, you have to find ways to deal with it, because nobody's going to help you with your mental health. That's something you have to deal with personally, and which is why I said that sometimes when I look at narratives, I'm excited by them, but then I think Do you think I'm prepared? I asked myself, am I prepared, you know, with the backlash that will come along with this. So sometimes, I mean, I understand that, you know, we should be brave and you should. We are the people. We are the voice of the people and we should be doing this but you can only do so much at a time. So I would I like to pick how much I can take at a time regarding the other part of you know, women being targeted more and I think it's not just restricted to journalism, right. Women in Twitter or on general are targeted more, you know, we were thinking of running this experiment of you know, having two bots, or one is a female board and one is a male board and we were thinking of you know, just putting statements out there and looking at the reactions that come to it because you look at anybody st Meera I mean you look at anything that you see on the internet, and you would know that this is not something that is up for debate or discussion. This is something that you see very openly in the in public, you know, public platforms that's happening every day to almost all women in all spheres. It's not just journalism. So yeah, that's that's there.

Meera Selva

28:22

Thank you and please do take care because it does kind of erode your sense of peace very quickly. So I'm sorry, you're going through it. I want to go back to kind of talking a little bit about the kind of the kind of the apps and the messaging board so talk a little bit about discord in particular, and, you know, I've got a teenage son who gets all his news and information and social interaction on Discord and yet it's it's something completely out of most journalists radar completely, but it's not out of your radar. I know. Can you talk a little bit about

Speaker 1

28:58

that that's, that's one of the nicer things that I wrote about. So I'm just from the platform perspective, right? You would see and I also want to add the India perspective here. So that makes sense. Overall, if you look at young urban Indians, you know, they're finding their voices on platforms like discord and Reddit. That's something I noticed while spending time on the platform. And discord originally is a platform that was meant for gamers, right so gaming. is also very popular in India, I think there are around the market is around 300 million users in India. So I think the popularity of platforms like discord, which was essentially meant for gamers excuse me to collaborate while playing it's gone beyond the gaming use case now and you know, it's got it got very popular in India between 2020 and 2021. When, you know, all of the teenagers were sort of in a lockdown. They were taking their schools and classes online and they were looking to interact with their friends, right? So discord has a very, you know, popular desk desktop version, which meant that students could interact with each other while they were doing their classes. It was just like a switch of tabs for them. You don't have to go and fetch your phone or look at your screen, or your teacher.

Meera Selva

30:12

Your parents wouldn't know.

Speaker 1

30:15

It looks like the UI is also very geeky, you would think they're working on something. So the discord has something where you know, people with similar interests become a part of the server and they get to hang out virtually with other such people. So in my experience, where I spend, spend some time on, on on the servers with some Indian audience, I realized that the the these people who are using the platform, sort of like a sounding board. I think the pandemic was very hard on teens, and a lot of them went through, you know, mental health challenges. In a country that's actually not fully equipped to understand and help them through this. So these teens would spend time on Discord talking about you know, loneliness, depression, Body Dysmorphia confusions while they also talked about you know, music, poetry making career as an artist how to apply to an Ivy League school in us or how to convince their parents that they need therapy, or you know, how to come out your parents or how to heal from a heartbreak. I think it was beautiful, the kinds of conversations I saw there. And I think because the platform, sort of you know, promotes anonymous it with most user using like a pseudonym for, you know, that instead of the names, people felt it was easier for them to open up to others. The response they received on the servers also made people feel that they were heard or, you know, they felt there were other people who felt the same way or in a way they felt less lonely. So that was that's that that was what was my experience on discord in India.

Meera Selva

31:51

And what about the kind of the other the flip side of it, which is the things you get in all other other social media platforms, which is a potential for misinformation, spreading the potential for bullying, the potential for trolling, you know, do you think that plays out differently on this good?

Speaker 1

32:06

I think it does. I felt I was part of a few servers. And I felt that, you know, people were mean to each other on Twitter, because somehow it was, you know, it's a platform where you get away by doing all of these things, but when you are a part of a community or you know, everybody knows you it's sort of like a virtual gang you know, so you try to be nicer you try to be kinda, I mean, of course, there will be pedophiles and you know, all sorts of people who are hunting for targets on these platforms, not saying that, you know, Discord is completely 100% safer on teenagers, but I'm saying because of the community aspect of the platform, I found that the people there was slightly more kinder than they would be on Instagram where their body shaming someone or you know, on Twitter where they feel like they need to be meaner than someone else. So I found this to be slightly more kinda is what I would say.

Meera Selva

32:57

Thank you. I'm going to go back into the room into the breakthrough. Caitlin that you want to ask a bit more about the social media events.

Caithlin Mercer

33:07

Sorry, I'm trying to operate the camera and talk at the same time but I'm gonna try to shut up I wanted to ask if the band's other bands actually effective. And how are people going around them? If they have?

Unknown Speaker

33:26

Good Could you repeat that your wife just cut off in between?

Caithlin Mercer

33:29

Is, is there any point actually in these bands? Do they work or do people just find ways around them?

Meera Selva

33:35

Does it work and is it effective? That is when the government banned social media platform?

Speaker 1

33:41

Yeah, I don't know. What's the best answer for that. Honestly, I personally don't think that it works as much because I mean, there's there's no one way to answer it and I'm not a qualified expert in, you know, Korea warfare or geopolitical tension. So I cannot comment on that in terms of how safe it is. For India, when there are geopolitical tensions between these two countries. Does it make sense to do something like this because you know, there's there's a lot of data that's at stake. So all of those are questions that I cannot answer. But I do think that I personally think that the bands don't really make any sense because people just find find a work around that. Or people will just find something else to because they will just look looking for entertainment, right? A lot of these apps work. Like I said, you know, gaming apps or short video apps. So these were just, you know, platforms that engage people in some way. So I think taking that away from people is doesn't make much sense because it could be replaced by something else.

Meera Selva

34:46

Okay, gotcha. Thank you. And can we talk a little bit about kind of spread of misinformation we touched on it slightly with discord but where do you see the fundamental problems are in India with misinformation like where does it spread fastest and do you think you know, what do you think works as a solution?

Speaker 1

35:07

Yeah, I think if you asked me as a social media reporter, you know, sometimes I think that the whole of the internet is made of just irrelevant bubbles or echo chambers for people. Because the algorithms of all social media platforms are designed to keep it that way right to confirm your biases, that's what it does. So the internet, you know, has every individual personas every individual P people's internet persona, and you know, it's the what you see what you see on your phone is content that's tailor made for your persona, right? So it's for this reason that the social feeds off, you know, to people living in the same house, for example, my feed would be very different from my partner feeds, partners feeds, or my father's feeds because we have different internet personas. So I think, you know, all of the algorithms are continuously just trying to re inform reinforce our biases, which is why it's very difficult for someone to you know, break off from that misinformation cycle that they are a part of, like, it's very easy for us to believe in something if we want it to be true, which is mostly what happens. So I think you mentioned platforms and I think one of the platforms that is sort of like a breeding ground of misinformation is WhatsApp in India. Because a lot of content that is, you know, spread across WhatsApp is something that is never verified, is something that people just want to you know, that people would forward like 20 messages in a group or, you know, nobody cares about going and checking the verification or the authenticity of something that they received in WhatsApp forward even though the company has been trying to you know, introduce these features where you have this double arrow if the message has been forwarded more than five times. And I think it's because of what's happening in India that you know, what's happened to go back and introduce some of these features in the country. So I think it's, it's also something that is a very popular among, you know, the older generation, because as much as we talk about the younger generation, I think we should also talk about the older generation in India that has, that they have a different kind of screen addiction to their phones, like all of our parents are constantly you know, glued to their phones and they are constantly looking at these pieces of information that they keep forwarding to everybody else. What Rails is to teenagers is what you know, WhatsApp media is to boomers in India, I think. So they keep forwarding these messages to everybody in the family, they will never go back and check the authenticity of it. So I think WhatsApp is one of the platforms that is, you know, a major breeding ground for misinformation.

Meera Selva

37:44

And tell me what you think digital journalists such as yourself, what role you can play in kind of improving digital literacy amongst both the old really younger.

Speaker 1

37:54

So that's one of the things that, you know, I was mentioning to you earlier is that I feel like you know, unfortunately, newsrooms in India are still catching up on these new platforms. Where their audience spent so much time. I mean, there are some newsrooms or media houses that make use of platforms like Instagram, you know, like the newer trendy ones because they understand that their audience is there. And then you know, there are some there's there's also paywalls subscription kind of model that has kicked off in the last few years. But you know, very often you would find a brilliantly researched and reported piece behind one of these paywall websites that is picked up by say a YouTuber, who will you know, then break it down into smaller bite sized content jazzy talk with memes, you know a few more engaging elements and that would probably get 1000 times more views than the original story right? Now, the problem with that is that the content creator is basically free to add their opinion to the story or spill it into a narrative that they like, right? The Creator, or the YouTuber is not as accountable as a journalist working for a newsroom. So the journalists who are working so hard on these stories are basically so consumed by the treadmill of producing, you know, stories every week every fortnight and holding their byline so tight that somewhere down the line, we stop caring about the messaging of the story. We care about the credits we care about where it gets published, and there's nothing wrong with that. But we also need to evolve with our audience. Right. I mean, to answer what you asked your question earlier, I think, as someone who writes long form, and has written long for most of my journalistic career, right, I would love to be able to make stories, my stories into some sort of video format for someone who doesn't want to read 3000 word stories, right? Or if someone who can make it into cards for Instagram, so that you know, Gen Z scrolling through the phone gets to know about it, you know, I'm all for it. So I think, you know, that's a leap that we need to take as social media journalists to not just use social media to report on social media, but also be able to understand how to you know, use it in a way that we can expand our reporting and writing horizons. So if you want young people to read news, we also have to be present where they are and we also have to evolve in the way we tell our stories.

Meera Selva

40:11

Thank you very much. Suppose the next question I have there is you talk about the kind of the rural content creators and you've done some really brilliant work on on the fact that they're often quite vulnerable to scams as well but could you talk a little bit more about that sector? And, again, who these content creators are, who are their audiences, and when Where do you see the potential there?

Speaker 1

40:39

Yeah, sure. So I think there are a lot of them and you know, I was mentioning this when I was talking about the Tick Tock ban earlier. So a lot of these people are first time internet users first time, you know, mobile or computer users. This is the first time that they are looking at something like this. So a lot of them come from very small villages. And like I said, village content is very popular. So a lot of people want to sort of you know, watch how a swimming pool is being dug by two guys. I mean, some of those videos are crazy popular on YouTube, right? There are two Indians who are ducking up a swimming pool and how do they finish it off? Or you know, there's this there's this young lady young woman, probably in her early 20s Who's who doesn't have a father and she's making earning through producing content. She's the one who's going to put a roof on her house. So people are very interested to see how she's going on the bike. She's dealing with the people who aren't you know, that she's getting the cement and the bricks for the house and she's going to now you know, get people who will help her put a house on her roof because she never had that earlier. So it's a lot of aspirational content that you will see. So, because the viewers of this content also come like I said, like a lot of people have migrated from villages to cities, you know, for employment opportunities. So they want to you know, when when they finish their day, they want to look at content that, you know, makes them feel nice, it's like feel good content for a lot of people and if it comes from somewhere, where they feel they also belong to it's more, it's more personal for them. So that kind of content is really popular in India. You will see a lot of that on YouTube, but like I said, I mean, there's a lot of hardware that you see that these creators put into it, but it's not compensated in the same way that it should be.

Meera Selva

42:25

This is really interesting about is kind of a hyperlocal and aspirational at once is really Yeah. Nice. Nice combination. Thank you. I mean, let's go back to talking about you because I think your work you're doing is brilliant. And, you know, you're you're you're kind of at this intersection of culture and technology and kind of the edge of social transformation in India and people have kind of people look at Taylor Lorenz in the Washington Post, who again, you know, speaks to a generation in a in a language that the older generation simply don't understand and get very cross about in many ways. What do you think of the differences and similarities between the kind of us and and India and the way they kind of deal with younger, younger people being online in different ways? Really?

Speaker 1

43:11

Yeah, I think Taylor's work is amazing, right? I mean, even even a comparison to her is like behind on the label. But if you look at the culture, right, like I said, in India, I mean, I don't know how it is exactly the US, but in India, you will see that what is very important to an urban Indian will not at all be important to someone who's migrated here, right? So it's very different like that, like the culture or the culture reporting that I do is I feel is very restricted to urban Indians, because the kinds of studies that have done the person or the work that I did write about discovery about discord or about you know how these young Indians are using Twitter as LinkedIn while they're actually posting their way through the tech corridors, right. A lot of this work is limited to the urban audience, I would say, and they are the ones who relate with it the most. They are the ones who read it the most. You know, that of course, there are stories like these, the stories that we did about the rural creators, those are the stories that urban Indians also care about. They care about, you know, they care about injustice, they care about, you know, not giving the rural creators they were they want to take up these issues. They want to discuss these shows, like when we did that story, a lot of people wanted to help these creators, get them on some sort of platforms, get them, you know, some sort of meetings with somebody so that they could accelerate in their journey as a content creator. So I think that's the distinction there is.

Meera Selva

44:39

Okay, thanks very much. I'm going to go to the q&a box. So this question from Eric from communications design student from Taiwan, who's asking, who'd like to ask about journalism, objectivity, and instead of core expectation from kind of online users in India, do you know, do people online expect objectivity in journalism? And do you think it should be a priority in journalism?

Speaker 1

45:04

I think it should definitely be a priority. If it's not a priority, then it's a problem. But having said that, I think you know, it's it's how do you measure objectivity right? I mean, it's not something that you can, that you have a checkpoint against, and you can do that, but I see that, you know, it's, the media itself is so divided in India, right? Like, there will be a certain set of people who follow tech news, or they follow the startup news and they are very keen on knowing what's happening at a certain company and that kind of stuff. And then there will be, you know, local stringers or local reporters who are writing about what is happening on ground in villages, what is happening with the schemes that the government is launching. So there's also that kind of journalism. So I think so I think objectivity is something that is that has to be one of the highest priorities, but it also depends on you know, what your expectation what the expectations of your editorial room is at the moment. So I think you will see that difference across different media houses that you know, some, some people would want to cater to their audience so they would do stories that their audience who would like to read rather than you know, doing something that I think is important, or they think at some person at some point things is important. So that is a difference you would see across media houses, if you have to look at the media landscape in India.

Meera Selva

46:24

Thanks very much. I suppose the question follow up question from that is getting this a generational difference between how younger people see not just objectivity but how much they feel they want to identify with the news producers and the journalists themselves.

Speaker 1

46:39

Right. Right. I think it's a very important question, and I wish that I had a better answer, but I don't think that you know, the young people are actually going to news websites to read some of the stories that we are writing. I mean, I think that they are I think most of the people are really angry at the way the world is right now. The, you know, they're looking at the Climate Change they're looking at, you know, how they're looking at injustice in the world, and they don't think that journalists are, you know, telling them what they need to hear. So I don't think they are coming to our platform for news, they mostly they care about issues, but they mostly find, you know, news through some of these short apps that summarize news for them or they will go to Twitter or Instagram for news. So I, I see that gap. And that's what you know, I've been mentioning earlier that I see that gap that I i understand that the younger generation is not going to be coming to news websites to read and new so we have to go where they are. We have to understand how they want to read their news. So that you know, we're able to help them with the right information that can help them form the right opinion.

Meera Selva

47:47

Okay, that's great. Thank you very much. I'm gonna go we're going to run running out of time to go back to the room. So there's time for two more questions and then one from Hannah.

Speaker 5

47:59

Hi, this is a bit of an abrupt change of topic and sorry about that. But I saw that you have been reporting back to daily about how tech companies handle sharing of child sexual abuse content, and I was wondering how you work in the newsroom with your colleagues. Or with your with yourself to sort of handle those topics. And do you have any systems of support in place?

Speaker 1

48:24

Oh, sure. Yeah. So I think we also work with some of the nonprofit, you know, organizations that are working in this area, because like you said, you do need some sort of support when you're reporting on something as sensitive as this. You also need some sort of legal help to know whether or not you are, you know, what you're doing is legally correct, correct or incorrect when you are doing some of these stories, like for example, the story that I talked about earlier and was, you know, I was a, I went to some of these WhatsApp, public groups to identify whether or not there was child sexual abuse happening on these platforms, or they were media that's being circulated on these platforms. So what we did was we used a virtual number to do that. We also partnered with an NGO who basically knew how to handle these issues, what is the most ethical and legally correct way to handle some of these things? So that's how we deal with it. We partner with organizations who have the knowledge of you know how to handle these issues.

Meera Selva

49:27

Thank you Thank you very much, and it's just really, really hard to deal with this. Again, thanks so much, and do take care of yourself on it. Robin. Might be the last question.

Speaker 7

49:43

Yeah, I just wondered if you could recommend any other reporters that we should be like maybe up and coming young reporters in India that covering this kind of stuff that we should be keeping an eye on?

Speaker 1

49:57

Oh, yeah, sure. Are you going to look them up on Twitter? Okay, so there's if you are looking at online and culture reporting that there's Shefali pot who writes for mint, she is really good. And she has been writing about online culture for a while. Then, you know, if you're, if you're if you're looking at India in general and the tech scene in India in general, there's Pankaj Mishra who's my co founder and who also does a lot of, you know, his stories cover great length and breadth in terms of what's happening in India in technology. Apart from that, I can send you some names. I can't think of them right now. But these two are the top names that just came to me but I can send them across if you want.

Meera Selva

50:46

Thank you so much. Thank you for that contract. They've been really brilliant talking to you. Thanks so much for taking such a range of questions. They've been coming at you at rapid fire as well, from all directions to really

Unknown Speaker

50:58

it was a pleasure I really had fun doing this.

Meera Selva

51:01

Thank you. Thanks very much. And thanks all for your questions and join us next week for a kind of deep look into the Trojan horse affair podcast which is going to be incredibly insightful as well and in the meantime, cyber, all power to you and all the best of luck with factor daily as well. Keep a close eye on what you do next with that.

Speaker 1

51:19

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. All right. Thank you, everyone.

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