Paradigms of Digital Activism: India and Its Mobile Internet Users

Abstract

India has the deepest penetration of mobile phone usage, and the second highest usage of mobile Internet in the world. Even the low-end mobile phones are enabled with options to access social networking sites (SNS). It helps that SNS can now be accessed in vernacular languages, too. This development in mobile telephony has the potential to mitigate the socio-economic disparity of the country’s population (D’Costa, in this edition) and make SNS available to the people, which in turn can connect millions of users instantly and efficiently. It is not surprising then that Indian SNS users are beginning to harness this capacity to digital activism. Any form of communication, non-profit or commercial, must involve a level of persuasion to be considered successful. While persuasion can take many different forms, in activism mediated through digital communication tools, it tends to follow two paradigms: to inform and to inspire, depending on the socio-economic development of the people to be persuaded; in a developed country, digital activism is used to inspire people on an issue of concern, and in a developing country digital tools are used foremost to inform the people about a cause. The choice of paradigm is also guided by access to communication technology. I argue that given the disparity in socio-economic development (D’Costa, in this edition) between urban and rural regions in contemporary India, both paradigms coexist within the Indian context. The way inspiration-based activities are managed and implemented is comparable to the persuasive strategies of a multinational corporation seeking global recognition. I conclude that digital activist “branding” has the potential to bring about social change, depending on how the communication tool is being used along with the nature of the issues raised online.