Anita Gurumurthy

2019

This article was first published in Firstpost.

A mass exodus from Twitter over to open-source microblogging community Mastodon is in the news, and it’s not the first time that users have responded to social media’s opaque content moderation policies in this way. Calls to #deletefacebook abounded after the Cambridge Analytica scandal…

2019

Digital and data technologies are not merely tools or enablers of development; they are the scaffolds of a new social paradigm. As data flows through a more and more interconnected planet, the capture of network-data spaces by corporate and state interest recasts opportunity structures, heightening inequalities between, and within, countries.…

2019

Progress towards every single sustainable development goal (SDG) of Agenda 2030 also hinges on the effective deployment of digital technologies. In Global Governance Spotlight 4|2019, Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami from IT for Change explain the importance of so-called digital ecosystems to catalyse inclusive sustainable development. In…

2019

Going by the chapter on data in the Economic Survey released on July 4, it seemed that the government’s new Budget would carry new thinking on the digital economy. If data of, for, and by, the people was going to be an important digital mantra, then the Budget had to build on this. However, the BJP government’s digital imaginary, read in the…

2019

Earlier this week, Facebook deleted over 700 pages in India for “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” and “spam”. Most of these pages were related to the Congress and the BJP. The action, evidently with an eye on the upcoming elections, targeted what Facebook described as deliberate attempts to mislead. Facebook’s role in cleaning up mala fide…

2019

Every once in a while, there is the high optics drama about a woman celebrity or public persona who has been trolled, and then, predictably, the dust settles. But make no mistake. This is but the proverbial tip of an iceberg that is ballooning.

The internet-mediated world presents a contradiction of a magnitude and complexity that…

2019

In October and November 2018, during the Great Indian Festival season in India, online retail giants — Amazon, Flipkart and Paytm Mall — sold goods worth $4.3 billion (Rs 29,947 crore), 43% higher than the last year.

Traders in physical retail must now reckon with the rather disconcerting reality of e-commerce. The press note issued by…

2018

 

Reorienting "data for development"

"Data for development" enjoys high currency in global policy circles. It has come to stand for the idea that developing countries need to acquire the capacity to produce "quality, accessible, timely and reliable disaggregated data" and use the promise of big data to…

2018

Anita Gurumurthy delivered a valedictory keynote at India HCI Conference 2018 on "Seeing beyond the screen - reflections on crafting technology for the art of change". The conference was organised by Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

Watch the presentation here.

2018

We need to move towards a new legal framework for surveillance

Over the past decade, we have been witness to many legal, juridical and executive interventions that comprise the highly contentious terrain of surveillance in digital times — from the amendment to Section 69 of the IT Act in 2008 that expanded the government’s powers of…