media, information, the contemporary

Tag: Fellowship


  • Social Media Research Workshop, August 12, 2016

    As part of the third and final cycle of Sarai’s Social Media Research Fellowship, since March this year, short-term research fellows have been studying different aspects of digital and social media. On Friday, 12 August, 2016 we are organising a workshop for the fellows to present and discuss their research with a select group of…

  • Culture, Conflict and Cyberspace: Towards a Bodo Digital Identity

    The Death Valley (2012) is a multilingual short film by Rajiv Saikia that aims to capture the 2012 ethnic conflict between the Bodos and Muslims, highlighting how innocent civilians from both sides are caught in the crossfire. This fictional account tells the story of a Bodo man and a Muslim man who are on friendly terms. Their peaceful existence is disrupted when ethnic conflict erupts. The Bodo man is chased by a group of Muslim men before being brutally murdered while his Muslim friend is killed as he tries to save him. Afterwards, the women of the two families leave with their children because of the unsafe environment…

  • Morality, Illegality and Crime in Download Culture.

    This is the third and final research note from Shiva Thorat, one of the researchers who received the Social Media Research grant for 2016.

    A Khandeshi album producer, who is also a politician, complained against me to the police. They gave me strict warnings on why I should not do download work. One of the policemen told me,

    “People involved in the production of the song cannot get any money when the transfer process is free. The product should be making profit to pay everyone who is involved in the production. They have copyright over the song and it is illegal. If someone is not paying for their produced song it is the case of copyright infringement and transferring them is a crime, we might arrest you”.

  • Fans without Borders: Tracing Transnational Digital Fandom on Television

    Televisual fandom is an amalgamation of multiple dimensions that include the televisual text, TV stars, corporate machineries of marketing and promotions and most importantly the fans. Fans are a significant parameter in analyzing the popularity of a television programme or a TV star; and fandom, therefore, is an important scholarly paradigm that redefines star studies on the small-screen. While the earlier forms of television-audience interactions were limited to sending letters to the broadcasters/producers, it is with the emergence of digital media, that this interaction has taken “one of the most intimate and far-reaching forms of sociability” in contemporary times…

  • Decree and Devotion: Sacred Property on Internet

    I took a murky turn between the Sunday market on Biplabi Rash Behari Bose Road and the Portuguese Church that is called the Portuguese Church Lane. Behind the white church, in the lane teeming with resting pushcarts, small shops and old shabby buildings, I found my address – 10, Portuguese Church Lane, Kolkata 700001. It was a typically dilapidated building whose façade could not be fully seen from where I stood, it overwhelmed my field of vision. There was an A3 sticker on a closed part of the door that spoke about martyrdom and I was sure that it was the front gate of Haji Kerbalai Imambara…

  • Context is King: Contextualisation of Models and Simulations

    “Models and simulations, both, represent certain reality in an abstract form…we are essentially trying to represent reality in some sense. [It is an] abstraction of reality – it could be a mathematical model, simulation model, or a physical model. When we develop a model there are a lot of parameters that need to be tuned, such as vehicle distribution, speed profile… Generally the software would have default values for these parameters and they have to be tuned based on Indian contexts. This becomes much more complicated in our traffic conditions because of the heterogeneity and non-lane-based movement. All this has to be replicated well in the simulation model…”

  • Call for Proposals: Short Term Research Projects in Social and Digital Media 2016

    The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, invites proposals from individuals for research projects on contemporary social and digital media, its ecologies and histories. Selected research proposals will be supported with a short-term grant for six months, and the researchers will present their studies in a workshop at Sarai-CSDS at the…

  • CSDS Doctoral Fellowships 2014-2015

    The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi invites applications for Doctoral Fellowships for the year 2014-15. Up to six fellowships (of which one fellowship is earmarked for a teacher-fellow) will be awarded for a period of two years with possible extension of one year. Successful candidates will work on a doctoral dissertation in an Indian university under the supervision/co-supervision of a faculty member of CSDS. Students from Universities which do not allow for co-supervision need not apply.

  • Short Term Research Projects in Social Media: Selected Proposals

    The Call for Proposals for the Short Term Research Projects in Social and Digital Media attracted over 80 applications from all over the country, and it took a careful scrutiny of all the applications to reach our decision. We got applications from scholars as well as practitioners, young researchers and older, and proposals looked at a wide range of themes. Please take a look at the excerpts from selected proposals for this year’s Short Term Research Projects in Social Media.

  • Independent Fellowship Programme – Abstracts 2006-07

    Compilation of selected abstracts from the 2006-2007 round of Independent Fellowship Programme.