Digital Shutdowns and Social Media: Spatiality, Political Economy and Internet Shutdowns in India 9783030678876, 9783030678883

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Springer Geography

Shekh Moinuddin

Digital Shutdowns and Social Media Spatiality, Political Economy and Internet Shutdowns in India

Springer Geography Advisory Editors Mitja Brilly, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia Richard A. Davis, Department of Geology, School of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA Nancy Hoalst-Pullen, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA Michael Leitner, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA Mark W. Patterson, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, USA Márton Veress, Department of Physical Geography, University of West Hungary, Szombathely, Hungary

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Shekh Moinuddin

Digital Shutdowns and Social Media Spatiality, Political Economy and Internet Shutdowns in India

Shekh Moinuddin Centre for Culture, Media and Governance Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi, Delhi, India

ISSN 2194-315X ISSN 2194-3168 (electronic) Springer Geography ISBN 978-3-030-67887-6 ISBN 978-3-030-67888-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Amma, my constant source of inspiration

Preface

The study engaged two broader themes-spatial sciences and social media to understand the spatio-politico-economic dimensions of information in the twenty-first century world that how both work together and separately? How both changed the perceptions to see the spatiality? How and at what extent both shaped the political economy? To understand nature and pattern of spatial turn in digital gadgets? The book followed some reports, research studies, digital laws, social media policies, survey results and academic discussions to map the spatiality of digital gadgets. The book is unique in certain senses: How social media is a spatial science? Social mediasphere is a spatial science unlike atmosphere and hydrosphere; screen behaves as a space/place unlike a behavioural space that’s shaping and reshaping the spatiality of digital gadgets; digital gadgets whittle the socialization process that’s often considered as path towards becoming a social animal; Internet shutdowns are more prevalent in developing countries than developed countries. India is leading in Internet shutdowns in the world, and political economy discloses the nature and patterns that how corporates captured social media and Internet industry in India? The book comprised eight chapters and each chapter dealt with a different issue though each issue had its own importance in both social media and spatial science. All the eight chapters build on the existing academic discussions, available notified reports prepared by independent/government organizations and survey data used accordingly to address the theme of the study. The survey data are used to understand the existing discourse in the concerned areas and accommodate accordingly to make compact the discourse further. Each chapter is organized in spatial ways where distributional patterns and spatial engagements were systematically arranged to understand how a common user used social media in their daily activities. The chapters are systematically arranged and tied by three separate phenomena, viz. spatiality, political economy and digital shutdowns. The chapters are linked to each other and create layers of contours that reflect spatiality and digitality in the sense of ‘turn’ phenomena where new spatial-digital mapping is constructed in the shape of social mediasphere. First chapter dealt with the political economy, spatial turn of social media and Internet in order to link each other. The chapter further analysed political economy of Internet in India; spatial turn in social media; spatial mapping of Internet in India; vii

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spatiality, political economy and social media: multidisciplinary literatures through available reports, data and the literatures. The study analysed the spatiality and spatial turn in digital gadgets. The second chapter mapped the spatial turn in digital gadgets in the shape of the ‘social’ in social media wherein digital lives, digital socialization, trolls, digital culture and information age were discussed. This part was much emphasized on the digital aspects of social lives in different configurations and representations. How does digital socialization work in daily lives? What is the vested interest of trolls before trolling someone else on a social media platform? How digital culture shapes? And how digital culture is different from existing and practising cultural taboos in daily lives. The chapter tries to understand the spatial dimensions of digital lives where ‘social’ was interpreted as spatial or can read the social as spatial, too. The spatial discussion on digital gadgets is further expanded in the third chapter in the shape of spatial mapping of social media in India, which includes various dimensions of networks, demography and hybrid nature of spatiality. The chapter emphasized communication and its medium. This section constitutes various communication components that deal with different aspects of social media and the growing complexities of the social media landscapes in representations of rural-urban and digital divide in the country. The succeeding fourth chapter dealt with electoral mapping of social media. Social media as an election tool? The role of social media during election? How political parties/politicians used social media? This part is excessively discussed how social media used agenda setting, framing and propaganda to influence the election. Rather, the relationship between social media and election is inseparable. During the election campaign, what is the role of social media? What are the means used by social media to influence the election and users? The chapter mainly discussed the electoral aspects of how digital gadgets influence the electoral process. The fifth chapter discussed the signs and symbols in semiotics representations. This unit is focused on emoticons/emoji. The use of emoji/emoticons is inevitable across the platforms. How social media users used such semiotic languages to express them? How is emoji used as a bridge between sender and receiver of a message across the platforms? This section compiled the meaning, pattern and nature of semiotics of social media as well as ontology and epistemology of signs and symbols. The next chapter dealt with the economic activities that how social media revolutionized e-commerce or online business? The study focused on mapping e-kart services and other online businesses. What are the services provided on platforms? The discussion mainly revolves around e-commerce. This chapter was about to draw contours of digital business in marketing and human resources perspectives. The seventh chapter discussed Internet shutdowns or digital shutdowns in different perspectives: laws, surveillance, digital economy, political economy and governance tools. Why does the state often take such decisions to Internet shutdown? The Internet became a lifeline in the twenty-first-century world. Without Internet smartphones are worthless. People are suffering the worst during Internet shutdown. The Internet is important to communication between the spatial layers in the society. Without the Internet, nobody can think about social media. However, Internet shutdown is

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unilateral decision of the state and that can give any reasons for Internet shutdown. The frequencies of Internet shutdowns are increased over a period of time. The study focused on all Internet shutdowns till date to understand the political and spatial dimensions in different subtopics in the chapter. The last chapter is a concluding segment that summarized the study where spatial turns were broadly noticed across the social media. Along with spatial turn, there is virtual turn that is too noticed in the digital gadgets age—when life without digital gadgets is beyond thinkable? The study used both political economy and digital economy synonymously because both thrived the same differently in different spatial targets. The information age made digital gadgets accessible to all invariably but spatial variations somehow eclipse it. New Delhi, India

Shekh Moinuddin

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to ICSSR, New Delhi, for funding this research project. My sincere thanks to Prof. Sanjay Kumar, CSDS. A special thanks to Jayashree, AO and finance and account staff, CSDS for cordial gestures. My sincere obligations would not complete unless I have to say my sincere thanks to all library staff where I visited regularly: Ratan Tata Library (RTL); Central Reference Library (CRL), University of Delhi, Delhi; Centre for The Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), The Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), and Centre for Culture, Media & Governance (CCMG), JMI, New Delhi. My sincere greetings to Noorjahan and Zafar for providing a painting. I am obliged to all, whom I discussed this works partially or fully and incorporated their suggestions wherever they advised me. I am extending my strong gratitude to my mother, sisters and brother who constantly encouraged me. I am thankful to my colleagues at CCMG, JMI who given me a cordial academic atmosphere to enrich my academic endevours. Another valuable insight was given by nature in the sense of pandemic COVID19 when the written works were completed. The pandemic was itself a new to the world that posed a serious challenge to human civilization to live in lockdown when social media was the only source and viable medium to connect with the outer world. Although the research was about mapping the political economy of social media, the experience of pandemic provides a different view to analyse the digital economy and digital spatiality in mundane shapes and sizes. I am thankful to anonymous reviewers who helped me to improve the contents and a special thanks to Springer particularly Doris Bleier and Jyanthi Krishnamoorthy for her patience and suggestions to make the manuscript compact. Shekh Moinuddin

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Contents

1 Mapping Digital Political Economy in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Mapping Political Economy of Social Media in India . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Mapping Political Economy of Internet in India . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Spatial Mapping of Internet in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Spatial Turn in Social Mediasphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Mapping Space and Place in Digital Gadgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.1 Mapping Social Mediasphere: A Case of Twitter . . . . . . . . 1.6 Spatiality, Political Economy and Social Mediasphere: A Spatial-Digital Landscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Contours of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix C: Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 2 7 10 12 14 17 20 24 26 27 27 28 32

2 Mapping ‘Social’ in Social Mediasphere in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Remapping ‘Social’ in Digital Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Digital Social Mediasphere Landscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 When Lived Digitally? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Scrolling Through the Spatial Senses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Why Does/Doesn’t ‘Social’ Matter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Digital Socialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Mapping Social as Trolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35 35 36 39 42 43 44 47 49 52 52 54 54

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3 Spatial Mapping of Social Mediasphere in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Cartographies of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Social Mediasphere: Why Called as ‘Rational Technology’? . . . . . 3.4 The Digital Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 People’s Perception and Social Media: A Spatial Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Networks and Social Mediasphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Social Mediasphere Analysis (SMA): A Spatial Linkages . . . . . . . 3.7.1 Degree Centrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7.2 Betweenness Centrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7.3 Closeness Centrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7.4 Network Centrality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 Is Social Mediasphere Bridging the Gap in Rural Areas? . . . . . . . . 3.9 Spatial Mapping of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10 Social Mediasphere and Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.11 The Concept of Diffusion of Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.12 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57 57 58 59 63 65 68 70 71 71 71 71 72 74 76 78 79 80

4 Electoral Mapping of Social Mediasphere in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 4.2 Social Mediasphere and the Election in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 4.3 Social Mediasphere: New Political Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 4.4 Political Communication and Social Mediasphere in India . . . . . . . 87 4.5 Political Participation and Digital Public Sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 4.6 Social Mediasphere: Formation of Public Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 4.7 Hidden Agenda: Election Campaign in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 4.8 Digital Change in Election in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 4.9 Political Mapping of Social Mediasphere in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 4.10 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 5 Geographies of Semiotics in Social Mediasphere in India . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Mapping Semiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Contours of Signs in Semiotic Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 The Saussurean Semiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Landscapes of Semiotics in Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 Signs and Advertising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.2 Material Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.3 Activities and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.4 Music and Sound Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.5 Signs and Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.6 Language and Speaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Social Media and Semiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

107 107 108 108 109 111 112 112 113 113 114 114 114

Contents

5.4.1 Semiotics Communication Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4.2 Semiotics for Sentiments and Affects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Nature of Emoticons/Semiotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.1 Evolution of Emoticons/Emojis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.2 Emoticons/semiotics as Non-Verbal Communication . . . . . 5.5.3 Generational and Cultural Variations in Usage of Emojis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Relevance of Semiotics/Emoticons in Social Mediasphere . . . . . . . 5.6.1 Impacts of Semiotics/emoticons on Message . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.2 Emoticons and Social Mediasphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.3 Emoticons as Linguistic Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.4 Production and Distribution of Semiotics on Social Mediasphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6.5 Semiotics Communication Model of Instagram . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 Semiotics Changed the Mode of Communication Through Social Mediasphere? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7.1 Expressing Ourselves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7.2 Collective Semantic Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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115 118 119 119 121 122 123 124 124 125 125 126 126 128 129 130 130

6 Social Mediasphere and Economic Activities in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Different Business Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Features of Social Mediasphere Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 Social Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Social Mediasphere and HR Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.3 Social Media and Recruitments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.4 Social Mediasphere and Small Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.5 Social Mediasphere and Public Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.6 Social Mediasphere Changed the Business Model . . . . . . . 6.4 Does Social Media Revolutionized Economic Activities . . . . . . . . . 6.4.1 Impact of Social Mediasphere for Business Growth and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.2 Section of People Depend on Social Mediasphere for Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Can Social Mediasphere Be Called as Economic Media? . . . . . . . . 6.5.1 Facebook Business Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

133 133 134 136 137 138 139 139 140 140 142

7 Spatial Mapping of Digital Shutdown in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Undermining Freedom of Expression/Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Surveillance Tool for the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 The Legal Aspects of Shutdowns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

149 149 153 155 156

144 144 145 146 147 148

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7.5 Digital Economy of Shutdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6 Digital Governance During Shutdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

158 159 160 160 161 162 163

8 Political Economy of Spatial Turn in Digital Landscapes . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Spatial Turn in Virtual Landscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Spatial-Digital Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

165 165 169 170

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Abbreviations

3Vs AR ARPANET BBS BCG BJP CAA CAGR CMC CrPC CSI DEITY ERNET F2F FAQ GDP GH-ADC GIF GIS GPS HR HRC IAMAI IBM ICRIER ICT INC IoT IPS IT Cell JPEG M2M

Video, Voice and Vernacular Augmented Reality Advanced Research Project Agency Networks Bulletin Board System Boston Consulting Group Bhartiya Janata Party Citizenship Amendment Act Compound Annual Growth Rate Computer Mediated Communication Code of Criminal Procedure Collective Semantic Intelligence Department of Electronic and Information Technology Education Research Networks Face to Face Frequently Asked Questions Gross Domestic Products Garo Hills Autonomous District Council Graphics Interchange Format Geographical Information System Global Positioning System Human Resources Human Rights Council Internet and Mobile Association of India International Business Machines Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations Information and Communication Technologies Indian National Congress Internet of Things Internet Service Provider Information Technology Cell Joint Photographic Experts Group Mobile to Mobile xvii

xviii

MMORPGs NASSCOM NDA NDLM NGP NRC OBC OECD OTT PR RTI SAS SEO SFLC SMA SMS SNA TRAI UGC UNDP UPI URL VSNL WHO WWW

Abbreviations

Massively Multiplayer Role-Online Games National Association of Software and Services Companies National Democratic Alliance National Digital Literacy Mission National Geospatial Policy National Register of Citizens Other Backwards Caste Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Over the Top Public Relations Right to Information Statistical Analysis System Search Engine Optimization Software Freedom Law Centre Social Media Analysis Short Messaging Services Social Media Analysis Telecom Regulatory Authority of India User-Generated Content United Nations Development Program Unified Payments Interface Uniform Resource Locator Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited World Health Organisation World Wide Web

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3

Graph 2.1 Graph 2.2 Graph 2.3 Graph 2.4 Graph 2.5 Graph 2.6 Graph 2.7 Graph 3.1 Graph 3.2 Graph 3.3 Graph 3.4

Social mediasphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Triangle of social mediasphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jakobson’s model of communication space (Source Mirsarraf et al. 2017: 2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Facebook’s logo of care (Courtesy: Painting by Noorjahan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Digital emoticons/semiotics used in social media (Courtesy: Painting by Noorjahan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Familiar with social media (Prepared after survey, 2017– 2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Main constitutes that’s shaped political information (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why it is called social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unattached parts of social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Have you share something on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What would you like to see first on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What contents of social media influenced you (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Which social media platforms do you preferred (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social media made any affects upon you (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How do you classify the contents of social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social media helped you to improve your identity (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

20 20 115 117 121

36 38 40 41 42 46 51 60 64 67 67 xix

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Graph 3.5 Graph 4.1 Graph 4.2 Graph 4.3 Graph 4.4 Graph 4.5 Graph 4.6 Graph 4.7 Graph 4.8 Graph 4.9 Graph 4.10 Graph 5.1 Graph 5.2 Graph 5.3 Graph 5.4 Graph 5.5 Graph 5.6 Graph 6.1 Graph 6.2 Graph 6.3 Graph 6.4

List of Figures

Nature of contents you often preferred to see (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Have you ever tried to promote yourself on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social media helps politicians to express them (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What contents you encountered often in your page (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How political parties used social media during election time (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Relevance of social media during election time (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Politicians used social media for (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Who used more social media national and regional parties (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The nature of political contents on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How you responds which you liked on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elections are mediated in India (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social media shaped as digital culture unlike other cultures (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Role of available comment section on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Role of like section attribute on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Are you used emoticons/emoji on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Role of tagging is an important attribute on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Role of tag section on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Which social media is giving more business opportunity (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Are you satisfied by online business (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What activities do you prefer utmost on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Who advised you to move on social media to get better business opportunity (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018) . . . .

73 82 85 86 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 110 116 118 120 127 129 137 140 142 143

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4 Table 5.5 Table 6.1 Table 6.2

Digital divides in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pierce’s Triadic Matrix of semiotics relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparison of connotation and denotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Saussure’s diagram of a sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Misleading signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Text containing emoji . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Features of social commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparison of popular social networking sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

75 109 109 111 113 122 138 145

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Chapter 1

Mapping Digital Political Economy in India

Abstract Social media became inevitable and found everywhere irrespective of nature of growths, gender, age, religion, caste and class whether developed and developing or rural and urban or male and female or literate and illiterate or professional and non-professional. The human lives not only found around it rather thinking without social media is not apt in sense of not connected to the surrounding spatiality wherein lives were portrayed and represented in mundane themes including politics and economics. Keywords Political economy · Social media · Spatial turn · India · Internet

1.1 Introduction Social media is everywhere and everyone is on or dreaming of being on social media for different purposes: some want social relationships, news, movies, games and sports; while someone wants to enhance/start up their business; while some are interested to reach their voters for political purposes. Social media is a by-product of the information revolution that marked the best invention in the twenty-firstcentury world; however, each invention has its own specific importance. Information revolution made the communication medium easier and affordable. Social media is a tool that strengthens the communication medium (Boullance 2019). Social media or social networking sites are often synonymous with each other. The expansion of smartphones and iPad has paved the way for social media in the country. In the short span of launch, social media started giving strong competition to the mainstream media particularly electronic and visual media, because it was dual communication systems and easy to operate and carry. The popularity of social media went up many times since the 2014 parliament election-when Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi won the election wherein the role of social media was widely acknowledged. While the second turning point was 2016 when Reliance Jio announced free Internet data in specific recharge packaged in order to lure new customers, that subsequently forced Airtel (Communication business competitor to Reliance Jio in India) to announce the same policy to intact their customers, and such

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Moinuddin, Digital Shutdowns and Social Media, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3_1

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competitive policy benefited the expansion of social media in the country. The business and expansion of social media were further designed under the Digital India1 programme in 2015. The number of social media users in India stood at 326.1 million in 2018. This increase is relatively lower as compared to the growth that occurred between 2016 and 2017. Nevertheless, the social network users in the country were expected to be almost 448 million in 2023.2 The subsequent technological progress made easy to access better speed on the Internet and uninterrupted social media business, shaped by both public and private organizations. The study focused on spatiality, political economy and digital shutdown in India with reference to the social media sphere. Social media has developed as such a hinge in the last decade that carrying all issues altogether, everyone found their own interest that varied from entertainment to information to sports to news to politics. A user admired social media for different reasons. Politicians joined social media to connect with voters while celebrities joined to acknowledge their followers. Social media is the same for everyone but it behaved differently in different contexts. The business of social media is expanding everyday with new targets and achievement. This study dealt with three separate issues altogether: How social media is spatial too? Or, how spatial turn took place in the digital gadgets? Mapping the political economy of social media? How does shutdown affect daily activities or as a tool to control spatiality?

1.2 Mapping Political Economy of Social Media in India A political economy approach analyses the power relationships between politics, mediation and economics (Thomas 2010). The political economy of the social media includes several domains including journalism, activism, broadcasting, advertising, entertainment, infotainment video games, e-commerce and communication technology. The political economy of social media or traditional media is contested in the sense of public and private. The political economy is a complex interrelationship between culture, economy, social movements and state (Garnham 2001; Herman and Chomsky 2001). In India, social media established as industry, parallel to other industries, is developing programmes in order to do business to benefit other as well. The nature of Indian media is growing in a ‘capitalist economic’ structure as laid down by Bennett’s (2007) five points of discussion. Since the liberalization of the economy in 1991, the Indian media industry has never looked back. The facets of Indian media are transforming every day in the sense of building a promising 1 Prime

Minister Narendra Modi launched digital India programme on July 1, 2015. The initiative includes plans to connect rural areas with high-speed Internet networks. Digital India has three main core components. These include: (1) the creation of digital infrastructure; (2) deliver digital services; (3) digital literacy. 2 In 2016, Reliance Jio announced 1.5 GB free Internet data to their subscribers who switched to Reliance Jio, that given a turn and boost in the business of smartphones. After Reliance, almost all ISPs companies had no option rather to announce the same scheme in different looks for business compatibility and competition. For details, https://www.statista.com/statistics/278407/number-ofsocial-network-users-in-india/. Accessed 25 June 2020.

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relationship between viewers and the media industry in materialistic ways. The small and marginal media offshoots have vanished or have been replaced by something bigger or in shape of social media outlets. All media organizations jumped into the social media business to reach out audience. The era of media houses in India has set the stage and is doing business primarily in the line of profit and not out of a sense of public service. However, the struggle between media and the state has transformed over time and both have set their own domain of preferences (Moinuddin 2017). Social media have potential to bring politics, culture and economics all together to do business where private or corporates are edged upon public organizations. Such patterns are deciphered in mundane interpretations. Social media emerged as a phenomenon that has strong imprints upon mind and/or in other words, social media has intrinsic effects on the function of brains (Greenfield 2014). The emergence of social media has created a two-way to manyto-many communication system empowering the consumer to connect, create, share and produce media content like never before throughout world history. Social media has become a major tool for people irrespective of the field they are in. For a student, it appears to be a way to be cool in their group. Similarly, for a company, it is a way to expand their business growth. In India, social media emerged as a business sector and played an important role in the growth. From election campaigns to protests to entertainment to movies, people are gradually shifting towards social media for different reasons. Mark Deuze (2007) correctly said how we are no longer living with technology but in it. The medium has eventually become from being cyber world geek buzz to one of the major platforms for business, influencers, companies, organizations that seek greater reputation and space in this wide world at a price that everyone can afford. Mahua Venkatesh (2019) reported a news on The Print (online edition) where she covered the rise and fall of Orkut. She exemplified the story of social media that was born in India in 2004 with the birth of Orkut. It became one of the major arenas for all people as they could connect with people all over the world through a click. It was seen as a major way to connecting with your current friends, friends that were long-forgotten friends and an amazing platform to make new friends too. She further quoted that ‘Orkut was a pioneer among social networking sites and it also marked the rise in internet users in India and a few other countries… it did very well in the early days, cashing in on the early internet users’, technology analyst Prasanto Kumar Roy told, The Print (Venkatesh 2019). Its parent company, Google, seeing the advancement of Orkut at such a high level was forced to launch the platform in various languages which included Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and Tamil (Venkatesh 2019). Matt Peterson (2011) put forth another aspect that around 20.44% of people were found to be using Orkut in India. It was the 12th most viewed website in India at one point of time. Most users were found to be from Brazil and India; the major age bracket that the consumers fall into were from 18 to 25. Orkut was launched just 10 days before Mark Zuckerberg gave us his technology that changed the history of social media, Facebook, although it became accessible to people beyond Harvard only after 2006. After 6 years of domination in India, Orkut had its first major challenge when Facebook came to India in late 2009. Orkut gave

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its best competition to Facebook but eventually in 2010 Facebook inched ahead in a way that the former couldn’t ever reach. The main reason for Orkut’s demise is Google and its inefficiency to promote the medium. Orkut even though lived a short life in India. But the memories it has attached to people have eventually stayed fresh in the Indian audience forever (Venkatesh 2019). According to Statista 2020, there are around 280 million Facebook users in India alone, and to some extent, it is the leading country in terms of Facebook audience demography. Apart from India, there are other countries with more than 100 million Facebook users: the United States, Indonesia and Brazil with 190 million, 130 million and 120 million Facebook users, respectively.3 Facebook came with a ‘wall’ concept that was at one point thought to be an alien concept but it eventually became popular. According to Statista 2020, as a surge in social media, Facebook had shown the highest traffic at around 86% among social media platforms followed by Instagram 5% and YouTube 3.2% in April 2020 in India. The popularity of social media companies has consistently attracted more in comparison with the last quarter of the financial year. The other social media networking sites like WhatsApp, Instagram and YouTube are far behind Facebook in terms of volume of traffic. In 2018, around 24% population accessed the social networks and the rate will further anticipate with time and expansion of digital infrastructure in the rural belts in the country. Mark Zuckerberg himself said how India is very important in Facebook’s history. According to echoVME news, about 71% of India’s population aged between 18 to 34 years use Facebook alone. In 2015, out of 112 million users on Facebook in India, around 99 million are phone users. The percentage from male to female ranges from 76 to 24%.4 According to The Next Web, 19% of India’s population uses the platform compared to 73% in the United States that equals around 241 million active users in India, compared to 240 million in the United States. Social media eventually got its grip stronger in India’s history with the launch of Twitter in 2009. It rocked the Internet history in India as soon as it was launched. It changed the trend from ‘making friends’ to ‘gaining followers’. Social networking websites have also been created for the purpose of initiating friendships between strangers (Acquisti and Gross 2006). According to the International Journal of Advanced Research Foundation, India is right now in a golden period of social media growth ever since 2013 and the trend continues till 2020 at least. The government and various organizations are 3 The

trajectory of Facebook users is increased across the world. In India, no doubt Facebook remains front-runner and first preference. If the number of Facebook users considered as demography, it would be fourth largest country in the world with 280 million Facebook users. For details, https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-based-on-numberof-facebook-users/. Accessed 15 June 2020. 4 EchoVME news studied the Facebook demographic structure in India. The news reported that major chunk of youth who are in their middle aged used Facebook and maximum of them used Facebook through smartphone. The study further pointed out that maximum of users was female. For details, echoVME news (2015) Complete Demographic Statistics of Facebook Users in India— An echoVME Report. Echo VME, Chennai, 5 June 2015. Available at: https://echovme.in/blog/com plete-demographic-statistics-of-facebook-users-in-india-an-echovme-report/. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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trying very hard to make the Indian population get on the Internet express. Economic Times published the Kantar IMRB data as: ‘India’s Internet users are expected to reach 627 million in 2019, by rapid Internet growth in rural areas. Internet usage in the country has increased by half a billion people for the first time, pegged at 566 million, driven by rural Internet growth and usage. In its ICUBE 2018 report that tracks digital adoption and usage trends in India, it noted that the number of Internet users in India has registered an annual growth of 18% and is estimated at 566 million as of December 2018, 40% overall Internet penetration, it observed. It projected a double-digit growth for 2019 and the number of Internet users will reach 627 million by the end of this year. Of the total user base, 87% or 493 million Indians are defined as regular users, having accessed the Internet in the last 30 days. Nearly 293 million active Internet users reside in urban India, while there are 200 million active users in rural India. The report found that 97% of users use smartphones as one of the devices to access the Internet’.5 The number increased in every quarter in both rural and urban areas when the use of social media multiplied in comparison with the same business quarter of the financial year. The surge of social media completely depends upon the expansion of infrastructures of the Internet. 4G Internet facilitates the flow of social media among users. As per the ICUBETM 2019 report, about 84% of users access the Internet for entertainment purposes. Th year 2019 witnessed a surge in over the top (OTT) (Netflix, Prime TV). This trend is expected to continue in 2020 and COVID-19 lockdown would not deflect the growth trend. More children added on the Internet than ever before at 38% growth; school going children segment in the age group of 15 years or below added on the Internet usage. Access to online education, webinar and information, social media, gaming and entertainment is driving behind in the surge of Internet adoption. During lockdown, the only accessible medium for entertainment was social media where most of them stuck with digital gadgets including work from home. According to ICUBETM 2019 report, there was a growth of more than 60% in the daily Internet users in the last one year; almost 9 out of 10 active Internet users were accessing the Internet daily owing to entertainment and communication needs. Rural India registered a 45% growth in the monthly active Internet users in 2019. It is now estimated that there are 264 million Internet users in rural India, and this is expected to reach 304 million in 2020. Vernacular videos are the underlying factors for the Internet boom in rural areas. In future, more children and housewives will be the new Internet adopters in the coming year and after. Of course, entertainment was the primary source of consumption that pulled the individual. The expansion of digital infrastructures across the rural areas somehow made them enabled to connect with the Internet and social media. The digital divide is quite high in the country when urban India shows almost covered with digital infrastructures while two-thirds of the rural areas are still awaiting the same. The available 3Vs (video, voice and 5 Economic

Times (Delhi edition, 6 March 2019). Available at: https://economictimes.indiatimes. com/tech/internet/internet-users-in-india-to-reach-627-million-in-2019-report/articleshow/682 88868.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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vernacular) features of 4G made the Internet popular among users. These features drive higher engagement of users in the past few financial quarters. Internet of things (IoT)6 and smart devices will make the Internet as much a household phenomenon in the next few years where every individual will be a potential user. The IoT-enabled sensor market in India is grown at a CAGR of 62.96% to reach a value of INR 81.07 billion by 2024, from INR 4.83 billion in 2018.7 The portal further reported that IoT-installed units in India are increased from 60 million devices in 2016 to 1.9 billion devices by 2020. Similarly, mobile-connected machine-to-machine (M2M) modules are also expected to reach 112 million by 2022.8 In line with the Government of India’s vision of a ‘Digital India’, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) launched India’s first draft on IoT Policy in 2016. The policy is considered a strong foundation in coming years in the country. Moreover, National Digital Communications Policy (NDCP) 2018 was anticipated to set futuristic goals and undertaken crucial policy initiatives to address the problem of communications and access to digital services in India. According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the goals set for 2022 are crucial policy initiatives that will address the associated issues in the sector. The new decade is expected to witness the next wave of ‘Digital India’ aided by the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has catalysed the speed at which the already connected consumer is getting further connected with devices, education, webinar, payments, e-medicine and e-governance. The numbers are constantly changing and estimated to grow by 351.4 million Internet users in the country by the end of 2019. On average, Indian users spend 2.4 h on social media a day in comparison with the global average of 2.5 h a day. Nearby 290 million active social media users in India access social networks through their mobile devices. Around 86% of social media users engaged in mundane ways on their social channels.9 However, around 42% of the total Internet 6 Nowadays,

the production and usage of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices that include laptops, smartphones, smart gadgets, smart watches, smart home décor light, smart door lock, smart and digitalized vehicles and almost all of these are used majorly today. By estimation, there are around 7.62 billion humans by the year 2021 and by comparison, if we count them, there may be around 20 billion IoT smart devices by the same year. There are possibilities that in the coming years the demand of IoT is going to surge for various reasons across the world but at the same time, in opposite, there are also possibilities that the waste of IoT are too going to increase in our planet. Of course, that needs to think how to solve such waste of IoT in coming decades and need to learn lives accordingly with radioactive equipment. 7 An estimation of IoT business in India was prepared by IoT-enabled Sensors Market in India 2019, the preliminary reports made projections and potential of IoT goods in the country. Available at: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iot-enabled-sensors-in-india-market-tec hnology-and-competitive-insights-2019-2024-301006743.html. Accessed 19 June 2020. 8 The projection of number of IoT units in the household and the number is going to surpass the total population of India in next few years. Available at: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel eases/iot-enabled-sensors-in-india-market-technology-and-competitive-insights-2019-2024-301 006743.html. Accessed 18 May 2020. 9 The Hindu published projections made by Global Web Index’s Social Media Trends 2019 report. Available at https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/how-much-time-do-Indians-spendon-social-media/article29201363. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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users comprised of women.10 Among Indian states, Bihar is found out to have the highest growing Internet users across both rural and urban areas of 35% over last year. Life without social media is unimaginable; it is something one cannot really live without. Mark Zuckerberg once said, ‘When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place’.11 The craze for smartphones was not to call and connect someone else; rather, the enthusiasm was to use 1.5 GB free Internet data provided in stipulated package by Internet Service Providers (ISPs)—Reliance Jio, Airtel and others in different business packages. Henceforth, the launch of the Jio fixed-line broadband service called Giga fibre added further in the Internet penetration across the country. Interestingly, demonetization in late 2016 did not deter the users; rather, the number increased up to 50% in 2019. That shapes the Internet consumption in the country. While we talk about the growth of social media in India, we just can’t ignore the fact how it revolutionized the political campaigns in modern times. In India, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) used the social media platforms to greater extent in comparison with other political parties. PM Narendra Modi used social media to access the voters and to make governance easy in government. His team began with a website, then moved on to a YouTube channel, then Facebook and Twitter accounts, then Google Hangouts and then to live webcasts of his speeches before finally adding WhatsApp as another tool to connect with voters. And now, NaMo app (NaMo TV during 2019 parliament election) facilitates PM Narendra Modi to access party leaders and to speak his own mind. In today’s time, most of the political parties and politicians and voters have understood the importance of social media. The dynamism of social media is completely dependent on the Internet; in the absence of better Internet infrastructures, the trajectories of digital business would not be fulfilled.

1.2.1 Mapping Political Economy of Internet in India Over the past 15 years, the information communication technology (ICT) revolution has driven global development in an unprecedented way in the country. With immense progress in technology, the Internet and its services have led to the creation of new markets. The Internet has become a breathing tool for people now. If you want to buy your weekly vegetables or read your hourly news, everything is available on your phone 24*7. With the introduction of the World Wide Web (www) and subsequent multimedia content expansion, the number of net users exploded. In fact, the Internet has grown much more quickly than any other medium in history (Jorgenson and Vu 2016). 10 Outlook

released Kantar IMRB report titled the Twenty-First Edition of ICUBE (2019, March 7). Available at: https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/kantar-imrb-releases-the-twentyfirstedition-of-icube-report/1491589. Accessed 15 June 2020. 11 For all his remark and quotes. Available at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/mark-Zucker berg-quotes. Accessed 25 June 2020.

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With the launch of the Education Research Network (ERNET) in 1986, the Internet breathed its first air in India—initiated by the Department of Education (DoE) with the funding support of United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Government of India. The first publicly available Internet was launched in August 1995 by stateowned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL).12 The first cybercafé was launched by Leela Mumbai Hotel in 1996. It charged INR 800 for an hour session at that time. Webdunia (Internet world) was the first Hindi portal in India’s Internet history. Over the years, many websites and online portals were introduced for the Indian public like IRCTC and eBay; among banking sectors, ICICI Bank was the first who opened their website in 1997. As per the KPMG survey 2017, India has the third-largest Internet user base in the world. Internet users in India rose from 189.6 million (2014) to 503 million until (2017). By 2020, the Indian e-commerce industry is expected to reach $34 billion with 200 million users transacting online. India’s youth demographics will lead to India’s Internet and entrepreneurship.13 A key landmark in the growth of the Internet in India is when the government allowed private Internet Service Providers (ISPs) which eventually set up the Internet infrastructures. The Internet eventually has changed the way a person learns, shopping, lives, works and even the way you connect. According to IAMAI and KANTAR IMRB report, 2016, it is estimated that India has 432 million Internet users by December 2016. The only thing setting it back is that it didn’t take into account the effect and impact of demonetization. The IMRB report also pointed out the growth of the Internet in India from 278 million in 2014 to 450–465 million in 2017. From October 2015 to October 2016, the Internet use in urban India grew by 7%. Out of the total population, around 51% of them were daily users who were part of the Internet at least once a day. In rural India, they are not far behind from their urban counterpart. Nearby 48% of the users were found to use the Internet daily, while around 140 million or around 83% used the Internet once a month. The most prolific users of the Internet in both areas were the younger generation. The demographics remained almost the same, just the gender ratio is found out to be slightly better in urban India. The analysis also pointed out that about 69% of them used the Internet for online communication while 68% used it for social networking in urban India. In rural India, about 39% of them used it for entertainment and around 34% for social networking sites.14 Moreover, Internet and Mobile Association of India, 2017, report talks about mobile Internet and how it has revolutionized the Internet industry. With an introduction of 5G, public Wi-Fi and other infrastructure models, mobile services will just 12 ERNET is a sister organization within Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, to enhance the education research networks in the country. For details, https:// ernet.in/content/about-us. Accessed 15 June 2020. 13 A study by KPMG in India and Google enabled us to map the digital business trajectories and potential areas. For details, see https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/in/pdf/2017/01/Impact-ofinternet-and-digitisation.pdf. Accessed 17 June 2020. 14 Internet and Mobile Association of India. Available at: https://cms.iamai.in/Content/ResearchP apers/15c3c84c-128a-4ea9-9cf2-a50a6d18f21c.pdf. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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be about Internet services. In terms of life stages, the data had six broad categories of usage and category the highest percentage being of young men who are prolific on almost all services like text chat, social networking and audio/video streaming. School and college going students are also the other categories according to the report that fits in all services. Both young men and older men have greater prosperity in using social media sites; the older generation is lacking a bit in the audio/video streaming. Working women have the highest propensity for social networking, while non-working women are more inclined towards text chat. By 2018, the number of users on the Internet reached 500 million as per the report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India.15 Further, a report published in Economic Times (Delhi edition, 20 February 2018) focuses on urban–rural digital divide. The future growth policies, therefore, must focus on bridging the digital divide that exists between urban and rural India today.16 Kantar IMRB’s i-Cube 2018 report analysed how the trend of digital adoption and the number of Internet users grew by 18%. Considerably about 40% of Internet penetration was estimated by December 2018.17 The report highlights the probability of this figure going into double-digit growth by 2019. The demographic access shows around 7% growth in urban India, touching the 300 million user mark in 2018. Across both the areas, Bihar had the highest growth of nearly 35% followed closely by Odisha. The report also points out how the ‘gender gap’ in the family is bridging by Internet. Women took about 24% of the total Internet users which proves how they are in turn equally engaged over the Internet as men. In the above, there were three reports and each report was presented empirically when projections were presented in terms of numbers that varied over the years. The growth of digital history in India is a decade old phenomenon that encompassed more than half of the population in the country. The urban localities received almost 100% digital services while rural areas were still looking to get digital infrastructures in order to access the Internet that revolutionized the communication systems. Of course, it is time taking technologies, but at the same time it also provides valuable global information in varied shapes and sizes. There are pros and cons of each invented technology—social media is not impartial from such perspectives but we cannot undermine social media that how it revolutionized the society (Appendix A). Since the expansion of Internet, infrastructures and consumption of social media increased among the users. The users should receive the correct information whether territorial extent of country or other geospatial maps thereafter, and need a specialized institution to look after all such in the information age. 15 Internet and Mobile Association of India. Available at: https://cms.iamai.in/Content/ResearchP apers/15c3c84c-128a-4ea9-9cf2-a50a6d18f21c.pdf. Accessed 15 June 2020. 16 For details (Economic Times, February 20, 2018, Delhi edition), https://economictimes.indiat imes.com/tech/internet/internet-users-in-india-expected-to-reach-500-million-by-june-iamai/articl eshow/63000198.cms. Accessed 29 June 2020. 17 Kantar IMRB’s i-cube 2018 report made projections of gradual penetration of internet in the society in two different proportional segments in both rural and urban locality. For details, https://ass ets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/in/pdf/2017/01/impact-of-internet-and-digitisation.pdf. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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1.3 Spatial Mapping of Internet in India The other most significant yet overshadowed part of the Internet family is ‘Spatial Mapping’. 3D reconstruction or spatial mapping is all about to create a 3D map of the environment. It is used for motion planning, realistic blending, the ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ world (Soja 1996). ‘Geospatial’ is often associated with a particular location. Geospatial technology has made inroads into both public and private sectors in India. Major sectors that are part of the technology are telecommunication, oil and gas, forestry, mining, public safety, logistics, infrastructure and agriculture.18 There are four recognizable components of the geospatial market: software, hardware, data and services. The government of India commemorates 2016 as ‘geospatial year’ in order to encourage the use of geospatial data, products, services and solutions (GDPSS). Government brought two consecutive bills, National Geospatial Policy (NGP) in April 2016 and Geospatial Information Regulation Bill in May 2016, respectively. The NGP will facilitate ease of doing business related to geospatial data. Both the policies enabled all government departments to catalogue, maintain and update the geospatial data in a phased manner to facilitate easy and uninterrupted access. The Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016, aims to regulate geospatial information by requiring a licence to acquire, disseminate, distribute or publish geospatial information. In the making of this geospatial information, there are usually three kinds of activities that are involved, namely: 1. 2. 3.

Number of spectrums that are used; Satellite imagery (images taken from satellites); Temporal resolution (time taken by two clicks from same geographical area).

At present, the Indian geospatial sector stands at $4 billion which is expected to reach $20 billion by 2025. As per the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, is the nodal department who prepared the soft maps with geographical accuracy to suit the demand. The agency has much specialized calibre to produce an image of around 25 cm resolution with ground accuracy. All the prepared images or maps are equipped with a Geographical Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) with real-time map. Digital India aims to establish end-to-end geospatial electronics delivery systems as part of Mission Mode Projects in e-Governance domain and envisages “National GIS Mission” as core foundation of location-based electronic delivery of services for planning and governance.19 Out of the 29 states in India, only 14 states and 3 UTs (out of the 9 UTs) followed the ICT policies, mainly remote sensing, geographical information or GIS. Three Indian states (Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) have state GIS Policy followed as part of the Indian geospatial economy study. 18 M.

M. K. Sardana, “An Overview of Geospatial Industry in India”, https://isid.org.in/pdf/DN1 804.pdf. Accessed 27 June 2020. 19 For details, visit https://www.bharatmaps.gov.in. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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Adopting geospatial solutions would benefit the nation. Better asset management, productivity gain and cost savings, and improved information sharing with the location would take India to digital high at another level. The territorial variations often require such precise technology to demarcate the boundary between two similar biomes or biodiversity. The draft policy enabled both the government and nodal agency to conduct study under geospatial media and communications for better utilization of geospatial resources, identification, codification and geotagging of natural resources. In the age of social media, the circulation of correct maps, images, territorial boundaries, international borders, state boundaries, the extent of biodiversity and location of natural resources required a specialized agency who caters such necessary to keep intact the sovereignty. The spatiality should be mapped with modern gizmos and precise technology that enables it to produce geospatial maps. That revolution put forth the process of digitalization in every segment of existence from lives to business to administration to defence to health to technologies. The expansion of digitalization has laid the foundation of ‘digital culture’20 (Miller 2011b) when people across the section and communities are using digital gadgets to negotiate their cultural attributes. In the past, the flow of information was ‘costs and time’ compression is taking process and it was quite exhausted to some extent (Adams 2009). Since digital gadgets are at their popular stage in the world, digitaltime compression is another turn when digital is synonymous with time when time is compressed in such a way that in a fraction of a minute an e-mail can travel from New Delhi to New York or California. The spatial distance between two distant locations are brought closer in shape of virtual distance or one can send or receive an email, in a fraction of minute, because of digital gadgets that embodied with social media and fast Internet speed—all together they shaped the spatial turn as spatial-digital compression—when distance between two distant locations has become closer or almost negligible at social media platform, when time and space both compressed together in the digital gadgets and therefore, as a result, an email can travel within less than a minute from New Delhi to New York or California. We produced digital technologies that somehow control the time. Time is crucial factor in the spatiality. Time decides the distance or vice versa, how long time will take place to reach such and such distance. The digital gadgets are able to control time and distance at the same moment. That needs a separate research to understand how and at what extent virtual turn in daily activities is shaping the spatiality in context to spatio-temporal compression and spatio-digital compression. The spatial turn is not restricted to spatiality; rather, it constructs the digital spaces as social media.

20 Digital culture is unlike other cultural traits when an individual supposes to consuming or using more ICTs gadgets in order to enhance or be compatible in and around the spatiality at best. For more, see Miller V (2011). Understanding Digital Culture. Los Angeles: Sage.

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1.4 Spatial Turn in Social Mediasphere What is a spatial turn? In the past, there were various moments when academicians imply the word ‘turn’ as a suffix to attribute to look back from where they are coming in order to retrospect. Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, the spatial turn has become popular among geographers. The quantitative turn in history in the 1960s, a linguistic and cultural turn of the 1980s in history and literature were noted as well as a turning point to corroborate a newer dimension in the discipline. Barney Warf and Santa Arias (2008) argued that new spatial thinking related to globalization has changed the lens through which we view space. Specht (2018) argues that geography, media and communications have been closely linked since the sixteenth century. Arias (2010) analysed the importance of spatial studies as interdisciplinary where exchanges of thoughts shape the spatial turn in newer dimensions. He further pointed out that analysis of space and spatiality has strengthened scholarship, built bridges, stimulated debates and provided a more effective and holistic engagement with issues of social and political relevance. Being a student of spatial science, the imagination of spatiality often travels beyond imagination into how space and place do matter in the virtual world. Falkheimer (2006) tries to understand the relations between journalism and advertising as places where such places are often shown by some images. Thelander (2006) analysed the mediation of place and nature in travel advertisements that are often represented in stereotypical manner as a recreational resource. Thielmann (2010) argues that every discipline has its own domain areas, for geography, ‘locative’, or with the prefix ‘geo’ often attached and studied as geoart, geosurveillance or geocaching. Within this context, recent geographical and phenomenological studies on mobile media or digital media practise the rematerialization of place as ‘spatial turn’, a cultural, humanistic and media turn acknowledged in geography. R. Kitchen et al. (2018) exemplify spatial media as those technologies that are helping people to make maps or locations by using GIS and GPS. Spatial media are technologies that enable spatial coordinates accurately. Within the ambit of spatial turn, when I started to map the spatiality of social media was not an easy walk rather nothing less than wilderness in the forest. First, I had been encountered with the unavailable geography literature, which was on either geographies of (mass) communication or media studies that dealt with two different domains. Second, issues of social media were easy to talk on the tea table, contrarily much complex in research conceptualization. Third, data collected from social media was both laborious and costly, and needed much time to process data. The research has given me a chance to ‘locate’ the constructions of both space and place in imagination, through cognitively and sensory. Social media is a digital sensor which works differently for different purposes— news, job, entertainment, sports, movies, videos, politics, social and many more to suit the odd versions. Each version has a specific subject and built purposefully but almost all versions are common in such sense that all are about to show spatiality in different contexts. Social media is embedded with layers of information and each

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layer is supposed to show composite mosaics wherein each bit of information either seeking or delivering specific spatial works. For example, Facebook or Instagram, the nature of these social media is entertainment in two different ways when Facebook is about to display the spatiality which has been uploaded by the users for the public to sense the spatiality in mundane ways. The viewers who are not familiar with such shared photos or cuisines or attires or politics might involve into imagination to know the spatiality or wandering into space that often posed various challenges, but, if the viewers are being familiar with the uploaded photos or issues, that might have given them a sense of place wherein he/she already been there. In case of, first time visualizing such shared photos, then imagination would have infinite along with feeling of spaces where challenges, imagination, contestations and struggles are often encountered. In case of familiar shared stuff known on social media might give a sense of place wherein everything is known and predictable, aware and acquainted. Similarly, on Instagram, shared photos are always tendered in binary sense either space or place, if acquainted, aware, acknowledged, and cognizance would give a sense of place while in contrary, if the shared photos are posed as challenges, wandering, imagination, contestations and conflicts would give a sense of space. The uploaded or shared stuff across the social media including Facebook or Instagram or others including over-the-top (OTT) media, Netflix, Prime TV, etc., are primarily disclosing the spatial relationship in various contexts. Let us review the same in a sensorial sense whether silence or voice that how sense works through social media to map the virtual spatiality, cannot deny nonexistence in mind in various shapes and colours. That is how often shown programmes across social media can be read or watched. The sensorial organs that humans inherit at birth mark their descent into the world of knowledge. It is through these senses that one garners the understanding of the world. Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) also descends into presenting the evolution of these sense organs in a child since its infancy but before going there let us understand how these sensoriums are conceived into the faculty of feeling and then to the constitution of space. Tuan busts the myths surrounding our constitution of space only through the sensorium of sight. ‘Human beings not only discern geometric patterns in nature and create abstract spaces in mind, they also try to embody their feelings, images and thoughts in tangible material. The result is sculptural or architectural space, and on a large scale, the planned city’ (Tuan 1977: 17), which goes on to say that despite many attempts to devise a prognosis for the plenary vision of things and objects, space could be constituted using all sense organs. For example, when we touch a surface, through years of knowing how different surfaces feel, whether it be skin, metal, fire, a gust of wind, we understand and correspond to the spaces of openings that fall before us. Similarly, through the sense of taste, we understand surfaces and objects that could be localized from spaces and thus categorically render what and how they would be interpreted into different meanings. But for the faculty of hearing through different sounds, Tuan places an interesting take. He says, ‘...sound dramatizes spatial experience. Soundless spaces feel calm and lifeless despite the visible flow of activity in it, as in watching events through binoculars or on the television screen with the sound turned off, or being in a city muffled in a fresh blanket

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of snow’ (Tuan 1977: 16). Although sounds can be distinctive just like how tapping a watermelon to listen to a resounding hollow sound to ascertain its ripeness could be, sound becomes quite subjective and can elicit a variety of emotions. Similarly, silence doesn’t always convey a sense of hollowness, silence could also be deafening. In a short soliloquy in the TV series hosted by Netflix titled ‘The End of the World’, after the two leading protagonists, a girl and a guy, both in their teens, leave each other after realizing that they are in love, the male protagonist James played by Alex Lawther says that the pain caused him to overthink and the silence was too loud for him to bear. What kind of space would this silence constitute? Would this space be subjective to the individual subject’s ideation and experiences through the coagulated plane of feelings? Or would we require a completely different paradigm to understand that? Tuan’s generalization opens up certain caveats that inform us to interpret spaces and their constitution through a variety of different meanings but at the same time, keep the ground open for the synthesis of different meanings to arise and play out. Geographers mapped different notions of spatiality in space and place representations and interpretations in past few decades.

1.5 Mapping Space and Place in Digital Gadgets The construction of space and place is like part of the same coin where both sides depict two different versions that need to decode. The spatial discourses reflect various imaginations and remain in the domain of geographers. Both place and space are often regarded as ‘fundamental stuff’ in the literature of geography. The concepts of place and space may appear self-explanatory and ill-defined, and to some extent, we can even say that there are no fixed definitions for both in the social sciences and rather that both terms have been used by geographers at various points in order to acknowledge their spatial dimensions. Both place and space are quite in use at various orders and often synonymous with terms such as locations, region, area, landscape, mediascape and network society. Different sections of geographers have examined these terms so as to represent a place/space on a minute scale. The words have been used increasingly between humanistic and Marxist geographers and both groups have examined the words in their sense of attachment, while by the humanistic tradition ‘sense of place’ is inherent and for Marxist or materialist tradition ‘sense of domination and resistance’ is fundamental. The ‘sense of place’ is about the lived experiences of peoples who have shared their day-to-day activities in a bounded location while the ‘sense of domination and resistance’ infers the importance of space and it’s socially produced and consumed. After the Second World War, the geographical discourses got a sharp turn and emerged with ‘spatial science’ in which scientific modelling was emphasized over qualitative explanation and measuring numerically both peoples and scales at various orders. During the 1970s, historical and geographical materialism set the meaning that space was deemed to be implemented in social relations and both socially produced and consumed. Lefebvre (1991) infers that absolute space cannot exist,

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because it is colonized through social activity, and it becomes relativized and historicized space. Further, he infers that every mode of production produces its own mode of space, which may vary in nature. Michael Foucault (1986) in his seminal work ‘Of Other Spaces’ argued about space and spatial thinking which he preferred to call ‘heterotopology’—that sets space against time and against history itself and by an assertion that ‘the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no doubt a great deal more than with time’. Soja (1996) infers in ‘Third space’ to encourage the spatial thoughts differently with different contexts and examining space very radically and critically. Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) introduced experiential properties of space and humanistic notions of place in the geographical discourse. Tuan (1977) in his space and place argues that place does not have any peculiar scale, but it is maintained and cared for by ‘fields of care’ that reflects people’s emotional attachment. Further, using the notions of ‘topophilia’ and ‘topophobia’, he refers to the desires and fears that people associated with the places. Castells (1996) argues that over a period of time contemporary society transformed into a network society and operates in a global ‘space of flows’ under electronic and communication technological developments. Auge (1996) infers ‘non-places’ as supermarkets, shopping malls, airports, highways and multiplex cinemas and parallel to that what Relph (1976) infers as ‘placelessness’ of so many high rise towers and serials suburbs and further argues that the spread of faceless modern architecture and planning was ‘dehumanizing’ place experience such that people’s sense of place was being thinned out and rendered uniform. Harvey (1989) critically analysed how places are constructed and what they are supposed to represent when changing cultural identities to the process of time-space compression that to some extent encouraged homogenization and differentiation. Massey (1991) examined a ‘progressive sense of place’ and established a relationship between spaces and places in terms of assertion that place represents a flow and challenging that they are bounded spaces. John Agnew (1987) identified three principal meanings in order to extend geographical discourse. First is place as location—a specific point on the earth’s surface. Second is sense of place—a sense of feeling for places and its role of place in their individual and group identity. Third is place as a locale—a setting and scale for people’s day-to-day interactions. Hartshorne’s (1939) dictum ‘geography is concerned to provide accurate, orderly and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth surface’. Hartshorne’s dictum is to some extent about place as location what Agnew acknowledged in his first principle. For example, if I am talking about ‘India’ in terms of place as location, the systematic, orderly and explanatory description of the place is available on the earth’s surface. Someone can easily locate the location as per requirements. The place has a set of bounded structures. Over time, a sense of place has been acknowledged by people through various sentiments in order to express their attachments to that place. Agnew infers that over a period of time a sense of attachment about the place from where we belong occupies both our mind and thinking at various capacities. For example, at present, I am settled in Delhi but my attachments with my permanent resident, whatever would

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have remained intact? This is despite the fact that I have not visited my residential place for a long time nor would have I done so at regular intervals in the past. However, this does not reduce my intimacy to being attached to the residential home where I was born and brought up. Cultural geographers’ viewing of the place is linked to the formation of personal and group identities (Keith and Pile 1993). Sack (1980) said that ‘space is an essential framework of all modes of thought’ and further argues that space changes its meaning as per spatial relations in different situations. Dear (1997) in his ‘postmodern bloodlines’ admits that postmodern thought has provided an important impetus and reconsideration of the role of space in social theory and in the construction of everyday life. Through the writing on postmodern bloodlines, he is relying on Lefebvre’s (1991) production of space and followed a dictum ‘…space is never empty: it always embodies a meaning’ in order to subscribe to the dimensions of space in myriad order. A science of space which is about codes as means to deciphering social space which is available in terms of message and reading and become the basis for constructing our own understanding of space in terms of architectural, urbanistic, and political. Further, very suspiciously rising questions that a code which allowed space not only to be ‘read’ but also to be constructed? If there is such a code, how did it come into being? Moreover, when, how and why did it disappear? Take an example, what short of knowledge compels peoples to take or demand for separate statehood and on that science of decisions, some political parties giving their sanctions, while some are standby against any such decisions. What kinds of science of decisions compel people to go either side, with calculations? How such a science of decisions is negated by opposition, why thinking so? Of course, science of space is simply acknowledging ‘space’ by their political need and politics supposed to multiply power centres at myriad levels. (Lefebvre 1991: 7–9)

The above paragraphs discussed the dimensions of spatiality in various shapes and sizes before the social media when it was not in use or in initial stages of innovation. The spatiality can further be imagined through the available literature or we can say that geographers map the space and place accordingly to construct the spatiality. But, digital gadgets reconstructed the meaning and identity of spatiality in virtual notions that are not existing but existing very much in idea, shape and size. We can’t avoid digital thinking in our daily lives in the twenty-first-century world. These digital gadgets facilitate all social, cultural, economic, geographical knowledge and information in a click. The digital culture21 is growing as cultural traits unlike other daily cultural practices when people use gadgets to share their feelings in mundane ways—anguish or solidarity. The digital culture (Miller 2011b) is a way of life when these gadgets irrespective of shape, size, colour and features determine daily requirements whatsoever. People use these gadgets for their day-to-day practices. So, to a certain extent, culture has taken a digital turn and it was inevitable for culture to be shaped by digital in the society. Such digital turn shaped as a result of digital gadgets that became inevitable over a period of time, and as a result, the identity of an individual is gradually 21 Digital culture is unlike other cultural traits when an individual supposes to consuming or using more ICTs gadgets in order to enhance or be compatible in and around the spatiality at best. For more, see Miller V (2011). Understanding Digital Culture. Los Angeles: Sage.

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changing as well wherein the role of digital gadgets is critical. For example, let’s think about Twitter, how this micro-blogging site revolutionized digital spatiality.

1.5.1 Mapping Social Mediasphere: A Case of Twitter Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that revolutionized the governance, administration and politics (Gerbaudo 2012; Gainous and Wagner 2014; Mejova et al. 2015, Moinuddin 2019). Twitter is spatial in its nature. The spaces of Twitter or social media offer a new dimension to understand the virtual space unlike the abstract or relational space that is intact and inseparable for mundane reasons and associated features— identity, location and imagination. Similarly, across social media, various apps are designed to serve a specific work. Let’s consider the spatiality of Twitter. How does a spatial turn take place in Twitter? Twitter is supposed to run through a gadget (primarily smartphone or laptop/desktop). That smartphone or laptop/desktop can be called as primary space, in absence of such digital gadgets the digital apps cannot be operational. Or, we can say primarily in the sense that the screen of such digital gadgets is primary to move further. The screen of the smartphone or laptop/desktop is such a place where exactly all the apps are installed and visible to us for operational purposes. And, we started our functions first from the screen and therefore, we called it as primary space, our first interaction site, wherein we have to touch it or use sensorial unlock to open it for further operation. Therefore, without being into the primary space or screen space, we cannot go ahead or in secondary level to use the installed apps including Twitter. Similarly, screen space or ‘perceived space’ or ‘spatial practice’22 (Lefebvre 1991) and ‘first space’23 (Soja 1996) are the same on spatial scale in an idealistic sense. Without the gadgets, we cannot move forward, or in other words, Twitter is supposed to operate from a smartphone or laptop or iPad. This forms the first stage or first space when an individual is exposed to experiences of spatiality of such digital devices whether smartphone or laptop or iPad. Unless a 22 Perceived space or spatial practice is same in spatial terms. The spatial practice is a social space that creates knowledge, information, images and many more to appropriate in the society. Here, the primary space is in such sense that creates aura of vividness, inquisitiveness and glare in various representations. The screen space of digital gadgets is indeed a space that have an intimate relationship with user and the user interacts with screen or gadgets so many times in a day in order to being updated or to being connected in the world. The proliferation of social media and smartphones in the society made the screen space as lived when user always fond to see the screen whether to receive call or to response someone else or to send message or to watch something or to see time, to take selfie or to make video. In some extent, screen is embedded as screen saver image when an image was uploaded to see always, to being close with the image. ‘The spatial practice of a society secretes that society’s space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it. From the analytic standpoint, the spatial practice of a society is revealed through the deciphering of it space’ (Lefebvre 1991: 38). 23 First space is the ‘real’ space—the urban built form of physical buildings that can be mapped and seen. https://planningtank.com/urban-planner/edward-sojas-theories-of-urban-space. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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digital device, we cannot think to run Twitter apps (because we need to download Twitter apps on device) and not possible to login on Twitter, so first we need device and such device is the primary space or ‘first space’ that encountered spatiality of such device—length, breadth, shape, size and colour; that is, it can be mapped easily unlike other physical spatiality. The second experience of spatiality is Twitter apps when an individual uses digital devices to download Twitter apps to communicate with the others or can be mapped as apps space or ‘conceived space’ or ‘representations of space’24 (Lefebvre 1991) and ‘second space’25 (Soja 1996) that seems to provide a sense of expression or spatial experiences to being connected or being physical (virtually) ‘materialism’ in mundane capacities. Apps space is a digital spatiality where all the apps are installed random wise or as preferential, depending upon how frequent using the apps. Apps space is similar to secondary space when without being into secondary space anyone cannot open the apps (social media space). Henceforth, after login into smartphone or laptop/desktop, the app would be visible with symbolic representation, for example Twitter app visible with a bird symbol in blue sky colour. Here, I considered the case of Twitter app is purely a manifestation of digital algorithms embodied with information and knowledge. When an individual experiences both being at ‘first space’ (perceived space) and ‘second space’ (conceived space) simultaneously but without being into secondary space, it is not possible to divulge into tertiary space or ‘lived space’ or ‘representational space’26 (Lefebvre 1991) and 24 Conceived space or representations of space is same and can be called as conceptualized space, the space of scientists, planners, urbanites, technocratic, artists and software engineers. When screen is open, then, apps are visible with symbol that anyone can identify such apps easily in short time of training. The apps are in fact a node, which facilitate to connect someone, constructed by technocrats to fulfil the specific need of the societies. All apps are social in nature. Each app represents specific social need from entertainment, to infotainment, to news, to sports, to financial transactions, to game, etc. A smartphone can carry as many apps that depends upon the capacity of smartphone or gadgets, even some smartphone carry more than one hundred apps, feasible to uninstall and install without much issue. The secondary space is the app space that is purely produced by technocrats to make visible and talkative social interactions. ‘Representations of space must therefore have a substantial role and a specific influence in the production of space. Their intervention occurs by way of construction-in other words, by way of architecture, conceived of not as the building of a particular structure, palace or monument, but rather as a project embedded in a spatial context and a texture which call for “representations” that will not vanish into the symbolic or imaginary realms’ (Lefebvre 1991: 42). 25 Second space is the ‘imagined’ representational space—i.e. how the space is conceived, seen and argued over. In urban settings, this would be evident through, for example, the role of marketing and redevelopment projects. https://planningtank.com/urban-planner/edward-sojas-theories-of-urbanspace. Accessed 15 June 2020. 26 Lived space or representational space is an existence or survived space that what we are at present or we are at the ground zero or we have experience of such spaces in different capacities ranged from entertainment, to conflicts, to saddened, to cheering, to conspiracy and to being simple. For example, when we login into Twitter or Facebook or else platform, the contents whether video, news, texts, memes and pictures acknowledge the real-time incidents with fictitious or contested or information or knowledge that put forth into lived space to accommodate the same in different capacities. Social media became inevitable nowadays and shaped(ing) digital loneliness among the users. Lived space creates manifestations or prompted(ing) for next. ‘Representational spaces are symbolic works. These are often unique; sometimes they set in train aesthetic trends and, after

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‘third spaces’27 (Soja 1996). Tertiary space is space of existence or space of being that provides options to a user to move accordingly. when an individual open an apps for watching or reading or sending messages or video or else purposes can map as social media space wherein users are enagaged with social media. Social media space is lived space too. Third space is a ‘lived space’, too. As ‘lived space’, for example, Twitter provides an opportunity to feel a sense of spatial experiences qualitatively: anxiety, anguish, happy, melancholy, wired, surprise, explicitly, etc., or sometimes in quantitatively including political, social, cultural, entertainment and economic sense when an individual supposes to address the spatial issues as per se. The spatial turn on Twitter can imagine spatiality through sense or sense does matter in myriad representations even in case of space and place. How does it work as space—a unknown territory that needs to explore further to establish a perfect acquaintance, for example, in case of smartphone, screen will behave as space untill and unless have password and user id to unlock the screen. The password and user id would not have unless created a profile on the apps. Moreover, how does it work as a place—it is bounded by perfect longitude and latitude? For example, in the case of a smartphone, the person knows the key to unlock the smartphone and henceforth has a login password and profile account on the social media platform. In that case, the same screen or smartphone would have a place in manifestation. I preferred the social media sphere (Fig. 1.1) where smartphones virtually create three layers of spaces of different names: connotations, identity, representations, symbols and uses. Such virtual constructions across the digital gadgets are inevitable and easily visualized as how a smartphone or laptop/desktop works like space and place differently in different contexts. Sometimes the same screen behaves as space or place, its subject to awareness, interests, knowledge and information. The screen behaved as space when someone does not know the required details to unlock it but the same screen behaved as place when someone knows the password and login Id. The embedded spatial manifestations quantify the three different layers in the smartphone or laptop/desktop or iPad when each layer has a different role and completely separated from another layer; without being into primary layer, no one can traverse into the subsequent secondary and tertiary layers. These three layers shape the social media as a social media sphere wherein digital spatiality mapped virtually and significantly to understand the nature and pattern of digital gadgets that are inevitable in the information age in the twenty-first-century world. Triangle of social media sphere (Fig. 1.2) is linear depictions that without being at screen space anyone cannot visit on apps space and further on social media space. a time, having provoked a series of manifestations and incursions into the imaginary, run out of steam’ (Lefebvre 1991: 42). 27 Third space takes this thinking further—it combines First and Second space to create what Soja (1996) describes as, ‘a fully lived space, a simultaneously real-and-imagined, actual-and-virtual locus of structured individuality and collective experience and agency’. Third space is the experience of life in the First space mediated through Second space expectations; for details, see https://planni ngtank.com/urban-planner/edward-sojas-theories-of-urban-space. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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Fig. 1.1 Social mediasphere

Fig. 1.2 Triangle of social mediasphere

Screen space (I)

The scrolling from primary to tertiary space is a linear flow path when someone should follow it sequentially to reach the destination of what apps he/she wants to use. The mode of spatiality changed in each accessed layer. Smartphones open with screen space followed by apps space and social media space.

1.6 Spatiality, Political Economy and Social Mediasphere: A Spatial-Digital Landscapes The study of social media has been widely discussed in media studies or mass communication studies or journalism, and in other disciplines wherein media is taught as core or optional paper. But, outside media studies/mass communication/journalism, the social media study is not widely researched for different reasons including the absence of methodological techniques. Spatial scientists can explore the landscapes of social media to understand the mundane dimensions of spatiality. Moreover, the following literature was examined in order to understand the nature and characteristics of social media and how it shaped and reshaped e-commerce/online business

1.6 Spatiality, Political Economy and Social Mediasphere …

21

in respective areas. T. R. Nagaraj and S. Motiram (2017) organized a conference, to understand the recent developments in the economy and polity of India through the interdisciplinary approach. In the initial post-independence time, many economists had agonized over the nation’s modest economic performance. The recent development focused on explaining the aspects of economic growth such as declining poverty, increasing per capita income and new policy interventions. But the main focus of political economists is to explain increasing inequality, poor human development and political crises with the pattern of economic growth. Robin Hahnel (2014) compiled a book of great economist work such as Karl Marx, Veblen, Kalecki, Keynes and Robinson, concentrating on modern concepts and models in economics. This book provides an in-depth study of the financial crisis of 2008, which affected the world economy after the Great Depression event in the 1930s. This book provides analytical tools to readers that help to critically evaluate recent economic institutions and policy reforms by themselves. Norman J. Schofield et al. (2011) argued that in the twenty-first century, we consistently try to achieve the goal of high economic growth but continuously fail. Even today, many societies live far from the frontier of the developed world; can this be the main reason? The answer to this question will be explained by social scientists in a better way. John Ravenhill (2014) argues that, in the twenty-first century, the contemporary international economy is fully integrated in terms of trade, finance and globalization. The global political economy is a major subfield of international relations. The GPE researchers have produced an enormous literature, theories and method in the field of international economy. The author has explained GPE in four parts such as theoretical approach, global trade, finance and globalization. These major parts are subdivided into chapters and each of which has been specially written for this book. This book represents the combined study of history and theoretical approaches to recent debates and issues. This new edition updates the earlier author’s work. Editors have discussed a wide range of financial crises and examined the prospects of larger developing economies, with special focus on the BRICs and global governance crisis. Ronnie D. Lipschutz (2010) offers an intersection between popular culture and international relations that offers a continued analysis of political economy through films and fiction. The author, Ronnie D. Lipschutz, has illustrated basic concepts and practices in capitalism, neoclassical economics and political economy. Lipschutz examined two analytical frameworks that are applied to movies and novels and produced mass audiences such as popular culture and they are the products of capitalist markets. Film and fiction serve to reproduce social beings and are associated with beliefs, contexts and practices. H. Spencer Banzhaf (2012) argued that the environmental justice literature focuses on poor and minority communities. These poor and minority populations live in more polluted neighbourhoods such as landfills sites, hazardous waste locations and near high air pollutants. The environmental protection agency (EPA) has launched a number of initiatives to work on environmental justice for poor and minority communities. The main aim of this article is to evaluate discrimination and injustice with poor and minority communities and set the correlation between pollution and demographics. This correlation depends upon various economic models that provide important insights into different issues. Author argues

22

1 Mapping Digital Political Economy in India

that the injustice and discrimination in the society are not only based upon income inequality, many other factors work simultaneously. Therefore, the author makes an effort to explain ‘The Lone Mountain Forum’ with generous support from experts of interdisciplinary fields such as economists, sociologists, geographers, philosophers and historians, whether they work for the government, business, academia or local community organizations. Bob Samuels (2011) offers information about mass protests in California against tuition increases, furloughs and state budget cuts and mass layoffs of schoolteachers, faculty members and other public-sector workers. The decision of reducing pay and increasing tuition has highly affected both students and faculty members of University of California. These demonstrations represented a new form of social movement that helps to formulate and produce new media. Author Bob Samuels explains that this new media is not only organizing the political protests, but these protests themselves help to shape the form of social media. Greg Miller (2011a) examined that social media have gained astounding growth and popularity worldwide. It is attracting the attention of users by adding new services to social networking sites. These social networking sites now claim that more than 100 million users post 230 million ‘tweets’ every day. Social media provides an opportunity for social scientists to study human interactions. Michael Macy, a sociologist at Cornell University, says people communicate with each other by using different devices and recording those interactions. Author Greg Miller tries to investigate how information and persuasion spread through social networks. This article helps to understand how we can analyse the big data in an appropriate way. Author used the Twitter data to examine human behaviour in the context of time and space. Dhiraj Murthy (2012) offers a sociological understanding of social media in the present time. The author suggests that many social media sites such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter add much deeper meanings in day-to-day life of users. Twitter is the most popular social media site, which provides micro-blogging services with medium’s restrictions of post 140 characters, or fewer. Author tries to analyse Twitter services and builds the social network by tweets and retweets, and people have subscribed individual’s tweets. Recently, the social media sites have been associated with social movements such as Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. The main attention of this article is to examine the role of new communication technology shaping our social world. This article helps to provide further scope for examining Twitter services such as self-production, interaction orders and the way people use Twitter language and power relation between users. Social media as a discipline provides the answers to timely posed questions. L. W. Lance Bennett (2012) pointed out that many political movements are being raised and forming individualized collective action. In the era of digital media, individuals are increasingly on their own to changing societies. This personalized communication technology helps large numbers of ordinary people to become connected and reorganized by other people. Political actors such as political parties or candidates, corporations, brands and policymakers are shaping this personalized era. Today’s landscape is socially fragmented and produced many personalized meanings in it. The origin of this personalized politics is related to globalization and the free market fetish that can be roughly bounded from the 1970s to the financial crisis of the

1.6 Spatiality, Political Economy and Social Mediasphere …

23

twenty-first century. The main focus of this article is to analyse forms of individualized collective action that depends upon new patterns of political consumerism. This article examines the major issues of the contemporary world such as inequality, environmental protection, worker and human rights that are organized with the help of digital media technology and individualized collective action. Tatiana Mazali (2011) argued information and technology are constantly creating new space for connecting individuals. Author tries to build an argument that social network spaces are not representational spaces rather performance spaces. Social media is creating social and relational spaces where individual identity is recreated and reinvented it. Author tries to trace the changes in the social media from interactivity to relational and from relational to participation. Different social media typologies help to understand the deeper meanings of participatory culture of it. The present article explores the relationship between consumers and producers and its passage from interactivity to participation. Participants of the larger social network are developing their own community and expanding their network. The Web 2.0 social network fosters the participatory community by six different catalogues such as creators, critics, joiners, collector’s spectators and inactive. This new web practice has reshaped the social and cultural dimension of social media. The author aims to investigate the imaginative and real-world capacities through new technology that helps to create a new political sphere for a participatory community. Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow (2017) observed that the 2016 presidential election race was surrounding the controversy over so-called fake news and its impact on current President Donald Trump’s victory that has been the fiercest. The present article aims to offer a theoretical and empirical background to frame the debate between election politics and fake news. The fake news reconstructs the politics of election by circulating false information among readers during election time. Authors analyse the economics of fake news that monetize the web content through misleading information. Katherine Ormerod (2018) focused on personal issues that how social media is shaping and reshaping such things on a daily basis wherein she considered following issues—identity, body image, health, relationship, motherhood, career and money and politics. She wrote the texts as a personal diary where she is advising how to handle such issues on social media somehow. Franklin Foer (2017) pointed out long consequences of social media that is unavoidable to some extent. The book accounts for some of the initial minds that shaped social media into industry and profitable ventures along with how digital gadgets reduced the intelligence of human beings. The author much talked about electronic configuration of virus, data, plagiarism and organic mind across the chapters. Amber Sinha (2019) focused on India particularly how social media has influenced democracy. The author mainly looked at how misinformation became a tool and controlled the public in order to execute digital crime or else. Further, he looked at the various dimensions of misinformation such as political aspects, data, power and how it influenced the democratic institutions—voting behaviour, electronic voting machine and Election Commission of India. Sunetra Sen Narayan and Shalini Narayanan (2016) argued new media on three grounds—first, theoretical; second, politics, government and the market; and third, historical exclusions. Both

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1 Mapping Digital Political Economy in India

acknowledged the role of new media at present time from social movements to governance to politics. Apart from these, both the authors incorporated chapters on media regulation and digital literacy to draw a major contour of new media in India. Susan Greenfield (2014) in her book ‘mind change: how digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains’ argues in the capacity of neuroscientists that how digital technologies are changing the human brain in order to cope with the digital atmosphere in the twenty-first-century world. She eloquently put forth the multiplicity of the brain and its efficiency to make decisions to execute works. In the book, she studied video games and networking sites from different perspectives where the human brain was in domain in her throughout discussion that the role of such digital gadgets or technologies couldn’t be undermined; rather, these technologies have long impacts on the human brain. Clay Shirkey (2008) counted the benefits of social media in the sense of digital revolution: how a user can collect or share something with like-minded people in order to be aware of some issue. Henceforth, he argues that these technologies are used in order to expand digital activism to aware people on certain issues. The author speaks in both directions—consequences and benefits. In the above, following scholars discussed the applications of social media in mundane interpretations and representations wherein they acknowledged both pros and cons of the social media in both implicit and explicit ways. The scholars agree that social media emerged as a public sphere that cannot be underestimated or undermined or marginalized. Henceforth, the above-mentioned literatures are indeed not enough to draw conclusions rather help to understand the nature of social media and its applicability. The study was to map the spatiality of social media in India.

1.7 Contours of the Book The chapters are following a sequence to reflect a picture of social mediasphere where I am defending how social mediasphere is geography through six different indicators which I discussed in next seven chapters. For example, I used social—in sense of exploration of meaning that how often we understood social media or in other words that how much social is/was in the social media? (Chapter 2); spatial or locations in sense of regions/nation/boundaries with communication (Chapter 3); electoral-to understand how electoral democracy or elections were influenced by social media (Chapter 4); semiotics/emoji—to map the use of such signs and symbols during communication (Chapter 5); economic activities/e-commerce—to locate that how social media can improve the potential business or else issues (Chapter 6); and the last, Internet shutdowns—to understand that how states are using social media to run the administration (Chapter 7). All the above-mentioned indicators are geographical in mundane ways what I conceived in the first chapter that social mediasphere is unlike atmosphere and hydrosphere where each layer denotes a different spatial distribution in both vertical and horizontal sense.

1.7 Contours of the Book

25

The contours around the spatiality of digital gadgets are inevitable in daily-lived experiences. Digital gadgets found in shapes of social mediasphere—spatial media acknowledged the different spatiality in a click in both pictorials and textual or combined together. I prefer to call it social mediasphere instead social media, which is a spatial phenomenon when digital gadgets represent spatiality in mundane interpretations. I often believed that social mediasphere is embedded with spatial configuration where augmented spatiality is inevitable. We are being users of such and such digital gadgets unknown to it unless we decode layers of spatiality. Let us think, how social mediasphere is an augmented spatiality? Augmentation is purely a technical calibration when technology shapes such idea, to map the spatiality that is absent in real ground but configured in technical landscapes. Habermas (1974) considered ‘public sphere’ as social spaces that institutionalized to share, to discuss and to understand the spatiality in terms of governance, politics, economics, culture, traditions and taboos in the society. Similarly, social mediasphere is a technically augmented platform that provides such opportunities to share, to discuss and to acknowledge the spatial manifestations. In social mediasphere, I preferred to use suffix ‘sphere’, being student of spatial science; sphere denotes the layers of knowledge, unlike atmosphere and hydrosphere. The study is based on four questions. First, social media institutionalized the senseless public? Second, social media institutionalized the fake and misinformation contents? Third, spatial turn is inseparable from social media contents?28 Fourth, social media contents are often embedded in political and economic values? These four questions further merged with five objectives that are discussed in the following chapters. These fives objectives are as follows: to examine contents in order to understand ‘social’ in social media in India; to examine popularity (use for business purpose) of social media among peoples involved in different economic activities in India; to examine the geographical pattern of social media in India; to examine the use of social media in terms of political business during election in India; and to analyse the geographical attributes of social media in order to understand the aspects 28 Content analysis is about analysing media content in systematic ways wherein ‘sample of media, establishing categories of content, measuring the presence of each category within the sample, and interpreting the results, usually against some external criteria’ (Bertrand and Hughes 2005: 198). This study will follow the methods of content analysis to interpret the headlines, caption and photographs. Content analysis (Mitchell 2011; Bertrand and Hughes 2005) is a research tool focused on the actual content of media. To conduct a content analysis on a text, the text is coded or broken down, into manageable categories on a variety of levels—word, word sense, phrase, sentence or theme—and then examined using one of content analysis’ basic methods: conceptual analysis or relational analysis. It is used to determine the presence of certain words, concepts, themes, phrases, characters or sentences within texts or sets of texts and to quantify this presence in an objective manner. Texts can be defined broadly as books, book chapters, essays, interviews, discussions, newspaper headlines and articles, historical documents, speeches, conversations, advertising, theatre, informal conversation or any occurrence of communicative language. See for further details Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Neuendorf, Kimberly A (2002). The Content Analysis Guidebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Weber, Robert Philip (1990). Basic Content Analysis (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Krippendorff, Klaus, and Bock, Mary Angela (eds) (2008). The Content Analysis Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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of political economy involved in the digital business in India.29 Moreover, Internet shutdowns are discussed as inseparable part of social media that nowadays states are using as weapons against people to either slow down the Internet speed or completely Internet shutdown in some parts of the territoriality. Moreover, the study is banking on secondary sources and a token survey conducted in different nineteen cities in India to understand the aspects of social media that how a common person conceives the technology in different time frameworks. The study designed to create interlinkages between social media in terms of space and place through election, e-commerce, emoji, trolls, digital socialization, digital divide and Internet shutdown. The study maps all the above in critical sense of political economy that how did social media shape spatiality and users as well in the country.

1.8 Conclusion Spatial scientists can explore the landscapes of social media that show how gadgets shaped and reshaped the digital spatiality. The constructions of digital spatiality are inevitable in the era of ‘space of flows’ (Castells 2009). The imagination of spaces multiplied in the age of information when digital gadgets became a basic need to be connected in the world. The compression of space and time has reached such a critical juncture when a message can travel, for example, Delhi to New York or London in a fraction of seconds, unlike space and time wherein both exit together and overlapped and digital became synonym of time. The study will help to decipher spatial turn in social media and how political and economics are inseparable from such spatial turn. The spatial turn is not limited to interpretations and representations in abstract sense; rather, it would consider social, political, economics and geography as indicators to map the spatiality in digital gadgets. The forthcoming chapter is about mapping the ‘social’ in context to spatiality that social media is often talked about spatiality in mundane interpretations and representations wherein imaginations of spatiality are embedded in the social media contents.

29 As per census of India 2011, there was 52 cities which had million population or more than that and they are spread in 16 states and 2 UTs; henceforth, in many states it was more than two cities which had million population. So, on that account the study considered to represent all states without giving privileged one over other and being rational; therefore study considered only one city from each state except Kerala, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh wherein the study had taken two cities of million population because number of million cities was more than two in the respective states. These states are populous in comparison with others as well.

Appendix A

27

Appendix A India’s Internet users expected to register double digit growth to reach 627 million in 2019, driven by rapid Internet growth in rural areas, market research agency Kantar IMRB Wednesday said. Internet usage in the country has exceeded half a billion people for first time, pegged at 566 million, driven by rural Internet growth and usage. In its ICUBE 2018 report that tracks digital adoption and usage trends in India, it noted that the number of Internet users in India has registered an annual growth of 18% and is estimated at 566 million as of December 2018, a 40% overall Internet penetration, it observed. It projected a double-digit growth for 2019 and estimates that the number of Internet users will reach 627 million by the end of this year. Of the total user base, 87% or 493 million Indians are defined as regular users, having accessed Internet in last 30 days. Nearly 293 million active Internet users reside in urban India, while Internet users grew by 7% in urban India, reaching 315 million users in 2018, digital adoption is now being propelled by rural India, registering a 35% growth in Internet users over the past year. It is now estimated that there are 251 million Internet users in rural India, and this is expected to reach 290 million by the end of 2019, the report said. ‘Increased availability of bandwidth, cheap data plans and increased awareness driven by government programme. It seems to have rapidly bridged the digital gap between urban and rural India. Consequently, the penetration in rural India has increased from 9% in 2015 to 25% in 2018’, it added. Bihar registered the highest growth in Internet users across both urban and rural areas, registering a growth of 35% over last year. The report also noted that the Internet usage is more gender balanced than ever before. For details, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/internet-usersin-india-to-reach-627-million-in-2019-report/articleshow/68288868.cms. Accessed 17 June 2020.

Appendix B

S. No

Cities (million population)

States

Population

1

Mumbai

Maharashtra

18,394,912

2

Delhi

Delhi (UTs)

16,349,831

3

Kolkata

West Bengal

14,057,991

4

Chennai

Tamil Nadu

8,653,521

5

Bangalore

Karnataka

8,520,435

6

Hyderabad

Telangana

7,677,018

7

Ahmedabad

Gujarat

6,357,693 (continued)

28

1 Mapping Digital Political Economy in India

(continued) S. No

Cities (million population)

States

Population

8

Pune

Maharashtra

5,057,709

9

Jaipur

Rajasthan

3,046,163

10

Ghaziabad

Uttar Pradesh

2,375,820

11

Patna

Bihar

2,049,156

12

Kozhikode

Kerala

2,028,399

13

Thiruvananthapuram

Kerala

1,679,754

14

Varanasi

Uttar Pradesh

1,432,280

15

Faridabad

Haryana

1,414,050

16

Srinagar

Jammu and Kashmir

1,264,202

17

Dhanbad

Jharkhand

1,196,214

18

Durg-Bhilainagar

Chhattisgarh

1,064,222

19

Chandigarh

Chandigarh (UTs)

1,055,450

Source Census of India, 2011

Appendix C: Questionnaire City ....... Date ....... Timing ....... INVESTIGATOR’S INTRODUCTION AND STATEMENT OF INFORMED CONSENT My name is ______________________________ and I have come from Centre for the Study of Developing Societies a social science research organization in Delhi. We are conducting an ICSSR funded research survey on Mapping the Political Economy of Social Media space in India: A Spatial Analysis in selected million cities in the country. There is no risk of participating in this survey. But, if you answer our questions, you will help us to understand the dimensions of social media. This survey is an independent study and is not linked to any political party or government agency. Whatever information you provide will be kept strictly confidential. The findings of this survey will be used for television programmes and writing articles in newspapers, research papers and books. Participation in this survey is voluntary and it is entirely up to you. We hope that you will take part in this survey. Usually, the survey will take 20 to 35 min to complete. Please spare some time for the interview and help me to successfully complete the survey. May I begin the interview now?

Appendix C: Questionnaire

29

Section I Name (Optional) ___________________________ Age .................... Gender .................... Email address .................... Education .................... Higher Secondary .................... Senior Secondary .................... Under Graduate .................... Post Graduate or Above .................... Section II 1. 2.

You are familiar with social media? a. Yes.... b. No.... How long you are associated with social media? • • • •

3.

Why it is called social media? • • • •

4.

6. 7. 8.

Connecting People.... Express emotions.... Provide Public Platform.... Others....

What are the main parts of social media as per your understanding? • • • •

5.

One year.... Two years.... Five Years.... Seven Years & Above....

Dialogue.... Information.... Interaction.... Like & Share....

How it is different from other media? a. One-way communication.... b. Two-way Communication.... c. Multi way communication.... d. Others.... Which social media site is important in your personal/professional life? a. Facebook.... b. WhatsApp.... c. Twitter.... d. Others.... Do you take the contents of the social media very seriously? a. Yes.... b. No.... How do you classify the contents of social media? • Entertainment.... • Social Affairs.... • Knowledge....

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1 Mapping Digital Political Economy in India

• Cultural Information.... 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

Are your family members using social media? a. Yes.... b. No.... Do you ever realize it is better for your family members? a. Yes.... b. No.... Do you feel social media made any changes in your life? a. Yes.... b. No.... Do you think social media helped you to improve your identity among peer group or other? a. Yes.... b. No.... Do you think social media is synonymous with cultural traits, as well? a. Yes.... b. No....

Section III 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Are you using social media as platform to promote your business activities? a. Yes.... b. No.... What is your prime source of income? a. Agriculture.... b. Manufacturing.... c. Tertiary.... d. Others.... Have you ever tried to promote yourself on social media? a. Yes.... b. No.... Have you found any relation between SNSs (social networking sites) and your economic activities? a. Yes.... b. No.... Are you using online transactions? a. Yes.... b. No.... Since you using online transactions, your business is? a. Increased.... b. Decreased.... Who advised you to move on social media to get better business opportunity? a. Friends.... b. Relatives.... c. Business Competitors.... d. Others.... Which social media is giving more business opportunity? a. Facebook.... b. WhatsApp.... c. Twitter.... d. LinkedIn.... e. Others.... Are you satisfied by online business? a. Yes.... b. No....

Section IV 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

The nature of contents appeared on your screen through social media often belong to? a. Urban....b. Rural.... c. Metropolitan.... d. Global.... What are the main geographical attributes found across the social media? a. Religion.... b. Caste.... c. Class.... d. Region.... e. Others.... Do you feel comfortable with contents by your service providers? a. Yes.... b. No.... The expanses (data) on social media become routine expenditure like other expenditure? a. Yes.... b. No.... What activities do you prefer utmost on social media? a. Blogging.... b. SNSs.... c. Chatting.... d. Online News....

Appendix C: Questionnaire

28. 29.

31

Can you live without social media for while? a. Yes.... b. No.... Have you ever realized that due to social media you landed into some trouble (sometime) in your life? a. Yes.... b. No....

Section V 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39.

40.

Do you found any relevance of social media during election time? a. Yes.... b. No.... How political parties are using social media during election time? a. By Policies.... b. By Slogan.... c. By Leadership Image.... d. By Flag.... Who are using more of social media between national and regional political parties in India? a. National Parties.... b. Regional Parties.... Which ways politicians are using social media? a. Personal.... b. Ideological Purposes.... The nature of political contents across the social media is? a. Informative.... b. Cultural.... c. Political.... d. Socio-economic.... In which of the following option has shaped the political information? a. Political symbols.... b. Flag.... c. Ideological leader.... d. Election symbol.... Do you found any hidden relationship between politicians/political party and particular social media to feed political news? a. Yes.... b. No.... Ever you realized that social media is promoting a particular political party during election time? a. Yes.... b. No.... How do treat such political news, which you like (with your political ideology)? a. Like.... b. Share.... c. Tag Emoticons.... d. Comments.... e. Nothing.... Do you realize that social media become lively platform for political expression? a. Yes.... b. No.... Do you realize that now elections are mediated in India? a. Yes.... b. No....

Section VI 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

Do you have found any relevance of time on social media? a. Yes.... b. No.... What would you like to see on social media, first? a. Image.... b. Time.... c. Who sent/posted the issue.... d. Location.... Are you using emoticons in social media? a. Yes.... b. No.... Do you agree that the comment button is made popular to the social media? a. Yes.... b. No.... Do you treat the Like, another basic tool of social media? a. Yes.... b. No....

32

46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

1 Mapping Digital Political Economy in India

How frequent you used the like button on social media? a. Sometime.... b. For all time.... c. Never.... d. Often.... Have you ever shared something on social media? a. Yes.... b. No.... What contents of social media you like to share among peer group or others, if any? a. Political.... b. Cultural.... c. Religion.... What you wish to share in your page? a. Individual.... b. Group.... c. Family.... How frequent you tag? a. Often.... b. Sometime.... c. Never.... d. Others.... e. Friends.... f. To all.... Do you think that tagging is an important tool of social media? a. Yes.... b. No....

Note Interviewer must report if found any inconvenience during feeling the questionnaire. Interviewer’s signature Name ....

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Castells M (2004) Space of flows, space of places: materials for a theory of urbanism in the information age. In: Graham, S (ed.) The cybercities reader. Routledge, London Castells M (2009) Communication power. Oxford University Press, Oxford Dear M (1997) Postmodern bloodlines. In: Benko G, Strohmayer U (eds) Space and social theory: interpreting modernity and postmodernity. Blackwell, Oxford Deuze M (2007) Media work: digital media and society. Polity, London Ehrenberg R (2012) Social media sway: worries over political misinformation on Twitter attract scientists’ attention. Sci News 182(8):22–25 Falkheimer J (2006) When place image collide: place branding news journalism. In: Falkheimer J, Jansson A (eds) A geographies of communication: the spatial turn in media studies. Nordicom, Gothenburg Foer F (2017) World without mind: why Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple threaten our future. Vintage, London Foucault M (1986) Of other spaces. Diacritics 16(1):22–27 Foucault M, Miskowiec J (1986) Of other spaces: utopias and heterotopias. Diacritics 16(1):22–27 Gainous J, Wagner KM (2014) Tweeting to power: the social media revolution in American politics. Oxford University Press, New York Garnham N (2001, reprint 2005/06) Contribution to a political economy of mass communication. In: Durham MG, Kellner DM (eds) Media and cultural studies. Blackwell, Oxford Gerbaudo P (2012) Tweets and the street: social media and contemporary activism. Pluto Press, London Graber DA (2007) Media power in politics. CQ Press, Washington DC Greenfield S (2014) Mind change: how digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains. Random, London Habermas J (1974) The public sphere: An encyclopedic article (Trans, Sara Lennox & Frank Lennox). New German Critique 3:49–55 Hahnel R (2014) The ABCs of political economy: a modern approach. Pluto Press, London Hartshorne R (1939) The nature of geography. Ann Assoc Am Geogr. Available at: https://files.cer comp.ufg.br/weby/up/214/o/Livro-The_Nature_of_Geography.pdf. Accessed 25 June 2020 Harvey D (1989) The condition of post-modernity. Blackwell, Oxford Herman E, Chomsky N (2001, reprint 2005/06) A propaganda model. In: Durham MG, Kellner DM (eds) Media and cultural studies. Blackwell, Oxford Jorgenson DW, Vu KM (2016) The ICT revolution, world economic growth, and policy issues. Telecommunications Policy 40(5):383–397 Keith M, Pile S (1993) Place and the politics of identity. Routledge, London Kennedy D (2012) Twitter talk: its search and trends can keep you up to speed. ABA Journal 98(9):33. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23423760. Accessed 07 September 2017 Kessler E (2013) Social media and the movement of ideas. Eur Jud: J New Eur 46:26–35. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42751114. Accessed 24 September 2017 Kitchen R et al (2018) Understanding spatial media. Sage, London Kudaisya G (2006) Region, nation, heartland: Uttar Pradesh in India’s body politics. Sage, New Delhi Lefebvre H (1991) The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith Trans.). Blackwell, Oxford Lipschutz RD (2010) Political economy, capitalism, and popular culture. Rowman & Littlefield, New York Lundby K (ed) (2009a) Digital storytelling, mediatized stories: self-representations in new media. Peter Lang, New York Lundby K (2009b) Mediatization: concept change consequences. Peter Lang, New York Massey D (1991) The political place of locality studies. Environ Plan A 23:267–281 Mazali T (2011) Social media as a new public sphere. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA McCartney M (2011) We shouldn’t fear Facebook and Twitter. BMJ 324. Available at: https://www. jstor.org/stable/23051965. Accessed 23 June 2020 McLuhan M (1964) Understanding media: the extensions of man. McGraw Hill, New York

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Mejova Y et al (2015) Twitter: a digital socioscope. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Miller G (2011a) Social scientists wade into the tweet stream. Am Assoc Adv Sci 333(6051):1814– 1815 Miller V (2011b) Understanding digital culture. Sage, Los Angeles Mitchell C (2011) Doing visual research. Sage, Los Angeles Moinuddin S (2017) Mediascape and the state: a geographical interpretation of image politics in India. Springer, Cham, Switzerland Moinuddin S (2019) The political Twittersphere in India. Springer, Cham, Switzerland Murthy D (2012) Towards a sociological understanding of social media: theorizing Twitter. Sociol 46(6):1059–1073 Nagaraj R, Motiram S (2017) Political economy of contemporary India. Cambridge University Press, New York Narayan S, Narayan SS (2016) India connected: mapping the impact of new media. Sage, New Delhi Nayar PK (2012) Digital cool: life in the age of new media. Orient Blackswan, New Delhi Ormerod K (2018) Why social media is ruining your life. Hachette, London Peterson M (2011) Orkut dissected social networking in India & Brazil. Aimclear, Duluth, 27 June 2011. Available at: https://www.aimclear.com/orkut-dissected-social-networking-in-indiabrazil/. Accessed 27 June 2020 Ravenhill J (2014) Global political economy, 4th edn. Oxford University Press, New York Relph E (1976) Place and placelessness. In: Hubbard P, Kitchin R, Gill V (eds) Key texts in human geography. Sage, London Sack R (1980) Conceptions of geographic space. Prog Hum Geogr 4(3):313–345 Samuels B (2011) Facebook, Twitter, Youtube—and democracy. Am Assoc Univ Profr 97(4):32–34 Schofield NJ, Falaschetti D, Rutten AR (2011) Political economy: critical concepts in the social sciences. Routledge, London Shirkey C (2008) Here comes everybody: how change happens when people come together. Penguin, New York Sinha A (2019) The networked public: how social media is changing democracy. RUPA, New Delhi Soja E (1996) Third space: journey to loss angles and other real and imagined places. Blackwell, London Specht D (2018) Did you find the world or did you make it up? Media, communications and geography in the digital age. Westminst Pap Commun Cult 13(2):1–13 Srivathsan A (2007) What mobile phones make of us. In: Rajan N (ed) Digital culture unplugged: probing the negative cyborg’s multiple locations. Routledge, New Delhi Straus JR, Glassman ME, Shogan CJ, Smelcer SN (2013) Communicating in 140 characters or less: Congressional adoption of Twitter in the 111th Congress. Am Polit Sci Assoc 46(1):60–66 Suresh K, Ramakrishnan C (2015) Twittering public sentiments: a predictive analysis of prepoll Twitter popularity of Prime Ministerial Candidates for India elections 2014. Media Watch 6(2):238–254 Thelander A (2006) Blank spaces: the mediation of nature in travel advertisements. In: Falkheimer J, Jansson A (eds) Geographies of communication: the spatial turn in media studies. Nordicom, Gothenburg Thielmann T (2010) Locative media and Mediated localities: an introduction to media geography. Aether 5(March):1–17 Thomas PN (2010) Political economy of communications in India: the good, the bad and the ugly. Sage, New Delhi Tuan Y-F (1977) Space and place: the perspective of experience. Minnesota University Press, Minneapolis, MN Venkatesh M (2019) Orkut the site where Indians made friendships before Facebook came along. The Print, New Delhi, 2 June. Available at: https://theprint.in/features/brandma/orkut-the-sitewhere-indians-made-frandships-before-facebook-came-along/244499/. Accessed 18 June 2020 Warf B, Arias S (2008) The spatial turn: interdisciplinary perspectives. Routledge, London

Chapter 2

Mapping ‘Social’ in Social Mediasphere in India

Abstract Social media is known as social media because people believe that the contents on social media is ‘social’ by nature. How much social or else, no bodies have accurate knowledge in fact the platform itself. Obar and Wildman (Telecommun Policy 39:745–750, 2015) argue that four arguments to be called as social media are as follows: (1) social media are Web 2.0 Internet-based applications. (2) Usergenerated content (UGC) is the lifeblood of the social media organism. (3) Users create service-specific profiles for the site or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization. (4) Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user’s profile with those of other individuals or groups. This chapter is about how to analyse ‘social’ that how it is imagined as spatiality in some context or in other words the imaginations of spatiality are often embedded in the circulated social media contents. Keywords Social · Mapping · Digital age · Digital socialization · Trolls

2.1 Introduction Social media is an Internet-based technology which can operate through smartphones, laptop and iPad. The decade 2010–2020 was the age of social media wherein it took almost whole world irrespective of north and south, rural and urban, male and female, caste and class, religion and atheist. The journey of social media is still going on, though the lives beyond social. The popularity of social media among Indian was institutionalized through governance1 when people were forced or in other words no other option left to either learn to operate social media for online transactions or e-commerce apart from infotainment or entertainments or news or games. In a survey 2017–2018, around 80.8% of people are familiar with social media while 19.2% are ignorant about social media (Graph 2.1). In India, nearly 41% 1 In

2016 Govt. of India suddenly took a decision of demonetization policy when all the existing currencies became illegal tender by midnight of 8 Nov., 2016 that pushed an individual to shift online transactions for as usual online business through Paytm, Google Pay and more. For more, see https://www.mbauniverse.com/group-discussion/topic/business-economy/demonetisation, last accessed, 5 June 2020. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Moinuddin, Digital Shutdowns and Social Media, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3_2

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Graph 2.1 Familiar with social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

of the population is online and despite that, it is the world’s largest social media market. In order to expand digital infrastructures, the government launched a flagship programme under ‘Digital India’ in 2015. Digital India (Appendix A) was the flagship programme of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to enhance digital infrastructure in the country. As a result, social media expands its reach in all directions equally in the country. The expansion brought many changes including digital lives when a user is often found on digital gadgets that somehow construct the meaning of social in both digital and spatial contexts.

2.2 Remapping ‘Social’ in Digital Lives South Asia stands today at the precincts where the inclusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has become incumbent on the state for better development in economic and political aspects in the broad functioning of the state. On the lines of the same are ensued initiatives like Digital India, Digital Bangladesh and Digital Pakistan by their respective ministries; such initiatives have led to the promulgation of social and cultural roles of its citizens, thus leading to the creation of a more inclusive atmosphere for the erstwhile marginalized communities (Paul and Thompson 2018). Quite a construed and misnomer side of ICTs is social media. Social media today is being used as a negotiating space for various affairs, mostly business and trade; apart from this, its ubiquity allows people to engage with others thus bridging the

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long withdrawn aspects of time and space present in legacy media technologies like the press, TV and radio. Robert Logan (2010) calls out new media, under whose banner ICTs and social media fall, as an offspring of legacy media. Does social media justifiably form to be an offspring of legacy media or not, is a question to be further thought upon. What brings to my mind is not the modalities of both the new and legacy mediums being congruent to each other in form and structure but the way they are perceived and used by people who are present on the respective platforms and the way they consume those platforms. Social media is actively used by entities, because it becomes a handy tool and allows an escape into the digital world where one can actively engage with others and form their very own publics. Narayan and Narayanan (2016) while describing new media put it under the ambit of mediascapes, ideoscapes and technoscapes, glibly missing to put it in the context of ethnoscapes and financescapes as conceptualized by Arjun Appadurai (1990). There have been many instances which prove that social media gives a space and platform for the conventional margins to voice out their opinion and get their opinion in the public forum thus giving a momentum to new discourses. The same happens with financescapes where a new media user will try to gauge and engage in e-commerce activities at the most basic level and in online trade and auctions for those who are high on the hierarchy of the digital divide. This phenomenon has been seen in the analysis of various movements that are today known as hashtag activism like the #OccuyWallStreet (Conover et al. 2013), #ArabSpring (Sjoberg and Whooley 2015) and #ILookLikeAnEngineer (Malik et al. 2018). The following movements had shaped the political information, and as consequences, the political regimes of such countries are under pressure, created by users (youths, activists and politicians) through social media. In a survey 2017–2018, around 53.28% of respondents often found images of leaderships that were used to propagate political information, nearly 26.64% found political symbol is another way to map politics, and about 20.09% believed that flags are enough to identify the respective political affiliation (Graph 2.2). Social media provides a platform to all its users to use it accordingly. The professional dimensions helped it to expand its horizon and still to know how it works, effects and behaves. This brings us to the point where we are left to lay out a narrow, precise and conceptual understanding of what we mean by social media. We understand that this new form of communication is still in its nascent stage and owing to its ubiquity, and ambivalence; it would not do justice to define social media in its entirety. But we can gradually start by understanding what you mean by the social in social media. As Miller et al. (2016: 1) pointed out with respect to social media that ‘we need first clearly to establish what those potentials are and then to examine what the world subsequently did with those possibilities’. Similarly, we need to first encapsulate what is the crux of social media that we are trying to define. On the one hand, it has led to the downfall of traditional forms of dyadic (face-to-face) communication but on the other hand, it has also given a new platform to conduct dyadic communication through mediums such as Skype and holding online video conferences. Such dynamism and perpetuating innovation, where companies provide new media especially social media apparatuses, have the calibration to infuse aspects of legacy media into the

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Graph 2.2 Main constitutes that’s shaped political information (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

realm of new media. Moreover, such apparatuses change forms with every new update that one garners on one’s device. On the same lines, we could start by understanding how social media shapes the sociality of entities that are a part of it. Miller et al. (2016) have laid down the basis of how social media gives entities a platform to engage from the smallest to the largest group and from flitting between the most private to the most public types of engagements. As one goes about engaging oneself on the various social media platforms at our disposal today, one can understand the rubrics of private and public lives are being reshaped today. It would have been very difficult to stalk someone prior to the inclusion of new media especially social media. With social media, even a lay (wo)man can today search for the digital footprints of any entity he/she wants to see. Snooping and prying too form a part of our everyday sociality. We might get the urge to look at what the person sitting next to us in a bus ride might be typing on WhatsApp, or for that matter, we might pass derisions over someone pouting on Snapchat in any public space, we tweet our problems tagging the concerned handle and get a repatriation response within minutes, this way the consumer redressal courts have gone redundant. We engage with everything in an abstract sense which never misses to be noticed. But all these form a large part of our sociality and are gradually becoming a part of how we conduct ourselves. As we try to negotiate ourselves in the virtual world, we are, at every moment, trying to burn the bridges of what constitutes our public and private selves. Conversations through comments, tweets pictures and other forms of expression like that of posting memes or Graphics Interchange Format (GIFs), when put in different contexts, can highlight a very significant change in what we constitute as our public

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and what we constitute as our private. The things which we wouldn’t have shared in a dyadic form of communication is now made possible in the sphere of social media. Social media provides us a mask. For example, inconsistency between reality and Facebook or WhatsApp or other platforms might lead. During focus group discussion, a boy suggested that, for example, a girl who regularly uploads lots of selfies taken at home, dressed and made-up provocatively, is then obliged to adopt an equally introvert/extrovert attitude at school. The fact that young people will criticize this kind of inconsistency in what they call ‘reality’ and ‘Facebook’ suggests that social media does not give them a sense of ‘unreality’ or ‘mystification’, but rather that they generally expect to find online what they already know from the offline environment. Consistency between online and offline is seen as ‘truth’, while repeated variations are sanctioned as inappropriate and disappointing. At the same time of providing such a space, social media also makes us deliberate whether we should say tweet, or upload a photo or put up a status, thus censoring our right to conduct free exchange of ideas. This way, social media and the response received through it explicitly place before us the digital aspects of whether we should accept putting ourselves out there or not.

2.3 Digital Social Mediasphere Landscapes The Indian society has traditionally been a commune. The population crossing 1300 million over a restricted geographic territory has led us no other option but to build residential buildings and tenements so close to each other that it is an accepted affair to peek into the affairs of the people next door. What then does it entail for Indians on the verge of formulating policies related to a medium with its headquarters in Silicon Valley and a law on privacy alien to them? To further explore my point, let me give you an example. In a survey 2017–2018, around 42.36% believed that social media facilitates to connect people, about 31.88% believed that it is a public platform, nearly 12.66% believed that anyone can express themselves on social media, while around 13.10% did not find reason to celebrate social media rather remain passive (Graph 2.3). Social media is different for different reasons. The social media landscape available today with users who have the requisite access to such platforms is in itself manifold stratified. We have usergenerated content sharing platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Youku, we have social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Weibo, and microblogging sites like Twitter and endless blogs. What is really distinct for these sites is that each allows a space that is lucidly restricted. I call it restricted in the sense that this place allows for the promulgation of a user’s private sphere out in the open. To elaborate on this, let us consider a teenage male user who goes to the gym and uploads his gym selfies and body poses regularly on any social networking site. Whoever who has access to his account will be able to see and understand a very important part of his life. For the matter, a careful stalker will also be able to make out what time does this gym enthusiast go to the gym and can also have an insight

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Graph 2.3 Why it is called social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

into what kind of private sphere does the gym enthusiast take with him to a public place—the gym—and how this public place also becomes a spectacle for those who have access to see. Thus, my point of contention is that the dynamics of public and private life has been argued over the centuries on accounts of daily socio-economic and political thoroughfares. Herbert Marcuse (1964) had his share of technological pessimism when he put forward his idea over the mutual sublation of technology citing the reason for a disruption in the societal dialectics. Of course, Marcuse doesn’t directly talk about social media as such but there have been theoreticians who have brought this argument under the fold of social media (Fuchs 2011, 2014a, c, 2015). But what does exactly Marcuse warn us from. Judging from his pessimistic allegories, Marcuse seems to be afraid of the societal dialectics—the process where human dialectics is considered a crucial part is negated due to the inclusion of technological processes into the fold of mainstream commercialization and profit mongering, and thus, unless technology is not sublated, i.e. if unless it is reconfigured and reconstructed to mark its inclusion in the aspects of individual and broader collective freedoms, then the technocrats will easily have an upper hand over the societal dialectics-heading for a dystopian future. In a survey 2017–2018, around 42.41% was agreed that social media provides or considered as source of information, about 37.99% believed that it is facilitating as interaction platform, nearly 9.61% believed that anyone can start dialogue on social media, while around 6.99% considered that the inbuilt attributes or buttons such as ‘like’ and ‘share’ do matter in the social media (Graph 2.4). Marcuse (1964) pointed out that when this same argument is brought into the fold of social media we see that issues over control of personal data and advertisement banners filling the screens of

2.3 Digital Social Mediasphere Landscapes

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Graph 2.4 Unattached parts of social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

platform access are all the interventions of commercialization that Marcuse wanted to warn us about. But then how can we bring this argument in the fold of mapping one’s public and private spheres of life in an age heavily dominated by pouting selfies, newer forms of dyadic communication and sprouting businesses aligning with liberal capitalist views? When the personal gets into the public, it has always been a contentious issue. Historiography suggests various forms of the private invading the personal. For instance, the famous feminist statement of the eponymous title: personal is political (Hanich 1970) and also examples of queer movements varying around identity politics, all have tried to put the sphere of sexuality—a historically private phenomenon into the public. But then, thinking on the same lines, if we put the public portrayal of private spheres through the intervention of a technocratic medium, how can we agree upon the subjective and objective dialectics to conceptualize this phenomenon that is noted all over the globe through the people who have the necessary access? Of course, to think about this is a time-consuming and effort replenishing job and will require a great deal of investment via the modalities of subjective and objective dialectics. I stress on the contingency of subjective and objective dialectics on the same lines as Marcuse said—that the subjective and objective arms of dialectics through a consummated passage of time will yield a wholesome form of dialectics. This is to say that both the above-mentioned arms constitute the progression of dialectics (Marcuse 1964).

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2.4 When Lived Digitally? In spite of having discussed the feasible viability of empirically gauging social media, let us now digress a bit and check for the possibility of measuring the utility as well as the dysfunctions that this medium provides for and through this let us traverse our journey in understanding the plethora of dynamic gauges that this medium contains within its ambit. In a survey 2017–2018, study revealed that around 81.22% used the platform to send/post or in other words, tries to be connected on social media irrespective of involvements while around 18.78% nevertheless used the platform though they often scroll social media for different reasons (Graph 2.5). That depends upon the interest and engagement of an individual attached to platforms. Christian Fuchs (2014a) attributes social media a hands-down capitalist function and provision by highlighting that social media and its contents be it in the form of videos (sketches, parodies, memes, talk-shows) on video sharing platforms or other types of content on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and even, the promotional content on a micro-blogging site like Reddit have a distinctive exchange value which according to Fuchs and also, rightly in the essentialist capitalist sense deems social media a capitalist function. But whether it is endogenously or exogenously capitalist or not, or whether it contains elements queer to the capitalist function is a job best left to further contemplation. When we are trying to map our digital lives by gaining access to the Internet and leaving our digital footprints through the various parameters and methodologies that

Graph 2.5 Have you share something on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

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we inculcate in practice, this main contention of mapping our digital footprints via its array of perimeters gives us a doleful indication that locating us in a complex of networks turns out to be a very difficult job. For this, the basic instruments that are indispensable in this realm are: first and foremost the Internet connection. Any type of metered, unmetered connection is necessary to launch ourselves into the digital space which is also in other terminologies known as the virtual world. Since the inception of ARPANET (DARPA 1969) in US military bases in 1960s and its promulgation in the public sphere of netizens, Internet has gained incredulous grounds with a series of makeovers as Web 1.0 shortly followed by Web 2.0 (Cormode and Krishnamurthy 2008) and now, the era in which we live in can be called as the era of Web 3.0. The first version as it would like to be called gained precedence with the sheer presence of the platform which was later modified as version 2 with the rise of social media and again with version 3 with the rise of platforms that cater to virtual reality and augmented reality. It can be said that without realizing the complete potential of one version by the users in entirety, we have jumped to explore and indulge ourselves in another version. This phenomenon is nevertheless different from the much celebrated ‘leap-frogging’ that can be religiously applied in the realm of technology. Apart from this what marks our distancing from the rudimentary gauges of spotting networks in this dense field contains the true modalities of this medium. Mapping the digital in social media can be characterized as a tenuous process which involves two layers of an individual’s performance. One will be the exogenous level which will constitute our primary requisite in the shape of life digitally that will consist of all the apparatus that will entail us to log-in and explore or indulge. The other part of this canon includes the endogenous effects that affect one’s cognition and further delve into shaping ritualistic practices that enhance the role played by social media in our day-to-day lives or in other words, the lives became digital. We will see the prominence in promulgation of the endogenous effects in the next sub-unit.

2.5 Scrolling Through the Spatial Senses Scrolling is unlike a search of something that a user is looking for on the smartphone or portals or platforms. The use of finger reflexes is extensively used as part of scrolling wherein shown pictures or more or less were depicting spatial locations in myriad representations. The virtual world today vis-a-vis social media has an immense potential to be calibrated on various parameters that markedly enhance its preference and acceptance in our lives. That social media in whatever form we consume today has an appeal to more than one sense of the human anatomy. Social media is characterized to have only an effect pertaining to sight and seeing and consuming through seeing. Even the capitalist model of social media deals with the surplus value generated by balancing the consumption of advertisements as averse to the consumption of user-generated content which can also be known as content that has value. But the constituent of exchange value, i.e. the advertisements also, according to Christian Fuchs (2014a), appeals only to the sensory organ of the vision.

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What I try to argue in this arena is that social media devoid of its capitalist or socialist functions is increasingly going on to represent not only from our sensory visions but also from other senses pertaining to touch, taste, hear and feel. By understanding this, I contend, will help us accommodate all the nascent aspects of Web 3.0 and how it has imbibed itself in our societal fold and has been helping us understand and gauge digital social and its sociality on a wider gamut. Hence, the title scrolling through the senses gives a wider ambiguity and holds itself for further contemplation as it promises to incorporate all the enhancing and utilitarian aspects of social media through all the sense perceptions that it affects. To highlight this argument, let’s consider an arena of augmented reality (AR) advertisements and how such advertisements are a residing feature of a video or a game being played on the AR platform. Such an advertisement will try its level best on the principles of exchange value to enhance a user experience and thus try to gauge out all known sense perceptions.

2.6 Why Does/Doesn’t ‘Social’ Matter? Historically, there have been many constructions on the perversity of the human nature of being social in its characteristics. Plato called ‘man a social animal’, and thousands of years later, Hegel constructed the idea of the social characteristics of human nature and termed it as the ‘human essence’. This was again picked up by Marx while constructing his broader idea of communism where he looked at forces of production, modes and means of production and each and every argument of his builds on the social essence of humans. Hence, it is safe to say, with the cohesion and propensity supplied by the historicity of the argument, that man is a social animal and has tended to work on his sociality engaging in various forms of social cohesion. Thus, in a way, this alters the relationship of the previous arguments and lends two different paths—abstractness on the one hand and the concreteness on the other. This further attenuates the argument and forms the idea that man today has become a social animal. How different is it from being to becoming? Let us minutely look at every aspect of it. What constitutes man being a social animal? When the question is put forward on the substantial being of any object or entity or thing, it casts a normative shadow on understanding man—or it would be better to say humans—as substantially being a social creature from the dawn of the era of man to this time in the twenty-first century. Thus, our new definition of man becoming a social animal stands starkly contrasting the deemed and pervasive account of man’s social being as a substantive quality. When man becomes a social animal instead of being one, then there are various other factors at play and all these factors ridicule and put down the historical argument that it is not inherent for man to be a social animal. It further puts down the notion that man does act on its own discretion and chooses not to be a social animal and that there are other forces that lend down certain attributes that do and do not allow man to become a social animal.

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Constructing on this very same idea and argument, we can further say that man being in the realm of sociality and defining and constricting this realm to sociality deals with the wider gamut that opens up and shows in itself a clear idea as to how man has come to be a social animal. On the same lines then one can say that when man is to become a social animal of a certain order living under a certan nationality and adhering to certain norms has either to choose to become or inherently being a social animal. We will look at how this interpellation works out in this age of digital lives and cyborg activities in our next unit. But before that let us discuss why it is or why it is not important to be social. To understand this rhetoric, we will take up examples for and against in the context of both—the historical Platonic idea of man being a social animal and the new age technoscape and liberal idea of man becoming a social animal. Through this, we will try to map how and when both these constructions animate and work out and in what conditions does everything fall apart. To understand the importance of becoming social in today’s world dynamics, we need to first take into consideration how we can never leave this fold of sociality and turn inwards as to what some mystics might term as ‘moksha’(emancipation). It is a hard-driven fact that being distant from the worldly realms of sociality like the accumulation of ‘social capital’ or the incessant drives to fulfil one’s capacity of sociality, we must understand that becoming social turns out to be an unintended phenomenon too. The reason why I specifically call it an unintended effect is from the perspective of the entity which wants individuals to become a part of this social mobility. In today’s age of bioregions were advocates of decentralization in a constricted— like a locality or independent house—and also widespread ecosystem—the world on a large scale—work as a demarcated territory of ‘nature’ and ‘civilizations’, thus culminating to be cyborg systems (Gray 2002). We are constantly bombarded with various apparatuses that deem to wreak out one’s sociality and thus evolve and characterize us as social beings. This phenomenon has been in traction since a very long time and should not be considered as a product of the cybernetic age. Looking at this from the ethical angle, we can say that such an unsolicited and unconsecrated adoption of the individual (cyborg—for a cybernetic reader) into the fold of the sociality plays a downturn role but also can be argued as a utopian role when being seen from the lens of a bioregionalism and an idealist in the realm of pragmatics. Let us bring this argument now in constructing an argument based on the field of social media. We have earlier tried to define the aspects of social media and what deems it necessary for it to be considered a platform of virtual networking and transverse communication. On the basis of that, we can try to figure out and understand how various arrangements cater out on social media platforms and in the end try to violate certain practised and coded humanistic values. Nishant Shah (2008) argued cyborg as cybernetics construe it to be is something that is translated in the virtual world and in the process of translation is in itself translated and modified due to the various intervening factors and assets that transform it from its formal, rudimentary value to a completely different entity that fashions constant identification and

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redefinition. Shah (2008) further goes on to cite various studies of how the translated cyborg in the realm of social media is being constantly deterred and subjugated to various subjugating phenomena often characterized as a breach of humanist values. On similar lines, let us consider the famous Shreya Singhal vs. The Union of India case which led to the deletion of Section 66A of IT Act, 2000 (Appendix B). In the case, the plaintiff was brought to the courts of law to determine whether her act of ‘becoming social’ through a platform of social media, Facebook, in this case, was detrimental to the national sovereignty by being castigated as an act of sedition. The perspective is of main highlight here; the plaintiff’s contention to use her freedom to beget sociality through a transverse platform was deemed harmful because it attacked the larger frame of constriction where the plaintiff resides and subdues her citizenship. This can be considered as a varied idea of multiple thoughts and facets but the underlying and prominent deal of the plaintiff’s sociality being subjugated to trial that too in this newer ideation of social media is a very important aspect that can in turn provide us with the insights as to how and why we intently and unintentionally become social. According to a survey 2017–2018, around 37.99% would prefer to see images on their social media platforms, around 31.88 per cent would prefer to see location, nearly 22.71% would interest to see that who sent the post, while about 7.42% would like to see at what time the post was delivered (Graph 2.6). Thus, everyone has their own manifestation to check out the contents on respective platforms. Further glaring on the same lines, we can understand that the aspect of individuals becoming social beings is driven to a major change in the cybernetic world. I say this in putting forward the argument set up by Shah (2008) and try to transmogrify the cyborg which is subjected to constant translation and re-translation.

Graph 2.6 What would you like to see first on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

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2.7 Digital Socialization Socialization is a routine process to cater for the needs of society in terms of teaching and learning wherein parents taught their son/daughters what to do or when to do or why they are supposed to do? In the past, family members often took such hectic jobs of socialization but over a period of time technology is consuming more time than elders. Let us now do away with terming humans as individuals or entities or formative species of a certain order and expand our horizons to include the terming of humans as cyborgs, as vehemently done by Susan Greenfield (2014). Now, let us venture into understanding what all ramifications can take form once the conventional aspect of referring to humans is taken out of context to term us as cyborgs. There can be a multitude of questions to swarm one’s mind at the instance of being labelled a cyborg. What are we really getting at? How can this overturn from humans to cyborgs be located? How can we derisively think and act in one’s interest if every person fights for the common claim? Should we be thinking about an ideal cyborg? Will norms and testaments be rolled out for the future cyborgs to look up to and adhere sacrilegiously? The last question has already been looked after by Donna Harroway (1991). The essay gives a common platform and an integrated language for digitally socialized women, who are acting out in the virtual space. The instances can be highlighted by the present #MeToo movement2 that has overridden the parameters set forth by conventional movements and broken all chains by implicating men who have previously harassed women across all professionalisms and couture. But at the same time, it will be safe to say and predict that purchasing a new term to underline a human form and its identity is nothing new and only time can tell whether the exhuming of a former identity to replenish it off its motley possibilities is a task reserved only for the hapless or not—the same in the case of the victims in the #MeToo realm. Edward Castronova (2005) argues that in the emergence of various kinds of worlds as cited in Williams and Waskul (2007: 628–629): ‘Castronova begins by playing off the notions of virtual reality and real life. He provides a host of recent (and not so recent) frameworks that have been used to conceptualize places beyond taken-for-granted everyday life—new frontiers, virtual worlds, massively multiplayer role-online games (MMORPGs), cyberspace, metaverses, proscenium, hyper stages, synthetic worlds—and argues that most people tend to see these as spaces that are fundamentally unreal, where social action is insignificant, and with which people pass (or “waste”) time playing out fantasies in make-believe worlds. The book’s basic goal is to convince skeptical readers that such a conclusion is superficial and misleading. Castronova’s broad organizing theme is that people may play

2 The

basic understanding of the movement was, ‘the “me too.” movement was founded in 2006 to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly Black women and girls, and other young women of color from low wealth communities, find pathways to healing. Our vision from the beginning was to address both the dearth in resources for survivors of sexual violence and to build a community of advocates, driven by survivors, who will be at the forefront of creating solutions to interrupt sexual violence in their communities’. For details, www.metoomvmt.org. Accessed 23 May 2020.

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in synthetic worlds, but those synthetic worlds also play an increasingly important role in daily life—both now and in the years and decades to come’. Here, Castronova has given a formidable and liking representation to the already created and deeply entrenched non-virtual worlds of the players. By doing so, Castronova points out the parallel existence of all universes, constituting a motley of multiverses through which by implication, one can derive that these cyborgs are up to the role of mediating in these multiverses of everyday life. However now, the stark difference is with the boundaries—physical and non-material that exist between these multiverses. It can be predicted that with the rise in digital technology and the stupendous increase in the use of ICTs in everyday life and everyday functioning of societal rectitude, the boundaries that appear to be discordant and visible might take a turn to blend in the natural exposures faced by the cyborgs, here in the questions being answered or rather, looked upon. Castronova further goes on to pose normative scriptures and suggestions based on his predictions of a deeply connected virtual world which do not site further implores on our part. On the contrary, what needs to be highlighted is the intricacies of the worlds a cyborg engages in. To experience it in total fruition, let us harp back on the conventional use of narratives. Narratives have had a very vast re-look with the rise of the post-modern school of thought. Where the postmodernist looks at everything, every single aspect as a narrative subsumed to be perceived in an excessively pessimistic sense that derides the functionality that particular narrative shared in the times of modern glory. Narrative itself as an ideation is subjected to constant pessimistic redundancies from the point of view of it achieving a neutral stance. Regardless of all these arguments, I believe that even in the confines of a postmodern mindset, enough space is made to accommodate a parallel thought of the narrative being subjected to a romanticized inference from a cautious and critical reader. Moreover, Marshall Gregory (1995: 33) says in response to a technocratic pessimism of narrative: ‘The notion of limits sounded like an account of exceptions rather than a comprehensive theory, but what most interested me then, and still does, about this objection, were the undertones of sadness and loss that accompanied it…imagination’s limits seemed to produce in (him) none of that joy, discovery, wonder or happiness that fresh insights into important problems are wont to produce’. Speaking on the same line, we can infer the importance of narratives of everyday life that plummets our wants and desires and leads us into living a sane and contented life. Such is the case again with the importance of narratives in defining an entire expanse of our lives. In today’s age, an average human being lives for at least 70 years and throughout his/her life, there are various narratives that collectively define the life cycle implored by the humans. Such narratives have conventionally been played out only in the realm of the social, non-virtual sense. But now, due to the advent and spread of various ‘synthetic worlds’, the narratives defining the ecclesiastical life processes are being transformed and cordoned by the narratives produced by these synthetic worlds. This in collection is something which Anand Mitra calls as ‘narbs’ (a combination of narrative and bits). Narbs is the timeline through which we can

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spot our narratives building up a story of our own. This can be said to constitute the process of digital socialization, in entirety. If we apply the same argument and blend in with the previous argument of man becoming social over man being social, then it can further open up new doors to understand the concept of sociality in the digital world. It is not of any use to point out the outburst of the Internet through ARPANET and the consequent rise of the World Wide Web (WWW) which has taken manifold material form in the present times—i.e. the turn of the century into a new millennium. Thus, the appendage of man becoming a social animal bears valid resemblance and resonance in the age of cyborgs being digitally socialized into a larger pantheon that is directly working, building and honouring under the aegis of synthetic multiverses. Becoming digitally socialized is not a choice any more. In the times when each and every business enterprise struggles to make a presence in the facets of social media, websites and the likes, in the age when governments are going paperless and every bureaucratic order is being carried out online, one cannot escape the plentiful of multiverses and thus, the order of man becoming social, or rather a cyborg becoming social, stands as an axiom too hard to get over with. Cyborg was a result of technical experiments while at the same time social media went another experimentation to spread rumours, fake and misinformation deliberately through a group of trained people to construct narratives or discourse as part of agenda for specific result—that’s are called trolls or in other words, bullying people who often goes against to them who do not fall in their set of ideology across social media. In India, such practices are rampantly noticed after 2014 when special information technology (IT) cell was set up for such specific cause and covertly supported by political parties by both Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC) in different proportions as available resources—funds.

2.8 Mapping Social as Trolls Trolls or trolling is often used as a terminology across social media to address such activity when a user trolling someone else on a platform for mundane reasons to fall in trap or passively admire the contents that the trolls want to follow the same without obligations. Let’s think about contextualizing and narrowing our perspectives of mapping a digital social life. Till now, we have seen that the digital social is a product of becoming and thus has gained a very solidified paradigmatic flow of its own. Opening up the contentions for digital sociability in its own fold opens up a higher avenue, not in the regressive hierarchical sense, but in the confirmed yet polemical sense that serves only the subjective interests of the viewer—in this case, the normal consumer of social media. We all know that from the time one logs-in into one’s social media account, to the time the interface is filled with vacuous and sometimes debilitating discourse of the coeval happenings in the world outside, one is locked into a sphere which provides the user with a lot of momentum and a lot of information. This also leads to the contribution—just by the mere presence that

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the user experiences and provides for in the realm of social media. Thus, altogether, we can surmise that the contribution of the user by the mere presence accounts for a dominating presence in shaping the intricate and individual aspects of sociability in the realm of virtual universes, and from this individual strand, we can understand how the game unfolds in the larger ambit and how these individual strands add up to form the congruent and sometimes meta-verses of legions. Such help a researcher to carefully extract the surfaces of virtual sociability—the sociability of various posts, memes, trolls, announcements, advertisements, etc.—to form a larger ambit of engaging with the domain of social media. When we try to trace the historicity of trolls, research has proved that it is not a new concept but a phenomenon that has seen the light of the day and the expanse of the night ages ago. John Lindlow (2014: 13) argued that ‘trolls have been around for 1,000 years, and they are not going away’. Through this, we can be privy to the contention that tracing the alacrity of trolls has been a historic process which is yet to meet a scientific relevance and so-called modern equivalence. Even in the sporadic market of research, one may not find the scientific juxtaposition of measuring the social implications that trolls behold in themselves. On similar lines are what have entered the popular paradigm—that of memes. Once logged into the virtual space, one can spot memes everywhere. We share them indulgently, and even if we don’t share them, we make sure to comprehend them to understand their rubrics. Memes too have been standardized in some sense but the same standardization doesn’t work for all meme makers. The other way of saying this would be that memes share cyclostyled life but deal in a very dull aspect of standardized routine. Such routine, even though it has been followed by certain virtual circles, hasn’t been progressively stuck on to and one can see many variants of the same. For instance, a meme is something which on the basis of its laid-out standards requires to be the following: the text that is superimposed on the image must appear on the top and bottom corners and must be in the font ‘Impact’. Unless such a criterion is not met, the picture in Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format being shared won’t be considered as a meme. But, over time, this hasn’t been followed to its full potential. Once we go through the social contentions and implications of memes on grounds of it being a facilitator in the accumulation of social capital, we can trace and map the effects of the memes on the digital social. In a survey 2017–2018, study revealed that around 51.97% used platforms to share something personal or else, around 17.90% preferred to share religious contents, 17.47% used the platform to share cultural contents, while at least 12.06% preferred to share political contents (Graph 2.7). Sinha (2019: 16) observed that ‘the advent of the Internet and social media has meant that millions of people interact with each other and debate issues every day’. Social media facilitates a platform they can share and connect with each other. Independent sociologist Chris Julien (2015) has laid out a comparative study of the major contentions bearing the idea of social capital. To understand the relevance of social capital with that of memes and trolls is an easy journey through relativity. Social capital like its counterparts of economic capital and political capital entails dividends in the realm that it serves. Economic capital may transform into wealth, whereas

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Graph 2.7 What contents of social media influenced you (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

political capital may transform into parliamentary strength. On the same lines, social capital translates to the accumulation of the various contravening entities that form the rubrics of sociability. Accumulating social capital gives an individual an entry into the various groups that share their existence in a society across all parameters of ideology and space. The dimension of space has been further ‘compressed’ due to the advent of new media technologies thus shrinking the world smaller and giving rise to tribalized cults of ‘global village’ (McLuhan 1964). Such an accumulation is persistently seen in the online dynamics of sharing memes on various social media platforms despite their principled functionality. In other words, whatever may be the function and however restricted it be in the sense of the technology it caters to—for example, Reddit for upvotes or YouTube as a video sharing platform or Facebook as a social networking site—every facet is not followed in applying the rendition of memes and the accumulation of social capital that pervades discussions is fulfilled. In other words, when someone bullied or bullied on platforms by unknown or anonymous identity, such incidents were reported variedly in the past few years. Swati Chaturvedi in her monograph ‘I am a Troll’ (2016) explicitly enumerated her experiences as troll when she joined BJP’s IT cell. She openly attacks BJP that how they used her to troll someone else who is not supposed to fall in trap of right ideology. Moreover, she sums up as ‘what will the future hold? More bad news, I fear. The BJP’s social media cell has the potential to morph into a bigger monster as it attacks citizens for not conforming to the party’s world view on issues like diet, religion, Kashmir and tribal rights. It’s time we opened our eyes to the dangers ahead’ (Chaturvedi 2016: 141). In India, prior 2014, troll was completely unknown and over period of time many people deactivated his/her social media account when

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they are openly mishandled and abused by trolls for vociferous write up against right ideology. Debating on the same lines, it would not be wrong to contend that sharing of memes and trolls on social media platforms also in itself develops a constricted territory and gives rise to a plethora of ramifications out of which the ramifications which have an undulated impact on the political spheres of any special context. Whether studies have gone into measuring the impact of such a move or not stands starkly contrasting the visual elements and the cognitive discrepancies that pervade on ground. Hence, it would not be wrong to stand by the notion that the measuring of cognitive pleasure and discrepancies on account of sharing and liking—in itself endorsing—memes proves to be an act of accumulating social capital and thus helps in the mapping of the digital social—the social that is becoming.

2.9 Conclusion The implications of social media played a critical role whether it was transition from human being to cyborg and further, how this changes the dynamics of the man being a social animal to man becoming a social animal. Social media seems like a project that governs the people accordingly to pull down into an agenda of social media as part of digital lives—when thinking beyond digital gadgets is unlike a necessary task or sometimes it looks like mediated where actions, language and semiotics were derived from social media. Mapping the digital footprints of our everyday lives is a challenging task that takes on the role of a demonic form as the purveyor of the infringement of privacy. Digital socialization is an extension of moral and ethical attributes that compelled an individual to follow such and such guidelines to being digital lives. The spatiality of digital lives can be interpreted into proper and improper, open and closed, good and bad and so on. Trolls are part of such spatial extension. However, the familiarity of social media is found across the people as a connecting device where anyone can share information in terms of images, texts and videos wherein locations and spatiality are inseparable. The forthcoming chapter is about the spatial mapping of social media. This section highlights the landscapes, accessibility, visibility, demography, social media analysis, urban–rural gaps and networks of social media in the country.

Appendix A Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Digital India programme on 1 July 2015. The initiative includes plans to connect rural areas with high-speed Internet networks. Digital India has three main core components. These include: • The creation of digital infrastructure;

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• Delivering services digitally; • Digital literacy. A two-way platform was created through which both service providers and consumers will benefit. The programme is monitored and administrated by the Digital India Advisory Group chaired by the Ministry of Communication and IT and it is an inter-Ministerial initiative where all ministries and departments offer their services to the public: such as health care, education, judicial and information. The publicprivate partnership model was adopted selectively and the plan was to restructure the National Informatics Centre (NIC) as well. The Digital India programme was one of the most ambitious projects of the NDA government. Digital India (DI) schemes include the following works with connecting the rural areas as the top priority: Broadband in 0.2 million villages, universal phone connectivity, Net Zero Imports by year 2020, 400,000 Public Internet Access Points, Wi-Fi in 0.25 million schools, all universities; Public Wi-Fi hotspots for citizens, Digital Inclusion: 17 million trained for IT, Telecom and Electronics Jobs creation: Direct 17 million and Indirect at least 85 million e-Governance & e-Services: Across government. India to be the leader in IT use in services like—health, education, banking digitally empowered citizens—public cloud, Internet access. The Government of India entity Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) will execute the National Optical Fibre Network project, which is a part of the Digital India project. BBNL ordered United Telecoms Limited to connect 250,000 villages through GPON to ensure FTTH-based broadband. This will provide the first basic set-up to achieve Digital India and is expected to be complete by 2017 but delayed for some reasons, and government is working to complete it before 2019. Optical fibre cables have been laid out in more than 68,000 village panchayats. Panchkula district of Haryana became the top-performing district under the Digital India scheme. However, the nine pillars of Digital India programme are as (Appendix 6.0) follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Broadband Highways; Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity; Public Internet Access Programme; e-Governance—Reforming Government through Technology; e-Kranti—Electronic delivery of services; Information for All; Electronics Manufacturing; IT for Jobs; Early Harvest Programmes.

These nine programmes are own dimensions to provide their services under Digital India initiative although the project will enhance the capacity building infrastructure and service skilled over period of time.

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Appendix B Section 66A in the Information Technology Act, 2000 72 [66A Punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc.—Any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device, a. b.

c.

any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; or any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will, persistently by making use of such computer resource or a communication device; or any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and with fine. Explanation—For the purpose of this section, terms ‘electronic mail’ and ‘electronic mail message’ mean a message or information created or transmitted or received on a computer, computer system, computer resource or communication device including attachments in text, image, audio, video and any other electronic record, which may be transmitted with the message. Source: https://indiankanoon.org/doc/170483278/.

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Chapter 3

Spatial Mapping of Social Mediasphere in India

Abstract Communication is the best way to convey your thoughts and meaningful interactions. The hybrid nature of communication makes the space compressed. Places do matter to communicate and to establish a relation between geographies and spaces. Media as mediators flourished differently in order to connect, accumulate and constitute spatiality. Sometimes it is difficult to recognize space and communication together in the hybrid structure because boundaries get blurred and ambivalent. This chapter constitutes various aspects of spatiality of social media. Keywords Social media · Spatial · Demography · Networks · Hybrid nature

3.1 Introduction Social media plays a prominent role to connect people across the world. Not even only Facebook, there are so many different social networking sites which characterized as the space-based communication—in sense of virtual spaces—connected through gadgets. The initial period of communication was based on oral tradition and considered as the ‘oral mode of communication’ (Dahle and Dowling 1956). The expansion of new media technology has created a business monopoly over period of time, despite the fact that social media became an important aspect of people’s life which influences at now and then challenges in their life. The tradition of communication has changed and a new kind of society emerged which we called ‘Network Society’ (Castells and Gustavo 2005). Social media is a collection of online communication channels which are dedicated to society-based interaction, knowledge sharing and collaboration. This chapter is about how and at what extent social media brought changes in the mode of communication including volume and density of number of social media users along with different ideas and thoughts that propagate through it. Indeed, there are end numbers of issues discussed on social media or in other words, everyone is looking platforms as opportunities to introduce their products irrespective of nature and characteristics. And each product has own specific communication model through which it attracts the platform users and depends upon how effectively the communication tools are used.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Moinuddin, Digital Shutdowns and Social Media, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3_3

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3.2 Cartographies of Communication Communication is everywhere. Communication is unlike a social and cultural process that demarcates the boundaries that differentiate the two distinct landscapes; communication is necessary to pass the knowledge/information in myriad representations and interpretations. In the past, people used rocks and caves or else stone wall to inscribe the locational documentations in pictorial formations. The history of communication was developed over a period of time and available nowadays in the shape of social media. Harold A. Innis (1951) provides an overview of media history along with the profound role of communication technologies in his ‘The Bias of Communication’. He described the changing relationship between economic activity and geography with the new ways of characterizing industrial societies. The paradigm of communication has been changed due to the change in societal conditions. The interdependency of communication and society can cause us to reflect upon the role played by the media. A Bias elaborates a framework of epochal divisions that are connected to dominant modes of communication. From the oral tradition of preliterate cultures, through different types of writing and print, to the electronic media of our own time, communications have been integral to the functioning of all social institutions. A fundamental notion that runs throughout Innis’s vision of communications history is the importance of understanding the oral tradition. The contrast between orality and literacy was mapped in communication studies by Walter J. Ong (2002). Innis addressed the way time or space is accentuated through communications is a crucial factor in the rise of civilization and its eventual collapse (Innis 1950). We have to understand how communication is changed through the changing nature of society. Furthermore, Innis elaborates that time-biased or time-binding societies tend to be those dependent on durable media that are difficult to transport; here durable media led those which are the ancient empires reliant on stone or clay and medieval Europe employed parchment. Media bonds with some sort of culture which accumulates different traditions for a particular society. Innis addressed the concept of social history in communication media; he described that the effectiveness of cultures is contingent on the balance and proportion of their media. He suggests that to begin our query into this area, we ask three basic questions: i. ii. iii.

How do specific communication technologies operate? What assumptions do they take from and contribute to society? What forms of power do they encourage?

For Innis, social change marked in the development of communication media. He identifies Bias in account of the organization and monopoly in the information. Innis elaborates the concept of time-biased media like stone and clay that are long-lasting and heavy. He claims that each medium of communication has bias because it is controlled by empire. Innis related this kind of media with the customary, sacred and moral. In contrast, the space-biased media is something which is light and portable in nature, because it can be moved around. It has territorial expansion; this medium can be passing on to many people so fast. But it has a short lifespan compared to

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time-biased media. This involves such as paper, television, radio and social media. Innis concluded that to achieve a stable society, they have to have a balance between time- and space-biased media. In addition, Innis (1951/1952) talk about the Monopolies of Knowledge in which he extended the economic concepts of monopoly to include culture and politics. Traditionally, the universities have strived to monopolize certain kinds of information, as have professional associations such as doctors or engineers or lawyers, as have governments. Innis demonstrated that those who monopolize knowledge are also in a position to define what is legitimate knowledge. Innis described several sources through which monopolies of knowledge derive their power: (i) Mastery of complexity—creates a hierarchy of professionals and amateurs. (ii) Control of Raw Materials for Media—who has controlled the media in depth. (iii) Performativity— just as Egyptian priests were able to accurately predict the regular flooding of the Nile because knowledge of writing allowed them to make calculations, so does access to public opinion allow psephologists to predict elections quantitatively. (iv) Speed— advantages accrue to those who know first. Business done in back rooms or the corridors of power is often never reported in the media. (v) Ability to afford high costs—the cult of production value in design, recording, and television and Hollywood movies makes it difficult for lower budget artefacts to compete for attention. Monopolies of knowledge enhance to polarize societies into a mass of the ignorant and knowledge elite. Monopolies of knowledge encourage centralization of power. Those who control knowledge have the power to define reality. On the other way, Innis perspective is based on an examination of how new media arise in the first place. To understand any medium, we must attend not only to its physical characteristics but also to how it is employed and institutionalized. Innis sees a dialectical relationship between society and technology. According to this view, certain social forms and situations encourage the development of new media, these media operating within existing situations, and react back on society to produce a new cycle of change.

3.3 Social Mediasphere: Why Called as ‘Rational Technology’? Social media emerged as an inevitable communication technology that works in mundane dimensions as all in one gadget where the screen of a smartphone is like a magical surface that accesses all in a click. During COVID-19 global pandemic social media-related companies are only that fetch multiple businesses in terms of online classes, work from home, etc. Christian Fuchs (2016) argued Marcuse’s theoretical thoughts on social media. Marcuse illustrates that social media are Internet-based platforms such as blogs (e.g. BlogSpot, WordPress, Tumbler), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Renren), user-generated content sharing sites (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, Youku), Microblogs (e.g. Twitter, Weibo) and Wikipedia. In a survey 2017–2018, study revealed that around 22.27% used Facebook, around

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53.71% used WhatsApp, around 13.54% used Twitter, and around 10.48% used others platforms to share something on social media (Graph 3.1). It is proven that all media are to a certain extent social because they reflect and transmogrify society in complex ways. The actual change that communication systems such as Facebook reflect is that the Internet has, since 2005, become more of a system of cooperative work and community formation than it was before. These media are social because they enable and are means of sharing, communication, community and collaboration. At the same time, they are deeply embedded in capitalism’s commodity logic and therefore reflect individual private property, individualism and structures of exploitation and domination. Capitalist class relations that individualize these social media’s sociality limit the sociality of social media as means of informational production (Fuchs 2016). Marcuse accounts the technological diversification in recent times and their reflection on social media. Furthermore, Herbert Marcuse claims that technological tools such as computers became the tool of control, domination and exploitation. Marcuse on the one side stressed the role of the computer as a tool of control, domination and exploitation: The formal rationality of capitalism celebrates its triumph in electronic computers, which calculate everything, no matter what the purpose, and which are put to use as mighty instruments of political manipulation, reliably calculating the chances of profit and loss, including the chance of the annihilation of the whole, with the consent of the likewise calculated and obedient population. (Marcuse 1965: 224–225)

On the other side, Marcuse recognizes liberating potentials of the computer writing that Marx:

Graph 3.1 Which social media platforms do you preferred (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

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Saw the possibility of reducing alienated labour already in capitalism, namely as a consequence of technical progress or as we would say today, increasing automation, mechanization, computerization, whatever you want to call it. That, however, is only the anticipation, or the first traces, of the liberation of the human being from full-time alienated labour. (Marcuse 1978: 220)

On this account, Marcuse looks out that dialectic of modern technology also plays in computer technology: An electronic computer can serve equally a capitalist or socialist administration.[…] in Marxian theory itself […] the social mode of production, not technics is the basic historical factor. However, when technics becomes the universal form of material production, it circumscribes an entire culture; it projects a historical totality- a ‘world’. (Marcuse 1964: 157–158)

In this context, Marx views modern technology such as the computer; he accounts that modern technology emerged as a form to socialize the means of production and communication and is, therefore, a substructure of a better society. Besides, he provides that modern technology became a tool for warfare, control, surveillance, advertising’s manipulation of needs, the creation of unemployment and new forms of precarious labour. In contrast to Marx, Marcuse sees differently, he did not think that one must simply vanish capitalism and then use the same technologies in a socialist society. However, he believes that a qualitative change in society would have to come along with a qualitative change of technology: The technological transformation is at the same time political transformation but the political change would turn into a qualitative social change only to the degree to which it would alter the direction of technical progress, that is, develop new technology. For the established technology has become an instrument of destructive politics. (Marcuse 1964: 232)

Social media is a vast platform to exchange knowledge and share our views but we cannot deny that social media manipulated our information as we can see nowadays. The power of domination emerged in the form of a hidden agenda which calmly changed the views of peoples. The technological advancement created the changes in the arena of communication; it is easy to connect people instantly because we are globally connected. Nevertheless, there are so many aspects of social media; it believes people connect socially through a particular medium which is media. Social media belongs to the people of urban and rural; everything is transformed into a new structure which is more technical, mechanical and controlled to some extent. The relationship of people also shaped a new form which is more virtual and less trustworthy. The power of technology can enhance day by day; everything is controlled and captured by technology.

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3 Spatial Mapping of Social … The technology which the industrial societies have inherited and developed and which rules our lives is in its very roots a technology of domination. Consummation of technical progress, therefore, implies the determinate negation of this technology. […..] The idea of qualitatively different forms of technological rationality belongs to a new historical project. (Marcuse 1962: 57)

Subsequently, Marcuse argued that modern technology has liberated, democratic but at the same time eliminated, preserved and lifted to a new qualitative level of actuality. Marcuse provides the dialectical sublation of technology; he suggests that a truly free society has to abolish repressive uses of the technology. He claims that social media technologies such as Facebook and Twitter are dependent on complex terms of use that enable the commodification of personal data and the exploitation of user’s digital labour. Furthermore, he suggests that we do not need to abolish social networking but we have to redesign social media in such a way they are privacy-enhancing, advertising-free, user-controlled, not-for-profit and allow the users a say in formulating the terms of use. It increases their liberating potentials and simultaneously vanishes their dominative character. Furthermore, Fuchs (2016) described the concept of a society of self-control in which Gilles Deleuze has pointed out that contemporary capitalism and disciplines are converted in such a way that humans increasingly discipline themselves without direct external violence. He terms this situation the ‘society of (self-) control’. Social networking sites tend to control the mind of the people which causes damage to the human mind. Its accessibility explores the domination of networks which indirectly surveillance the people and creates a disciplined society. Subsequently, Herbert Marcuse used the term ‘technological rationality’ for exploring the phenomenon of instrumental reason. Through which he described that ideology and manipulation try to make human consciousness and human behaviour function like an automatic machine that has only a limited set of available response behaviours. Technological rationality contains ‘elements of thought which adjust the rules of thought to the rules of control and domination’ (Marcuse 1964: 138). Social media emerged as an independent view or in other words we say that hashtag politics is an extension of such digital ideas that persist upon others’ voices for other reasons. This shows the worldwide technological advancement of visibility and accessibility of social media but in the context of India, these things may be seen differently. The Indian society has a multi-dimensional culture with different tribes, and technology plays a crucial role to develop the rural areas. The integration of technology can create the path of rural people so that they can achieve their goal. Likewise, mobile technology plays a substantial role in connecting people even though it may not seem wrong to say that the introduction of mobile technology has a lion’s share in bringing the nation to an outstanding level of progress. ICT has emerged as a major source for development in India (see Chapter 1). The Economic Times (Delhi edition, 10 Feb 2012) covered the news of farmers of Sangli district, Maharashtra,

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that how Facebook saved many farmers from perishing.1 Facebook as a digital platform provided a space where farmers discussed their issues and asked fellow farmers for dissemination of farmers’ issues. At the same time when these platform technologies are providing timely information to multiply their savings and business but in contrarily they are in entrap of capitalists too who monitored them algorithmically what common users are not aware about it or if they knew the same but they are unable to change the pattern set by social media as trending or further, in shape of hashtag politics. So, sometimes such news got domain place due to technology or vested interests are behind to change the discourse under the purview of technology, which is rational.

3.4 The Digital Generation An infant is exposed to the smartphone’s camera first when he/she was born in the maternity ward when parents want to take a snap to share in their family groups and social networking sites. Since then, the infant’s journey starts with smartphones and grown along with screen’s light and digital rhyme when parents want to divert their attentions for mundane reasons. And, gradually he/she learnt to scroll over screen to search rhyme, and after some years, they become well to do on digital platform. Edward Kessler (2013) argued the three different phases of communication technology development; in addition, he defines ‘the term social media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue’ (Kessler 2013: 26). This definition provided a well-known example of modern technology. He talks about the generation shift which occurred due to technological shift. To prove his point, he described how we understand these shifts through the different phrases of technology. He explains three phases as (Kessler 2013: 27) follows: 1. 2.

1 The

1980s—One-to-One connections: for instance, e-mail (in 2010, 107 trillion emails were sent, an average of 294 billion per day; 89% spam). 1990s—One-to-Many connections: for instance, web pages (such as Wikipedia and Google available to countries ‘web surfers’ at the same time).

reason was, to oversupply of turmeric, prices crashed exceeding in the local market. One of the local farmers used Facebook to connect to other farmers all over the country and consider the situation and discussed the prices with them. Because of the power of social media, the news spread like a forest fire and 25000 turmeric farmers of Sangli heard of the boycott. The boycott served its purpose as the prices doubled. Other social networking sites also expend this news all over. There are different social networking sites which promote the opportunities to the farmers and accelerate the rural growth. There are different programmes and schemes which started to enhance the productivity of the rural people and connect to them with globally. For details, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/agriculture/farmers-usingfacebook-to-discuss-prices-and-plan-strategy/articleshow/11829710.cms. Accessed 25 June 2020.

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Graph 3.2 Social media made any affects upon you (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

3.

2000s—Many-to-Many connections, which is social media, e.g. Facebook (established 2004), YouTube (established in 2005) and Twitter (established in 2006).

Kessler (2013) discussed the third phase in which he talked about different achievements of social media. Social media has generated global attention that upheavals the society; there are such movements that reach the people because of social media, such as Arab Spring. In a survey 2017–2018, around 70.74% agreed that social media have an impact on their lives while 29.26% nevertheless found any merits in platforms (Graph 3.2). In the recent year, social networking sites have grown rapidly from website owners to website users. The massive growth of social networking sites is not only on a national or international level but even on a regional level as well. According to a report from the Berkley Centre for Religion, Peace and World Affairs (2011) at Georgetown University claim that the proliferation of information also shapes religious identity. For example, Peter Mandaville, of the centre for global studies at George Mason University, has observed that many young Muslims find information from a multitude of sources with varying perspectives on their faith. Indeed, religious activists and intellectuals from all faiths are establishing their own interpretation of their faith (and ideology). (Kessler 2013: 28)

In this context, social media somehow demonstrates the information and enhances user-generated content that also makes it easier for misinformation and negative content to circulate online. The new technologies have prompted an interconnected world to connect people in a greater diversity in the number of people, places and perspectives.

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Social media not only shapes the perspectives rather provides freedom to raise their voice and is accessible to other people as well. ‘Slacktivism’ and ‘clicktivism’ are two processes which often employ digital protest2 while slacktivism is a halfhearted activism promoted on social media (Dennis 2019). There is very less chance to turn digital protest into movement, unless the issue touches many more. In late 2019 and early 2020, whole India was under the grip of protest against anti-citizenship amendment act (CAA), 2019. The protest was against the amendment brought by the Government of India in the citizenship act to give citizenships to the members of minority communities except Muslims from South Asian countries. Therefore, Muslims in India stood against such biased amendments. The protest went like forest fire and many places witnessed the bizarre strike, protest and sloganeering against the anti-CAA amendment. However, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 global pandemic, the protest was withheld temporarily but later it was decided to resume online.3 The protest gradually fed the information beyond the conventional medium and used digital gadgets, and as a result, people started to join in the protest in order to show solidarity. In short, we can map that digital gadgets played an important role in the expansion of people participation and subsequently in the change of perception that somehow noted in the spatiality or nothing wrong to say that the present generation as digital generation who are mostly dependent on digital gadgets from online classes to communication.

3.5 People’s Perception and Social Media: A Spatial Understanding How and at what extent social media shaped individual’s lives in daily routine when he/she encountered the same purposefully. Here, a case study was discussed in order to understand how social media changed the social understanding. Shriram Venkatraman (2017) analyses how the IT sector developed in Panchagrami, the nearby city of Chennai. Furthermore, he illustrates the prior condition of Panchagrami in terms of communication infrastructure. He discussed traditional media-radio, television and newspapers and social media as well. Since the availability of smartphones, people have gradually moved towards catching up information as much as possible. Social media provided them a chance to connect with the rest of the world. In a survey, the author found that the lives in the locality have changed since modern 2 In

social media, both are the ways to join in the digital protests. When people pursue to participate in the digital protest in varied capacities wherein sharing, forwarding, liking shows desperate concern on the issue, all such affection noted on social media but not confirmed from ground zero. For details, clicktivismSlacktivismOrRealActivismCulturalCodes OfA.pdf, https://scholar.col orado.edu/concern/file_sets/df65v8288. Accessed 24 June 2020. 3 Activists have taken decision to continue online protest against CAA till withdrawn. For details, https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/anti-caa-protests-go-online/article31743233. ecee. Accessed 25 June 2020.

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communication infrastructure was installed. Venkatraman described the impact of gender, class or caste on Facebook. He argued: The main impact of caste on Facebook is therefore essentially in regard to gender issues. For example, the leadership of a caste-based political group (this caste claims to be higher up the social hierarchy than the scheduled castes) had recently declared that the girls of their caste were being targeted and wooed by young men from the Scheduled castes, and that this bad had to be stopped as it was leading to inter-caste marriages. These young men from this caste group, who more or less fell into lower middle-class backgrounds, expressed a similar opinion, echoing the thoughts of their leader [……] interviews with young women belonging to this class and caste revealed that in reality most of them had an account on Facebook, since they did not want to be left out of a social network that their peers from the city enjoyed. (Venkatraman 2017: 37–38)

Author defines that at the same time the men in Panchagrami whatever of their socioeconomic status is became members of Facebook at a much younger age. It is evident that mostly people misuse the social media for the sake of their own concern. This virtual space turns their life in a different way and especially girls are the primary who are affected by it. We can see at what level these social networking sites socialize the world, there is no such privacy, and everyone has shared their photos on these sites. Facebook is popular among the young girls and young boys irrespective of class, gender, class or social disparities. In a survey 2017–2018, study revealed that around 21.83% watched social media for entertainments, around 30.13% used to know social affairs in the surrounding spatiality or in other words, to know news whether regional, national or international, and remain to be updated whatsoever, around 36.24% used to know information in shape of knowledge, and about 11.79% used platforms for cultural information, which means a cocktail of such information that often found across the platforms (Graph 3.3). Furthermore, Venkatraman talks about other social networking sites such as Twitter, as the survey declares that Twitter is not as popular as Facebook, the reason behind it is because Twitter was somehow associated with intellectuality of English and it seemed like a medium that needed exertion with respect to get followers. Twitter needs an active participation to collect the one’s audience: Many skilled IT employees were active to a certain extent on twitter, however, or at least engaged with it on a passive basis. They felt that twitter was an ideal knowledge platform if you followed someone of repute, such as Guy Kawasaki or Robert Scoble, both thought leaders from Silicon Valley. Many also followed Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, on twitter. Although most of these users were sharing news and information through re-tweets, they agreed that they had to put in the initial effort of gaining followers for themselves. (Venkatraman 2017: 51–52)

On this account, in Panchagrami, Twitter was not used as an everyday means of communication and found different from other social networking sites like Facebook. Comparing the usage of twitter to that of other social networking sites such as Facebook or WhatsApp clearly showed that the kinds of messages exchanged on twitter were different from those exchanged on Facebook. Twitter was perceived to be a platform on which one had to be normative and politically correct. (Venkatraman 2017: 53)

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Graph 3.3 How do you classify the contents of social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

No doubt, social media made it easy to connect with each other and improve communication skills. In a survey 2017–2018, around 52.84% users agreed that social media helped them to improve their identity, while 47.16% nevertheless found any merits in the platforms (Graph 3.4). There are lots of emotional concerns which are attached

Graph 3.4 Social media helped you to improve your identity (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

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to it and such other factors which influence and control social media. We cannot deny that social media is controlled by a dominant group of people who are powerful and have enough resources. In addition, Venkatraman (2017: 54) argues that social media influence people in dual ways: first, hard restrictions; second, soft controls. Within the lower socioeconomic classes and lower middle classes, hard restrictions manifested in four distinct forms: 1. 2.

3.

4.

Complete Restriction: This is the case of male family members trying to keep a watchful eye on young unmarried women in their families and caste. Time Restrictions: This form of control establishes in families who opt themselves as less conservative, since they allowed access to social media. Time limits on access over multiple devices were imposed; however, a specific time limit is strictly maintained. Space restrictions: This evolves in families who believe themselves to be less conservative. Space outside the home was perceived as a potentially threatening, masculine arena that could have a detrimental effect on girls and young women. Intentional surveillance: Families who allowed younger female members to be on social media, while limiting their friend contacts to their extended family or those whom the family knew offline. A strict surveillance was kept on young women’s profiles, with families monitoring their social media posts.

These issues create some sort of problems, however soft controls, generally unintentional in nature. The author tries to convey the emotional aspect of social media. The above understanding gives us a spatial notion that how technology has changed the people’s perception. The communication infrastructure changed the spatiality of the village over a period of time. The embedded spatiality of castes, gender discrimination and class bifurcation too noticed since social media introduced in the village. Prior to social media, the social crevasse was not widened but over a period of time it widened. People’s perception swung in both directions, sometimes it widened the social crevasse and sometimes it remained under folds. Such swing depends upon networks and how the networks behave.

3.6 Networks and Social Mediasphere Social media density measures through the networks that connect with the nodes, each and every node is essential for the system to function, and nodes are not all equally important. Here, I am going to discuss the theoretical background of social media. Communication pattern depends upon the networks that what types of networks we are engaged in? How does the network work? How network is spatial? Manuel Castells (2009) argued the power of networks because effective communication depends on the strong power of networks. Manual Castells in his book

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further cite the Fritjof Capra as Fritjof Capra4 writes, ‘The network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks’ (Castells 2009: 21). The network plays a crucial role to build a social circle, and it has created some other world. Manuel Castells wrote about network society which he argues that human society moved from industrial society to informational society; in this transition, capitalism is centred on information and knowledge no other modes of production. The term networked society refers to the social structure of this new age; Castells termed its economic manifestation of the global informational economy. According to Castells (2009), networks now form the new architecture of society and are the dominant mode of organizing social relations. A network for Castells is a decentralized system of nodes, which do not have any centre of particular, through which communication can occur, each and every node is necessary for the system to function through nodes are not all of equal importance. Networks have an open structure and are able to expand and contract as necessary communication that occurs across these networks via nodes. Nodes are multidimensional and multidirectional and not restricted by either time or space. The difference in a network society is the process of managing information within networks. Networks use micro-electronic-based communication technologies such as the Internet or mobile phones. Societies do not have to be attached to a specific geographical space in terms of nation or state. ‘Digital networks are global, as they have the capacity to reconfigure themselves, as directed by their programmers, transcending territorial and institutional boundaries through telecommunicated computer networks’ (Castells 2009: 24). The rise of the networked society has also led to transformations in social dynamics and interpersonal relationships as well as how individuals relate to institutions’ and organizations’ access to networks is no longer dominated by one powerful social group in comparison with prior, while economically disadvantaged groups may find it more difficult to use the new networks particularly amongst the poor. Furthermore, Castells argues that the structural changes in society, place and time are gradually becoming less relevant to social life. They exist side by side with new identities and ways of life that are formed in the space of flows. Castells (2009) explains two emergent social forms of time and space that characterize the network society. There are the space of flows and timeless time. The space of flows refers to the technological and organizational possibility of practicing simultaneity without contiguity. It also refers to the possibility of asynchronous interaction in chosen time at a distance. Most dominant functions in the network society (financial markets, transnational production networks, media networks, networked forms of global governance, global social movements) are organized around the space of flows. However, the space of flows is not placeless. It is made of nodes and networks; that is, of places connected by electronically powered communication networks through which flows of information that ensure the Time-sharing of practices processed in such a space circulates and interact. (Castells (2009: 34)

4 Fritjof Capra is an Austrian-born American physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist. In 1995,

he became a founding director of the Centre for Eco literacy in Berkeley, California.

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The networked society provides people with the opportunity to communicate and interact with people from different places instantaneously allowing for the creation of social networks that draw from a myriad of culture and ideological worldviews. In Castells mind, this ultimately leads to a more connected productive accepting and open-minded global society. However, not everyone agrees with Castell’s vision of the networked society. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman5 believes that Castells is too idealist and utopian in his assessment of the current situation of the world with all of its social, political and economic ailments. Frank Webster6 argues that Castells places too much emphasis on the influence of technology on social relations and not enough on how humans correspondingly shape and reshape communications and networks. Despite these criticisms, it’s clear that Castells is overarching theory of the increasing interconnectedness of human society and our reliance on information and communication technologies is an important contribution to our understanding of globalization. Castell’s theory of networked society has been hugely influential in the sociological understanding of the relationship between new technologies and society. When Castells talked about space of flows where he was not supposed to talk in the sense of organizations rather than spatiality and each connected node has its own spatial identity or functions or features that keep others intact in myriad capacities. Space of flows is not an independent agent, relatively interlinked networks in the shape of spatiality. I would prefer to categorize ‘Network society’ a spatial concept that deals with spatial configurations with the help of Internet and social media.

3.7 Social Mediasphere Analysis (SMA): A Spatial Linkages Social media analysis is the kind of mapping the relationship and flows between people and groups. Every action on social media can be recorded and stored. Through this method, we can analyse and interpret the data and make sensible interpretations. SMA plays a very significant role to map social media today. There are different organizations such as Statistical Analysis System (SAS), International Business Machines (IBM), Adobe and Oracle that deal with social media data analytics; they have different tools to measure such data. These measures give us depth into the different roles and grouping in a network— in that sense, where are the clusters? Who is in between? Who is in the centre of the network? Who is on the periphery? David Krackhardt (1990) developed the ‘kite network’ which indicates that if they regularly talk to each other or interact in some 5 Zygmunt

Bauman was a polish sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of Poland by a political purge in 1968 engineered by the communist government of the polish people’s republic and forced to give up his polish citizenship to move to Israel. 6 Frank Webster is a British sociologist. His critical writing on the ‘information society’ has been translated into many languages, widely discussed and criticized.

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way, then the two nodes are linked with each other. This kind of network shows the differentiation between three most influential individual centrality measures: degree centrality, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality. Through these centralities, we can identify the effectiveness and the potentiality of the actor in the social world. This will help to map the pattern of spatiality that is an inevitable part of the spatial mapping.

3.7.1 Degree Centrality Degree centrality is the number of connections that an actor has. The degree can be interpreted in terms of the immediate risk of a node for catching whatever is flowing through the network. In the case of a direct network, we majorly define two separate measures of degree centrality, namely in degree and out degree. Consequently, in degree is a count of the number of ties directed to the node and out degree is the number of ties that the nodes direct to others.

3.7.2 Betweenness Centrality Betweenness centrality plays an important role in analysis of social networks. It is a measure of the influence of a vertex over the flow of information between every pair of vertices under the assumption that information primarily flows over the shortest paths between them.

3.7.3 Closeness Centrality Closeness centrality of a node is to measure the centrality in a network, calculated as the reciprocal of the sum of the length of the shortest paths between the node and all other nodes. It is measured in a connected graph.

3.7.4 Network Centrality Centrality is such a measure that defines us how influential or important a node is within the whole network. This concept is significant to map the social networks so that we can identify the social networks and the connection among the actors. This concept depends on different types of networks. So to some extent, centrality at that matter was about the question ‘what characterizes an essential node?’ From this measurement of centrality, we can get some idea of the node’s importance within

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the overall network. The degree of a node’s connectivity that mentioned above is probably the simplest and most basic measure of centrality. The centrality often depends on the context, some of the most important parameters for trying to capture the significance of any given node in a network. The significance of a node can be thought in two ways: first, how much of the network’s resources flow through this node, and second, how critical is the node of that flow. The basis to discuss these centralities helps to identify the consecutiveness of the different nodes to each other. This concept is based on the mathematical phenomenon which is associated with the mapping to social networks—to find the social relationship that ties among people or organization. While mapping the social media, we should know how these relationships measure, in what way we can analyse the whole concept of mapping the social media. In the recent time, two kinds of networks are most popular: user-centric social network which develops from online relationships around a user (e.g. one’s friend in Facebook or followers in Twitter, etc.) and other object-centric social networks which develop from online interaction around a social object (e.g. photo in Flickr, video in YouTube or hashtags in Twitter, etc.). The mapping of such networks often draws the outer boundaries that demarcate the same from the rest of other networks. Similarly, a WhatsApp group of likeminded people who knew each other in most cases or they came to know over a period of time shared messages or else information to keep benefitting all in the group.

3.8 Is Social Mediasphere Bridging the Gap in Rural Areas? From the digital perspective, India is divided into two very different communities: 70% of rural population vs. 30% of urban population. In a survey 2017–2018, around 13.54% reported that shown contents belong to urban sphere wherein urban issues were predominantly portrayed, nearby 10.04% said that the appeared portrayals belong to rural stories, about 21.40% observed that the appeared contents are metropolitan in nature where stories of big cities were textured in different demands, and around 55.02% unable to decode such contents or it shows mix pattern; however, they enjoyed all whatever appeared on their platform screen (Graph 3.5). The social media worked in the rural areas to promote the awareness regarding health issues and spread information regarding other information. Many Indian social media networks have committed themselves to provide information to the farmers regarding cultivation as well as animal husbandry especially All India Radio (AIR) which has been committed to rural audiences. Through an online public grievance system, development in these parts take smoothly as the villagers can lodge their complaints on this forum. (Bansal 2015: 203)

Furthermore, information networks can become one of the reasons that allow money to flow into the villages through new kinds of non-discriminatory and clean industries. Information and communication technologies can also compensate for other kinds of infrastructure limitations.

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Graph 3.5 Nature of contents you often preferred to see (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

For instance, if online work, trade or payment were to become available for members of a village community, the poor quality of roads to and from that village becomes less of an obstacle to learning and employment. Finally, and most importantly, if capital were to become more readily available within village communities through such networked systems, it would then be in a better position to finance the basic infrastructure that it needs, including roads, dispensaries, and water and sanitation systems. (Rai and Shahila 2013)

The Internet has transformed the way most people in the west live. It has become an important part of our economic, political and social lives, changing the way they purchase commodities, the way they bank and the way they share exchanges with one another. First, the Internet reduces traditional blockage to trade and industry, allowing small businesses in developing nations to market their products directly to the United States and other developed countries. Second, the informational capacity of the Internet enabled developing countries to move ahead in improving fundamental services, and it can allow, with its use, people all across information from any part of the world. There are two outcomes of a particular thing, one is negative and the other one is positive. One side, ICT brings a change in the rural areas in terms of development, but on the other hand, it is also the reason for the ‘digital divides’. Digital divide may refer to the gap between demographics and regions that have access to ICT and that do not have access to it or at the most have restricted access due to economic, technical or social reasons. The digital divides rise due to the lack of access to the informational tools. The reasons behind digital divides are as follows: socio-economic status, income, education, race, caste, gender, geographic (rural-urban) location, age, skills, awareness, political, cultural and psychological attitudes. According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) the gaps of digital divides is wider in the country. It shows in terms of number of subscribers where 27.57 persons in 100 persons accessed Internet in rural areas while in urban areas the rate of Internet penetration is almost 100% where 104.25 persons in 100 persons accessed.

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In total, about 52.08 people in 100 people accessed the Internet in the country. In Himachal Pradesh, the number of subscribers is highest in rural areas followed by Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Kerala. In Himachal Pradesh, the number of subscribers is highest in urban areas followed by Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan in the country (Table 3.1). The stark division in digital divides needs to reduce.

3.9 Spatial Mapping of Communication Communication traverses through spatiality. The topography of spatiality does matter for better communication and spatial distributions. Paul C. Adams (2009) argued four perspectives of communication. Media in space—it can be understood as a communication as infrastructures. Spaces in media—understood as a functional topological space: personal, professional, social, etc. Places in media—when place is a centre of meaning and attention, for example, hey, I love to watch Taj Mahal. Media in place— use of communication tools or mediums in specific places—a ringing in classroom or church can attract attention of others and therefore feel embarrassment. Adams argued various aspects of communication geography en route to response to environmental risk. With the development of location-acquisition techniques, social media become increasingly geographic (Blanford et al. 2011). In social media, geographic positioning systems (GPS) are inbuilt features that detect location automatically. The geo-components of social media have inbuilt features that comprehend in virtual space. Goodchild and Janelle (2010) demonstrate that the spatial-temporal dynamics in social science can refer to two aspects: individual movement and information diffusion. Marshall McLuhan (1964) argued global villages that described the phenomenon of the world becoming more interconnected as the outcome of the circulation of media technologies across the world. He elaborates that the global villages mean different parts of the world that are linked by the media. There are many communicative forms that allow us to connect with people in different parts of the country; for instance, Skype allows us to communicate and connect others. The new form of digital age has implications to establish new meaningful structures within the context of culture. Exchange messages, stories, opinions, posts and videos via channels on telecommunication can cause miscommunication—especially through different cultures. McLuhan pointed out that the increased velocity of transactions has promoted international density, making social networks an incentive for social change. All over the global village, people have excelled in their micro- and meso-level contexts. They are involved in a complex community of networks spread across cities, nations and so on. Besides this, increasing communications with friends on social media may also increase the density of interconnections within existing social clusters. Each social media platform acts as a digital home for individuals, permitting people to express themselves through the global village. According to McLuhan, the enhanced electric speed in bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden explosion has heightened human awareness

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Table 3.1 Digital divides in India Service areas

Andhra Pradesh

Internet subscribers (in million)

No. of internet subscribers per 100 population

Rural

Rural

Urban

Urban

Total

Total

21.54

32.26

53.80

33.02

126.70

59.33

Assam

6.57

6.46

13.03

23.45

113.28

38.66

Bihar

25.37

18.52

43.88

20.60

92.99

30.68

Delhi

0.74

37.79

38.53

98.35

165.82

163.65

12.05

30.56

42.61

31.97

107.44

64.43

Gujarat Haryana

6.16

9.87

16.02

34.41

90.09

55.55

Himachal Pradesh

3.41

2.19

5.60

53.34

245.68

76.85

Jammu & Kashmir

1.70

3.17

4.88

18.59

86.24

37.96

Karnataka

14.32

29.36

43.68

37.18

114.22

68.02

Kerala

10.27

15.70

25.97

37.69

171.21

71.30

Madhya Pradesh

17.06

27.38

44.44

21.82

89.85

40.90

Maharashtra

36.84

99.38

68.01

117.09

50.87 40.37

22.16

35.44

57.59

Mumbai

1.37

27.60

28.97

North East

2.96

4.40

7.36

27.65

Orissa

10.51

7.10

17.62

29.54

88.37

Punjab

7.38

17.31

24.69

42.46

117.73

76.96

Rajasthan

17.23

21.98

39.21

29.82

118.15

51.34

Tamil Nadu

13.49

34.97

48.46

50.74

76.31

66.92

UP (East)

23.91

25.60

49.51

20.09

83.47

34.89

UP (West)

13.23

21.39

34.62

1.52

15.32

16.84

23.38

109.60

48.32

14.70

15.62

30.31

247.63

439.99

687.62

27.57

104.25

52.08

Kolkata West Bengal Total

Notes 1. The number of total Internet subscribers per 100 population is derived from the subscriber data provided by the operators and the population projections of the country, published by the Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India 2. Data/information for Andhra Pradesh includes Telangana, Madhya Pradesh includes Chhattisgarh, Bihar includes Jharkhand, Maharashtra includes Goa, Uttar Pradesh includes Uttarakhand, West Bengal includes Sikkim and North East includes Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland & Tripura states Source Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Report (TRAI) 2020. (For details, https://trai.gov. in/sites/default/files/PIR_08012020_0.pdf. Accessed 25 June 2020) *Population data/projections are available state-wise only

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of responsibility to an intense degree. The advancement speed of communication and the ability for people to read about and react to global news quickly force us to become more involved with others from various social groups and countries around the world and to be more aware of our global responsibilities. Likely, web-connected computers enable people to link their web sites together. Furthermore, McLuhan argued that the global village ensures maximal disagreement on all points because it establishes more discontinuity and division and diversity under the increase of the village conditions. The global village is far more diverse and divergent. The diversity gives challenge to the cultural aspects and the world faces enormous challenges in maintaining the cultural diversity. It seems obvious that if there is no technology, there is no connection to share and exchange different thoughts. McLuhan believed that the world was entering a fourth age, he called the electronic age, where people everywhere would be able to find and experience the same information through technological tools. His analysis depended on how human communication was affected, helped him develop his hypothesis about the future and how innovations such as the coming Internet would impact individuals and culture as a whole. McLuhan’s prediction of a global village of connectedness also came with the warning; he suspected this technology would introduce violence into the world and the stress of having access to too much information might cause people to ‘re-tribalize’ into new integrated cultural groups. Both Adams and McLuhan established the spatial importance of new cultural imperialism in the shape of media that is inevitable in the twenty-first century. Media discerned the spatial differences and connotes them accordingly with different purposes. Globalization helped media to reach the unsolicited spatiality, and thereafter, mediated patterns are disclosed in mundane spatial representations.

3.10 Social Mediasphere and Globalization The globalization is the major phenomenon which causes the advancement of technology. In this section, we will learn about the globalization and its relationship with social media or new media. We all know that the emergence of new technologies (ICTs) has opened the door for exchange of ideas, services and products like never before. Many consider technological advancement all over the world as a force that has played a crucial role to bring out these changes. Ohmae (in 1995)7 says, ‘New Media are associated with far more cataclysmic changes in actually enabling the development of a truly global system, or society-culture thereby leading to fundamental changes in the world organisations’, and in contrast, Siapera8 raises a very

7 Kenichi

Ohmae is a Japanese organizational theorist, management consultant, former professor and dean of UCLA Luskin School of public Affairs. 8 Eugenia Siapera is professor of information and communication studies and head of the ICS School at UCD.

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authentic question in terms of the connection between the new media and globalization. The question is whether new technologies and new media entitle globalization or was it globalization that led to the cause of the rise of the Internet and other new media in global terms. The central feature of the idea of globalization is that many contemporary problems cannot be adequately studied at the level of nation-states, that is, in terms of each country and its international relations, but instead need to be seen in terms of global processes. (Eugenia 2012)

Simultaneously, Appadurai (1996) argues that the vital role in global culture is devoted to the media and migration as they represent movement of images and the movement of people. Social media also associates with a global culture; the people connect themselves with this relevant culture. The flow of ideas, technologies and finance together make a new landscape. Appadurai (1996) talks about five landscapes which change the whole world, i.e. ethnoscapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, technoscapes and financescapes. All creates new global orders. On the other way, Malcolm Gladwell, the scholar of The New Yorker and the Washington Post, believes that social media used as an effective tool in the different kinds of activism but that it cannot be reached as like traditional activism. He directly criticizes the very notion of social media in his own way. Social media is a very effective platform and increasing rapidly to get more new audiences. Social media emerged as a powerful tool in the information age that connects north to south and east to west. Humans are social beings and social media is the perfect platform to express that social nature all around the world. There is continuous addition to the available technological resources; one of the core features that make social media a global hit is: it is easy to access people who can share and talk across the globe through mobile phones, as people all over the world are connected like never before. Social media has changed the way in businesses because we can interact with them on a global scale. Businesses used social media to advertise and communicate with their customers; this interaction is a major factor in the globalization of social media. Social media is used by corporations all across the globe, and now, anyone can feel like they are at the forefront of innovation along with the companies that they follow on social media. Nowadays, it is evident that social media tend to enhance their original scope and offer support for additional services, for instance, social networking together with image and video sharing and tagging. There are several impacts of new media over globalization; according to Castells, globalization is not only the increase in interconnectedness in the world but also includes changes in the following areas: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Economy and works; Redistribution of power; Reorganization of nation state; Rise of cultural identities.

Thus, technical innovations conceived the idea of social media to the world that is unbiased and non-partial in nature, although with time it exposes the spatiality more

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and more. Social media brought all unity in diversity where everyone can join it without restrictions; rather, it created a composite-embedded virtual spatiality.

3.11 The Concept of Diffusion of Innovation After discussing the different aspects of globalization and how globalization enhances the availability of social media, now, we move on to diffusion of innovation and the elements which are essential in the process of diffusion of innovation. Diffusion of innovations, one of the oldest theories of social science, was developed by E. M. Rogers (1962). This term was used astronomically in the area of communication studies to explain the process of diffusion of an idea or product through a specific population or social system over a period of time. Here, innovation refers to an idea, practice or object or other units of adoption in society. There are different elements of diffusion of innovation: the innovation, communication channels, time and the social system. 1.

2.

3.

4.

Innovation: According to Rogers, innovation is an idea, practice or project that is obtained as new by an individual or other unit of adoption. Adoption of an innovation is related to the innovation-decision process which has three steps—knowledge, persuasion and decision. The innovation depends on these three steps that any society perceives. Every transformation has come up with a different agenda of a particular thing. Communication channels: The second component of the diffusion of innovations process is communication channels. Rogers defines communication is a process in which participants create and share information with one another to reach a mutual understanding. Two primary communication channels are mass media and interpersonal communication. Mass media channels reach to masses in a particular time, for instance, television, radio and so on, and on the other side, interpersonal communication contains two-way correspondence between at least two people or more. Time: According to Rogers, the time factor is overlooked in most behavioural research. He contends that incorporating the time measurement in diffusion research shows one of its qualities. Social system: The social system is the last component of the diffusion process. Rogers defines the social system as an arrangement of interrelated units occupied with joint critical thinking to finish a shared objective.

There are different stages in which diffusion of innovation can be practised and adopted; we are living in a ‘knowledge stage’; in this stage, an individual finds out the presence of innovation and looks for data about the innovation. A person seeks an answer to what innovation is and how and why it works? As outlined by Rogers (1962), the questions shape three sorts of knowledge:

3.11 The Concept of Diffusion of Innovation

1.

2.

3.

79

Awareness knowledge: It indicates the information about the innovation’s existence. This kind of information can stimulate the person to take in more about the innovation. How to knowledge: It indicates how to utilize an innovation properly. Rogers believed that to gain knowledge about how should be an essential variable in the innovation-decision process. Principles knowledge: The last information sort is principles knowledge. This information incorporates the functioning principles portraying how and why an innovation function.

The diffusion of innovation is essential to understand the theoretical backgrounds of how the information of flow disseminated. There are certain elements which we had discussed on the above through which any stage of society can obtain new innovations. Each stage of innovation and diffusion exchanges some knowledge in shapes of spatiality that binds the other spatial unlike nodes in networks. Therefore, the interconnectedness constructs spatially have their own distinct geographical indication that what we share across the social media where we shared, talked, discussed, represents the spatiality in mundane names and interpretations.

3.12 Conclusion This chapter discussed the communication as networks, nodes, space of flows, communication power, global village and diffusion in innovation. Social media owes two significant ways: first, the amount of content that can be provided by the users themselves far exceeds the content provided by news/opinion makers and second, its huge ability for potential exponential spread of information by word of mouth and interlinking of the various social media platforms. Henceforth, WhatsApp is a popular social media networking site among surveyed people followed by Facebook. Social media has changed daily lives engagement, enhanced public identity among peer groups as well as emerged as a medium to access the knowledge of what a common person felt during a survey. In comparison with traditional media, social media is more interactive and more dynamic in the sense of spatial turn across the digital gadgets. There are certain values to using the social media: identity, authority, relevance, professionalism, openness, compliance and privacy. The compression of time and space is another way to look for or to understand social media; due to the advent of technologies, the notion of geographic conditions has been completely changed. It takes a virtual turn within spatial turn when both spatial and virtual exists in the same spatiality without privilege one upon the other. The next section is mapped how social media facilitates as a political tool, political communication, political participation and digital public sphere. The chapter further discussed the social media, political campaigns and elections in the country.

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References Adams PC (2009) Geographies of media and communication: a critical introduction. WileyBlackwell, London Adams PC et al (2017) Communications/media/geographies. Routledge, London Appadurai A (1996) Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota Archer K (2013) The city: the basics. Routledge, London Ardoin PJ (2013) Why don’t you tweet?: the Congressional Black Caucus’ social media gap. Race, Gend & Cl 20(1–2):130–140 Arnold RD (1990) The logic of congressional action. Yale University Press, New Haven Asp K (1990) Mediatization, media logic and mediarchy. Nord Rev 11(2):47–50 Bansal E (2015) Impact of social media on rural India. Int J Manag Bus Strat 4(3):201–207 Blanford A et al (2011) Geo-Twitter analytics: applications in crisis management. In: Proceedings, 25th International Cartographic Conference, Paris, France, pp 1– 8. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229045946_Geo-Twitter_Analytics_Applications_ in_Crisis_Management. Accessed 28 May 2020 Castells M (2009) Communication power. Oxford University Press, Oxford Castells M, Gutavo C (2005) The network society: from knowledge to policy. Centre for Transatlantic Relations, Washington, DC Dahle TL, Dowling FR (1956) Improving the communication. J Commun 6(2):77–84 Denis J (2019) Beyond slacktivism: political participation on social media. Palgrave Macmillan, New York Eugenia S (2012) Understanding media. Sage Publications, London Fuchs C (2016) Critical theory of communication. University of Westminster Press, London Goodchild MF, Janelle DG (2010) Toward critical spatial thinking in the social sciences and humanities. GeoJournal 75(1):3–13 Innis H (1950) Empire and communicator. Oxford University Press, Oxford Innis H (1951) The bias of communication. University of Toronto Press, Toronto Innis H (1952) Changing concept of time. University of Toronto Press, Toronto Kessler E (2013) Social media and the movement of ideas. Eur Jud: J New Eur 46(1):26–35 Krackhardt D (1990) Assessing the political landscape: structure, cognition, and power in organizations. Adm Sci Q 35(2): 342–369 Marcuse H (1962) The problem of social change in the technological society. In: D Keller (ed) Towards a critical theory of society. Routledge, London Marcuse H (1964) One-dimensional man. Beacon Press, New York Marcuse H (1965) Socialist humanism? In: E Fromm (ed.) Socialist humanism: an international symposium, Garden Unity, NY, 107–117 Marcuse H (1978) The aesthetic dimensions: toward a critique of marxists aesthetics. Beacon Press, Boston McDonald T (2016) Social media in rural China. UCL Press, London McLuhan M (1964) Understanding media: the extensions of man. McGraw Hill, New York Miller P, Bobkowski P, Maliniak D, Rapoport RB (2015) Talking politics on Facebook: network centrality and political discussion practices in social media. Polit Res Q 68(2):377–391. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/24371839. Last accessed by 15 Oct 2020 Mosco V (2004) Webs of myth and power: the urban dominance of dot.com geography in the late 1990s. In: S Graham (ed) The cybercities reader. Routledge, London Mrgolis M, David R (2000) Politics as usual: the cyberspace revolution. Sage, London Murphy A (2004) The web, the grocer and the city. In: S Graham (ed) The cybercities reader. Routledge, London Ong WJ (2002) Orality and literacy: the technologies of the world. Routledge, London Rai GA, Shahila Z (2013) Rural India: the next frontier for social media networks. Int J Eng Res Technol 2(1):1–6 Rogers EM (1962) Diffusion of innovation. The Free Press, New York Venkatraman S (2017) The social media in south India. UCL Press, London

Chapter 4

Electoral Mapping of Social Mediasphere in India

Abstract The role of the media was critical during the election and it was further exaggerated since social media joined the election in the form of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp. Social media is now inevitable and found in every sphere of lived activities. Election is a live activity in democratic world. Everyone wants to capture the live activities including election, to know how and to what extent election has been influenced by social media through political contents. Social media emerged as a political tool and found precarious over a period of time. This chapter discussed the correlation between social media and election and how both are inseparable as well in spatial representations and interpretations. Keywords Social media · Elections · Political mobilization · Political agenda

4.1 Introduction Media plays an essential role in a democracy, informing the public about political issues and acting as a watchdog against misuse of power. Mainstream media does not provide such a platform that is more connected to the people, whereas social media have to facilitate an interactive way of communication. Social media is playing a substantial new role in Indian democracy; therefore, social media does not only refer to a democratic space, but the concern is more about how this space is being used for communication. It deflected the mainstream media and directly spoke to the voters. At the time of the election, the state engagement with social media seems to be more powerful and being strategized. Furthermore, out of all social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter are considered as an authentic space to share the knowledge; sometimes it enshrines turbulence that often happens in the virtual war. Social media is a tool that brings politics closer to people. This section begins with an overview of the rise of social media and how it controls through the political parties during the election meanwhile social media is also subjugating the manpower. This section is interested to map the political economy of social media to how social media politicized the issues, manipulated the real ideas and to inculcate their agendas into peoples’ minds. In fact, we never consider social media as an emancipator space rather it is more about to shape the propaganda. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Moinuddin, Digital Shutdowns and Social Media, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3_4

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4.2 Social Mediasphere and the Election in India While no doubt, how social media emerged quickly and generated so much excitement among the people. In a survey 2017–2018, study revealed that around 50.66% used platforms in order to promote themselves while 49.34% never used the platform to promote rather they used platforms for mundane purposes unlike others (Graph 4.1). The stimulus about social media is gradually multiplied over a period of time. Brook (2012) defines social media as a comprehensive platform in which one can create and discuss the information. Furthermore, he points out the websites and social media sites, in which he identified that these websites have exclusive control over the content and it simply displays for consumption by its users. On that account, he delineates three characteristics of true social media sites: (i) the information being posted is not directed at anyone in particular, (ii) the information being posted can be edited and/or discussed by all who see it and (iii) the information posted includes an easy way to share it with people not included within the scope of the original post. Here, the basic concern is how to understand the reach of social media and their accessibility and how this social media space provides the interactions in terms of a political goal. As Brook defines characteristic of the ‘true’ social media sites is basically based on the partial way of dissemination of information. Moreover, in the author’s view, social media have grown quickly because of the two dynamics: first, social media allows us to send to a core network of random people. Second, the dynamic that seems to full public excitement about social media is the very powerful concept of ‘virality’ (Brook 2012). Brook provides a general overview of the social

Graph 4.1 Have you ever tried to promote yourself on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017– 2018)

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media websites and how one can be used as their own way. The contextualizing of social media is based on the immense network through which the accessibility of information is enhanced. As Brook’s account the ‘networks’ substantiate his vision of social media. Manuel Castells (2009) ‘communication power’ exemplified the power of networks and how these networks inculcate the ideas in people’s mind. Manuel Castells (2009) defines ‘networks is a set of interconnecting nodes’. The functionality and meaning of particular networks depend on the connectivity of the specific programme and on its interconnection with other nodes in the network. In the digital age, networks play a beneficial role to connect the people with altogether. Networks incorporate the ideas and fabricate around the set of goals simultaneously it operates unity of purpose and flexibility of accomplishment depending on their operating environment. Moreover, Manuel Castells (2009) also elaborated network as a form of communicative structure, communicative networks are the patterns of contact that are created by the flow of messages among communicators through time and space. Manuel Castells (2009) specifies three features of the network which are important for the new technological environment: flexibility, scalability and survivability. Flexibility is the ability to reconstruct according to changing the environment and possess their goals while changing their components, sometimes elude blocking points of communication channels to find new connections. Scalability is the ability to expand or shrink in size with little disruption. Survivability is the ability of networks, because they have no single centre and can operate in an extensive range of arrangements, to withstand attacks to their nodes and codes because the codes of the network are embedded in multiple nodes that can reproduce the directive and find new ways to perform. Manuel Castells (2009) firmly points out that digital networks create global networks. The network society itself is a global society. However, this does not mean that everyone is included in these networks but the processes that take place in the global networks fiercely affect people. Thereby, the digital media depends on the networks; the global networks control and shape the human activities in every corner of the planet. After globalization the structure and mode of communication have been changed, it is more about the market-oriented and power of the network also being changed. Furthermore, Manuel Castells addressed four distinct powers in the global network society, which is as (i) networking power, (ii) network power, (iii) networked power, (iv) network making power. Each form of power specifies different processes that Manuel Castells (2009) elaborate. We have to understand how this power operates in the digital space and power connected to networks, one that has a network, who has power itself. Networking power refers to the power of the actors and organizations included in the networks that constitute the core of the global network society over human collectives or individuals who are not included in these global networks. This form of power operates by exclusion/inclusion. However, network power theorizes globalization from the perspective of network analysis by Guzzini (2009). In this sense, globalization involves social coordination between multiple networked actors. Power of networks set for a specific goal to control the particular group and the domination of networks depends over

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the interest. But the question is who has power in the dominant networks? How does networked power operate? The elites who have the power to control the networks? And the most crucial forms of power follow the logic of network-making power, there are two basic mechanisms to exercise control over others: (i) the ability to constitute network (s) and to program/reprogram the network(s) in terms of the goals assigned to the network and (ii) the ability to connect and ensure the cooperation of different networks by sharing common goals and combining resources, while fending off competition from other networks by setting up strategic cooperation (Castells 2009: 45). How to understand the significance of new media networks? There are four core characteristics of these networks: first, the new media networks enormously rely on social relations that flourish in society. The individual can see new networks as an extension of an individual’s social self into the virtual realm that promises grater connectivity, accessibility and maintenance of interactional communities created. Second, new media networks give genesis to speak for debate and discussion and counter the systemic constraint that is intrinsic to the content by the individual. Third, plurality, which is the third characteristic of these networks, arises from the coexistence of multiple outlooks existing within a shared framework of the information and communication technologies. Fourth, the shift from ‘the mass’ to ‘the self’ has been revived by the expansion of new media networks. Manuel Castells (2009) analysed the structure of power and network moreover, how this network configurations with the power which depends on the program goal. When the network of power control through social actors, therefore, it resist the power of the development of counter-power emerged. The resistance of power also takes place through and by networks. Because of counter power, the domination of power modifies their actions, according to their specific structural goals. Thus, the dualism of social media itself is a complex phenomenon that is more dominated and less liberal. We cannot find the centre of domination; there is no sequence but a flow of network that comes with both forms of domination as well as resistance.

4.3 Social Mediasphere: New Political Tool It has been a decade when social media seemed like a powerful and opinionated medium of communication in the developed countries and developing countries. In a survey 2017–2018, around 74.67% agreed upon that social media is a potential political tool which can be used during election while 25.33% completely differed with that social media as a political tool or politician used social media for said purposes (Graph 4.2). The world had witnessed at the time of the US presidential election in the year 2000 when social media covered all the aspects related to social media that was the real time when the Internet provided a new connectivity and interactivity tool of the direct conversation between the candidate and voters. After the presidential election of the United States, the Indian political parties too followed

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Graph 4.2 Social media helps politicians to express them (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

the same pattern of the United States. At that time, smartphones created a buzz and electronic messages were sent on the Internet. It would be interesting to know to what extent social media platforms have increased the participation and new pattern of communication that is more relevant nowadays. Social media is certainly playing a crucial role in opinion formation and mobilization of masses. At the time of the election, social media creates some sort of fake news and generates misinformation that affects people at another level (Sinha 2019). Misinformation played an important role in the whole process of election. Regarding this issue of misinformation and fake news, Election Commission of India offered to take voluntary measures to check the occurrence of fake news and other objectionable content on their platform. The fake news is the biggest threat in the process of election. In India, the focus is WhatsApp and growing evidence of messaging platforms being used to spread misinformation so that digital literacy is still on the rise as is awareness around how to differentiate between what is true versus what is false. Social media continue to struggle with these issues of misconception and misinformation of fake news. The growth of virtual space increases day by day at a very high rate. The role of social media during Parliamentary election 2019 can be accessed in India; the political parties who have the greatest social media supporters have the privilege to become closer to the winning path. However, according to a survey 2017–2018, around 23.14% found more religious contents followed by others, about 6.11% found caste-related contents are overwhelmingly over others, nearby 12.66% found class (in economic sense) contents are found more than else types of messages, around 23.58% encountered more contents on regionalism than else and, nearly 34.50% contradicts from above contents and

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Graph 4.3 What contents you encountered often in your page (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

found some others (Graph 4.3). The above-mentioned issues are often found in political tone or in other words we can read such issues purely as political to propagate political agenda where issues like religion, regionalism, caste and class would have been criticized for myriad reasons. To substantiate the power of social media, we can take an example of the Arab Spring, a comprehensive wave of demonstration and protests in the Middle East and North Africa between 2010 and 2012. By early January, urgent appeal for help and amateur mobile phone videos were spreading across North Africa. The impact of protest covered many countries such as Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Since 2000, technology proliferation has been particularly rapid in the Arab world. Social media conceptualize the whole process of movements with their active supporters. It was a massive movement all over the country in which the social media played their extensive role towards the same. The movement has several features, and basically, it was related to a political change and democratization of the countries. More anything, social media allowed communities to realize shared injustice and transportable strategies for mobilizing against dictators. Mainly in each country, people used digital media to update the reports of the events and to build a political response to a local experience with injustice. The effective use of social media during Arab Spring was the impact on organizational behaviour and there was a different prediction about the demonstration at a very high level. Social media forms public opinion, develops the common consensus and provides new structures for collective action. Social media space recognized as a public sphere where autonomous and anonymous public debate can take place simultaneously; it is considered a global world in which we can talk or share anything at the

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corner of the planet. The fundamental phenomenon of social media is to give a space that people are able to communicate wisely and put their argument strongly but at the same time larger political parties and other powerful organizations that deal with social media to propagate the ideas, to influence the behaviour and to manipulate the decisions of people for that matter. It is really partial to be less democratic because social media should be seen as an equal power for the same but unfortunately this is not happening as such. The social media has a massive impact at the time of election through which people make up their mind to which they want to give a vote. Each and every story of social media has an impact and effectiveness however, whatever the outcome, the central role of social media cannot be wished away. The issues mediated through social media are more about those issues that are less concerned at mainstream media.

4.4 Political Communication and Social Mediasphere in India Political communication is a branch to study modern communication studies. Most of the earliest studies of modern communication were created by analyses of propaganda/persuasive messages, mass media effects on voting, and public opinion of social and political issues. There are many authoritative scholars in the development of modern communication that worked in the domain of political communication study, for instance, political scientist Harold Lasswell,1 sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld2 and psychologists Carl Hovland.3 The origin of political communication can be traced at a very long back it is about centuries (e.g. Plato’s works in ancient Greece), as a cross-disciplinary area of study, it started in 1950 (Nimmo and Sanders 1981). At this period, the label political communication first appeared to describe an intervening procedure by which political institutions and citizens interact with each other and ‘political influences are mobilized and transmitted’ (Nimmo and Sanders 1981). Furthermore, the author talks about research traditions in multiple disciplines that contribute to the emergence of political communication. The first tradition is the rhetorical analysis of public political discourse. It contains the longest history of political communication study. There are some of the classic writers such as Aristotle, Blair, Campbell and Whately, who work on it. This perspective is qualitative in nature and the sources of a political message and the message have been historically and critically examined. 1 Harold Laswell was one of earliest communication model profounder. His popular communication

model was based on, ‘who said it, what was said, in what channel it was said, to whom it was said, and with what effect it was said’. 2 He was first who laid foundation of modern research institute; he was twentieth century empirical sociologist who initiated empiricism in study of communication. 3 Carl Hovland was associated with US army and assisted them to understand the war psychology and later he developed social judgement theory based on communication and attitude change.

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The second tradition was political propaganda study throughout the period of postworld war to post-world war second. There are such scholars like Harold Laswell and Leonard William Dood4 that deal on how different governments used propaganda/persuasive messages to influence public opinion. Laswell’s (1927) firmly described quantitative analysis5 (Rogers and Freiberg 1994). Lazarsfeld (legacy edition, 2020) and his colleagues had done classic work in the sphere of voting study. The fourth tradition is based on mass media effects. This tradition basically started by Lazarsfeld. He questioned the burly model of mass communication and emerged different concepts such as opinion leadership and the two-step flow of communication (Rogers and Freiberg 1994). Lippmann’s (1922) ‘Public Opinion’ was the first illustration of the agenda-setting function of mass media. In that account, the political effects of mass media, as stated by this tradition, are the outcome of the media agenda-setting process in which media ‘may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling [people] what to think about’ (Cohen 1963: 13). These traditions illustrate the emerging concept of political communication. Political communication is merely done through the media; the media actors sensationalize the issues and manipulate the entire concepts. Sometimes, it is being difficult to trust them and people lose their faith towards the media. Politicizing the issue is something that challenges transparency and accountability. Before the Lok Sabha election, twitter and other digital platforms started the participation and circulation of different ideas of the campaign. Twitter has different hashtags which are available in twelve Indian languages. There are several functions in which political communication exists: (i) the politicians develop their control and create their point of view at any cost even still when journalists stop them (ii) social media given privilege for the politicians to post a tentative political agenda. Meanwhile, nowadays, it has become a common practice for journalists to get some statements from Facebook pages of politicians. (iii) Through social media, political parties or politicians can mobilize the public and provide such a platform to them so that they can participate in the discourse on some issues which are supported by the public. (iv) Consuming the social media as an effective tool, politicians and the political parties have the same propaganda to gain access for their own sake of benefits, apparently with more rationality with their supporters, beyond the institutional and bureaucratic rigors. Among the vital political parties in India, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has the biggest presence in comparison with other political parties on social media. Both national and regional political parties had used vernacular media 4 Leonard

William Dood (1909–2000) was an emeritus professor of psychology and worked extensively on propaganda. He believed that communication and behavioural science-motivation, attitudes, personality and values are used as tools to understand the propaganda. 5 Content analysis of messages provided by the government demonstrated the power of mass political communication in created public opinion. His question, ‘who says what in which channel to whom with what effects?’ it shows the communication process and identifies a framework for later communication studies. The third tradition is related to voting studies in the United States. In this tradition, scholars combined a diversification of quantitative and qualitative research methods. It includes survey research with both in-depth interviewing and observation, content analysis with biographies and panel studies with focused interviews.

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to expand their political horizon. The vernacular public sphere plays a crucial role in political communication and mobilization (Saeed 2013; Neyazi 2018). Political communication and mobilization works informally and rhetorically when words are jumbled in such fashion that it sends multiple meanings. Tweets are often considered an idea of an individual who works in mundane capacities either to respond to the public or private for different reasons. Tweets and retweets are two different entities and two separate ideas that work in two different ways. Tweets invite formal or informal acknowledgement by followers. Similarly, PM Modi made the tweet ‘Phir Ek Baar…Cameron Sarkar’ (once again…Cameron Government) on 8 May 2015 after David Cameron won the Parliamentary election. The tweet was read in a different light or politically contested interpretations when PM Modi hinted that the time will repeat in India as well and asked the followers to be ready or to do so in order to secure such a repetition for his own government. The tweet was of course rhetoric in nature ‘once again’ which invites many spatial representations (Moinuddin 2019). The BJP began using social media even before the 2009 general election, which they lost. Nowadays, the party has great control on social media; many senior leaders such as Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh, Subramanian Swamy and many others are on Twitter. The most important aspect of social media is to create the phenomenon of fake news and misinformation during the time of elections and to see tussle between the politicians and parties is another to look at the digital space. The digital media flourished in a different way until the ‘spatial turn’ of communication being very productive. Social media develop fake identities and the agenda setting plays a significant role to establish these fake identities. For the 2019 Parliament election, the proper use of social media has started in 2018 and parties have been using platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp to woo voters including youths particularly those who would have cast their vote for the first time. Thereby, through social networking sites politicians shared their opinion, tweet to hashtags and they can make themselves visible through social media. Thus, today’s culture has contained different phenomena, new technological advancement is the primary component to develop the new channel, which information and ideas can quickly flow, but this space being exploited by politicians for determining competitive advantages. The political parties dominated the young and challenged voice and also manipulated the real ideologies. The participation for the real voice is less relevant, there are differences related to the religious ideologies. The question arises, do social media give equal space thereby everyone gets equal benefits to take the advantage of that medium? Equal participation is another concern of the recent paradigm of social media. Therefore, all political parties have moved to digital platforms and are trying hard to connect supporters, sympathizers, ideologues and funders. Social media of course changed the mode of political communication and mobilization if compared to the past.

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4.5 Political Participation and Digital Public Sphere The concept of public sphere comes from the German philosopher and sociologist Jurgen Habermas (1974) as ‘The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere’. Habermas (1974) raises the question that is a crucial one for democratic theory. He asks, for a rational-critical debate about political issues controlled by private persons willing to let arguments and not statuses dictate decisions? Habermas’s social theory is often interpreted as moving over the years from a Hegelian-Marxist inclination to a sort of Kantian orientation. Kant preoccupies the main place in structural transformation as the theorist who proposes the fullest enunciation of the ideal of the bourgeois public sphere. Habermas’s task in structural transformation is to define a critique of this category of bourgeois society, to develop some specific explanation: (i) its internal tensions and the factors that led to its transformations and partial degeneration and (ii) the element of truth and emancipator potential that it contained despite its ideological misrepresentation and contradictions. The transformation of Habermas public sphere now turns into the largest on its continual expansion to include more and more participants (as well as on the development of large-scale social organizations as mediators of individual participation). In most traditional complex societies, ‘public’ issues are discussed and decided on only by the elite. Therefore, the rise of consumerist mass democracy is another that challenges the public sphere. Mass media focused on consumerist advertising interests and public relations. Public opinion was reduced to a marketable commodity managed by public relation experts rather than formed through rational discussion under such conditions the political process itself was stage-managed to the benefit of commercial interests pressure groups. Basically, Habermas’s public sphere approach focused the elite people who control the public sphere for the sake of their own benefits. However, the advancement of technology changed the shape or structure of the public sphere. The structure of the earliest public sphere based on the print media, local discussions platform but the emergence of digital platforms changed the paradigm of the public sphere and the ‘New’ in sense of digital public sphere has been established. What I looked these social media as dual communication platforms somehow allows users to share openly their discussions in various formations. Or, in other words, we can say we are living in the age of platform democracy wherein social media is influencing democratic elements. The advancement of technology changes the communication process and the new media communication process becomes more direct, fast and complex. The public sphere is important for gathering the public opinion and necessary to assess the functionality of participatory democratic government. But the question has been ‘does a political discussion on social media qualify social media as a feasible public sphere’? The answer is in two ways. First, the qualifiers of the public sphere have changed with regard to how social media could be a digital public sphere. Peter Dahlgren (2005), Maria Bakardjieva (2009) and Nick Couldry (2005) stated that new definitions of civic engagement and the public sphere should be used to assess political

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discussion on social media. Moreover, social media creates a constructional platform for the public sphere, political discussion on social media is subject to forms of power that hinder what Habermas defined as public opinion. Habermas’s model of the public sphere is important to understand the composition of political discussion on social media. Sarah Brenne (2016) in ‘political discussion on social media and the public sphere’ defines three dimensions which conceptualize the public sphere in order to discuss online discussion. The first dimensions are structural features that focused on classic democratic rights such as the freedom of speech and equal access to the public sphere. The second dimension is the representational dimension that focused on an output of symbols–phrases, sign or images and their communication. The third dimension is the interactional dimension. Moreover, Habermas emphasizes two criteria that allowed for the rise of the public sphere in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in continental Europe. The first condition was the rise of the reading public. The bourgeoisie would meet in coffee houses to critically discuss literature. The second condition was the emergence of private spheres, majorly freedom of religion and land ownership. The structure of the public sphere allows people to participate in the realm of political discussion. For instance, during Tunisian uprising and the ensuing Arab Spring around 90% of the population had access to social networking sites, or through their cell phones. Furthermore, women had the opportunity to engage in political discourse in countries where they had earlier been discouraged from engaging in public debate. With the parallel of political participation, social media confine public opinion at the same time. India is democratic country and everyone has the right to express his or her views. Social media fails as a public sphere in Habermas’s terms. Habermas examines the downfall of the public sphere as being connected to the mediatization of politics and the commercialization of the media. Social media considered as the commercial platform, there is no public debate or shared public opinion despite the fact that social media is only used for promoting the product or at the time of the election for promoting the election campaign. Furthermore, Habermas argued that the public sphere became a utility for managing consensus and less a space for public information and for debate. How can we consider social media as the tool for managing consensus? In this context Michel Foucault (1982) defines through continuous surveillance and examination, social media becomes the tool for managing consensus. Furthermore, Foucault’s panopticon thesis argues that surveillance is a mechanism of power. Surveillance operates on social networking sites through desired visibility and a threat of invisibility. Therefore, social in terms of political participation play a dual role and control the digital public sphere by their powerful networks. The mediated public sphere seems to become the rival of public opinion; the constructed public opinion emerged which don’t have any logic and reason. Meanwhile, the elite people who own social media in order to suppress the true opinion of the people and make them realize that they are on the wrong side. Social media is not a free space that deals with real issues rather than a powerful network that controls it. For example, ‘the hashtag politics’ (Moinuddin 2019) emerged as result of digital public sphere.

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The idea behind hashtags is to represent a similar story at particular links wherein anybody can search for the specific story easily, if they wish to read it. Unlike other symbols, it was an augmented journey of hashtag in the digital strata when the symbols (#) (Hashtag) became popular since Chris Messina used it for the first time in 2007. The symbols of hashtag (#) became unlike other symbols used for different purposes in both natural and social sciences as well. Social media has shaped the hashtag as a ubiquitous part of digital culture, which started from Twitter and expanded to other social networking sites. It was designed for categorizing posts and the hashtag can now be a tool for a supplementary words and comments (e.g. #MakeInIndia). The word tag means—‘a word or phrase used for description or identification’. The symbols became popular on Twitter and other microblogging sites to represent the similar nature of the story. Stephen Jeffares (2014) argues what policymakers do creates branded policy through Twitter and how Twitter makes the information mediatized in a short while in the shape of hashtag politics (Moinuddin 2019). Digital public sphere mobilizes political participation in mundane ways when users taking part as ‘clicktivism’ or ‘slacktivism’ in order to show his/her solidarity on some issues what he/she is very much profound for political or else rational. For example, Bihar Assembly election 2020 is progressing where digital platform or online media would play a decisive role when digital election rallies, digital election poster, target voters (through AI profiling by Facebook or other involved agencies), digital election meetings are conducted through digital equipment in order to reach out to voters. Such process and procedures started couple of months back when BJP organized a digital rally to reach out their sympathizers. This election will create a new landscape for future elections not only in terms of campaign, rallies, meetings rather to propagate false information, misinformation, inauthentic information and handling to all such will be a herculean task for Election Commission of India in the country.

4.6 Social Mediasphere: Formation of Public Opinion Walter Lippmann (1922) talks about the functioning of democratic government, especially of the irrational and often self-serving social perceptions that influence individual behaviour and prevent optimal societal cohesion where public opinion is manipulated according to the requirement of benefits of the elite class. Lippmann proposes that the political elites are members of the class of people, professional specialized class collect and analyse data, and turn the conclusion as per the requirement. Elite classes are manufacturing the consent and to redefine the whole truth through power. Media manufacture the consent where they used materials or evidence in dark light in order to prove what is right despite being conventional understanding or in other words, to think as per se media on such issue what media said is right (Herman and Chomsky 1988). The main problem of ‘public opinion’ is to demonstrate the problem facing democracy in its original form ‘because the pictures inside

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people’s heads do not automatically communicate with the world outside and to propose a retrieve based on classify intelligence and “representation of the unseen facts of public affairs”’ (Lippmann 1922: 19). Walter Lippmann defines how public opinion consists of pictures inside men’s heads and why the pictures are so often misled in their dealings with the world. He explains how stereotypes affect public opinions and how these individual opinions are crystallized into what is called public opinion (Lippmann 1922). The nature of public opinion transforms the social relation and controls the decision-making power. The public sphere moreover has to take into account the growing intermission of the state, which tends both to the condition, it subtract from the total control of civil society. The growing audience of speakers is joined not only by the audience of readers/viewers but also more generally by the consumer public. The mediatization of public opinion is unlike a mechanism that played a critical role in the formation of public opinion in the society. The public opinion is not in the hands of the public, rather is in the hand of the media through which people get influence and control by politicians or elite class. The influence highly depends on social media as per their structure it shaped the opinion. For example, the hashtag that controls the issue and shapes the news contents of that spatiality or time being, whatever: the news is in control of the elite through the media.

4.7 Hidden Agenda: Election Campaign in India Social media can be considered as an aggressive platform in which diverse groups fight each other and their opinion might be called influential thoughts. In the current scenario, everyone wants to become part of social media, since everything is concerned in the digital era. For example, one of the latest survey reports of a social marketing agency, ‘We are social’ expressed that India has 242 millions of people using social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and other mobile apps like Hike, WhatsApp, etc. This has become an instrumental and best possible way for marketers to reach every individual in the easiest manner. But the question arises ‘How is the power used by the politicians for the campaigns through social media’? The first thing which is important for them to get connected with people through social media thereby, the use of social media during the political campaign has become a crucial part for every political party and candidate. Social media has a significant impact on the elections relating to the number of people involved and the speed of communication. For instance, in 2008, Barack Obama, the US president used the social media successfully for his campaign since he understood the social media and leveraged it and it was the initial campaign where social media was pervasive. Politicians try to create interesting posts and make the followers engaged which is similar to the strategy followed by a brand or media company. While the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was the first party to use social media to campaign for its own programme and ideology in the 2014 elections, in the years since most other parties, including the Indian National Congress

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(INC), the Samajwadi Party and many others have established IT cells to interact and promote campaign for their programme and vision for the 2019 elections. In a survey 2017–2018, around 19.65% found that political parties used manifesto to reach the voters, what they promised to do, if voted to power, nearby 24.02% used slogans to attract viewers attention which found a effective medium to catch viewers gaze, nearly 42.36% used the photos of their respective leadership on social media, and around 13.97% found flags are used by political parties across social media (Graph 4.4). In general, politicians used photographs of their leaders to promote political ideology. A study of the patterns of political enunciation across social media leaves the distinct impression of a rupture and fragmented public sphere. Each of the large electoral alliances led by the BJP and the INC, severally, seems to be addressing completely different public spheres through social media. Social media campaigns are consequently likely to have an important impact on the 2019 elections whereas most commentators are less than assured about their impact and fear social polarization leading to significant crooked in the electoral outcome. The supporter of the two sides along with trolling each other is fighting out brutal battles on social media. Social media is considered as an effective tool for election campaigning in India and all over the world. According to a survey 2017–2018, around 70.74% convinced at large that social media is inevitable during election time while 29.26% did not convinced that social media can influence the election anymore (Graph 4.5). Around two-thirds agreed upon that social media could influence the election or set the agenda for desired electoral results. McCombs and Shaw (1972) illustrate the agenda-setting theory on the American presidential election. In the 1968 ‘Chapel Hill study’, McCombs and Shaw indicate

Graph 4.4 How political parties used social media during election time (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

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Graph 4.5 Relevance of social media during election time (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

a strong correlation coefficient between 100 residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina belief was the most crucial election issue and what the local and national news media reported was the most important issue. By comparing the salience of issues in news content with the public’s viewpoint of the most important election issues, McCombs and Shaw (1972) were able to elaborate the degree to which the media shape public opinion. On that account, agenda setting can be detected in the first chapter of Walter Lippmann’s (1922) ‘public opinion’. Lippmann argues that mass media are the one who mediated between events in the world and the images in the minds of the public. In the agenda-setting theory, McCombs and Shaw (1972) define three types of agenda-setting: (i) public agenda setting, in which the public’s agenda is the dependent variable (The traditional hypothesis), (ii) Media agenda-setting, in which the media’s agenda is treated as the dependent variable (Agenda Building), (iii) policy agenda setting, in which elite policymaker’s agendas are treated as dependent variable (political agenda-setting). On the other side ‘Framing’ is another way to influence the people about a particular issue. The notion of framing has obtained impulse in the communication source presenting and defining an issue. Entman (1993) noted that frames have several locations, including the communicator, the text, the receiver and the culture. These components are integral to a process of framing that consists of distinct stages: framebuilding, frame-setting and individual and societal level consequences of framing (D’Angelo 2002; Scheufele 2000; de Vreese 2005). Framing is an important aspect to frame the particular issue, on that account; the consequences of framing can be conceived on the individual and the societal level. The election campaign frame according to the agenda setting, in the political

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Graph 4.6 Politicians used social media for (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

campaign there is a hidden agenda that influences through the power of words and design. Consequently, Gitlin (1980: 7) marked frames as ‘persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation and presentation of selection, emphasis and exclusive by which symbol handlers routinely organize discourse’. In short, a frame is an emphasis on the salience of different features of a topic. While agenda-setting theory allocates with the salience of issues, framing is anxious with the presentation of issues. To substantiate the argument, we take an example of ‘TikTok’ considered as an online platform; it made Modi to become popular among young voters. Sharing App TikTok played a major role in creating a ‘Modi Wave’ among them. In a survey 2017–2018, around 27.95% agreed that politicians used social platforms for personal popularity or personal benefits while nearby 72.05% found that politicians used the platform to express his/her political ideologues, whatsoever (Graph 4.6). The strategy made by Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) to hire young ‘karyakartas’(field workers) to expand Modi’s digital presence across the platform including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. According to a survey 2017– 2018, around 62.45% agreed that national parties are using more social media platforms than regional political parties while 37.55% believed that regional political parties are using more social media than national parties (Graph 4.7). The App affects young voters to choose to the platform to record themselves, shouting the famous ‘Mitro’ (Friends) and ‘Is Baar fir Modi Sarkar’ (let’s again Modi govt.) videos, hash-tagged them with social media drift and shared those. This is considered as the hidden agenda of the political parties that mainly arises at the time of the election. Not just a person but families recorded themselves emulate Modi’s ‘Aap Aashvast rahiye, aapka ye chowkidar, poori Tarah chowkanna hai’ (You do not need to worried I am very tentative and punctual as gatekeeper) dialogue

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Graph 4.7 Who used more social media national and regional parties (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

along with videos on the ‘Mein Bhi chowkidar hu’ (I am too gatekeeper) songs. The political content is basically somewhere most influential that creates tussles between the two parties and their supporters. Furthermore, several TikTok videos were shared in other regional languages including Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Gujarati and Bengali. Every political party plays their card to use social media for their own propaganda and supposed to misguide the people out there. In spite of this, on the other side political advertisement plays a crucial role to propagate the people’s mind. The campaign of the BJP during Parliament election 2014 ‘Ab ki Baar Modi Sarkar’ (once again Modi govt.) used a wise combination of animated films and films with actors can be seen in both affecting and inspirational manner. Indian National Congress (INC) also came with an interesting advertisement during 2014 general election through its slogan ‘Har Haath Shakti campaign’ (each hand is powerful). The political advertisement has frequently fastened with an acute and intense need to influence mindsets. Moreover, political advertising is majorly about to enhance a ‘human-brand’ or enhance a politician, as a brand. According to a survey 2017–2018, nearly 22.71% endorsed that contents across the platforms are quite informative in nature, nearby 14.85% said contents are often portrayed in cultural affiliations, about 45.85% said most of the contents are political in nature, and approximately 16.59% agreed that the contents are socio-economic in nature (Graph 4.8). During the survey, it was common and around half of respondents agreed that contents found on social media are political in nature followed by informational, socio-economic and cultural contents. Meanwhile, all these years, political advertising was done in a very different way, the corporate one, the recently Prime Minister Narendra Modi changed this attitude once and for all. He made himself experience with the different types of media platforms and involved with all of them in their appropriate languages creatively. The main agenda of campaigns was made to divert and divide people from the major

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Graph 4.8 The nature of political contents on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

issues and to create such kind of images among its viewers that affected people at a larger level. Social media is the wider platform in recent times that circulates the information at the global level and unites the people in a common space. This virtuality of social media somehow spread the fake connection. The campaigns of Indian political parties through social media propagate the ideas and control the minds of the people. The rationale behind the campaign was to divert them from the serious issues and involve them in an absurd religious perspective. In present scenario, the government agenda was to revolve them around Hindu-Muslim politics, the situation has been worst at some extent. People did not understand how much the government had suppressed the people in the name of the development. The situation reached that level, people even did not believe the voting system was right because the corruption that happened in nowadays is simple and ridiculous. That proves the government can only propagate, manipulate and suppress to showcase the card of development. During the global pandemic of COVID-19 when the whole country was struggling with COVID-19, BJP was busy in Bihar Assembly election preparation, which was scheduled in the latter half of 2020. BJP managed to organize the first digital rally to reach voters in Bihar.6 The COVID-19 pandemic opens a digital door to politicians to address the masses or we can say it is a shift in the election campaign when both voters and leaders are sharing political promises through the Internet and platforms. 6 It

was first election rally that was held on digital platform when BJP managed more than 72,000 LED screen to address the voters in the state. For details, https://www.financialexpress.com/indianews/amit-shah-virtual-rally-live-amit-shah-speech-today-updates-bihar-assembly-election-2020latest-news-rjd-congress-jdu-nitish-kumar-tejashwi-yadav/1983808/. Accessed 24 June 2020.

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4.8 Digital Change in Election in India Earlier, media during the Indira Gandhi rule appeared as the main villain and was promptly shot. The control of the government over the television and radio being there, India Gandhi transformed herself into the most powerful public personality and charismatic leader by the time of 1971 elections. Media then popularly called the press was the vehicle that carried all information to people and the government, which felt threatened by mounting criticism. Meanwhile, in the last four years, there has been a shift in social content and strategy of the BJP and the major opposition party, centre-left Indian National Congress (INC). Thereby, during 2014 the BJP was banked on development agenda but meanwhile by approaching 2019 BJP shifted to polarization and that became contentious for both the BJP and the INC. In earlier times, the media were under full government authority; there were mainly government channels, and private or independent channels were not there. The government used three principal methods to control the media during an emergency. Those were not the days of social media Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. In a survey 2017–2018, around 21.83% often used to like political news, nearby 16.59% shared the political news, about 3.93% preferred to tag the political news, nearly 12.66% used to sanctify such news, about 25.76% preferred to comment on the news, if they agreed upon the contents, and approximately 19.21% just scrolled off the news without any responses (Graph 4.9). Almost two-thirds scroll the political news and react accordingly. The response of each one is quite different upon the same political news. Media depended on their own communicator or the news agencies for information. Moreover, social media is supposed to disseminate the

Graph 4.9 How you responds which you liked on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

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election campaign and circulate the information around the world. Indian politics has assumed a wider change over the period of time. In the 2014 general elections, it was presumed that social media became the battleground of various political campaigns and the enormous flow of different political opinions. The Indian public sphere is expanding not just by conventional media—TV, print, online and radio rather seeking information, pushing disinformation and immediate indulgence. The expansion of Internet networks enhances the business of social media in small towns as well. The extensive emergence of multiple media platforms including social media addresses the role of the media in politics and government and the relationship between the two. In the earlier history of Narendra Modi as chief minister, especially with some elements of the English media following the 2002 riots, he developed a new strategy for media-government relationship. In a survey 2017–2018, nearly 69.43% agreed that elections are mediated wherein the role of media including social media is visible while 30.57% do not find any reason to believe that elections are mediated (Graph 4.10). The Prime Minister Narendra Modi used a media-centric strategy where his government wanted to shoot all issues through media or judiciary to reach their goals whatever. For example, the Supreme Court of India declared the final judgement in the Ayodhya dispute on 9 November 2019. The Supreme Court of India ordered the disputed land (2.77 acres) to be handed over to a trust (to be created by Government of India to build the Ram Janmabhoomi (revered as the birthplace of Hindu deity, Ram)) temple. The court also ordered the government to give an alternate 5 acres of land in another place to the Sunni Waqf Board for the purpose

Graph 4.10 Elections are mediated in India (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

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of building a mosque.7 The case was an acute example of sabotaged judiciary when final pronouncement of the judgement does not comply with its own evidence. In the five years of the Modi-I regime, the party and government utilized a simple formula: delegitimize existing media and operate your own channels of communication with the voter and citizen. Over the five years, more than any time in the past, media houses in India find the integrity of self-censorship. NDTV was exposed as the channel that had practiced internal censorship during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime as well. There are so many allegations made on NDTV from politicians particularly right wings. Nowadays, Modi has great control over the media and information dissemination and they are doing as per their requirements. Since May 2014, when this government again came to power, the 404 error page on media websites is showing up rather more commonly than before. The de-legitimization of mainstream media has been attained by communicating directly with citizens and voters, by inclination on private sector media outlets in ways that conduct to increasing selfcensorship and by giving interviews to only those journalists with whom the prime minister is congenial. However, BJP creates its own media, election time accelerates Modi’s image and a message has led to different experiments in 2014 and 2019. The 2019 Parliament campaign was powered by an unflagging media machine explained in this Time Magazine report on how WhatsApp has disseminated fake news ahead of the election. There was also a more unflinching experiment with NaMo TV8 launched on 31st March 2019, just a few days before the polling was scheduled. On YouTube channel, Modi’s rallies and speeches were telecast on 24 × 7. NaMo TV encourages Modi through every phase of polling. The instrumentality of media occurred means control of the media from the outside actor, political instrumentalization9 and commercial instrumentalization10 happened at the same time. After 1991 when globalization policies transformed the structure of media that caused a change in the nature of politics and thereafter a new style of political campaigning replaced the old model of political campaign that benefited both the politicians and social media to grow each other. All political organization adhere digital public sphere in order to promote them.

4.9 Political Mapping of Social Mediasphere in India As the field of study, the political economy of communication has three main concerns: (i) examining the ownership of media organizations to determine how 7 The Supreme Court decision was binding to both the sides Hindu and Muslim to accept the decision,

though the various remarks made by honourable court were fictitious and conflict to itself and let decision pronounced on Faith not on evidences. For details, https://www.sci.gov.in/pdf/JUD_2.pdf. Accessed 20 June 2020. 8 It can read as Narendra Modi (NaMo). 9 Ideas that played as pivot in order to execute some actions. 10 Business does matter, nothing to worry about ethics or moral values.

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much and what kind of autonomy (freedom) it affords, (ii) examining how advertising and commercial values influence, determine or shape media content and (iii) critiques the state policies and the way media are owned, controlled and managed the capacity of the media to serve the democratic imperatives and relevant and reliable information. Metaxas and Mustafarj (2012) in ‘social media and the election’ examined the spamming11 and through illustrations tried to understand how social media predicted the election. The spamming creates the chain through which messages circulate, and data from social media are fundamentally different from data from the natural circumstance. People will change their behaviour the next time around spammers and activists would have taken advantage, for instance—‘Twitter Bomb’.12 The spammer has also created some sort of connection; therefore, the people connect and political business gets higher. In the earliest time, in Germany, Nazi party used the hegemonic power to implement various policies and to gain people’s consent including from jurisdiction to the political economy of media, it is not a new aspect, the influence remains the same but the structure is changed. The political economy may change through the different phenomenon that has been used through the ruling government and the various political parties. The advent of social media raises the impact of political economy that changed the entire concept of power. On that account, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India has made several laws pertaining to govern the social media and to reduce the gap between government and people. Various private companies are working with the government to expand the business of social media, thus, Reliance-Jio launched 4G-telecom service for free for the first four months in September 2016. A report on Economic Times in 2018 revealed how Reliance-Jio had made 100 million subscribers in the first six months since it’s launched. The 4G have created a lot of enthusiasm in the market and politics. In fact, the technology has paved the path to fill the propaganda and collateral business tie up between the government and Reliance Telecom took further to take care of mutual interests. The political campaign is another important side in which we have to discuss the political economy because the political economy is also affected by campaigning in a very different way. Since Modi assumed PM office he himself has taken the lead to use social media platforms as much as and subsequently emerged as a ‘Brand’ as nothing exceptional rather an extension of such a project when politicians are likely to treat as a celebrity so that people get influence over them. In the past, the argument on political marketing was often considered as sacred for political campaigning (Baines and Egan 2001; O’leary and Iredale 1976). The concept of introducing the marketing technique in the political campaigning remains a subject to others and to differentiate with profitability where politics has greater intent than the commercial or the other who notify marketing along ‘style’ relatively than ‘substance’. The ordinary anguish 11 Spamming

is used for messaging systems to send unprompted message especially advertising as well as sending messages repeatedly on the same site. 12 Twitter Bomb refers posting various tweets with the same hashtags and other similar content, involve @messages from multiple accounts with the objective of advertising a certain meme, basically by people’s tweet feeds with the same message and making it a ‘trending topic’ on twitter.

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of the political field into the access of marketing recommends that critics give higher credibility to ‘power of marketing’ than the marketer’s grants for themselves. The pessimistic spectators are often considered as vital for marketing exposure that political consumers suffered a little less than a general consumer. Either from political or financial perspectives the higher authority has a wider knowledge than the voters (consumers). It is stated that in either of the conditions, consumers are expecting higher assurance in making an exact decision, and done by the marketing through providing adequate information (Baines and Egan 2001). Further illustrate that marketing is performing a crucial role in modern politics but the outcomes are inadequate. From the marketer’s perspective, the outcomes are anguishing as the aloft purchases (higher voting) are identical to the measure of success. (Baines and Egan 2001) state that unstableness of marketing in the context of political campaigning operated the Internet in political activity and networked digital connectivity. Langlois and Elmer (2013) stated that social media sites such as Twitter have become an important site for fast response in order to political events. In addition, voters and consumers both prone to ignore the media message, whether commercial or political, if they don’t feel it suitable (Vakratsas and Ambler 1999). Moreover, it is clear that there are similarities between marketing and political campaigning practice, and in the micro-level, there are certain unsuitable factors concerning particular audiences related to political and commercial. It is clear that politics and marketing depend on each other; the political parties spent a big amount on the campaigning. The global networks take part in the sphere of marketing. The advertisement plays an important role to develop the excitement among the people. The political hegemony establishes through the political parties and it propagates according to their agenda. The political parties joined the social media to increase their voters and to enhance their strategies so that they gain public support. The advertisement creates marketing and it is the source to manipulate the people’s mind through the soft power or hegemonic power. The social media as a form of the virtual market is widening day by day at a very larger level in India.

4.10 Conclusion Social media establishes as the wider platform in making a public opinion and disseminating the information at a very fast level. Social media reached the corner of the world; everyone gets access easily and shares their views all together or separately at the same time. Substantially, social media rises as a free platform; it becomes less free and less democratic at the same time. The whole concern now shifted from mainstream media to social media. The free public sphere converted into the dominated public sphere. The social media created some sort of network that binds the nodes with each other; this network is horizontal in nature. The media have always been an important aspect in the context of politics while the government often wants to control the media.

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It is clear that social media as a platform for candid political discussion, thereby; social media is still a popular platform for organizing political movements and during COVID-19 pandemic digital election rally were reported from Bihar. Social media arises from political myths and discourse as what we experience is fiction in arts and theatre. The useless fight occurred or debates occurred on social media as some sort of propaganda to capture the collective attention. On the other side, in the past five years, the media landscape has also been changed. There are so many websites, bloggers and different media platforms developed. Many of these have benefitted from a new trend of corporate philanthropy that is funding independent media. The media and politics both are interdependent to each other, but now the entire mainstream media shifted to social media. The more often they use social media, the more often they use social media for political activities. The spatiality of social media furthered in new shapes and sizes and pushed the politicians and political parties to colonize the spatiality of social media, if they want to influence the election. The political ideology often talked about regionalism versus nationalism. The upcoming chapter is about how signs and symbols shaped and reshaped the social media and how it works in the communication. The various dimensions of semiotics were discussed in the section.

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Shaw EM, Shaw LD (1972) The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opin Q 36(2):176– 187 McCombs M, Shaw D (1987) Chapel Hill study. In: Iyenger S, Kinder D (eds) News that matters: agenda setting and priming in a television age. University of Chicago Press, Chicago Metaxas PT, Mustafaraj E (2012) Science and society: social media and the elections. Science 338(6106):472–473 Moinuddin S (2019) The political Twittersphere in India. Springer, Cham, Switzerland Neyazi TA (2018) Political communication and mobilisation: the Hindi media in India. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Nimmo DD, Sanders KR (1981) Handbook of political communication. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills O’Leary R, Iredale I (1976) The marketing concept: quo vadis? Semant Sch. https://doi.org/10. 1108/EUM0000000005043. Accessed 18 May 2020 Puniyani R (2003) Communal politics: facts versus myth. Sage Publications, New Delhi Rajagopal A (2001) Politics after television: Hindu nationalism and the reshaping of the public in India. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Rajendran C (2007) Acting among the Shadows of the Screen. In: Nalini Rajan. Digital culture unplugged: probing the negative cyborg’s multiple locations. Routledge, New Delhi Rogers CR, Freiberg HJ (1994) Freedom to learn. Merrill/Macmillan, New York Saeed S (2013) Screening the public sphere: media and democracy in India. Routledge, New Delhi Schefule DA (2000) Agenda-setting, priming, and framing revisited: another look at cognitive effects of political communication. J Mass Commun & Soc 3(2):297–316 Sinha A (2019) The networked public: how social media is changing democracy. RUPA, New Delhi Vakratsas D, Ambler T (1999) How advertising works: what do we really know. J Mark 63(1):26–43

Chapter 5

Geographies of Semiotics in Social Mediasphere in India

Abstract We live in a world of signs and symbols. Deep meanings are often connoted through signs and symbols. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and emoticons/emoji are features that are used in graphical or pictorial representations in mundane expressions. The use of emoji across the platforms is inevitable and users used emoji very purposefully to express them or it works as a bridge between senders and receivers. Emoji facilitates digital language wherein users often express themselves accordingly. Emoji/emoticons are not mere a sign or symbol rather it represents spatial connotations between senders and receivers in varied expressions when two persons exchange greetings, anguish, sorrow, melancholy, pain, happiness, etc. This chapter is about to explore the meaning, pattern and nature of semiotics in social media. Keywords Signs · Symbols · Semiotics · Emoticons · Language · Communication

5.1 Introduction Social media is a communication tool and having inbuilt semiotics features that facilitates the users to communicate with each other through signs and symbols, to exchange ideas, thoughts, opinions and feelings, whatever. Semiotics/emoticons played an important role in the process of communication on social media. There is a word limit (in case of Twitter or else when words are unable to express the feelings and expressions) through which one can’t express their feelings. Semiotics provides that scope through which the users can express their mood, feelings, body language, gesture and so on. ‘Factual information about an event to which people are reacting can be obtained from different types of (geo-) sensors, official authorities, or the public press, but not the emotional or attitudinal impact of events on people’ (Hauthal et al. 2019). Social media facilitates such spatiality where an emoji is enough to express them even without texts. These emotions/emoji have a range of features of living and non-living characteristics. These emojis often touch emotional values that texts are often unable to express or in other words when words are unable to express or not supportive or not allowed, in such conditions expression through emoticons/emoji found as panacea. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Moinuddin, Digital Shutdowns and Social Media, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3_5

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Emoticons/emoji emerged as digital languages in the information age what we believed that in the past when there were no languages, emoji/emoticons was the medium between them to be expressed. The use of emoji was not restricted to communication between two persons rather it was beyond that when two societies communicated with each other, and as consequences, emoji shaped the spatiality of civilizations. The spatiality of civilizations carries the same connotations in different names, race, caste, tribe, religions, culture and traditions.

5.2 Mapping Semiotics Semiotic is a term broadly defined as the study of different signs conveyed through different channels and media. The term semiotics traced from ancient Greek formulations of semioticians, as symptom or sign. ‘In modern history, semiotics have been taken up in philosophy, literary, and cultural studies, language and literacy studies, psychology, and even biology’ (Prior 2014). Geography too accommodates signs and symbols to understand the spatial features. In other words, emoticons are spatial in nature where each emoticon tenders own spatial meanings.

5.2.1 Contours of Signs in Semiotic Theory The semiotics were subdivided into pure, descriptive and applied areas. Different writers gave different meanings of semiotics, as Sebeok (2001) states it as ‘the antique doctrine of signs’. Halliday and Hasan (1985) state it as ‘the study of sign systems’. Human beings to represent their feelings, emotions to the world use signs and symbols. The major contributor in the semiotics studies is Charles Pierce (classification of sign),1 Morris (the scope of semiotic theory),2 Ferdinand de Saussure (Semiology and linguistics).3 Charles Pierce and Saussure were referred to as the founders of the semiology. The existence of semiotics is related to the process of meaning-making.

1 Charles

Sanders Peirce found the term semiosis which mean an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects—such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant. This tirade further developed as: (1) speculative grammar, (2) logical critics, and (3) speculative rhetoric. 2 Charles Morris extended the semiosis/semiotics as the relation between the sign and science, to given a solid surface where semiotics established as scientific meaning. He had given another lease of life to the study of ‘the sign’. 3 Ferdinand de Saussure was the actual architect of semiology and founder of linguistics of twentieth century. Along with Pierce and Morris, Saussure carries forward the study of semiotics.

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5.2.2 The Saussurean Semiotics In Saussurean semiotics the sign had the central part that consisted of signifier and signified. The signifier is a physical object while the signified is the mental state or meaning. Charles Pierce had a triadic concept of the sign, objects (conceptual or material), represent men’s (sign-vehicles) and interpretations (in mind of recipients) (Table 5.1). Pierce defines a sign that stands for something in some respect, observed by Prior (2014). Roland Barthes (1915–1980) another semiotician contributed to semiotic studies of myth, theology, literature and narrative. He became famous for semiotics of various types of visual communication and semiotic model of signification. Barthes (1977) two orders of signification derive from the Saussurean model of signifier and signified. • Denotation: The word denotation ‘to mark along with’. The literal meaning of this is sign. The objectified meaning which can be recognized and identified. It involves symbolic, historic and emotional matters. For example, a crow denotes a bird or a type of bird. • Connotation: Connotative meaning is dependent on the denotative level. Connotative meaning derives from symbolic level. A sign can be interpreted by the reader connotatively which goes beyond the literal meaning (denotative). Both denotation and connotation shaped the spatiality where an individual conceived, perceived and lived with such images (Table 5.2). An image of a rose (a symbol) connotes a love. A sign can make sense only with the background knowledge of culturally based codes. In a survey 2017–2018, around 58.52% used platforms to share something unlike other cultural traits that embedded in daily lives while Table 5.1 Pierce’s Triadic Matrix of semiotics relations Semiotics relations

Firstness

Secondness

Thirdness

Relation of sign to itself

Qualisign

Sinsign

Legisign (type)

Relation of sign to its object

Icon

Index

Symbol

Relation of sign to its interpretants

Rheme (term)

Dicent (proposition)

Argument

Source Based on Moore (1998)

Table 5.2 Comparison of connotation and denotation

Connotation

Denotation

Figurative

Literal

Signified(s)

Signifier(s)

Inferred

Obvious

Suggests meaning

Describes

Realm of myth

Realm of existence

Source Berger (2004: 17)

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Graph 5.1 Social media shaped as digital culture unlike other cultures (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

41.48% never shared anything on social media though they used is as usual, they do not believe its effective rather taken social media as passive technology (Graph 5.1). The active/passive participation on social media made users take the spatiality in two different ways. The connotation meaning is depending on background knowledge of concepts. Barthes (1977) clarifies the concept of connotative and denotative in relation with the advertising images. The denotative meaning in advertising images is referred as non-coded iconic message whereas the connotative meaning is referred as coded iconic or symbolic messages. For Barthes (1977, 1980) there is also a third meaning other than denotative and connotative that he discussed in his study of press photographs and advertisements. The semiology of photographs can be understood in spatial contexts. Barthes’s answer to this question pivots on the unique way that photographs embody time and space. When your camera’s shutter is released, a moment is simultaneously immortalized and gone forever. When we look at a photograph, we are confronted with what Barthes labels the “having-been-there” quality of its contents. It is a testament to the existence of a specific thing in a specific place at a specific time. I can paint your portrait from anywhere in the world, but I can photograph you only when you are in front of my camera. Similarly, a photograph offers a view of the world that you will never have access to except through the photo. You can look but you cannot touch. A photograph can only show the past—but it represents it in such a way that it appears in the present. This paradox lends every photograph a touch of nostalgia or longing.4 4 Ronald

Barthes examined a photograph that how photograph carries spatio-temporal identity when both space and time are inseparable from the photograph. For details, https://www.bhphotovi deo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/4-ideas-photographic-writings-roland-barthes. Accessed 20 June 2020.

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Barthes advocated that both identity and time are inseparable from any photographs. Along with signs and semiotics, the spatial attributes and time gave other dimensions that are aesthetically, semiotically and spatially.

5.3 Landscapes of Semiotics in Communication Modern semiotics analysis had been begun by two thinkers—Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) and Charles Sanders Pierce (1839–1914). Charles Pierce called semiotics the science of signs. ‘Saussure wrote the linguistic sign unites not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound image a sign, but in current usage the term generally designates only a sound-image’ (Berger 2004: 66–67). Saussure states the components of sign are the signifier (sound image) and the signified (concept). Charles Sanders Pierce had been analysed in three aspects—icon, index and symbolic. We often made rough diagram to illustrate someone when required to map something in order to do further clarification. Such diagrams are considered as symbol in raw shape or sign to identify the same. In contemporary terms semiotics was applied to every field, to films, media, zoology used as a means of communication to transfer information. Pierce wrote that sign is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity (Berger 2004). Through semiotics the meanings have been generated and conveyed and it is being used as a language. ‘Ferdinand Saussure write-up language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems. A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would be a part of social psychology and consequently of general psychology; I shall call it semiology’ (Berger 2004: 7) (Table 5.3). Berger (2004) analysed the television programme Star Trek to understand the signifiers and signified. This is a science fiction series. The science fiction adventure is the ‘signified’ while the signifiers include spaceships, advanced computer technology, strange power and magic/science. Berger (2004) further pointed out that people purchase the right products and assume (or hope) that these products will signify a certain social class, status, lifestyle or what you will. For example, during Table 5.3 Saussure’s diagram of a sign

Sound image (signifier) Concept (signified) Source Berger (2004: 8)

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COVID-19 Facebook introduced a new emoticon in shape of care (see Fig. 5.2) to create a sense of caring among users. The sign of care indicates an intimate love.

5.3.1 Signs and Advertising Media used for advertising, the signs are lighting, other materials form words and images. Signs such as designs and materials are made for establishment of the market. Signs and symbols used for the establishment of brand, identity because it is easy to remember the symbols or icons. The forms, colour, structure, specific words all made a corporate identity. Advertisements made use of signs to communicate with their target audience. The meaning of advertisements was defined when the story of the advertisement carried out and shapes our experience of reality. Advertisements make a good use of signs, symbols, codes and social myth. The meaning, which the advertisement carries, is the signs of that advertisement that are the linguistics signs (words) and iconic signs (visuals), and non-linguistics signs like graphics. The brand’s name is created for connotative signification systems for the product. The product acts as a denotative system that allows the customers to identify the product they like to purchase. At a connotative level, the product generates its images and brand value that can be identified by name only. For example, Armani shoes, Gucci: denotatively the name allows us to identify the product. When we say or discuss brands it gives us an overall map in terms of who, where, when and what. That is somehow indicating a specific identity in terms of material culture—a section that is often associated with such connotation.

5.3.2 Material Culture The objects and artefacts also serve signs and symbols. These objects convey a vast system of communication. The way people live can be identified through their lifestyle, their sense of wearing clothes, shoes and their ornaments which they wear or living style, it can identify from where the people belong to. Berger (2004) argues that some of anthropologists study people’s garbage to gain information about their lifestyles. Culture as a language operates with a system of signs. When it is said about any culture, it can be identified through different images, signs and symbols. Their connotative meanings create pictures of that respective culture. The signifier can have different meanings across different cultures. For e.g. gift in English language means present but in German language means poison or toxic. So the connotative meaning of gift changed with the changes in cultures.

5.3 Landscapes of Semiotics in Communication Table 5.4 Misleading signs

Area

113 Misleading signs

Wigs

Bald persons with different hair colour

Elevator shoes

Short persons made taller

Dyed hair

Brunettes become blondes, blondes become redheads and so on

Falsies

Women with small breast seem to have big ones

Imposters

Persons pretend to be doctors, lawyers or whatever

Impersonation

Persons pretend to be someone else, steal ‘identity’

Malingering

Persons pretend to be ill

Theatre

Persons pretend to have feelings, beliefs and the like

Food

Imitation crab, shrimp, lobster and so on

Words

White lies told so as not to hurt people

Source Berger (2004: 13)

We are always engaged in a process of signification whenever we are in a process of communication. The field of semiotics includes several different projects—mainstream semiotics, interpretative projects, language-centred communication semiotics that studies images, gestures, music and socio-historic semiotics.

5.3.3 Activities and Performance The body language, gesture, facial expressions, moods all are used as a sign to read people. This was an attempt to find the truthfulness, personalities and values. Actors for performance used facial expression and body language that reveals to their audiences (Table 5.4). Berger (2004) observed that poker players are also concerned with signs. They look for ‘tells’ (body movements and facial expressions) displayed by their opponents that telegraph information about the strength of their hands or intentions to act.

5.3.4 Music and Sound Effects Music and sound effects provide certain kinds of emotions. A musical phrase we remember is a signifier and the emotion it generates is signified. As it was stated that the relation between the signifier and signified is arbitrary in nature. Music and sound effects gave the emotional touch to the films and television shows.

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The signs lie and mislead too. The above examples are often confused by connotation but further clarify by denotation with respective images.

5.3.5 Signs and Truth Signs were used to tell the truth as well as to lie also. Berger quotes, ‘Umberto Eco defines: semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything that can be taken as significantly substituting for something else. This something else does not necessarily have to exist or to actually be somewhere at the moment in which a sign stands for it. Thus semiotics is in principle, the discipline studying everything that can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth; it cannot be used “to tell” at all. I think that the definition of a “theory of the lie” should be taken as a pretty comprehensive program for a general semiotics’ (Berger 2004: 13).

5.3.6 Language and Speaking Language is used for communication, information, ideas, and to establish systems and rules that people learn. There is a grammar for writing and speaking. Saussure distinguished between language and speaking. Language as a social institution made up of rules and convention in a systematic form that enables us to speak. The television programme involves narratives as a language that is understood by the audience because the audience knows the language. The language as a sign and it can be understood from the in-built knowledge that they signify. Sometimes the codes, which were used by the programmer, aren’t the code that we used, in that case that was made as a bad communication. Now, people speak without saying it verbally. Their gestures, facial expressions, posture and many other things speak to those who have knowledge of signs and signifiers.

5.4 Social Media and Semiotics The popularity of social media among users because of the platform allowed semiotics as mediums to express and convey their messages in lucid and clearly within limited words. Social media is embedded with stock of emoticons that help users to use instead of words to express feelings or whatever. The relation between social media and semiotics needs to explore further.

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5.4.1 Semiotics Communication Model Mirsarraf et al. (2017) explains semiotics communication model that was proposed by Roman Jakobson (1960); he reread the Shannon Weaver’s communication model and gave six related elements of communication. • • • • • •

Context Sender Receiver Message Code Channel

He explains that the sender transmits a message to the receiver through a channel and this message is expressed in terms of code and referred in terms of context. Jakobson’s semiotic studies focused on how language is used to draw reader attention (Fig. 5.1). Media content depends on content and meaning. The semiotics analysed the meaning of media. Through semiotics the audience analysed the structure of media messages. Semiotics helps to understand the meaning of the content of the media. Different mediums transmit content in print, sound or pictorial image that the audience can analyse. Media content is polysemic (having multiple meanings for multiple audiences). Social media offers a platform for users to inform themselves and others through their thoughts, opinions, expression and feelings. Users use hashtags or keywords for expressing their ideas. The emotions can be expressed through the use of semiotics/emoticons in social media. The use of semiotics/emoticons as a language-pictorial representation of signs and symbols that shows faces, expressions, animals, objects.

Context Channel

Sender

Message

Receiver

Code

Fig. 5.1 Jakobson’s model of communication space (Source Mirsarraf et al. 2017: 2)

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Roland Barthes, a French semiotician, is the first that studies media in terms of their meanings it generated. Semiotics system is used for the generation of the meaning. McQuail (2010) too believed that the application of semiological analysis opens the possibility of revealing more of the underlying meaning of a text. Semiotics can be applied to ‘texts’ that involve more than one sign-system and signs (such as visual images and sounds). It is clear from the above statement that semiological analysis of media content presupposes a thorough knowledge of the originating culture and of the particular genre. Semiotics provides a method to establish cultural meanings of media content. Semiotic studies in social media can be traced for varied reasons: • What something means or represents. • How it exemplifies its meanings. • Why it has a meaning. The straightforward meaning of a sign is denotative. For example, the emojis in social media denote the mood and expressions of a writer; an advertisement used an actor’s photo for the perfume brand. That photo denotes the actor while the connotative can be understood from the cultural history. Media messages are powerful and effective because they have more than meets the eye (beyond what they at first appear to convey). In a survey 2017–2018, around 80.79% use emoji in their comments when found comfortable to express during communication while 19.21% avoid to use emoji during communication with others (Graph 5.2). Mostly, the users used emoticons during communication because they believed that emoji works or are able to fill the gaps which texts are unable to fill the gaps in the communication. During global pandemic COVID-19 Facebook unveiled a new attribute in the sense

Graph 5.2 Role of available comment section on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

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Fig. 5.2 Facebook’s logo of care (Courtesy: Painting by Noorjahan)

Courtesy: Painting by Noorjahan

of ‘take care’ to expand the caring across the tough time. Facebook launched an emoji ‘Take Care’ to prevail a sense of caring during COVID-19 global pandemic, when almost the whole world was under lockdown to observe ‘social distancing’/physical distancing5 in order to avoid social gatherings. However, such emoji are a notion to attribute to caring or take care at best. The intention behind such a move is to create a caring sense among users who can extend their sense of appreciation in their Facebook page. It needs further research to decode more. The notion of attribute is about smiley holding the heart in their hand or we can say that smiley caring the heart—a symbol of love (Fig. 5.2). The best part of social media is the comment section when a known or unknown can make a comment on your post. In that way the attributes work across social media including the new attribute of Facebook of caring. In a survey 2017–2018, around 53.71% preferred to give comment either the ways, around 18.34% preferred to give comment when they felt or required either the ways, around 16.59% not regular or once a while when they felt, otherwise they avoid, while 11.35% never made any comments rather use other attributes though they preferred to go through the contents without acknowledging the post (Graph 5.3). The attributes work in the shape of emoji and each emoji has its own specific meaning that helps to understand the feelings of the counterparts whether he/she likes, caring, shared or comments. Each attribute draws a cognitive mapping in different perspectives whether its love or caring or like or shared or comment. Social media as a semiotic system had varieties of signs and symbols that were used to communicate with feelings and expressions. The signs as well as the communication should be understood culturally. Media also became a media culture or youth culture. The semiotics dimensions on social media were easily understood and grasped by them. Social media culture annihilates national boundaries, cultures, sub-culture as well as the linguistics. There was a fusion of culture. The world is mediated through social media. But we should add: that every text (content) is only 5 Social/Physical

distancing, World Health Organization (WHO) later corrected and said Physical distancing as a policy or guideline issued by WHO amid COVID-19 global pandemic, to avoid social gatherings in order to break the chain of COVID-19 virus, because it was contagious disease which spread through human to human.

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Graph 5.3 Role of like section attribute on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

meaningful when an individual subject decodes it himself or she and every text (content) presuppose a reader viewer/audience for whom its sign will make sense.

5.4.2 Semiotics for Sentiments and Affects Human emotions have various components and one of the components is expressive motoric reaction like body language and gestures. The emojis/emoticons depict those gestures and represent emotions. There are various types of emojis that show faces or pictorials. Emojis can be seen as emotional signals that add emotions to the social media post. Emotions are difficult to express through written words, to express physical appearance, gestures which are important for face-to-face communication. What Hauthal et al. (2019) had identified was that universality is underpinned by seven basic emotions (joy, anger, disgust, fear, contempt, sadness and surprise) that empirically proved to be recognized in facial expressions irrespective of culture. These expressions can be decoded not only through the human faces but also from the emojis faces. But the use of these emojis is not culturally independent. There is a difference in emoji usage across different languages and culture. Emoticons are nothing except a way to express themselves on social media where words are limited or unable to express or else reasons including time to utilize as much as typing/texting. There are two approaches to analysis: first, sentiment analysis; second, affect analysis. The sentiment analysis is measured in terms of positive, negative and

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neutral while the affect analysis consists of emotional content such as joy, sadness, excitement.

5.5 Nature of Emoticons/Semiotics Emoticons are referred to as rational icons. Communication between humans is changing with the changing in the language structure and in social trends. Language takes many forms and one of the forms is emojis and emoticons. These emoticons/emojis form a visual language. The emoticons are a combination of symbols used in electronic mail and text messaging to indicate the state of mind of the author such as to express happiness or sadness or else.

5.5.1 Evolution of Emoticons/Emojis Shigetaka Kurita in Japan first introduced in late 1990s that provide emotional context for mobile Internet platform or for social media.6 In a survey 2017–2018, around 70.79% used platforms to share emoticons to complete their messages while 29.26% never used emoticons rather written proper texts as much as what they can (Graph 5.4). Most social media users sent emoticons during communication. Thousands of emoticons/emojis are used individually or collectively to make meaningful communication. The emojis are visual representations of words that expressed emotions, thoughts of mind. Emoticons are a sign of the living nature of language. Humans always tried to communicate their feelings; emotions to one another and the evolution of those emoticons provide that platform to individuals. Meanwhile smiley was created by Nicolas Loufrani and Franklin Loufrani,7 a journalist who popularized smileys as an attempt to impart an optimistic tone to the print media and accepted globally as a mark of positivity and cheerfulness. There is also a criticism that the evolution of the emoticons led to the use of short text messages and the loss of literacy and communication skills. However, emoji/emoticons is a sign or language devolving when society is supposed to return to the pictorial representation of ancient history that are deemed less intellectual or intelligent. Jonathan Jones argued in different contexts and used a survey report to express that demand for emoji is massive: 72% 6 Around

1,800 emoji characters and still the number is going on. These emojis covered almost all topics and emerged as medium to chat across social media or we can say a digital language that helps both the sender and receiver to decode the meaning in the smartphone age. For details, https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/smiley-faced-success-for-japan-s-emojicreator/story-x28dr3rRZPzG1N11N5pmoL.html. Accessed 27 June 2020. 7 Both father and son established smiley.co as firm to fetch more market with the expansion of digital market. The yellow smiley stands for single purpose to being smile. For details, https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/QZPronj81Xrs KNTG0bzQjI/The-company-behindthe-smiley-gets-serious-about-India.html. Accessed 27 June 2020.

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Graph 5.4 Are you used emoticons/emoji on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

of 18 to 25 year olds find it easier to express their feelings in emoji pictures but he was opposite and preferred written word than emoji.8 Emojis also indicates sarcasm, euphemism, hints and affection that are not possible in a text. But instead of this the emojis also create confusion due to their digital nature. For e.g. the emoji of a smiley face can mean ‘I am happy’ or ‘I like this’. ‘Indeed it can be argued that emojis are in fact expanding linguistic ability, and opening up new possibilities for innovative communication channels and expansion of traditional writing, making languages more visual and playful and thus returning to a more creative form of languages’ (Alshenqeeti 2016: 58). 8 Jonathan Jones published a article on May 27, 2015 on The International Guardian, London edition

and primarily endorsed the fact that how demand for emoji is increased in United Kingdom, in fact across the world the business turn over for emoji is multiplied over period of time. But his main concern was that—where we the civilization are heading forward or backward? He emphasized that written texts are better option to move forward than emoji—these are symbols of ancient civilizations, identity of backwardness. He preferred to go with words or texts in order to communicate rather use emoji. For details, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/ may/27/emoji-language-dragging-us-back-to-the-dark-ages-yellow-smiley-face. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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Courtesy: Painting by Noorjahan Fig. 5.3 Digital emoticons/semiotics used in social media (Courtesy: Painting by Noorjahan)

In 2014, a new mobile texting network called ‘emoji’ was launched which allows the users to use the emojis for communication. The pictogram representation was the traditional form of writing as the cavemen used it to create ideas about their lives, their beliefs. Cuneiform was also a form of writing used by Sumerians in 3300 BC, those icons made by tools on wet clay. That system again could only be possible in the digital age. Digital emojis are the universally recognized icons or pictograms (Fig. 5.3). These symbols used as standalone depictions and were used as string communication to make a meaning.

5.5.2 Emoticons/semiotics as Non-Verbal Communication Emojis provide the reader the facial expression, thoughts, feelings of the writer. Through them the writer can convey their feelings digitally, it enhances non-verbal communication. This system of language is universal and is globally understood. ‘As it is given the pictograph representation that provides the universality of emojis assessed by Instagram and indicates the usage and frequency of these icons across different countries’ (Alshenqeeti 2016: 60). The use of emoji is not restricted to one continent or one nation; rather it is found uniformly across the world in different proportions (Table 5.5). This represents that the emoji were developed as a universal symbolic language. The rise of Instagram, blog posts and tweets became a platform for that new form of language. Emojis are similar to logographs, and they represent a singular word as one image indicates multiple emotional reactions. Emojis are a language with universal concepts. Emojis provide new possibilities for communication. Emojis were created with greater creativity and imaginations.

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Table 5.5 Text containing emoji

Source Alshenqeeti (2016)

5.5.3 Generational and Cultural Variations in Usage of Emojis ‘In the same way that language is a constantly evolving phenomena and is subject to social, generational, and cultural variations, and technology and how it used’ (Alshenqeeti 2016: 61). As per Nishimura (2018), emojis were subdivided into different groups. These are: • Typographic face marks which are used for facial expressions like ‘smile’ (:)), and ‘sad face’ (:(). • Non-linguistic symbols, which were used at the end of a sentence to create visual impact and added meaning. • Emoji or graphics like beating heart, blinking stars. There is a universal trend of using emojis, but frequency of using is different from culture to culture. The younger generation is to use or adopt these symbols in their conversation on social media. Nishimura (2018) and Lu et al. (2016) state that emojis use as a form of language and used both as universal and cross generation. Social media became the biggest tool for the use of semiotics/emoticons. Social media led to the radical change in the use of language. WhatsApp became a specialized social media application used as a messaging app. WhatsApp messenger is on the top list of chat applications. It is the most cheaply and efficiently accessed to use for messaging, photos, trolls, videos and also for emojis. Brian Acton and Jan Koum invented the WhatsApp application in 2009. The idea behind this was to make social media activities easier. Due to this the plain verbal text is replaced by non-verbal language like animated gifts, smileys, emojis. It had so many emoticons, which

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were used according to the moods, expressions. Facebook first launched the realm of mojos through the introduction of Facebook stickers. The Unicode 864 started9 in 2015 that made available hundreds of emojis and smileys with a unique script code used in social media widely. The mostly used emojis are smiley face and heart amalgamation. The Nail polish emoji, for instance, is significant since it assumes a position between gender, race, and class that allows prospective platforms. It denotes a certain type of self-adorning culture. George (2018) referred nail polish emoji is in practice since 2014, the nail polish emoji has been used as an emotional tone marker to communicate sass, indifference or poise in text, the image evoking a sense of regal aloofness. The emoji act as practice of communication with both the characteristics of a code system and a language system. Henceforth, George (2018) listed some of the semiotic machines of the computer, whether embodied as laptop, touchpad or smartphone and its standardization graphical user interface (GUI), predominantly advances verbal signs over the verbal signs of face-to-face (F2F) communication. Consequently, computer mediated communication (CMC), short messaging service (SMS) and social networking services (SNS) all enclose a ‘semiotic vacuum’ devoid of behavioural codes (emoji is enlarging the human capability to communicate).

5.6 Relevance of Semiotics/Emoticons in Social Mediasphere There is a constant growth in the development of information and communication technology and semiotics/emoticons became the genre to use in various aspects of computer-mediated communication (CMC). Emoticons were used as socioemotional suppliers to social media to communicate particularly in short message service. The verbal type of communication requires content, grammar, expertise. The non-verbal type of communication is represented through non-words language that includes gestures, eye contact, facial expressions and body language. Non-verbal communication has the ability to communicate the writer’s emotions and attitude. The reader can understand the writer’s mood or feelings. Danesi (2016) explains that emoticons as a form of computer-mediated communication are: string of keyboard characters that, when viewed sideways (or in some other orientation), can be seen to suggest a face expressing a particular emotion. Emoticon is often used in an email message or newsgroup posting as a comment on the text that accompanies it. Common emoticons include the smiley:-) or:). Before the advent of emoticons there is no way to indicate their mood changes. Emoticons are considered as visual cues that were formed from ordinary typographic symbols that indicate the emotions and feelings. Emoticons were also considered as coding systems like ‘ASCII glyph’ (computer coding technique) that is used to indicate emotions in email or news. 9 Unicode

864 is a code page used to write Arabic in Egypt, Iraq, Jordon, Saudi Arabia and Syria.

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5.6.1 Impacts of Semiotics/emoticons on Message Psychologist Albert Mehrabian believes that 93% of human communication takes place nonverbally.10 According to a research conducted at 3 M Corporation, the human brain processes visual elements 60,000 times faster than written texts. That is to say, the human brain decrypts image elements in an instantaneous method, while language is decoded in a linear, chronological manner requiring extra time to process (Jibril 2013). Emoticons had the capability to strengthen the effect of an unwritten message and also simplify the messages. Emoticons communicate a clear mental state of the writer. Now on social media when individuals try to communicate without emoticons they find it difficult to express their emotions. When emoticons combined together with the text it adds to the value of the communication that becomes clear and complete. It is stated that the positive message with the emoticon became more positive than the pure verbal positive message so as the negative messages too. It is clear that the emoticons have higher impacts on message in the baseness of exclamation marks. Both the emoticons and punctuation marks have an impact on how people perceive the message.

5.6.2 Emoticons and Social Mediasphere It was argued that social media replaced face-to-face communication. Due to social media the nature of communication changed as most of the people communicate through social media not through face-to-face communication. Before the advent of emoticons there is a lack of expressions in digital media. Emoticons emerged as a platform that substitutes the missing human emotional touch of their gestures, feelings and expressions. The written text had the lack of gestures, facial expressions. Social media always incorporates to use the emoticons as visual cues to add to the meaning of textual text or messages. There is the same authenticity of using the emoticons as that of face-to-face communications. Social media, the emoticons used for verbal as well as for non-verbal communication. It not only adds to the meaning of the message but also plays a significant role in the formation of the sentences. Emoticons also had potential effects on enjoyment. Enjoyment has an effect on personal interaction. There is an abundance of semiotics as visual signs on social media. There is a self-representation and self-disclosure through images that were used for social interaction based on collective sense making and interpersonal negotiation on meanings. 10 Albert Mehrabian’s research provided an over-simplified empirical understanding for the effectiveness of spoken communications and categorized in three different ways where 93% are nonverbal. 1.7% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in the words that are spoken. 2. 38% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said). 3. 55% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in facial expression. For details, https://www.businessballs.com/communication-skills/mehrabians-communication-theoryverbal-non-verbal-body-language/. Accessed 25 June 2020.

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5.6.3 Emoticons as Linguistic Components Emoticons use in social media led to the shift from verbal to pictorial representation of meaning. The meaning is codified into a form of pictures or emoticons to represent the moods. Jibril (2013) argued that attributes of the graphic symbols when used in written form of communication facilitate the flow of semantic properties from the grammatical structure. Signs that express meanings are symbolic resemblance of objects through pictograms. Emoticons are the pictograms that combine with the graphemes (the smallest segment of the graphic system). Jibril (2013) further used categorization, emoticons are alphabetic graphemes or alphagrams; ponchotypographical or topograms; and logo grammatical graphemes or logograms. The tweets containing emoticons are more emotional. The pictorial sign influences the reading on social media.

5.6.4 Production and Distribution of Semiotics on Social Mediasphere The visual signs on social media were treated as a machine of symbolic world making. The pictorial signs are technically produced, modified and used. Erdmann (2015) argues that layers of media technology can thus be conceived as process chains through which signs from station to station are constantly transformed. The production and distribution of semiotics is considered as a semiotics practice that is performed on social media. The technological and practice of pictorial signs were used as Barthes (1977), denotative, connotative and linguistic dimension of semiology. The signs and symbols, which were used, originate from different mediums. Erdmann (2015) illustrated that Facebook give an automatic view of the picture when the uniform resource locator (URL) is copied into a text box and even encourages users to share visual content from other websites with other network members through a ‘share on Facebook’ function that is embedded on websites like news sites and other popular media. The emoticons in social media are highly standardized. The sign box was designed according to the users profile and newsfeed. The symbolic technique allows the users to express the emotional response to the post. The emoticons are used on social media to share, comment or affirm. So, the visual may be dissociated from its original producer’s profile. Semiotics as a field deals with signs, concepts, and thus the analogies with the social media will be derived. Instagram—a social networking site used as a photography application. Social media users can produce visual and textual impressions through Instagram.

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5.6.5 Semiotics Communication Model of Instagram Social media is used for the dissemination of content. Through Instagram users can send videos, pictures, captions, texts, hashtags and geo-location information. Instagram provides varieties of semiotics to their users such as visual and written, captions and images. Instagram allows you to create personal profiles and to make friends. The semiotic system of language focused on how people used it. The sign serves three functions simultaneously: they express something about the world (ideational metafunction), position people in relation to each other (interpersonal metafunction) and form connections with other signs to produce coherent text (‘textual metafunction) (Halliday and Hasan 1985). In social media, the ideational metafunction of semiotics is to comment, giving feedback from the readers who receive those signs. The interpersonal metafunction of signs is the community of friends who received the signs while the textual metafunction is the capability of producing the signs and symbols by using pictures, videos and caption text. The ideational metafunction of signs on Instagram generates through the pictures used to share through Instagram. The users create the visual images through their logical combination of experiences. The user gets familiar with the visual signs and its grammar. The images were a composite of the multimodal text, containing more than one code and meanings. In social networks the signs are the posts generated, commented, broadcasted, forwarded and liked through the community of users subscribed to social networks (Mirsarraf et al. 2017). Social semiotics is created according to the environment where it was used. Signs that were used in Instagram are the pictures captured by the users. These signs will be saved in the profile history of the user and these signs had memorable features. These signs are highly distributed across the friends circle and some became the viral signs that have distinguished features and became a striking message. Instagram had a feature to represent the visual post that was generated as a semiotic resource. Social media provides the community where users interact through commenting and liking the post.

5.7 Semiotics Changed the Mode of Communication Through Social Mediasphere? On social media billions and billions of emojis are sent a day. Whatever people like to communicate, emojis are there for each and every type of communication. The emoticons were everywhere from personal communication to marketing to advertising campaigns. Different brand companies used signs and symbols for seeking attention. Emoticons now became a part of our culture. Social media is unimaginable without the emoticons. On social media people explore different ways of communication. The emoticons/semiotics are one the most influential forms of nonverbal form of communication that was used as text messaging. According to a study,

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in 2016, roughly 92% of online users reported sending emojis in their own communication, with nearly half of all messages sent including an emoji with more than half of this audience using emojis in the majority of their sent messages (Daniel and Camp 2018). Social media had a limitation of length like SMS only had a limit of 160 characters, and twitter could only have 280 characters limit. In respect of that emojis can convey information in character and give full meaning with the writer’s moods and feelings and visual cues to online text. The emoticons provide emotional context to communication that can be possible through social media. These visual cues enhance the positive connotation to an uplifting statement and negative connotation to pessimistic statement. The emoticons and emojis do not replace the existing words and characters; it can change the meaning of a sentence through the selection of signs and symbols. The use of emoticons provides the writer’s emotions about how it feels when face to face communication. On social media it was found that the users fell more comfortable to use emoticons than using the text. The text became more playful with emoticons than using plain text. The information flow with the images is more pleasant as the symbols are easier to perceive. Chang (2013) elicited fluency in advertising, showing that advertisements were more effective, when images were relevant to advertising copy. In a survey 2017–2018, around 67.25% used platforms to tag something in their loop, while 32.75% never tagged to anyone rather remains passive on social media (Graph 5.5). How to use the platform of course depends upon the users, some might tag and some might not to anyone rather remain passive and follow the same without any acknowledgement.

Graph 5.5 Role of tagging is an important attribute on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017– 2018)

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Social media is a shorthand visual communication. Semiotics changed the way and nature of communication. It is breaking down the language barrier and increased human interaction. Chris O’Brien, tech journalist, covered the mobile world congress in Barcelona. Where the article covered the statements made by D J Koh, the head of Samsung’s IT and Mobile communication division, boldly pronounced, ‘nothing is more important than how emojis are replacing words’. Koh explained that images are becoming the new mode of expression, and that ‘clearly, the social media generation has revolutionized the way people communicate, noting that 1.2 trillion photos were taken on smartphone in the past year, and five billion emojis were sent’.11 The importance of emojis increased, as most of the people communicate through online, not through face-to-face communication. Vyvyan Evans (2017) decoded the different dimensions of emojis that help to reproduce characteristics of human communication that are present in the real world, in the digital environment. There is a lack of emotional context in a text message that is present in face-toface communication with others. Even in writing when it needs to be expressive the emoticons help. Emojis can be more accessible, universal. The semiotics/emoticons make a link between the writer and their emotional context. The use of semiotics is an easy way to communicate your emotions. Bevan Hamilton found that around six billion emojis are sent on mobile messaging apps every day, according to Digiday, a media company that specializes in digital media.12 Nearly half of the comments and captions on Instagram contain emojis. Today there is nothing that can be imagined without emoticons. If it tried to post on social media without the emoticons, it wouldn’t be possible. These were used creatively, as people used them according to the situation or as per their post.

5.7.1 Expressing Ourselves Emojis are useful as it helps in better communication. They have also become sensational as communicating through text becomes a part of humans life and the emoticons provide another way to communicate. People are always fond to express themselves and the emoticons provide a way of doing that. The semiotics/emoticons are not about to take away the language but they are adding an expressive meaning to it. Hamilton (2016) analysed that they expand the way we communicate. That’s one of the reasons they’ve taken off. It gives people an opportunity to be polite, to be funny. It gives people a chance to express themselves. Emojis also remain in a trend 11 Chris O’Brien covers world mobile congress at Barcelona where leaders of mobile phones are supposed to unveil their future business strategy along with some new features including how camera or smiley/emoji became important; similarly, how emoji became a medium to chat on mobile phones. For details, https://venturebeat.com/2018/02/25/samsungs-camera-focus-nothingis-more-important-than-how-emojis-are-replacing-words/. Accessed 15 June 2020. 12 Bevan Hamilton argued that the meaning for emoji is different for everyone, someone liked it while others not fond of it. The choice for emoji is conditional. For details, https://www.cbc.ca/ news/technology/emojis-online-communication-1.3500734. Accessed 23 May 2020.

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Graph 5.6 Role of tag section on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

as people always try to write in shortcuts. Everything became fast. Social media also acts as a fast communication. In a survey 2017–2018, around 49.78% respondents used attributes (tagging) to share on social media, around 2.82% tagged to all when they felt required to share something, around 32.31% often tagged when they felt required to do or otherwise they avoid, while 15.28% never tagged anyone on social media (Graph 5.6).

5.7.2 Collective Semantic Intelligence Collective semantic intelligence (CSI) is shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration, collective efforts and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision-making (Mirsarraf et al. 2017). This was used for peer review and crowdsourcing application. People shared more signs through their post, sharing and tagging content, reviews and comment. Instagram became important social networking site where pictures were shared a lot. It increased the participation and interaction and the pictorial information then converted into visual semantic intelligence. According to 2015 statistics Instagram users have shared over 40 billion photos and share an average of 95 million photos per day. This big number of pictures is a rich data source to be used for extracting semantic intelligence by big data applications. The attracted feature of these pictures is their supplementary information such as their location tag, time tag, captions, the per cent of people who liked it and the written text which can be considered as their metadata (Mirsarraf et al. 2017).

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5.8 Conclusion Social media is a two-way communication between the author and a reader. Semiotics/emoticons is nothing more than a medium to bridge the communication between two people across social media. The emoticons/emojis are primarily used in social networking sites. The emoticons/emojis are used for both positive and negative tone in order to reflect the best to convey the message. Smileys were used to express happiness and the other types of emoji are also used as per mood and feelings of the senders. As Danesi (2016) states that human communication continued by using emojis that could only be possible in digital media. The emoji/emoticons not only prevailed the positive or negative expressions rather created a spatiality where both author and reader were equipped with such connotation and denotation for better understanding between them. The semiotics of digital gadgets of course need more study to disclose the pattern, nature and mapping of emoji/emoticons to decode depression, stress, anxiety, frustration and anguish. The used emoji/emoticons create a sense of spatiality when both the author and reader went through it without much confusion. The emoji found unlike other cultural traits when use of emoji has become necessary during digital conversation. The next chapter is about economic activities and social media in order to map the potentialities of digital business in marketing and Human Resources perspectives. This section apparently discussed including e-commerce as one of the major aspects of social media.

References Alshenqeeti H (2016) Are emojis creating a new or old visual language for new generations? A socio-semiotic study. Adv Lang Lit Stud 7(6):56–69 Barthes R (1980) Camera Lucida: reflections on photography (trans: Howard R). Hill and Wang, New York Barthes R (1977) The rhetoric of the image, reproduced in image, music, text (trans: Heath S). Hill and Wang, New York Berger A (2004) Semiotics analysis. Sage Publishing, New York Bhabha HK (1994) The location of culture. Routledge, New York Canty MJ (2007) Image analysis, classification and change detection. CRC Press, Boca Raton Castells M (1977) The urban question. Edward Arnold, London Castells M (1983) The city and the grassroots. Edward Arnold, London Chang C (2013) Imagery fluency and narrative advertising effects. J Advert 42(1):54–68 Danesi M (2016) The semiotics of emoji. Bloomsbury Publishing, London Daniel TA, Camp AL (2018) Emojis affect processing fluency on social media. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000219. Accessed 7 June 2020 Erdmann J (2015) Semiotics of pictorial signs on social networking sites: remarks on a neglected field of study. Punctum 1(1):26–42 Evans V (2017) The emoji code: language and the nature of communication. Picador, New York George D (2018) Semiotic rendition of emoticons, emoji and smileys in the present Whasapp and social networking scenario. Criterion: Int J Engl 9(1):231–238

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Halliday MAK, Hasan R (1985) Language, context, and text: aspects of language in a social semiotic perspective. Deakin University Press, Australia Hauthal E, Burghardt D, Dunkel A (2019) Analyzing and visualizing emotional reactions expressed by emojis in location-based social media. Int J Geo-Inf 8(113):1–21 Hubbard P (eds) (2007) Space/place. In: Atkinson D (ed) Cultural geography: a critical dictionary of key concept, Rawat Publications, Jaipur Hudson R (2016) Approaches to Economic Geography: Towards a geographical political economy. Routledge, New York Ikas K, Wagner G (eds) (2009) Communicating in the third Space, Blackwell, New York Jakobson R (1960) Linguistics and poetics. In: T Sebeok (ed) Style in language. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Jibril A (2013) Relevance of emoticons in computer-mediated communication contexts: an overview. Asian Soc Sci 9(4):201–207 Lu X, et al. (2016) Learning from the ubiquitous language: an empirical analysis of emoji usage of smartphone users. Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, Association for Computing Machinery, New York: 770–780. https:// doi.org/10.1145/2971648.2971724 McQuail D (2010) McQuail’s mass communication theory. Sage, Los Angeles Mirsarraf M, et al (2017) Social semiotic aspects of Instagram social network. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications (INISTA): 460–465. https://doi.org/10.1109/INISTA.2017.8001204 Moore EC (1998) Charles peirce: the essential writing. Prometheus Books, New York Nishimura Y (2018) A sociolinguistic analysis of emoticon usage in Japanese blogs: variation by age, gender, and topic. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 50. https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/ index.php/spir/article/view/8396. Accessed, 15 June 2020 Prior P (2014) Semiotics. In: Leung C, Street B (eds) The Routledge companion of English studies. Routledge, London, pp 160–173 Seabok TA (2001) Sign: an introduction to semiotics. University of Toronto Press, Toronto

Chapter 6

Social Mediasphere and Economic Activities in India

Abstract Social media became a powerful and profitable platform for companies to increase its visibility. Social media revolutionized e-commerce and shaped e-business in the shapes of ekart when online business thrived into many folds over a period of time. E-commerce became a centre stage as people used it for shopping clothes, electronic devices and so on. The corporates, consumers, stakeholders all come in one platform to interact, share and connect with each other. Doing business on social media invite risk factors and digital fraud at the same time? This chapter outlined the potentialities of social media in digital business in marketing and human resource perspectives. Keywords Online business · E-commerce · Globalization · Public relations (PR) · Human Resources (HR)

6.1 Introduction In the contemporary business environment the role of social media increased. Globalization led to the changes in the business environment, strategies and organizational structures. The information technology removes the physical distance barriers and it can send in just a few seconds since clicked. Odhiambo quotes Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) who defined ‘social media as a group of internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundation of web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content. People used social media for everything to communicate with friends, to find jobs and also to start a business; it provides successful relationships between business and its customers’ (Odhiambo 2012: 12) quotes. Companies used social media as a communication tool that can be reached to a majority of people at one time. Marketing and public relations became an important business activity across social media platforms; meanwhile companies used social media platforms to create and popularize their brand as image. In 1979, Truscott and Ellis from Duke University developed the Usenet, a worldwide discussion system that allowed users to post public messages (Odhiambo 2012). Social media networks create brand awareness and increase brand visibility.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Moinuddin, Digital Shutdowns and Social Media, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3_6

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Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and MySpace are popular among the users. India is a key market for social media giants active as social media users in India grew to around 106 million and India is among the top three countries in terms of number of people using Facebook (more than 100 million) whereas Twitter is seeing as increased user base of over 33 million (Jayasingh and Rajagopalan 2016).

6.2 Different Business Model Social media allows every individual to connect easily. Social media provide a global customer. Business no longer remains limited to the mainstream where it paid for advertisement. Social media provide too many communications. Social media gave a pro-sharing environment. Before the Internet the old tactics that were used for marketing like advertising are the only way to promote their business while social media is completely free and anyone can join anytime. ‘Social media have transformed the ways of businesses from marketing to operations to finance to human resource management. Increasingly social media are also transforming the way businesses relate to workers, allowing them to build flexible relationships with remote talents, to crowdsource new ideas, or to engage in micro outsourcing’ (Jayasingh and Rajagopalan 2016). It is unlike a virtual market where number of individuals connects of the same interest. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the most used social media sites for business purpose and evolved as an integral part of marketing strategy. The marketing strategy of business is impossible to think without social media. Corporates started their own YouTube channels and making videos for promotions and showing as brand. Today e-commerce plays one of the major roles in business activity. That’s how the customers prefer to go for online shopping to buy things. The online food delivery added as another emerging venture where there is ample scope. Peoples are now getting everything through social media. The consumers are being in direct connected with the merchants or wholesalers. The consumers can verify the authenticity of the brand; compare online with other similar brands and then finally can make a decision (Jayasingh and Rajagopalan 2016). Everyone wants to be up to date, that’s how corporates also make their up to date unlike others to know it and to get success. Along with the evolution of the IT-based companies social media has become one of the most booming sectors where youth are the major users and followers of such media (Ghoshal 2019). On social media everything becomes a business sharing news, recipes, brand making. All that information which is shared on the Internet is made to get attention as much as who are interested. Customers get a space for feedback in either positive or negative, which gives a unique opportunity to the organization to understand their customers and find the authentic problems that customers are facing while using the particular product. Through a feedback mechanism, consumers are supposed to know about the product and its services. People are gradually losing their interest in traditional media to know about the

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product they preferred to purchase online. So the social media gave that space to ask their friends about their experience of using that particular brand. In a survey, 76% of consumers rely on what others say regarding their purchasing decisions, while only 15% say that they rely on traditional advertising (Qualman 2013). In that transparent environment the organization should ensure that their products are trustworthy, otherwise they will lose their customers. Companies make products interesting, like integrating products into online applications. The companies tried to make their online applications more effective. The growing popularity of e-books also creates another advertising avenue for corporations. Most eBooks are able to connect to the Internet, and because of this, it will soon be possible for words within eBooks text to link to products or services related to that word, for e.g. if a book mentions Hawaii, the word Hawaii link to Hawaii office of tourism, or if a book mentions Coca-Cola, the word Coca-Cola could link back to Coca-Cola company (Qualman 2013). The company’s apps are designed in a very less amount than that of commercials. These apps shared in a speed as individuals shared their links on their account in return that they got some loyalty cards or rewards. The individuals searched the brand websites through social media rather than on search engines. The search engines provide only the popular sites. The advertisement in such a way becomes more entertaining and consumers share it more with their friends and in peer groups. The consumers also started to make their own short videos of brands and shared it with friends. The companies take advantage of that and encourage their customers to create more videos. Qualman (2013) argues that when an organization joins the realm of social networking, they should also try to achieve search engine optimization (SEO), it involves using keywords relative to the company’s specific industry in order to come up higher in search results, thus driving more traffic to their site. The companies use social media as their strategy to focus on where their customers are. The organization also paid to the consumers who are sharing their brand websites through their profile pages. Traditional banners remain there because they are traceable. Moreover, search engines are becoming more sophisticated in order to search or profiling for future purposes for better results (Qualman 2013). Another shift in the business was in the realm of jobs searches. Now companies used the Internet for the recruitment of employees like LinkedIn and Facebook. The applicant gets relevant information about the company through their respective profiles that the applicant can’t obtain from the traditional media. By simply posting the advertisements of recruitment, the organization contacts directly to the people whom they know or asked them from an individual who can make enquiries or else. There are few specific websites like Tumbler, Pinterest, Instagram and Wanelo are becoming online catalogues for shopping ideas, fashion tips and wish lists (Rao 2017). The customers’ friends were also offered discounts to buy products that create awareness about the product among people. Pinterest and other platforms are started a phenomenon known as ‘social shopping’—a clever blend between typical social media and e-commerce experience (Rao 2017).

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6.3 Features of Social Mediasphere Marketing Social media marketing is rapidly familiarizing among the users. Different forms of social media had different features. Facebook emerged as the first site that was launched in 2004 for marketing purposes. ‘Facebook main mission is to give people the power to share and make the work more open and connected’ (Nadaraja and Yazdanifard 2013: 2). Facebook marketing model works as a page where each profile page is supposed to sell some products. When a user likes the product page that page would have opened in their own network of contacts. Twitter is a combination of micro-blogging that gives the opportunity to receive updates from their favoured companies. Blogging was another social media site that can be used either by individuals or organizations. Through this the organization promotes the brand awareness by sharing relevant information or by updating about the new product to their customers. It also facilitates the customers to post comments, and their opinions. ‘This encourages the exchange of ideas between peers and can also promote honest discussion between individuals and companies to improve their defaults’ (Nadaraja and Yazdanifard 2013: 3). Social media marketing transformed the business to think more than that of advertising. The marketers get the direct customers on social media that they can’t get on their own websites. Social media marketing has advantages as well as some drawbacks also. Nadaraja and Yazdanifard (2013) provide the five main advantages of online marketing to customers. 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

Cost related: The social media sites are free to create their own profile, share information. Companies can run successful social media marketing campaigns within a limited budget. Social interaction: Social networking sites the social interaction, as it has increased the space to communicate with each other. Interactivity: There was a greater access of information on social media sites, the customers get interact with machines, messages. The interactivity provides the customers for selection of content, timing and provides two-way communication. Targeted Market: Marketers get the opportunity to get their target audience based on users personal interest. With the marketing strategy, the marketer reaches the customers who are interested in their product. Customer Service: Customer service is selection of the websites through which the customers get the important information. For example, frequently asked questions (FAQ) and online representatives are the sites for customers who help in the selection and buying process.

The disadvantages of social media marketing are that social marketing are time intensive. It requires time to manage the network, to answer the comments, as the business without the service to manage is difficult to compete with. There are also the trademarks and copyright issues. Trust, privacy and security issues, and along this, there is negative feedback as well.

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6.3.1 Social Commerce In a survey 2017–2018, around 23.14% found that Facebook is convenient for business, nearby 29.26% followed WhatsApp is convenient for business, about 6.55% used Twitter to run their business, nearly 5.68% followed LinkedIn and around 35.37% used others medium apart from these popular platforms to do online business (Graph 6.1). Melakoski et al. state the term of ‘participatory economy’, which refers to commodities that are produced, distributed, shared and consumed in social media. Similarly, a new concept named ‘social commerce’ (Table 6.1) refers to the monetization of social media with e-commerce. Other terms are ‘sharing economy’, ‘peerto-peer economy’, ‘wikinomics’, ‘networked economy’, etc. The related concepts for them are also ‘crowd sourcing’ and ‘synthetic economy’ (Hintikka 2007; Hu 2011). The concept of e-commerce was transformed into social commerce with the advent of social media sites. The e-commerce was focused on retailers, marketing and sales and social commerce have reached out to a larger audience with the social interactions and connections. Customers can direct contact to merchants. The customers can share products online so their friends get to see and to know more about the product by clicking the product store site. Tumbler, Pinterest, Instagram and Wanelo became the popular site for shopping catalogues. Social commerce is defined as a form of Internet-based social media that allows people to actively participate in the marketing and selling of products and services in online marketplace and communities (Stephen and Toubia 2008; Rao 2017). Social commerce involves social interaction and user

Graph 6.1 Which social media is giving more business opportunity (Prepared after survey, 2017– 2018)

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Table 6.1 Features of social commerce Features social commerce Meaning Social login

Social login is an initial to enter into or gateway of such companies or products. It is a user-generated login address that needs to be used again and again with password inbuilt

Like button

The like button is a feature that allows users to show their support for specific comments, pictures, wall posts, statuses or fan pages

Pinterest buyable pins

Pins are simply to ensure that you are purchasing such and such products

Google button

Google+ button shows that you like or agree with something

Rating and review button

To rate the contents whatsoever or give valuable comments, if any

Product recommendation

Recommendations feed displays the most recommended content on your site, using actions (such as likes) by your friends and other people

Source Rao (2017)

contribution for selling and buying of products. Yahoo started social commerce in 2005 where people can get the collections of shared pick lists, ratings of products, and also user-generated content for the customers. Social commerce includes photosharing social networks such as Pinterest are highly curated e-commerce sites with strong social components such as Etsy, Fab or Fancy. For example, niche services1 such as Airbnb, which is a social platform providing individuals to rent living spaces and short-term lodging have also taken advantage of social networking features (Rao 2017). Pinterest became an important site for social commerce. It allows companies to showcase their product, for reviewing and directing towards online shopping. Instagram uses it as an advertising platform; it allows companies to offer options like ‘install app’, ‘download’ ‘and shop now’ features. By clicking the buttons the users direct to websites or towards the Google play store. The expansion of social media is not possible unless trained employees who regularly update the websites of such and such companies or products to attract more and more business. This could have only been possible by recruitment of efficient staff through human resource practices.

6.3.2 Social Mediasphere and HR Practices Social media has changed the human resource practices. Social media can be used for the purpose of internal branding, collaboration, and communication and for hiring also. Today jobs are being recruited through social media. For example—the website 1 Niche services are a specific segment in the market has its own particular requirements, customers

and products. Niche services are the practice of dividing the market into specialized areas for which particular products are made. A niche service is one of these specialized areas. For details, https:// www.shopify.in/blog/niche-markets. Accessed 18 June 2020.

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Glassdoor.com, an employee feedback and job seeker forum site, allows members to provide inside information on companies cultures, employees and salaries. Members rate their own organizations on various characteristics, and these data are then searchable by other users on the site (Rao 2017). The HR executives are supposed to monitor their employees. The employees share their experiences on social media sites. Human resource departments in organizations use social media for employee communication, corporate branding, background checks and emergency notifications (Rao 2017). The companies recruit some employees for their social media where the employees use social media all day to post information about the companies in a positive way.

6.3.3 Social Media and Recruitments Recruitment is one of the important wings to recruit the employees through laid guidelines. The human resource managers used social media to make the recruiting process easier and faster. Social media emerged as a tool to help the HR to recruit. LinkedIn became one of the most important sites for the recruitment process. When there are job openings, the company posts such vacancies on LinkedIn to get the notice, then candidates would have applied for those respective vacancies. Science daily research study shows that 90% of companies are using social media for the recruitment.

6.3.4 Social Mediasphere and Small Business Social media showcases the small-scale start-up. Small businesses get the platform that is cost effective and get the visibility to their customers with a very little investment. They used social media to interact with the consumer market. When the customers are interactive in nature and they can highlight their opinion to the company and also the rest of the consumer market, the operational and quality issue of the company can be highlighted. The company has to ensure that it is ready to make such a transition and it has developed the operation infrastructure to be able to cope with these challenges (Constantinides and Fountain 2008; Abuhashesh 2014). In a survey 2017–2018, around 67.25% are satisfied with social media platforms and found convenient for business, about 32.75% are not preferred offline business or they are not aware of online business (Graph 6.2). It needs to create an awareness programme about how social media can be useful for business ventures, if someone is interested. Such awareness programmes need a specific set of trained employees; public relations is specified to curate such needs, to promote the business opportunities among users or can work with other organizations to create awareness drives.

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Graph 6.2 Are you satisfied by online business (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

6.3.5 Social Mediasphere and Public Relations There are some common public relation tool used by social media: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Maintaining a company profile page, For press releases and news, Monitoring and responding to the comments of product as mentioned by the customers, Interacting with the bloggers, Sponsored groups to answer customer questions

Public relation officers used social media to become visible to thousands of customers at one time. They monitor their companies’ sites and look for positive connections. The PRs maintain the company profile pages. The companies engage with their consumers through their profiles. The profiles help the consumers to understand as well as to talk about to their consumers.

6.3.6 Social Mediasphere Changed the Business Model Due to the popularity of social media and the abundance of easily accessible information led to the company to opt for social media. The print media started digitized versions in order to reach out to more and more readers. The social media used by individuals, government and business. For individuals, social media is used as

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a new communication platform beyond the traditional platform of communication. It provides an abundance of knowledge. Users can take out information according to their need. Social media is also viewed as a new entertainment platform. The individuals used it for their entertainment in between or after the load of work to recharge themselves. They also used to convey their thoughts and expressions. They post their photos, their daily life routine on social media. Social media digitized the gossipization2 that we generally do in between friend circles whenever we have time or else. For the government, the use of social media is to reach a larger audience at one time to disseminate information and to take feedback on current policies implementation and governance. The politicians used it for campaigning and the election process. The former US President Barack Obama used social media for their election campaigning. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the platform for political and ideological campaigns. The grievance process became easier since social media operationalized across the organizations. For business purposes the social media provide the online assistance or grievance cell, which will look after all concerned grievances issues. If there were some changes in the brand, social media would provide a speedy network due to which the customers knew information. The companies post photos, information and also monitor the comment and replying session about their product. In a survey 2017– 2018, around 10.04% respondents preferred to write blogging on social media, nearly 2.18% followed social networking sites (SNSs), nearby 54.59% preferred to do chatting on social media, about 33.19% move to platforms to access online news (Graph 6.3). With the Internet revolution the whole scenario of business and personal lives changed. Once Tim Berners-Lee said that the web is more a social creation than a technical one (Siricharoen 2012). Social media changed the way of communication, as it follows many to many communications. Social media platforms provide a new set of tools for a business. Companies influenced by social media for doing business because it provides a free space to start their business and also to expand. The companies get a large number of customers on social media. There are six core principles that differ social media from other methods (Siricharoen 2012). These are as: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

2 An

Participation: Everyone can access social media and can contribute, which the other media do not provide such space to access. Collective: People can work collectively on social media platforms or share contents, information, data and videos. Transparency: People can track the status of applications or else whenever and wherever. Independence: Anyone can contribute and can use according to their requirements. Persistent: On social media anyone can view or share the information.

informal talk in between friends when meet, wherever including social media.

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Graph 6.3 What activities do you prefer utmost on social media (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

6.

Emergence: The emergence principle embodies the recognition that the people cannot predict, model, design and control all human collaborative interactions and optimize them as they would a fixed business process (Siricharoen 2012).

6.4 Does Social Media Revolutionized Economic Activities Economy is the result of individual/group investors who invest to increase its utility. The Internet revolutionized business activities and personal lives. The Internet started out as a giant bulletin board system (BBS) that allowed users to exchange software, data, messages and news with each other (Papachristou 2013). In a survey 2017–2018, nearby 38.43% moved to social media on advised by friends, around 18.78% joined after advised by relatives, nearly 16.59% moved to platforms in order to enhance business while about 28.20% followed others on social media over period of time to start available business opportunity (Graph 6.4). The corporate web pages and ecommerce started in 1995 with the launch of Amazon and eBay. Then social media facilitates the exchange of information between users. Social media is different from other media in that it allows users to create user-generated content (UGC). Social media gave the platform to become viral however, an unnecessary issue surfaced in the midst of viral news that caused more rumours and made the issue into a trend as well. People buy things not just because they have a necessity for this, but because others are buying or it gives pleasure to be consumer or else. Meanwhile, the company needs to enlarge the volume in order to attract customers. Social media facilitates a bridge between consumer, corporates and stakeholders to interact and

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Graph 6.4 Who advised you to move on social media to get better business opportunity (Prepared after survey, 2017–2018)

share information in order to improve or on else issue. Consumers find a place to raise their voice and to interact with corporates. The impact of social media on economic activities identifies with some key factors. These are1. 2. 3.

Effect on type of product and purchase Effect on brand Effect in the market structure

Singh and Sinha (2017) argued that low to high brands retailers are embracing social media in order to boost sales and brand awareness. The corporates are using the best strategy for using social media efficiently and to build positive networks. Further, they argue three reasons for corporates therefore corporates should use social media. Firstly, it was due to a low cost, highly accessible platform and to create their identity of the company. Secondly, it allows engaging with employees, customers. Thirdly, it provides an opportunity for giving feedback. Social media also had an important role for recruitment of employees for companies. It states social media is not only for social practice but also for hiring and for the introduction of companies. It mentions that the company that doesn’t embrace social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as a recruitment tool might lose quality candidates. Social media becomes the top most agenda of the companies and tries out the best way to use those social networking sites. According to Singh and Sinha (2017), the major benefits of social media for business are that; 1.

Improved Customers Insights: On social media the company get better understanding of their customers by providing space for comments and feedback. The

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4. 5. 6.

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customers were also known that the company is listening to their suggestions and comments. Better Customer Service: Social media also allows the company to listen to their customers’ problems. Cost Efficient: Social media is very cost efficient to the company. Small businesses were also making a good profit by investing a minimum on publicity through social media. Connectivity: The company was always remaining connected with their customers for sharing information. Establishing Brand Awareness: Social media provides brand awareness to its customers. Sales: Social media makes the potential customers into actual and permanent customers of the brand which increases sales.

Social media is very important for the business as it helps showcase the company’s brand and create a brand image by handling a strong social media presence. By regularly updating details about the company and its social happenings, prospective customers are sublimely on the lookout for the company. It became a marketplace of ideas. Social media channels as a tool for increasing company trustworthiness.

6.4.1 Impact of Social Mediasphere for Business Growth and Performance Social media gives opportunities for companies to attract customers at large scale in a second. The companies make their profile pages on which they post all the information of brand and new comings.

6.4.2 Section of People Depend on Social Mediasphere for Business Social media is a tool that is mostly used by the young generation that utilizes social media to its full potential. This generation used it for both personal and professional purposes. It can’t use email to someone but prefer to message them through social media. On social media, individuals knew to anyone through their status, which gave very relevant information about that person or organization. Social media are now shaping the way young people think, connect, engage and work together Papachristou (2013). When the Internet emerged in 2000, teenagers were the first who used the computers and accessed the Internet and taught their older relatives about how to use the computers and Internet. The use of social media explored with the emergence of ‘Skype’ for communicating with their relatives face to face. The new middle class

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Table 6.2 Comparison of popular social networking sites Primary audience

Primary features

General features

MySpace

Teenage/young people

Blog, video, photo, address book, bulletin calendar, email

Browse profile, search, invite new people, film/comedy/music forum, favourites, classifieds, videos and events

Orkut

Teenage/young people

Photo, video, bookmarks, scrapbook, profile, testimonials

Friends, search, communication, Orkut media news

LinkedIn

Business professional

Connections, network data, email-list, recommendations

People search jobs, hiring, categorized service provider recommendations, ask a question from professional

Facebook

Students/all age group

Browse profile, search, invite new friends

Source Hu (2011)

emerged which is also called a new working class who became the first to use the social networking sites (Table 6.2). Social media means different people based on the purpose of using it. People using it for personal bases used it for the interaction with their relatives and friends. It is also for professional use. It is used for small business as well for the big corporates. Social media used for politics also. Politicians used it for their campaigning. Young people extol the advantages of having a domain of interaction in which adults cannot participate as freely. Men/women relentlessly talk and make jokes about Facebook in terms of its facility for secret communication. People in general refer to Facebook and WhatsApp as platforms used by others to spy on their personal lives. And parents, particularly mothers, refer to the new difficulty of having to earn money and leave their children behind—a situation helped by social media, which allows them to maintain responsibilities to home and family while working away from the settlement for long hours on most days (Spyer 2017).

6.5 Can Social Mediasphere Be Called as Economic Media? Social media is defined as the new business model that has distinct activities and approaches that enable the company to succeed in attracting the customers, employees and to deliver their services. Hu (2011) mentioned Osterwalder (2011) business model framework that was divided into four main pillars. 1. 2.

Customer relationship Product innovation

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3. 4.

6 Social Mediasphere and Economic Activities in India

Infrastructure management Financial aspects

The company used strategy to gather customer information for the customer relationship. The company used that information for their own satisfaction. In order to get into market and reach to the customers effectively and efficiently, make the right product and services available at the right place, right time to the right people, the company has to outline how to deliver it’s offering, either indirect or direct channels, operated by the company itself or outsourced by a third party (Hu 2011). Trust is an important pillar between the customers, companies and their partners in order to establish a virtual business environment. Costumer’s loyalty viewed with the outcome of customer’s trust and satisfaction, as (Hu 2011). 1.

2.

3.

Product innovation: Product innovation indicates the value proposition that the organization offers to customers. The value is offered to the target group, according to their geographical area and interest. Infrastructure management: The company that utilizes its resources and assets in the form of value proposition. The value delivered to the customers is the outcome of inside and outside activities and processes. Financial aspects: It refers to the company’s profit. The company sells their content and takes the subscription fees from the customers.

Social media as a business model based on four factors—network properties, security and privacy, market consideration and technology. The network property indicates in terms of density, boundedness, range and strength of ties. Social media is the platform that has a large range of networks. There is also an issue of security and privacy of the user’s as it is a place of extensive exchange of information. There is also a market consideration, as the social media sites designed for the young people. Technologies are the important aspect; it is a platform for users to contribute in developing and sharing of content.

6.5.1 Facebook Business Model However, Hu (2011) explained social media as a business model through the case studies. He used Facebook in his study to understand the business model and success story of Facebook. 1.

Information strategy: Facebook collects information about users from their profiles and also shares user’s information with the third party permitted by them. There are other sites also which were connected with Facebook. Like the YouTube Video, which was shared on a Facebook page by someone can be accessed by friends or others. Product innovation: social media helps to communicate more efficiently. It has capability to transmit mass data under

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network infrastructure. It ensures up-to-date information for customers about the company’s new arrival products. Infrastructure management: Facebook designs many activities to guarantee various features and maintain distinct networks on its platform for enabling user’s different social needs (Hu 2011). The application designs for the efficient use of it. 2.

3.

4.

Market consideration: Different sites target different social groups with different purposes but Facebook has dominant sites which are used by the largest number of people across the world. Technologies: Technology differs Facebook from others. Facebook has built on a powerful multi-language framework that can easily tie with any infrastructure written in any language on any platform. Financial aspects: Facebook provides an advertisement platform. It is used for another application and gaming. It also offers a channel for pulling.

Facebook emerged as a digital brand that each digital platform wants to replicate it the same model that was adopted and performed accordingly. Since 2004, Facebook has traversed a model journey that changed the both means and meaning of spatiality. The digital spatiality encompassed the whole world as networked spaces that everyone is connected to others on Facebook.

6.6 Conclusion Social media became an inevitable tool in the information age. Every business start-up needs social media channels for visibility and for their target audience. The e-commerce made feedback systems more easier and the role of middlemen is minimized either digital marketing or recruitment purposes. Social media marketing proved to be cost effective. The social media ads are cheaper than the traditional form of advertising. Social media had a positive impact on business and provided faster and easier communication between the company and customer, employer and employees. Customers can communicate and give feedback and comments as well. Social media provides open options to choose products and follow reviews given by others in the past. All such made a mosaic platform where customers have varied options in finger tips whether to purchase or return, of course it revolutionized the e-commerce/online business. But at the same time, e-commerce is completely dependent upon the Internet, if there is absence or low speed that can cause the business exclusively. The next chapter is about digital shutdown when the Internet is shutdown to cease the flow of information in pretexts to maintain law and order situations along with other cited reasons. The chapter enquires the various aspects of digital shutdown that’s how shutdowns shaped the spatiality, digital economy and politics.

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References Abuhashesh M (2014) International of social media in media in business. Int J Bus Soc Sci 5(8):202– 209 Constantinides E, Fountain SJ (2008) Web 2.0: conceptual foundations and marketing issues. J Direct Data Digit Mark Pract 9(3):231–244 Davis H, Walton P (eds) (1983) Language, image and media. Basil Blackwell, Oxford De BH (2012) Why geography matters: more than ever. Oxford University Press, New York Dodge M (2004) Geographies of e-commerce: The case of Amazon.Com. In: Graham S (ed.) The cybercities reader. Routledge, London Ehrenberg R (2012) Social media sway: worries over political misinformation on Twitter attract scientists’ attention. Sci News 182(8):22–25. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23351069. Accessed by 2 September 2020 Ghoshal M (2019) Social media as an effective tool to promote business. An empirical study. Glob J Manag Bus Res: E-Mark 19(1):15–25 Hintikka J (2007) Socratic epistemology: explorations of knowledge-seeking by questioning. Cambridge University Press, New York Hu X (2011) Social media business model analysis—case Tencent, Facebook, and MySpace. School of Economics, Alto University. Available at: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201111181588. Accessed 5 June 2020 Jayasingh S, Rajagopalan V (2016) Transformation of business through social media. In: Rao R (ed) Social media listening and monitoring for business applications. IGI Global, Chennai, pp 1–17 Kaplan MA, Haenlein M (2010) Users of the world unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Bus Horiz 53(1):59–68 Nadaraja R, Yazdanifard R (2013) Social media marketing: advantages and disadvantages. https:// www.reseachgate.net/publication256296291. Accessed 15 June 2020 Odhiambo C (2012) Social media as a tool of marketing and creating. Business Economics and Tourism. https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/44591/Christine.A.Odhiambo.pdf? sequence=1. Accessed 15 June 2020 Osterwalder A, Pigneur Y (2010) Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ Papachristou IA (2013) The social media in the economy. https://www.reseachgate.net/publication/ 1273990038. Accessed 15 June 2020 Qualman E (2013) Socialnomics: how social media transform the way we live and do business. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ Rao RN (2017) Social media listening and monitoring for business application. IGI Global, Hershey, PA Singh T, Sinha R (2017) The impact of social media on business growth and performance in India. Int J Res Manag Bus Stud 4(1):36–40 Siricharoen W (2012) Social media, how does it work for business? Int J Innov Manag Technol 3(4):476–479 Spyer J (2017) Social media in emergent Brazil: how the Internet affects social mobility. UCL Press, London Stephen TA, Toubia O (2008) Deriving value from social commerce network. J Mark Res 47(2):215– 228 Thackeray R et al (2008) Enhancing promotional strategies within social marketing programs: use of web 2.0 social media. Health Promot Pract 9(4):338–343

Chapter 7

Spatial Mapping of Digital Shutdown in India

Abstract Internet shutdown is a newer phenomenon which is predominantly found across the world when authorities and states take such decisions to shutdown the Internet for momentarily in view to maintain law and order situations or some other reasons. The Internet is important to run digital gadgets otherwise digital gadgets are worthless. The connectivity of social media and its business purely depends upon the flow and speed of the Internet. This chapter discussed spatial-digital mapping of digital shutdown in terms of freedom of speech, laws, political economy, surveillance and governance. Keywords Digital shutdown · Surveillance · Laws · Freedom of speech · Internet

7.1 Introduction Let’s think you are visiting the adjacent town and suddenly a riot breaks out. What would be your ideal reaction on the situation? You would eventually think of taking shelter in the town or book a cab to your hotel to save yourself from riot. Or, let’s presume you are injured in the riot. Then your reaction would be to get to a hospital and to find a way through Google Maps or else. The most convenient was that you would have to inform your family members or else through WhatsApp or other available social media apps. Your main concern would be to reassure your family or else that you are safe. The Internet which is often called net is a worldwide system of computer or networks—a network of networks in which users can get information from any other computer if they have permission. With its information revolution,1 it has changed a life like never before. The changes are all social, economic, political and to some extent an individual’s life. Coming to the above situation, what would you do if the state authorities and the administration have suspended Internet access for a moment 1 Information

revolution is the fourth crucial revolution in the human history that changed the lifestyle and livelihood (in case of COVID-19 global pandemic work from home is possible only due to information systems), after hunting and gathering, agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, information or communication revolution is the turning point in the development of human civilization. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Moinuddin, Digital Shutdowns and Social Media, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3_7

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to maintain law and order situations. This has resulted in a position of Internet shutdown. Government intentionally disrupts the flow of the Internet in the sense of Internet shutdown or removed some apps which agencies found fictitious. For example, Government of India removed/blocked fifty nine apps that are controlled by Chinese or run by them in the wake of Indo-China border clash.2 In simpler terms, an Internet shutdown can be seen as the total disruption of access to the Internet both mobile-based or broadband, in a particular region as directed by the government. It can be explicit as well as implicit. It can be explicit when the state suspends the Internet. An implicit side is when the state intentionally slows down the speed of the Internet (Pandey and Tiwari 2020). The government has eventually justified Internet shutdowns for various reasons, which includes stopping people from sharing information or organizing protests. This can also be done and justified when people are demonstrating peaceful protest. To hide fraud or shape outcomes, the Internet is majorly shutdown during the elections. People often make out this difference between intentional disruption and technical glitch in case of a shutdown with the help of a variety of stakeholders. In India, there is a distinction of getting through the maximum shutdowns in the world. It is very uncertain as to when the first Internet shutdown was witnessed in India. The state of Jammu & Kashmir is the best example of Internet shutdown in India. It faces frequent shutdowns of all Internet and telecom services during Independence Day and Republic Day since 2005. But since 2017, there has been an alarming rise in the reports of shutdowns in the country. Twenty-two of India’s twenty-eight states have faced Internet shutdown at least once. Rajasthan imposed three shutdowns in three weeks to prevent cheating in public service recruitment examination.1 The shutdown never discriminates with the sender and the content of communication. It affects daily life with wrecking ball online communications matters. Rajasthan police seek permission from the government to suspend Internet services for two days, i.e. 14th–15th July 2018, to prevent cheating during the Police Constable recruitment examinations. On 21 September 2012, mobile Internet services were shutdown in the Kashmir Valley on the pretext to protest a movie which hurt a few Islamic sentiments. Not counting the routine suspension in Jammu & Kashmir, in 2014, three more shutdowns were encountered in India. These shutdowns were again seen at the valley after incidents of violence were encountered. Their main motive was to limit the spread of rumours and misinformation online. Also most of the shutdowns implemented between 2012 and 2018 were seen to prevent the spread of more violence after several incidents of violence were encountered in a particular area (Nayak 2018). In 2012, residents from the North-Eastern India got themselves in the middle of a rumour when some miscreants tried in pretexts to evacuate from the Bengaluru metropolitan city. The messages and posts that were circulated on WhatsApp and 2 Indian

authorities blocked fifty-nine Chinese apps in wake of Indo-China border issue when Chinese army tried to encroach Indian Territory nearby Galwan valley in Ladakh region. For details, https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/tiktok-removed-play-store-india-bans59-chinese-apps-6482706/. Accessed 30 June 2020.

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other social media websites created a huge uproar and fear among the people. Even though no particular cases were registered the news created an atmosphere of fear and mistrust among the people. Both online and offline news circulation saw an impending violence environment among the people. Hundreds and thousands of people were seen rushing towards the airport and railway stations to return to their hometown. This created a stampede like situations in many places. The government implemented a blanket ban in the affected locality unlike shutdowns in Jammu & Kashmir Valley. The most recent reports of Internet shutdown when out of the eleven, seven were ordered in Jammu & Kashmir, while on two different occasions the state of West Bengal suffered the effects of shutdowns during this period. The other states that were snapped with this luxury were Uttar Pradesh and Odisha (Nayak 2018). In 2019 alone fifty-nine incidents have been reported. In Sept. 2018, the mark crossed a hundred. On average, India encounters ten shutdowns every month. Between 2012 and 2018, 125 shutdowns cases were reported in Jammu & Kashmir out of the 331 reported Internet shutdowns. It was the only state to encounter shutdowns in 2013–2014. The first case was reported in 2013 with around three in total that year.2 However, the shutdown process often follows the principle of secrecy whether in regard to implementation or restoration. C. K. Hickey (2019) put forth his observation that ‘India is the World’s leader in Internet Shutdowns’ and shown shutdowns in Kashmir Valley through a graph how the number of shutdowns in the Kashmir Valley doubled each year from 2015 to 2018 and the track again increased in 2019 with fifty-three cases already encountered till August 2019 in the state. In the past three years the Internet has been suspended 159 times in the country. Internet shutdown is not an Indian phenomenon rather it is found in other developing countries too. The nation that follows in the list is Pakistan that is almost one-third of India’s cases from 2016 to 2018. Asia and Africa where Internet shutdowns are common unlike western world. Other countries in the list are Iraq and Syria with eight cases, Turkey (seven), D. R. Congo (five), Ethiopia (five), Iran (four), Chad and Egypt (three). The report is from the period Jan 2016 to May 2018. According to the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), India lost almost around $3.04 billion from around 16,315 hours of International Internet shutdowns between 2012 and 2017 (McCarthy 2018). Internet shutdowns have become an easy throwback to the state in the response of curfews, media clampdowns, etc. Problems which arise due to shutdown including disruptions in e-governance, e-commerce and e-banking are seen as collateral damage during public emergencies. Internet shutdowns are also seen as a way to not let people say or express their views. The latest Internet shutdown was in Jammu & Kashmir was imposed on 5 August 2019 (after the removal of Article 370) and that continued until April 2020 in the state; it was indeed the longest shutdown in the history of Internet shutdown in the world with people having no way to contact or communicate with the outside world. Internet or digital shutdown can be used interchangeably, without Internet digital gadgets are worthless or not operational. Internet shutdown has eventually become a regular phenomenon and often some territoriality is under lockdown for myriad reasons. The interruptions of the Internet often consider a hurdle

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in the expressions of freedom or freedom of speech or somehow deprived from the right to free Internet, of course, the Internet emerged a basic essential to live a life in the twenty-first century (Nayak 2018). Internet shutdowns are status quo positions that use of Internet services is not permitted by an order issued by an authorizing body. The decision specifies a particular location, specific length of time and ranged of days. Sometimes it could expand indefinitely unless favourable atmosphere returned or normally should return back. The Internet shutdown may vary or be limited to cellular Internet or broadband or both, depending upon the situations or decisions taken by concerned authority. Internet Freedom Foundation has identified six types of disruptions, ‘national internet, subnational internet, national mobile internet, subnational mobile internet, national app/service, and subnational app/service’.3 The major reasons for shutting down the Internet were law and order situations. Now some of the other major concerns are peace during festival processions as well as in some cases preventing cheating in exams. In Darjeeling, West Bengal, there was a forty-five day Internet shutdown imposed due to political demonstrations, clashes and protests by activists who wanted to get a separate state. The other incident is from Nawada in Bihar where a forty day Internet shutdown was witnessed after communal clashes. The report also talked about how thirty-one days in Jammu & Kashmir stopped circulation images that showed alleged military abuse. The Internet shutdown was also witnessed in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh for twelve days to halt rumours of violent communal clashes. After Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan is the state which encountered the second highest Internet shutdowns in India, which was around sixty-seven cases in 2019. The major reason is because of which the Internet services were suspended in the wake of the Ayodhya Verdict.4 The public wanted to celebrate Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi. In Maharashtra, Police asked the local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Malad to shut down the Internet, on the day of the Ayodhya Verdict. Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh ahead of the Ayodhya Verdict put off the Internet as a preventive measure. In August 2019, Sawai Madhopur district of Rajasthan was taken down with the privilege of the Internet as the communal tension broke out in the city. In 2012, the Internet shutdown cases in India stood at just three. The number eventually grew over time. In 2013, the cases increased by five, in the next two years it tripled to fifteen. The number increased to seventy-nine by 2017 and one hundred and thirty-four by 2018. There are states like Karnataka, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Kerala who have not experienced any Internet shutdown activities in 2019. Apart from them every state has gone through shutdown at least once in 2019.

3 Internet

freedom foundation comes with frequently asked question on Internet shutdowns; in a brief they tried to explain the shutdowns and its nature and dimensions. Available at: https://intern etfreedom.in/shutdowns-faq/. Accessed 15 June 2020. 4 A communal dispute was a contentious issue between Hindu and Muslims for more than one century and had witnessed many communal riots and caused both lives and property.

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7.2 Undermining Freedom of Expression/Speech The most recent and perfect example of how Internet shutdown affects the people and their rights could be understood as such suffering that how people of Jammu & Kashmir crossed through such digital grief during the last six months of Internet shutdown from August 2019 to April 2020. However, the Internet could only be accessed using 2G on verified SIMs. As the J&K state’s ‘special status’ is removed, it is pulled down into being two union territories. As soon as this happened, all communication lines were cut. Phones, Internet and even landline communications were snapped. They are reported that WhatsApp accounts are being automatically deactivated because of the users being inactive for the past four months (Dixit, 2019). ‘To maintain security and limit data retention, WhatsApp accounts generally expire after 120 days of inactivity’, a spokesperson from Facebook told BuzzFeed News. The spokesperson from WhatsApp informed, ‘when that happens, those accounts automatically exit their WhatsApp groups. People will need to be re-added to groups upon regaining access to the Internet and joining WhatsApp again (Dixit 2019)’. This makes one wonder how people are denied their right to express their opinion on such an important matter. A rule that has been said to revoke for the people of a particular community is eventually denied to express their own voice on the issue. Freedom of expression and opinion and the right to peaceful assembly is a fundamental right of an individual that can’t be denied at any possible hindrance in the name of free Internet access. The people are not given the basic right of expressing their concerns or telling people of their problem. Henceforth, freedom of speech, of the press, of association, of assembly and petition—this set of guarantees comprises what we refer to as freedom of expression. Without it, other fundamental rights, like the right to vote, would wither and die. This rule is eventually revoked when the Internet is shutdown for your basic needs. You are put up in isolation with no contact with the people outside. The Internet is supposed to be a tool that connects people around the world. The shutdown in turn takes away this basic function of the Internet. The Internet helps us to respect our human rights, mainly freedom of speech and freedom of expression. When the authorities shutdown the Internet, people thrive to communicate with people they love, they can’t even visit a doctor during an emergency or even run their businesses. Both these rights are recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—it is the government’s duty and responsibility to respect them and respect the citizen’s enjoyment of them. The Internet is basically a common tool of communication with family, friends, access and sharing knowledge. By disabling all means of communication, it is considered as a potential human rights violation. In terms of national security, rights such as free speech can be restricted and at the same time it need to follow three-part test in Article 19(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), including meeting proportionality and necessity criteria.5 The United Nations Human Rights 5 International

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 19(3). More on limitations to freedom of expression. For more, https://www.article19.org/pages/en/limitations.html. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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Council (UNHRC) has ‘unequivocally condemned’ the Internet shutdowns across the world. A 2017 report by the Special Rapporteur to the Human Rights Council states how users are mentally affected by the Internet shutdown. The United Nations Human Rights Council condemned the network disruptions and measures taken by the states to halt online access and dissemination of information on 1st July 2016.6 The resolution also points out how this same standard of protection should be put up in the offline world. ‘Curbing Internet services violate basic human rights and does irreversible economic and social damage to common citizens of the state’, said by Burhaan Kinu.7 However, Centre promulgated a ‘Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services (Public Emergency or Public Safety) Rules, 2017’ which provided a legal mechanism for disrupting Internet access in August 2017. A Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted a resolution by consensus in 2016 that ‘condemns unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online in violation of international human rights law’.8 An Internet shutdown is much bigger than just the perimeter of disconnection from your favourite social media sites like WhatsApp, Facebook or Twitter. It restricts students from getting education opportunities. Platforms like Coursera or edX or major YouTube channels cannot be accessed by students. During an Internet shutdown, students are restricted for access to information, fellowships, education programmes among other educational activities. Students are eventually left out to communicate with people or students apart from their society. The shutdown eventually results in people from around the world getting cut off from the region. You can just have assumptions and rely on news agencies (which some may argue are run by the authorities and their ideologies) for information. The people affected have no way to communicate with the outside world. They can’t tell their stories, their sufferings or their needs. The government which guarantees you the basic fundamental rights, in the process of Internet shutdown, takes it away.9 The voices raised against such Internet shutdowns in both local and global platforms are not deterred the government to avoid shutdowns in future rather government made necessary changes in the existing laws to clampdowns in future as well. The spatiality of shutdowns encompassed more new areas in the lists which has been reported from all 6 United Nations, General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Promotion and protection of all human

rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, Thirty-second session, Agenda item 3, 27th June 2016. Available at: https://www.article19.org/ data/files/Internet_Statement_Adopted.pdf. Accessed 3 July 2020. 7 He is a senior photojournalist at Hindustan Times (New Delhi), daily newspaper. 8 For details, UN Human Rights Council Resolution A/HRC/32/L.20, July 2016. Available at: https:// www.article19.org/data/files/Internet_Statement_Adopted.pdf. Accessed 3 July 2020. 9 UNHRC in their universal periodic review went reiterated their non-tolerance on against human rights violations. ‘The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a unique process which involves a review of the human rights records of all UN Member States. The UPR is a State-driven process, under the auspices of the Human Rights Council, which provides the opportunity for each State to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfil their human rights obligations’. For details, https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/upr/pages/uprmain. aspx. Accessed 15 June 2020.

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directions north, south, east and west in the country. However, authorities are unable to forward rational justification except politically motivated arguments behind such shutdowns (Nayak 2018). The shutdowns are explicit illustrations of caging voices and expressions; it is an unfortunate practice that is gradually institutionalizing in some countries including India. Why state muzzle to free expressions and voices? Why state ever want passive citizens? Why state unable to digest their criticisms? Why does the state often fail to create a benevolent relationship among people rather directly or indirectly provoke one section or community against others? Internet shutdown is not a solution in fact it needs more deliberation and participation between all stakeholders to minimize or restrain it.

7.3 Surveillance Tool for the State The government of India’s Department of Telecommunication notified the state governments to not issue any Internet ban if there is no question of ‘public emergency’ or ‘public safety’. The digital shutdown has become a silent weapon for the state to dilute the voices of the people. In Assam, the ‘internet ban’ because of the protests of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019 is one of the prime case studies to figure out how the state uses the tool of banning the Internet to oppress the voice. The people of Assam have been fighting for a state which doesn’t discriminate. With the coming of the CAA and National Register of Citizens (NRC) they would become a ‘minority community’ in their own state. But their voices were oppressed as the Internet was banned in the state. With the state curfew, Section 144 implemented in the state, mobile towers shutting off, the citizens have no way to communicate with the masses. This is how it becomes a very comfortable surveillance tool for the state. The state again banned the Internet for their own personal gain. Movie telecasting and taking the right of the people to choose their own version of entertainment. Also, the immediate banning of TV news channels and mobile Internet after the execution of Afzal Guru on 9 February 2013 till 15 February 2013. The state’s shutdown was actually to see the citizens do not indulge in any violent activities or get influenced by any external factor. Though most bans were put up in the Kashmir Valley, this one was put up in the entire state of Jammu & Kashmir. During 2014, after a morphed picture of a Muslim religious shrine was circulated in the city of Vadodara mobile Internet was blocked for three days. The shutdown was then implemented just for the circulation to stop. The state uses it as a surveillance tool where they take it upon themselves to stop people from spreading news. They banned the Internet as they were unable to stop the public from circulating messages that were not based on public interest. In the same year, both the mobile as well as broadband Internet was banned after lynching video of a rape accused goes viral in Nagaland for forty-eighty hours. This becomes a state’s go to measure whenever they find a time where they can’t stop the citizens by propagating a news or the measure. Both Surat and Ahmedabad were again under the scanner in August 2014,

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after a mega rally led by Hardik Patel seeking Other Backwards Caste (OBCs)10 status for the Patel community got into focus. The Internet ban again enforced by the state prohibiting the citizen to take part in a protest or raise their voices on the same points out how the digital shutdown eventually becomes a helping tool for the state. It helps them to keep the public in check. Similarly during the riots in Haryana in 2016, Jhajjar, Panipat, Sonipat, Hisar, Rohtak, Jind and Bhiwani faced a ban on the Internet in subsequent to the Jat reservation protest. The riot took a huge overturn when it went violent at another level which resulted in the state taking this step. In Meghalaya’s Garo hills Internet was again stopped in the name of preventing inflammatory messages during the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council (GHADC) elections. One may see this as a measure of the state to stop people from spreading unfavourable agendas and other ideologies. In Bokaro, Jharkhand, during Ram Navami Internet services were temporarily halted to prevent the spreading of communal fear and hatredness in 2018. This was a way to make the authorities ban the Internet just on ‘suspicion.’ The state then uses this privilege on their own. The effects and the objective are not really important on this. After a person was shot dead by the police, mobile Internet services were shut down in Jaisalmer and Barmer for forty-eight hours as the community member of the Bandh community was killed. Under section 5 of the Telegraph Act in Bhadrak, Odisha witnessed communal violence over derogatory remarks about Hindu deities. ‘Yesterday a person uploaded an objectionable document on Facebook which hurt the sentiments of a particular community. We are keeping a close eye on the situation’ (Nayak 2018). The state, therefore, takes this as a surveillance tool for all their ongoing matters. From matters of ‘suspicion’ to ‘national security’, one may say how this becomes a means for the government to suppress voices. Government uses this as a very easy way out to empower the people of the country. Digital shutdown eventually works on how not to spread any ‘fake news’ which might circulate on trending topics. Fake news is one of the easiest ways to propagate an audience and influence them on their own issues. Around ninety-six per cent of Indian Internet users access the Internet over mobile networks (Nayak 2018). Governments most of the time do not acknowledge shutdowns. In 2018, out of two-hundred reported incidents, only seventy-seven got government’s notice. And once they did, they used this as an umbrella term to justify them despite knowing what the details and nuances actually happened.

7.4 The Legal Aspects of Shutdowns The legal aspects of shutdown can be understood in two parts. The older laws were operationalized till August 2017, where there was a regulatory vacuum that made people wonder how these shutdowns were eventually carried out. Governments could shutdown the Internet under three vague laws with varying degrees of unsuitability:

10 In

India, OBCs get 27% reservation in education and employment.

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section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), section 69A of the Information Technology Act and section 5(2) of the Telegraph Act. Prior to 2017, Internet shutdown often ordered under section 144 of the CrPC, 1973. The media reports often do not mention the laws and provisions under which the shutdowns were imposed. The CrPC is a collection of laid procedural laws that govern under Indian Penal Code, 1860 (Nayak 2018). The core aspects of section 144 found relevance of Internet shutdowns (Appendix A). In absence of proper guidelines to imposed and revoked shutdowns made uproar across the civil society activists, authority, judiciary and political circles. There were no exact laws to enforce Internet shutdowns rather the same is governed by Telecom Suspension Rules prior to 2017. The procedure to suspend telecom services in the case of public safety or public emergency was interpreted from Section 5(2) of Telegraph Act 1855, while the law was not really a part of the Act or Rules. This obnoxious law was notified under section 7 of The Telegraph Act, 1855, under provisions of the Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services (Public Emergency or Public Safety) Rules, 2017 (Nayak 2018). The competent authorities which have the power to give directions under these rules are: • For Central government, the Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs • For State government, the Secretary to the State Government incharge of the Home Department. However, in some unfavourable circumstances the order might be issued by an officer at the rank of Joint Secretary. Also, the rules mention that in such unfavourable circumstances a competent authority needs to confirm the order which if fails would cease to exist. A review committee (Appendix B) would be set up where they shall receive the order that is being passed by the competent authority. Both the laws used for shutdowns seem authoritarian by nature, neither the explicit reasons were mentioned nor exclusively the stakeholders were given positions in the committee. In fact, shutdowns are unlike complete iron laws where representatives were neither included nor considered to take consent in such sensitive issue. The promulgation of shutdown laws is closed in its configurations and power was assigned to authority from presiding to review the stock of situations, whatever. If anyone wants to see humanitarian perspective in the promulgated shutdown laws, I think, the way the structure of laws is created would demotivate the person or agency. Almost six months of shutdown in Jammu & Kashmir from August 2019 to March 2020 forced me to think that, why the state are accumulating such authority? Why not consider rights to the Internet unlike other rights? What is the use of digital gadgets and other communication technology, if there is no Internet? Why not stakeholders were included in the decision-making whether to shutdown or withdrawal of shutdown? Every shutdown has some way or other way of financial disbursements, an important part of implementation.

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7.5 Digital Economy of Shutdown The Internet drives a multitude of businesses in this modern world, and its shutting eventually has its own repercussions. In his report Darrell M. West (2016)11 estimated that Internet shutdowns cost countries over $2.4 billion a year. The Brookings Institution report further unveiled the economic losses in following countries include $968 million in India, $465 million in Saudi Arabia, $320 million in Morocco, $209 million in Iraq, $72 million in the Republic of the Congo, $69 million in Pakistan, $48 million in Syria and $35 million in Turkey. In 2012, the World Bank analysed that ‘ten percentage point increase in fixed broadband generating a 1.35% increase in per capita GDP for developing countries and 1.19% increase for developed countries’ (Minges 2015). The United Nations passed a resolution to intact ‘promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet’. The resolution specifically ‘[c]condemns unequivocally measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online in violation of international human rights law and calls on all states to refrain from and cease such measures’.12 Few independent researchers, from University of Washington has identified six hundred six occasions in between 1995 and 2011 where 99 different governments deliberately ‘interfered’ with the normal operation of the Internet.13 The study by Darrel M. West where we combine studies from various authors, he estimated economic impact for six different types of digital shutdowns using the following formulas (Appendix C). Of course, such economic losses are not meagre rather shadows negative imprint upon all financial transactions. Internet shutdown hampered a chain of business where so many nodes and networks worked together as a flow chain, so it affects everyone who is on the chain.

11 Vice president and director of Governance Studies and founding director of the Centre for Technology Innovation at Brookings. 12 Max Metzger, “UN Extends Human Rights to Online World,” SC Magazine, July 13, 2016. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/1/un-human-rights-council-unequivoc ally-condemns-int/, last accessed, June 15, 2020. 13 McKinsey Global Institute, “Internet Matters: The Net’s Sweeping Impact on Growth, Jobs, and Prosperity”, May 2011 (Studying a report based on Boston Consulting Group (BCG), they compiled a data based on the Internet expenditure and investments and they are found to be constituted 12.4% of the United Kingdom’s GDP, compared to 8% in South Korea, 6.9% in China, 5.6% in India and Japan, 5.4% in the United States, 4.2% in Mexico, 4% in Germany, 3.8% in Saudi Arabia, 3.7% in Australia, 3.6% in Canada, 3.5% in Italy, 3.4% in France, 3.3% in Argentina, 2.8% in Russia, 2.5% in South Africa, 2.4% in Brazil, 2.3% in Turkey and 1.5% in Indonesia.).

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7.6 Digital Governance During Shutdown The authorities restricted to access the various social media including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, when Internet shutdown imposed. People eventually found themselves in the middle of all these crises and then not being able to even contact their loved ones. The Internet has actually become an essential utility which takes into power various activities including business, health, education, journalism and communications. Of course, apps are made to access such and such services likewise Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe, Location Tracker, etc., which often hooked on them on a daily basis. Internet shutdowns affect people and their daily activities in a big way. It creates a silent online atmosphere which results in people’s disruption of day-to-day activities. As the advancement of the Digital India campaigns, most of the businesses are now adopting online business model, operational through apps. It is evident that business is at a loss even when there’s a halt for a few hours on the Internet. For instance, an Amazon delivery guy is out for delivery. Due to digital shutdown, the delivery guy won’t be able to contact Amazon if there is any issue with the address. At delivery, the customer wants to pay through certain payment gateway operators but that is not possible. Even a one day shutdown can eventually cause a big distress in people’s life. In the state of Telangana, Dipak Birolia, cotton bales trader shared his story of how the long-term digital shutdown in his city affected his export business. He shared his side of the story of how he had to travel around forty kilometres every day to generate his e-way bills and access the Internet to make sure his goods are transported. He said, ‘I have been to Patan Bori village in neighbouring Yavatmal district in Maharashtra to get an eWaybill for the cotton bales I needed to transport’ (Singh 2017). There are few digital businesses that affect mainly like e-commerce, job portal websites, e-banking applications, e-trading and online trading are solely dependent on the Internet. They are mostly based on customer/subscribers services. With a ban on the Internet they suffer with various economic existence. Internet shutdown affects education in a big way where students nowadays for extending their knowledge take into account a number of platforms like edX, Byju’s and Coursera; suspension of the Internet services also has psychological impact on the masses. People are nowadays too much dependent on sites like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, etc. As the Internet shutdown prevails, people go into psychotic depression where they can’t really contact the outside world. We are so engrossed into the Internet that this creates a sense of loneliness just a few hours or days without it. The most harmful and dangerous effect of digital shutdown is the effect it creates on the health industry. Digital media or the Internet is an indispensable service in the industry. The patients records are mostly handled upon the hospital’s database which Internet shutdown makes difficult to access. Moreover, many times, the doctors or e-medicine often take a consultation from the Internet or even their peers which they do through social media apps. Internet shutdown makes it difficult for them to communicate. Also, medicines being ordered online therefore people can’t really take advantage of that. Many surgical instruments and life-saving drugs are ordered

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and shipped through various parts of the world. The global lockdown amid COVID19 pandemic has given chance to realize the importance of being online. Apart from the manufacturing sector, service sectors managed to survive during COVID-19 lockdown because of online for example, online classes, work from home and other facilities, viz. delivery of household goods. The Internet became a lifeline in the twenty-first-century world. Thinking beyond the Internet is hard to conceive when especially you are unable to do financial transactions, business, meeting, connections and communication. It is true that every government wants to muzzle the Internet and wants to use it accordingly to what extent that is favourable to them or authorities. But, it needs to be treated unlike other natural resources where every citizen has equal power on such resources (Pandey and Tiwari, 2020). The Internet should belong to everyone and Internet services should be improved like electricity, drinking water, road, transportation, etc.

7.7 Conclusion Internet shutdown is now a daily feature of the authorities/government across the world. Social media runs through the Internet. The Internet is crucial to move the communication between the spatial layers in the society. Across the world, including South Asia, the free flow of the Internet has been restricted purposefully when administration found some oddness in the governance. The Internet became crucial in governance and it can be read as digital shutdown to restrict the Internet or controlled purposefully. Internet shutdown is a new draconian phenomena and sign of a strong state where civil liberty and others rights of citizens are infringed and almost secluded into nothing important than territorial laws irrespective of spatial issues and diversity. The frequency of shutdowns is gradually reported from globe and used as a new weapon by the state machinery whenever and wherever they are needed, imposed upon the territoriality. Internet shutdown became a popular measure by state machinery amid the crisis, in fact, first and foremost priority of state machinery. Of course, Internet shutdowns pose some serious questions that need to be answered, why is shutdown necessary? What is the nature and pattern of digital authoritarianism? How and at what extent freedom of individuals can be withheld under such digital shutdown? Why can’t we infer the Internet as fundamental rights of people? What social-psychological impacts during shutdown?

Appendix A • The District Magistrate, a sub-divisional magistrate or any other Executive Magistrate whose powers are given especially by the state government to issue order under this section.

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• The issuing authority has to be satisfied as to have a sufficient ground for ordering anything under this section and that should also have an immediate prevention or speedy remedy is desirable. • The order issued under Section 144 must be in writing, stating facts of the case and served to apply legal procedure. • The order so issued and served can ‘direct any person to do or abstain from a certain act’ or ‘to take certain order with respect to certain property in his possession or under his management’. • The order can ask anyone to do or restrict them to do anything. The order can also ask the person to perform any actions which may be with respect to any property they manage. • In the issuing authority’s view, the order must be ‘likely to prevent, or tends to prevent, obstruction, annoyance or injury to any person lawfully employed, or danger to human life, health or safety, or a disturbance of the public tranquillity, or a riot or an affray’.14

Appendix B The Review Committee shall comprise of: • Where it is constituted by the Central Government- Cabinet Secretary, and Secretaries of Legal Affairs and the Department of Telecommunication; • Where it is constituted by State Government- Chief Secretary, Secretary Law or Legal Remembrancer In-Charge, Legal Affairs and Secretary to the State Government (other than the Home Secretary).15 The review committee has to meet within five working days of the issuance of order and record findings on suspension order under the provisions of sub-section (2) of section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act. The suspension of telecom services is done nowadays under ‘Temporary Suspension of Telecom Services (Public Emergency or Public Safety) Rules, 2017’. However, there are several areas of concern surrounding these rules.

14 Living in Digital Darkness: A Handbook on Internet Shutdowns in India accessed at https:// sflc.in/sites/default/files/reports/Living%20in%20Digital%20Darkness%20-%20A%20Hand book%20on%20Internet%20Shutdowns%20in%20India%2C%20May%202018%20-%20by% 20SFLCin.pdf, accessed 15 June 2020. 15 Living in Digital Darkness: A Handbook on Internet Shutdowns in India accessed at https:// sflc.in/sites/default/files/reports/Living%20in%20Digital%20Darkness%20-%20A%20Hand book%20on%20Internet%20Shutdowns%20in%20India%2C%20May%202018%20-%20by% 20SFLCin.pdf, accessed 15 June 2020.

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Firstly, the rules give you an oversight of the suspension by a single Review Committee, which comprises members of the executive. This comprises the impartiality and independence of apparent conflict of interest carried out by a single arm of government machinery. Secondly, new rules failed to accommodate the principle of transparency. Considering that TSPs offering Internet services in the country do not consistently issue notifications before shutdowns are imposed, users in affected areas are often caught unaware and have little to no time to make arrangements to mitigate the impact of shutdowns.16 The Supreme Court in Hukam Chand Shyam Lal v. Union of India and Others (hereinafter Hukam Chand)17 has elaborated on the meaning of these terms—‘public emergency’ and ‘public safety’—in the context of section 5. In the facts of the case, certain telephones in a hotel in Delhi were being used to facilitate illegal forward trading. The Administrator of Delhi authorized the police to take temporary possession of the telephones, on the grounds that ‘public emergency exists and that the continuation of ‘satta’ at the aforesaid premises through the telephones given above is prejudicial to public interest’.18

Appendix C • National Internet Shutdown Costs = National GDP * Duration (measured as per cent of the year based on number of days the Internet was shut down) * Extent of Digital Economy (measured by the percentage of that nation’s economy derived from the digital economy) + the multiplier effect of the disrupted digital economy. • Subnational Internet Shutdown Costs = National GDP * Duration (measured as per cent of the year based on number of days the Internet was shut down) * Extent of Digital Economy (measured by the percentage there have been very few publications examining the economic impact of Internet disruptions, in part due to the challenges in identifying disruptions and collecting relevant economic data. Internet shutdowns cost countries $2.4 billion last year of that nation’s economy based on the digital economy) * Extent of Population Affected (measured by the percentage of the country that is in the neighbourhood, city or state affected by the shutdown) + the multiplier effect of the disrupted digital economy. • National Mobile Shutdown Costs = National GDP * Duration (measured as per cent of the year based on number of days the Internet was shut down) * Extent of Digital Economy (measured by the percentage of that nation’s economy based on 16 Living

in Digital Darkness: A Handbook on Internet Shutdowns in India accessed at https:// sflc.in/sites/default/files/reports/Living%20in%20Digital%20Darkness%20-%20A%20Hand book%20on%20Internet%20Shutdowns%20in%20India%2C%20May%202018%20-%20by% 20SFLCin.pdf, last accessed 10 June 2020. 17 (1976) 2 SCC 128. 18 Hukam Chand, at 130 (para 5).

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the digital economy) * Extent of Mobile Penetration (measured as the percentage of the country having mobile subscriptions) + the multiplier effect of the disrupted digital economy. Subnational Mobile Shutdown Costs = National GDP * Duration (measured as per cent of the year based on number of days the Internet was shut down) * Extent of Digital Economy + the multiplier effect of the digital economy (measured by the percentage of that nation’s economy based on the digital economy) * Extent of Population Affected (measured by the percentage of the country that is in the neighbourhood, city or state affected by the shutdown) * Extent of Mobile Penetration (measured as the percentage of the country having mobile subscriptions) + the multiplier effect of the disrupted digital economy. National Free App Shutdown Costs = National GDP * Duration (measured as per cent of the year based on number of days the Internet was shut down) * Free Digital App GDP Impact (measured by Erik Brynjolfsson and JooHee Oh at 0.23 of one per cent of national GDP)19 + the multiplier effect of the disrupted digital economy. Subnational Free App Shutdown Costs = National GDP * Duration (measured as per cent of the year based on number of days the Internet was shut down) * Extent of Population Affected (measured by the percentage of the country that is in the neighbourhood, city or state affected by the shutdown) * Free App GDP Impact + the multiplier effect of the disrupted digital economy.19 How India lost the most amount of money with losing US$968 million. The second highest country that lost a good amount of money by Internet shutdown is Saudi Arabia losing more than US$465 million. Leading examples of countries that lost money included US$69 million in Pakistan, US$465 million in Saudi Arabia, US$320 million in Morocco, US$209 million in Iraq and US$116 million in Brazil. These disruptions lasted 753 days in total across all countries. The total amount that was lost in the process was around US$2 billion in the past year. The type of disruption that is the cost of Internet shutdown is mostly by specific National App and other services which had around cost of US$1 billion, national Internet ($294.9 million), leading by subnational mobile Internet ($934.6 million), subnational Internet ($91.5 million), national mobile Internet ($60.9 million) and subnational disruptions of specific apps and services ($8.5 million).

References Castells M (1996) The rise of network society. Blackwell, Cambridge Certeau M de (2009) The practice of everyday life. In: Thornham S et al. (eds), Media studies: a reader (3rd ed.). Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

19 Internet

shutdowns cost countries $2.4 billion last year (2016). Retrieved from https://www.bro okings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/intenet-shutdowns-v-3.pdf, last accessed 15 June 2020.

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Chadwick A (2006) Internet politics: states, citizens, and new communication technologies. Oxford University Press, New York Chattarji S (2008) Tracking the media: interpretations of mass media discourses in India and Pakistan. Routledge, New Delhi Chatterjee I (2014) Social conflict and the neoliberal city: a case of Hindu-Muslim violence in India. In: Shaktin G (ed), Contesting the Indian City: global visions and the politics of the local, Wiley Blackwell, Oxford Chaudhary MA, Chaudhary G (2009) Global encyclopaedia of political geography. Global Vision Publications, New Delhi Chen MK, Jane LR (2010) How choice affects and reflects preferences: revising the free-choice paradigm. J Pers Soc Psychol 99(4):573–594 Chi F, Nathan Y (2010) Twitter in congress: outreach vs. transparency. Social Science Research Network. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1630943. Accessed 17 October 2020 Chomsky N, Herman ES (2010) A propaganda model. In: Greer Chris (ed) Crime and media: a reader. Routledge, London Chowdhury A (2011) Electronic media and cultures of communication: a sociological study of the internet. University of Delhi, Delhi Christensen C (2012) Thoughts on revolution, state aid and liberation technologies. Ir Stud Int Aff 23:37–45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23489212. Accessed 2 October 2020 Dixit P (2019) Kashmiris are disappearing from WhatsApp. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/art icle/pranavdixit/hundreds-of-kashmiris-are-disappearing-from-their-whatsapp. Accessed 5 July 2020 Hickey CK (2019) India is the world’s leader in internet shutdowns. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/ 08/05/india-is-the-worlds-leader-in-internet-shutdowns/. Accessed 25 June 2020 McCarthy N (2018) The countries shutting down the internet the most [infographic]. https://www. forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/08/28/the-countries-shutting-down-the-internet-the-mostinfographic/#10c1d3cb1294. Accessed 3 July 2020 Minges M (2015) Exploring the relationship between broadband and economic growth. World Development Report, p. 3. http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/391452529895999/WDR16-BPExploring-the-Relationship-between-Broadband-and-Economic-Growth-Minges.pdf. Accessed 6 July 2020 Nayak N (2018) The legal disconnects: An analysis of India’s internet shutdown laws. IFF Working Paper No. 1/2018. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3254857or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3254857. Accessed 26 June 2020 Pandey N, Tiwari A (2020) Access to internet: a fundamental right. Juscholars 1(3). https://www. juscholars.com/post/access-to-internet-a-fundamental-right. Accessed 23 June 2020 Singh SH (2017) No internet, no transactions. https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/ no-internet-notransactions/article21958061.ece. Accessed 6 July 2020

Chapter 8

Political Economy of Spatial Turn in Digital Landscapes

Abstract The spatiality of spatial-digital compression is a virtual construction. Virtual turn in spatiality is about to map the spatiality of digital gadgets. Digital gadgets cannot operate in absence of time and location. Digital gadgets have inbuilt features of time and location, in absence of both, operational efficiency of such gadgets would be compromised, somehow. Both time and location help to map the spatiality of digital gadgets. This section is about to map the virtual turn in the spatiality and spatial mapping in digital gadgets. Keywords Spatial-digital compression · Virtual turn · Senseless public · Fake news · Spatiality

8.1 Spatial Turn in Virtual Landscapes The growth and business projections of social media were talked exclusively in academic volumes in the last one decade. Interdisciplinary approaches were evaluated variedly to understand the subject of communication accordingly. In spatial science the study of communication was restricted to traditional media but since the last few years especially after the Geographical Information System (GIS) and quantification approaches helped the scholars to decipher the constructions of virtual spaces in respective representations and interpretations. The chapters in the book discuss the concept of ‘spatial turn’ and how and to what extent social media accommodated spatial turn as an interdisciplinary approach. Social media institutionalized the senseless public? What is senseless? How a senseless public is institutionalized? What constitutes public? What does the public denote? Senseless is blurred idea or vision or fictitious identity or concocted naming were assigned or discussed on social media platforms. Senseless public is such spatiality where such blurred ideas or concocted naming was assigned for mundane reasons including political. Social mediasphere is a senseless public where such discussions are often found around various subjects ranging from economic to cultural to political to geographical. It is not restricted to one particular topic or subject, it can be any subject, but deliberately controlled by IT Cell of respective

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Moinuddin, Digital Shutdowns and Social Media, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3_8

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countries or organizations in order to push their concocted ideology upon the theme or issue or subject. Social media is the home of spatial spaces where spatiality is shaped into various shapes and sizes and discussed among users whether in the sense of problem or policy or politics. Most of the time such discussions end with no conclusion or contentious turn where making silence on such issues is quite better than putting some odd views publicly. Here, the public is a social media sphere that’s embedded with different layers of meaning and representations in the shape of view or an idea or a naming. One can understand the senseless public in terms of endless or infinite mapping of any issue which talked across the platforms where there is no clear-cut demarcation rather it incorporated all such valid points or elements were considered to understand the issue or topic. Social media provides us a platform to put forth our ideas, issues, views and understanding as per se. But how someone taken the same issue apart from original approaches or completely different thinking, in that sense, this study found that we are institutionalized the senseless public, the meaning is represented in such a way that we cannot draw a conclusion rather it looks like a mosaic, all different idea infused in it. Though, spatiality is all about to denote the spatial indication at its first glance (since the issue uploaded across the social media, it discussed for white unless it is replaced by another issue and gradually in a sequence manner issue lost its spatial importance). In the age of social media the issues are embedded with spatial indication but across the platform it lost their original indication rather shaped as senseless public where issues, views, thinking and understanding lost its meaning, though exists in its original structure, process and stages. Such views, thinking, reports, analysis, maps, texts, videos, memes, emoticons and signs, of course, found in circulations across the platforms in myriad nature and characteristics but only few of them acknowledged by the users while rest lost its spatial landscapes in the virtual landscapes. The spatial landscape of contents is like a metaphor when contents attribute such chronology and phenomenology as special characteristics. For example, the outburst of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China became contentious for myriad ways and very soon the whole world engulfed into the catch of COVID-19 that caused both economic and human losses across the world. Wuhan is a popular city in China but since COVID-19 spread, thousands of memes or textual messages or videos were made to signify Wuhan as metaphor, in both positive and negative representations and interpretations. Wuhan is a spatial landscape but the same has been used through digital configurations where sometimes we can judge as senseless public—the space is concocted and represented across the social mediasphere. We can’t live in isolation in the ‘information age’, when the social mediasphere is a reality that can’t leave you in isolation unless you have a strong desire to keep minimal online or less interactions with outer worlds. But more or less, digital gadgets are penetrated in the human lives and living side by side with human activities. Digital lives and digital socialization are inevitable nowadays. Digital lives are a kind of virtual status when an individual prefers to be online on their favourite platform, purposefully. The expansion of business of smartphones and 4G Internet

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speed made it possible for an individual to be online as much as they want, to use such digital gadgets for sharing, learning, information and knowledge. The association and intimacy with digital gadgets increased over a period of time irrespective of age, gender, race, religion, profession, education, tribes and caste. Such intimacy and association has changed the arithmetic and geometrics of an individual who carried many apps and smartphones to report across the platform and other services through digital gadgets what they are made to serve. The regular features of digital gadgets were shown in both public and private spaces as digital loneliness—digital loneliness is shaping social behaviour in the long run when digital privacy is becoming an utmost priority in both public and private spaces irrespective of age, religion, gender, tribe and profession. Such social behaviour unlike digital loneliness when no one trust anyone in fact, the social movement of nuclearization of family is further shaping and reshaping, under the expansion of such digital gadgets like smartphones. Digital lives are primary steps towards digital socialization and that leads to trolls unlike to abuse someone else who often takes different stands on the given issues or ideology on social media. The information technology (IT) cell is a new feature of digital lives when a group of trained trolls who are often ready to harass someone on social media platforms, if you write against their ideology. They will use abusive and threatening languages or emoticons. The use of social mediasphere often push such contentious and fictitious contents in order to propagate ideology, knowledge, data, etc., that do not have credible sources rather posed as real or true information in its first appearance but if you go to search the reality of such information, most of them found fake and misinformation or disinformation. Social media institutionalized the fake and misinformation contents? The idea of fake news is not new to the world (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017; Barthel et al. 2016) but it is treated as new phenomena in the information society where each content was talked as whether an authentic or fake information. The circulated videos, texts or images first need to pass the authentication click and thereafter the merit of such issues, views or news and other ideas. The fake is contentious itself unless proved that it was misrepresented or moulded from original versions. The abundance of contents somehow made confused or no other option to scroll into another page unless found something interesting, whatever. For example, the case of trolls who often run behind to whom they found odd in the lists that object to the content. Trolling is not new rather the same found in the society in mundane names who often threaten or beat or unnecessary harassed people. So, trolls are nothing, a digitized version of local goons who are trained digitally to abuse to which they found odd in the group. Trolls often pass such information that is constructed in order to achieve a certain political score or fulfil specific need, whatsoever. AltNews.co or FactChecker.in is about authenticating the news and often checks such uploaded news; these channels are specifically designated to burst the misinformation and fake news that is often found among the circulation when users get confused whether the news is true or fake. When there were no such channels to identify whether the news is fake or not, people often believed such contents primarily, of course, they have some suspicions upon that but no other ways rather to digest the news. Digital lives

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or digital socialization shaped such information whether in terms of senseless public or fake or misinformation. Fake news is not a new term rather it is largely undefined and unauthenticated kinds of popular taxonomies (Wardle 2017). Fake news used for political satire (Baym 2005), political propaganda (Khaldarova and Pantti 2016), photo manipulation (Zubiaga and Ji 2014), to deceive (Duffy et al. 2019) and news caricatures (Berkowitz and Schwartz 2016). The fake news is basically carved to make propaganda and satire or draw caricatures to mock or represent purposefully. Moreover, such contents too invite business in a sense of circulation that ultimately serves the purposes. Social media contents are often embedded with political and economic values? Each shown content has its own values. This study implies basically two indicators: first, political and second, economic or in other words we can have political economic values in totality. Political economy mapped the structural features of capitalism, such as the causes of crises, whereas ideology critique analyses the claims that are made about reality and how true they are. If one wants to understand power, then one needs to analyse both ideology and political economy together (Fuchs 2014). The circulated content has ideological background apart from political economy. Social media platform-industry partnerships are essential to understanding the politics and economics of social data circulating among platforms and third parties (Helmond et al. 2017). The ‘platform’ is an increasingly common type of online organizational form. Online platforms include search engines like Google, Amazon and eBay, content providers like Wikipedia, and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, traditional software and hardware manufacturers like Microsoft (Bing) and Apple (iTunes and App Store). Online platforms are central to what might be called the content or media infrastructure of the Web—that is to say, the infrastructure through which digital content and media, both privately and industrially created, are distributed throughout the Web (Couvering 2017). The political economy of social media can be understood both as a commodity of the media and as ideologies in the media. This means the media is supposed to bring the political economy as commodities and ideologies? Media used advertisements as a medium to carry both together (Fuchs 2014). Vincent Mosco’s (2009) defined political economic studies, where the production, distribution and consumption of resources, including communication resources are essential and remains relevant in times of new media. The political economy of communications looks at a range of issues including capitalism, media ownership, funded mechanism, government policy, globalization, regulation and neoliberalism. The study focused on the capitalism part to understand the spatial issues in the contents of how and why certain issues are chosen to circulate that have hidden ideas of political economy (see in chapters). The political economy is global phenomena and very much spatial in nature and that can’t be separated from any issues that are talked or discussed or circulated on social media.

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8.2 Spatial-Digital Compression Spatial turn is inseparable from social media contents? Everything on the platform is spatial by its nature. Of course, it is indeed true that the uploaded content has some contexts that have spatial affiliation that is inseparable from such contents. The discussion often substantiates such spatial affiliation in mundane representations. The expansion of social media which not only strengthens the communication rather generating, accumulating, sorting and ordering of such data that found on social platforms in virtual shapes in various representations as spatial knowledge, spatial behaviour and spatial politics (Kitchin et al. 2017). Spatial turn is something to look back to explore more differently in different contexts that how to re-examine and reinterpret the same in some other ways. In the first chapter, I tried to express the spatial mapping of digital gadgets wherein the spatial dimensions were mapped in contexts to digital gadgets that is somehow inevitable nowadays. How a layman can map the digital gadgets as spatial expressions and treat the same as other ‘spaces’ that is already mapped by scholars in the past one-century and particularly the works of Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) and Henery Lefebvre (1991) and Christian Fuchs (2014). I tried to add a dimension that we can map our digital gadgets as space in different interpretations and representations as primary space, secondary space and tertiary space, respectively. The configuration of digital gadgets can be understood as spatial-digital compression—the technological innovations lead the transformation in spatiality. The idea of real space or abstract space shaped further and took virtual turn (the automation technology derived human civilization in such juncture wherein information and mass communication technology shapes the spatial cognition when things are apparently not appeared or not visible by naked eyes rather existing in concept, idea and meaning. Virtual turn embedded in the spatiality of digital gadgets that found in myriad shape and size) within spatial turn. The virtual turn shaped the dimensions of digital gadgets; one can easily read the transformations that shape the spatiality. Digital gadgets transformed the construction of spaces and places. The cognitive construction in digital gadgets shapes the virtual spaces further that helps to map the screen of smartphone, ipod, laptop/desktop as a primary space or first space or spatial practices or visible by naked eyes but unexplored, inquisitive and inconclusive. The screen of digital gadgets embedded with layers of spatiality that shapes virtuality in two more variations. Subsequently, the installed apps within smartphones can be treated as secondary space or second space or technocrat space. And, further when someone clicks the apps or opens the apps for being connected to others or across the world can be understood as tertiary space or third space or lived space that is full of contentious, struggle, politics, existence, skirmish, scuffle, etc. Spatio-digital compression is all about the virtual construction of digital spaces that is embedded in digital gadgets variedly. Digital became synonymous with time, within fraction of second, two distant persons can share an email to each other. Time submerged into digital gadgets as a spatial indicator that works along with location, which is too spatial in nature. Digital gadgets cannot operate in absence of time and

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location. For example, Google map works effectively when both time and location are on and therefore Google map would signify the destination route and time otherwise Google map would not be effectively functional. Similarly, Facebook, Instagram works where both time and location work as spatial attributes to signify the digital spatiality. The spatio-digital compression needs further research to map exclusively how and at what extent digital gadgets are shaped and reshaped the virtual spatiality beside representations or during Internet shutdowns. Henceforth, spatial turn and Internet shutdown are two inseparable spatial phenomena when a territory is marked separated from the rest of other territorial boundaries on administrative and governance order. Of course, Internet shutdown is a spatial incongruous based on various grounds and spatial incongruous is spreading across the developing countries. Internet shutdowns need separate research in order to map the social, cultural, psychological and economic impacts in the spatiality.

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Index

A Absolute space, 14 Abstract space, 13, 17 Advertising, 112 Agenda, 95 Agenda-setting theory, 96 Architectural spaces, 13 ARPANET, 43 Audio/video streaming, 9 Augmented Reality (AR), 43

B Betweenness centrality, 71 Bias of Communication, 58 Business growth, 3

C Capitalism, 21 Chat, 9 Civilization, 45 Closeness centrality, 71 Communication, 9, 12, 20, 45, 69, 84, 85, 104, 109, 113–115, 119, 133 Computer-mediated communication (CMC), 123 Conceived space, 13 Costs and time, 11 Cultural geographers, 16 Cultural turn, 12 Culture, 112 Cybercafé, 8 Cybernetic age, 45 Cyber world, 3 Cyborg, 45, 48

D Data, 9, 10 Degree centrality, 71 Democracy, 23 Demographics, 8 Demography, 52 Demonetization policy, 8 Dialectical sublation, 62 Diffusion of innovation, 78, 79 Digital, 5 Digital adoption, 9 Digital Age, 26, 83 Digital Bangladesh, 36 Digital culture, 11 Digital divide, 9, 73, 74 Digital Economy, 165 Digital gadgets, 11, 149 Digital India, 2, 6, 10, 36, 159 Digital lives, 45 Digital networks, 83 Digital Pakistan, 36 Digital platform, 90 Digital Public Sphere, 92 Digital sensory, 12 Digital Shutdown, 149, 151, 155, 160, 170 Digital social, 50 Digital socialization, 26, 47 Digital Socially, 39 Digital technology, 48 Digitization, 11 Dyadic communication, 37, 41

E E-banking, 151 EBay, 8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. Moinuddin, Digital Shutdowns and Social Media, Springer Geography, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67888-3

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174 E-commerce, 8, 26, 37, 134, 135, 151 Economic activities, 133 Economic capital, 50 Economic media, 145 E-governance, 10, 151 E-kart, 133 Election, 84, 85 Election campaigns, 3 Electoral mapping, 81 Emoji, 116–123, 126–128, 130 Emoticons, 108, 112, 114–116, 118, 119, 121–128, 130 Ethnoscapes, 37

F Facebook, 3, 4, 7, 13, 22, 42, 46, 51, 72, 79, 92, 134–136, 147 Facebook’ Generation, 63 Fake news, 23 Financescapes, 37, 77 First space, 17 Flexibility, 83 Framing, 95, 96 Freedom of speech, 152

G Gadgets, 14 Gender-balanced, 8 Gender gap, 9 Geo-art, 12 Geocaching, 12 Geography, 12 Geospatial, 11 Geospatial data, 10 Geospatial economy, 10 Geospatial media, 11 Geo-surveillance, 12 Globalization, 12, 77, 78, 133 Global village, 51, 74, 76, 79 Google, 3, 4 Google Hangouts, 7 Governance, 149 Graphical representations, 107

H Hashtags, 91, 92 Heterotopology, 15 Humanistic, 15 Human Relations, 133 Human resource, 138, 139 Human Resources perspectives, 133

Index Hybrid nature, 57 I ICICI Bank, 8 Identity, 15 Ideoscapes, 37, 77 Imagination, 14 India, 2–5 Indonesia, 4 Information society, 16 Instagram, 4, 13, 96, 121, 125, 126, 128, 129, 134, 135, 138, 159 Interdisciplinary approach, 21 Internet, 1–9, 150, 166 Internet-based applications, 35 Internet consumption, 7 Internet express, 5 Internet networks, 100 Internet penetration, 5, 9 Internet Service Providers (ISPs), 7, 8 Internet services, 9 Internet shutdown, 150–155, 157–160, 170 IPad, 1, 17 IRCTC, 8 K Kashmir shutdown, 157 Kite network, 70 L Language, 107, 108, 111–114, 123, 124 Laptop, 17 Latitude, 19 Laws, 152, 160 Leap-frogging, 43 Liberal capitalist, 41 Like, 40 Linguistic turn, 12 LinkedIn, 39, 42, 59 Lived digitally, 42 Lived space, 18, 19 Location, 14 Locative, 12 Longitude, 19 M Manufacture of consent, 92 Mapping, 26 Material culture, 112 Media, 11 Media-in place, 74

Index Media-in-space, 74 Media Networks, 84 Mediascapes, 20, 26, 37, 77 Mediatization, 91, 93 Micro-blogging platforms, 17 Misinformation, 168 Mobile services, 8 Mode of production, 15 Modi, Narendra, 7 Modi wave, 96 Movements, 86 Multidisciplinary literatures, viii Music, 113 Myspace, 134

N NaMo, 7 NaMo TV, 101 Narbs, 48 National Geospatial Policy (NGP), 10 Nationality, 45 Nature, 45 Netflix, 13, 14 Network Centrality, 71 Network power, 83 Networks, 52, 68, 69, 84 Network society, 15, 51, 70 Non-places, 15 Non-working, 9

O Object-centric, 72 Of Other Spaces, 15 Online business, 133 Online entertainment, 8 Online portal, 8 Online transactions, 35 Oral tradition, 57 Orkut, 3, 4 Over the Top (OTT) media, 13

P Panopticon, 91 Paradigm of Communication, 58 Parliament, 1 Perceived space, 17 Phenomenological studies, 12 Pictorial representations, 107 Pinterest, 135, 138 Place, 12–16 Place-in-media, 74

175 Placelessness, 15 Planned city, 13 Platform(s), 3, 25 Political campaign, 96 Political communication, 89 Political economy, 2, 20, 26, 102, 149 Postmodern bloodlines, 16 Prime TV, 13 Protests, 86 Public opinion, 95 Public Relations (PR), 133 Public sphere, 24, 93 Public Wi-Fi, 8

Q Quantitative turn, 12

R Real, 10 Real-time, 10 Reddit, 42, 51 Reliance Jio, 1, 102 Retweets, 22 Revolution, 9 Rural India, 5, 9 Rural Internet, 5

S Satellite imagery, 10 Scalability, 83 Scrolling, 43 Sculptural space, 13 Second space, 15 Second World War, 14 Semiological analysis, 116 Semiotics, 107–109, 111, 113–115, 121– 123, 125, 126 Senseless public, 168 Sensorial sense, 13 Share, 40 Signs, 111–113 Silicon Valley, 39 Skype, 37 Smartphone, 1, 7, 17–19 Snapchat, 38, 63 Social, 26, 48, 49 Social animal, 44, 45 Social capital, 45, 50 Social commerce, 137 Social culture, 117

176 Social media, 1, 3, 5–7, 9, 11, 13, 19, 20, 26, 59, 60, 79, 84, 88, 110, 114, 115, 133, 134, 136, 140, 141 Social Media Analysis, 70 Social media organism, 35 Social Media sphere, 59 Social networking, 8, 9 Social networking sites, 1, 3 Social networking websites, 4 Social network services, 2 Sound, 13, 14 Sound effects, 113 Space, 11–16 Space-in-media, 79 Space of flows, 15 Spatial, 52 Spatial-digital mapping, 149 Spatial imagination, 14, 17, 154 Spatiality, 11, 19, 20 Spatial science, 14, 25 Spatial studies, 12 Spatial turn, 2, 11, 12 Spatio-digital compression, 169, 170 Spectrums, 10 Surveillance, 155 Surveillance tool, 156 Survivability, 83 Symbols, 109 Synthetic worlds, 48 T Technocratic pessimism, 41, 48 Technological processes, 40 Technological rationality, 62 Technoscapes, 37, 77 Temporal resolution, 10 Third space, 15, 19 TikTok, 97 Time-biased media, 58, 59 Timeline, 68 Time-space compression, 15 Topophilia, 15 Trolls, 26, 52

Index Tumbler, 135 Tweets, 22 Twitter, 4, 7, 17, 72, 92, 134, 137 Twitter bomb, 102

U United States, 4 Urban India, 5, 9 Urban–rural digital divide, 9 User-centric, 72

V Virality, 82 Virtual, 10 Virtual construction, 169 Virtual spaces, 50 Virtual spatiality, 13 Virtual turn, 169 Virtual universe, 50 Virtual world, 12 Visual media, 1

W Wall, 58 Wanelo, 135 Web 1.0, 43 Web 2.0, 23, 43, 133 Web 3.0, 43 Web dunia, 8 Website, 7, 8 WhatsApp, 4, 7, 122, 134, 145, 150, 154 Wikipedia, 59

Y YouTube, 7, 59, 72

Z Zuckerberg, Mark, 3, 4, 7