"Digital media histories are part of a global network, and South Asia is a key nexus in shaping the trajectory of digital media in the twenty-first century. Digital platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and others are deeply embedded in the daily lives of millions of people around the world, shaping ho
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w people engage with others as kin, as citizens, and as consumers. Moving away from Anglo-American and strictly national frameworks, the essays in this book explore the intersections of local, national, regional, and global forces that shape contemporary digital culture(s) in regions like South Asia: the rise of digital and mobile media technologies, the ongoing transformation of established media industries, and emergent forms of digital media practice and use that are reconfiguring sociocultural, political, and economic terrains across the Indian subcontinent. From massive state-driven digital identity projects and YouTube censorship to Tinder and dating culture, from Twitter and primetime television to Facebook and political rumors, Global Digital Cultures focuses on enduring concerns of representation, identity, and power while grappling with algorithmic curation and data-driven processes of production, circulation, and consumption." (Publisher description)
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"Transversal dissent by communities whose actions and identities are no longer primarily state centric but, rather, have shifted to cross identity boundaries is one of the most important developments for understanding how politics is being transformed today. Burmese media groups, political activists
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, migrants, and refugees, while challenging the state of Myanmar and, at times, the sovereign state power of host states, have not yet been openly challenging the state system itself. In fact, they generally desire to rebuild a community within such a sovereign state system. Yet, the work of activists in exile offers insights into "the intrinsically co-Constitutive relation between the 'informal' and the 'formal' political spaces and how they transform each other" (O'Kane 2006)." (Concluding thoughts, page 158-159)
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"To a certain extent the field's shortcomings could be the consequence of academic work increasingly trapped in the normativity of the development industry and out of touch with the variety of agents concerned with social injustice worldwide, who are deploying communication and media strategies to a
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dvance their struggles." (Page 134)
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