Attending the Social Media and Society in India conference; lessons in hosting an inclusive, global conference

This past Friday and Saturday, I (virtually) attended a few sessions of the two-day Social Media and Society in India conference hosted by University of Michigan’s Information School. Joyojeet Pal and a handful of student organizers convened a series of insightful interdisciplinary discussions on how different communities interact with social media platforms and what different experiences on social media can tell us about India.

Students also presented forthcoming research on topics including family-vlogging, how algorithmic systems may encode nationalistic values, and the boundaries between the self and our digital depiction.

The conference was an opportunity to dive into the depths of a topic that is often sidelined to one session or panel. It also offered a space for speakers to complicate existing understandings of which communities use social media spaces, the ways they use or perceive these spaces, and how it materially affects their lives. Social media was then not the focus of this conference but a lens through which to talk about broader issues within India. Some compelling questions speakers raised included: who is over-represented on social media and media in general in the country? What sort of norms do we see perpetuated in online spaces that don’t necessarily connect with the norms offline? What is the state of the rule of law in India when it comes to online spaces?

SMSI will release recorded sessions to the public soon. If you are interested in how social media has shaped expression across Indian communities and particularly if you are an organizer of such events and convenings (whether as an academic, civil society organization, funder, or even company) I encourage you to tune into these sessions.

Here are a few thoughts from the conference:

Inclusion of affected parties as speakers: What struck me about this conference was how seamlessly experts from different disciplines were able to be in conversation with each other. Perspectives from experts who study recommendation algorithms were in dialogue with influencers whose reach and income is dependent on ‘gaming’ the algorithm. Experiences from trans creators, satirists, and platform governance experts gave a multidimensional view into the enforcement of content policies on social media services. Karuna Nundy’s presentation about the Indian legal framework for example was a critical ground-setting exercise but was especially powerful when attendees could correspond what she said with the experience of RoflGandhi, a Twitter satirist whose tweets have led to state action against him, and what that tells us about the enforcement of the rule of law and constitutional protections for expression.

There’s a broader value in the inclusion of these speakers too. The inclusion of those who use social media for their jobs or are on the impacted end of social media policies and processes expands who is allowed to call themselves an ‘expert’ in the study of social media. This is critical at a time when the broader tech policy apparatus tries to privilege technical expertise and concentrate power amongst a few. The point here is not that technical expertise should not be valued, but simply that it must be in conversation with those that can demonstrate how technical systems impact communities differently. Having people speak to their own experience can also make our advocacy, as organizations and advocates who do center users’ rights, richer by giving us a more nuanced and complicated understanding of how different people are using social media today.

Multilinguality in conferences: Although this seems obvious in hindsight, I was struck by the multilinguality of the conference. Some presenters presented and spoke entirely in Hindi, others slipped into other languages into their presentation. The multilinguality of the conference was by design. One of the standout presentations was by Turing researcher Monojit Choudhury where he spoke about code-mixing (or code-switching as it is also known) a linguistic phenomenon where individuals switch between languages depending on who they are speaking with, what they are speaking about, and what they are saying. In one discursive analysis of Hinglish social media posts, Choudhury shows that tweeters swear more in Hindi than in English regardless of what they are tweeting about. The research Choudhury spotlights shows the unique ways a subset of Indian users use Twitter but also shows the importance of conducting research in languages other than English as the findings they reveal may complicate existing notions or understandings of social media use. This, he says, is not just a matter of use in the “Global South”, in fact people in the United States are also multilingual and different groups of people may be code-switching in their posts. A survey of only English tweets may miss this point. I left that talk thinking about how Anglocentrism guides not only what we choose to study or uplift as important in the field, but how it is often encoded into how we choose to study what we study.

The multilinguality of the conference is a testament to the space and intentionality of the organizers, who could have easily made this conference English-first, shutting out the chance to platform experts who prefer other languages. The conversation was richer because it allowed a multiplicity of expression and voices to be exchanged. At one point, someone in the audience asked whether they could ask their question in Hindi because it would be more emphatic, symbolizing the differences in how we express depending on which language we use.

Conferences in the US (and globally) should be increasingly multilingual, especially because many of the issues we study under this broad umbrella of platform governance, tech policy, and digital democracy affects more than just English speakers. Of course this may require further accommodation (translators at the very least.)

Immigration remains a big hurdle to a deeper understanding of how tech shapes society: One organizer noted that there would have been many others that the conference would have liked to invite if traveling to the U.S. and obtaining a tourist visa was easier for all. One example of those who were unable to receive a visa: experts that could speak to how farmers and agrarian workers use social media to share their experience. This is a critical gap in the space; agriculture-related workers make up 42.6% of the Indian workforce in estimates calculated in 2019 and as the farmers protest in 2021 showed, many of these workers feel unrepresented and oftentimes silenced in most policy conversations despite their prominence. SALDEF is one organization that has recently shed light onto the opportunities and challenges social media presents to farmers by using the farmers protest as a case study.

It’s important to spotlight how the American immigration system remains a barrier to research and progress in the tech policy and research space. The United States is home not only to many of the largest technology companies and where it staffs most of its personnel, who influence policy and build tools that are deployed worldwide, it is also the home to a majority of ‘global’ convenings and funders who fund these convenings and research. The country’s state and federal legislative bodies also set norms and rules for technology companies that these companies may then implement outside of the borders of the US.

Those who are in attendance at convenings and conversations in the US then, to a significant extent, dictate what becomes the de facto global agenda. The immigration system, which grants tourist visas based on a candidate’s means or previous access to the United States (a proxy of means as well) then perpetuates a status quo — allowing a few to gain access to key convenings, leaving those who haven’t been given this opportunity without this opportunity yet again. Incidentally, many of those who may not have the opportunity or the privilege to access tourist visas are also those who provide the labor to power tech’s shiny new fixations.

Many are reckoning with this. ICTD and RightsCon, two convenings for academics who study technology and digital rights advocates respectively, regularly host outside the US to be inclusive recognizing the barrier the immigration system erects to many. Those working in research and advocacy around technology and human rights too should be a voice in the immigration reform space.