Buhari’s spokespeople attributed the ban to Twitter being a platform that promoted real-life violence. Yet days before the ban, Twitter removed a tweet from Buhari threatening to treat dissidents in “the language they understand” for violating its abusive behavior policy. Many theorize this was the final straw for the Nigerian government, which had previously toyed with the idea of regulating social media. 

In 2020, protests against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, exploded following years of claims of police brutality, violence and corruption. The protests were largely fueled and organized through Twitter under the #EndSARS hashtag, which the platform heavily promoted, a move that presumably drew Buhari’s anger.  

The ultimate decision to ban Twitter was met with mixed reactions. A number of world leaders and human rights groups condemned the act. The United States, EU, Ireland, Britain and Canada issued a joint letter reasoning that “banning systems of expression is not the answer,” especially during a time when “Nigeria [precisely]needs to foster inclusive dialogue and expression of opinions.” 

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), a Nigerian non-profit NGO, decreed the presidential move “illegal and unconstitutional” and threatened legal action. Small businesses in Nigeria suffered a massive blow, and Twitter’s 39 million Nigerian users spoke out heavily against the ban. 

There remained, however, a prominent supporter of Buhari’s decision: former U.S. President Donald J. Trump. Trump has experienced struggles with Twitter of his own, being permanently banned from the app following his incitement, in part on Twitter, of the January 6 Capitol riots. While Trump elected to sue Twitter as a private citizen, he still personally congratulated Buhari for his decision. Trump even claimed that he himself should have done the same while in office and that more countries should consider banning Twitter and Facebook as they do not allow for “free and open speech.” 

Across Africa, this tightening of accessibility to such platforms is increasingly becoming a reality. Countries like Uganda and Ethiopia have engaged in social media shut-downs prior to presidential elections. Globally, nations like India, Thailand and Vietnam consistently delete mass amounts of information from these forums, justifying these deletions as an attack on “fake news.”

Twitter, for its part, issued a statement following the Nigerian ban stating that “access to the free and #OpenInternet is an essential human right in modern society.” Many view this statement as truth, with the aforementioned SERAP stating, “The suspension of Twitter in Nigeria is a blatant violation of Nigerians’ rights to freedom of expression and access to information.” Twitter and its fellow virtual platforms are undeniably intrinsic to communication, awareness, and activism in our modern world. 

In Nigeria, along with the #EndSARS hashtag, Twitter was essential in raising awareness and action following Boko Haram’s 2015 kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. This massive potential for activism has been witnessed around the world, from the Black Lives Matter movement to the Arab Spring uprisings. 

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has been imperative to educating the public on symptoms and possible exposures. For many, it had allowed them to maintain a sense of human connection and wellness during a highly stressful and isolated period. 

Across the world, 97% of Fortune 500 companies rely on social media, and research by Fundera has found that 96% of small businesses have social media as part of their marketing strategy, with 74% of consumers making decisions guided by the platforms. More than 90% of companies use mediums like LinkedIn to fill job openings. More than half of the world uses social media and relies on it to access news and information. 

Social media has clearly burrowed its way deep into the etches of modern society. Some contend it must be left as an open-speech forum to avoid the possibility of corruption and manipulation.

Yet critics of mass media liberalization argue that the consequences of not regulating monoliths like Twitter and Facebook have unprecedented ramifications. Experts have pinned these tech giants as a major source of polarization and violence worldwide, as is illustrated by the January 6 riots. The United Nations found that Facebook played a “defining role” in the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar. Security experts also point to deadly patterns in the use of social media combined with the rise in homegrown and worldwide terrorism. Russia utilized the platforms to essentially hack the 2016 U.S. presidential elections by stoking social divisions with controversial content and heavily promoting pro-Trump content. 

While social media was highly beneficial for establishing digital connections during COVID, it was also the source of an abundance of harmful misinformation, likely influencing the millions who willingly remain unvaccinated. These negative effects persist despite the fact that all major platforms heavily self-regulate, relying on AI and human moderators to take down hundreds of millions of posts containing everything from hate speech to child pornography to harmful misinformation. 

Africa is a particularly contested problem region. Social media regulation as applied by corrupt govenrments has been seen to lead to a legitimization of disinformation and censorship of public discourse. Prominent examples other than Nigeria include Uganda, Ethiopia, Chad, Kenya and Malawi. All these countries have vaguely worded social media policies which allow for governments to crack down and censor public dissent under the guise of limiting “disinformation.” In Chad, for example, the regulation of hate speech is oft used as an excuse to halt internet access. African governments exploit the unestablsihed boundaries of social media regulation to their benefit, largely without accountability. 

The issue of government regulation of the digital sphere is an ever-evolving challenge yet to be solved. It raises a plethora of concerns about the future of social media. Will countries elect to tighten restrictions on what can be shared and viewed, or conversely, demand there be no restrictions at all? Should governments be able to manipulate the language of regulation to their interests? Perhaps the most prominent question to ask is if regulation is even viable anymore.  

In Nigeria, the day after the ban, the country’s second most searched term was “VPN app,” with a more than 100% spike in searches. VPN trended among Nigerian social media users hours after the announcement. Nigerians rushed to download these VPNs, or virtual private networks, which would allow them to evade regulation and restriction by falsely changing their device’s location to another country.  Furthermore, there remained countless other apps at Nigerians’ fingertips to use in a highly similar format to Twitter.

Buhari’s ban of Twitter was ultimately a fruitless effort to limit the power and scope of social media. Loopholes in the system, such as VPNs, and a plethora of alternate options, like Facebook or Instagram, made such a ban ineffective. Furthermore, the policy cost the country $709 million dollars in just 118 days, primarily due to the failure of businesses that rely on the platform.

As such, Nigeria reversed course and lifted the Twitter ban only four months after its instatement. Statements made by Buhari’s spokespeople demand the app presently be used only for “business and positive engagements” in order to “respect Nigeria’s sovereignty, cultural values, and promote online safety.” For countries across Africa and the world, the conclusive failure of the ban is both a warning and a lesson. 

Social media has grown to previously unimaginable heights. Its influence shapes the world’s political, cultural and societal discourse. Social media is no longer an accessory, but a necessity for the average citizen in a modern society. The most pressing issue that remains is not how to regulate social media, but how to reckon with its control over our globalized world. 

SAN FRANCISCO — Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to demonstrate a real fear of rising opposition forces, fueled by Western social media platforms. On March 10, the Russian government announced it would be slowing down speeds on Twitter as part of a larger effort to crackdown on opposition within the country and impose sweeping national censorship. Russian authorities have increasingly attempted to intimidate social media platforms with warnings, fines and threats of blockage as they begin to mimic the oppressive internet initiatives under the Chinese government. 

The censoring of Twitter comes as a result of the Russian government arguing that social media platforms have played a major role in encouraging dissent nationwide. Alexei Navalny, the de facto head of the opposition movement in Russia, has used platforms like YouTube and Twitter to promote his anti-corruption agenda. Using the internet and other digital means has enabled Navalny to produce viral videos, including his documentary on Putin’s alleged palace, which has reached over a hundred million views on Youtube. 

Since Navalny’s most recent detainment and subsequent imprisonment in February, Russian citizens have been outraged, flooding into the streets to fight for Navalny and against the greater government corruption in the country. Navalny’s two-year sentence in Russia’s colony number two is at a correctional colony in Pokrov. Although Russia describes the facility as their average prison, in reality, Pokrov is considered the maximum level of imprisonment and an institution known for isolating its prisoners and destroying them psychologically. Navalny is one of several Russian political activists that have been imprisoned at this corrective colony. 

Due to Navalny’s success on platforms like YouTube, the Russian government has enacted greater measures to silence western social media platforms. Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal executive body in charge of supervising media and mass communications, began the slowdown of Twitter in order to tighten the control of social media platforms following Navalny’s internet success. In February, Putin advocated for officials to monitor said platforms more closely, arguing they encourage children to participate in unsanctioned and illegal opposition protests. 

However, these attempts at censorship date back to 2012, when a law was implemented allowing the government to block or blacklist online content it deemed inappropriate. Since then, the Russian government has only increased its level of censorship. 

In 2014, the Russian State Duma passed a law requiring the personal data of Russian users to be stored on Russian servers. The government has continuously fined apps like Facebook and Twitter for their lack of action but have failed to ban either platform, possibly to avoid further public resentment. The Russian government successfully blocked LinkedIn in 2016, both because of its unpopularity in Russia and the company’s failure to adhere to Russian user data guidelines. 

During the Crimean crisis, Russian authorities banned Alexei Navalny’s blog and Kasparov.ru, owned by Garry Kasparov, a chess grandmaster and World Chess Champion, known for its condemnation of Vladimir Putin. Roskomnadzor often blocks specific Facebook or Wikipedia pages and blogs, like a 2014 Facebook page protesting the prosecution of Alexei Navalny for inciting violence or “unsanctioned mass protest”. 

In April 2018, Roskomnadzor banned Telegram for its refusal to grant the Federal Security Service access to encryption keys, but lifted the ban in 2020 due to its ineffectiveness and particularly Telegram’s ability to work around the limitation. 

In December 2020, the Russian government implemented a new bill for anyone defaming the government online and sentencing them to jail for up to two years. Another bill signed into law that same day bans online discussions of law enforcement officials and judges’ personal information or property ownership. In doing so, the government is able to silence any allegations of corruption on part of officials. 

The Russian government passed a new law in January 2021, that fines companies annual revenue by 10% if they fail to block illegal activity. One example of “illegal activity” is rallying the youth to participate in unsanctioned protests. In January, the government threatened and then proceeded to fine social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Vkontakte, a Russianowned social media platform, for allegedly promoting protests to minors. On January 28, Putin announced that he has given the government until the first of August to create more thorough rules for foreign tech companies choosing to work in Russia. Additionally, he is requiring those same companies to open offices in the country. 

Even though Russian officials have been mostly ineffective in definitively censoring popular social media platforms like Reddit, YouTube and others, their authority over television gives them lasting control. Television, Russia’s most popular medium for entertainment and information, is government-controlled. Nearly 74% of the Russian population watches national television channels. Of the three main nationwide news broadcasters in Russia, Channel One and Russia TV are government owned, while the third, NTV is owned by the state-controlled natural gas-giant Gazprom. The majority of the population that indulges in Russian news is thus fed government-propagated information rather than unbiased news. Due to television being predominantly in the hands of the government, social media has become an even greater outlet for younger generations to engage in critical debate. 

For years, Roskomnadzor and the Russian government have been building an infrastructure to minimize the freedom of speech online. Many have argued that this push for censorship is akin to China’s government monitored internet. However, the main difference is that China’s censorship was embedded from the beginning of the internet’s expansion. As a result, the distinction between China’s government propaganda and its internet are blurred. The Chinese government strategically blocked potentially unsettling information regarding COVID-19 and any negative coverage on China’s handling of the virus. But, their censorship goes deeper than just blocking unwelcome information and rather uses specialized technology to create false, alternative narratives to controversial issues. In Russia, digital entrepreneurship was encouraged until the anti-government protests in 2011 and 2012, making it significantly more difficult for Russian officials to censor the free-internet in the same way as China. Although both regimes are similar in their oppressive tactics, Russia’s late entrance into the sphere of censored internet puts them at a significant disadvantage as social media companies have built an infrastructure to fight against government bans. 

But, Russian officials have been hinting at a “sovereign RuNet”, a platform designed to tie Russian citizens to the internet regardless of if they were to disconnect from the World Wide Web. The purpose, the government argues, is to block Western observers and intruders from cutting Russia’s communication link; yet, many activists believe this Russian controlled internet would allow for more censored content that is directly cut off from the external world.

Rather than directly force its citizens to join, officials are attempting to coax Russian social media users to switch platforms from Western apps to Russian social networks like VKontakte. Vkontakte, along with the Chinese-owned platform TikTok, have previously agreed to ban certain content that may encourage protesting in Russia. Vkontakte is known to be linked to the Russian government. 

In order to further their government-controlled internet bubble, Gazprom Media has committed to creating a video platform called RuTube in order to potentially replace Youtube. On top of that, the corporation also bought rights to “Ya Molodets”, an app that strives to resemble or, even better, replace TikTok.

The purpose of Russia’s government-run array of social media platforms isn’t only to better censor Western media content, but also to destroy the potential of viral videos that the Kremlin believes could promote dissent. That way, the government is better prepared for another Navalny figure who has the potential of encouraging younger audiences to revolt. Although they can’t directly replicate China’s successful government-censored social media platforms, they can and are trying to smear and suppress the platforms that go against their regime. 

Overall, this begs the question of whether or not Russia’s strategy for censorship will be effective in the long-term. Even though China has successfully incorporated their oppressive political tactics into their citizens’ everyday lives and thus acts as an example, Russia is unable to double-down in the same way due to their lack of control over free speech on the internet.  Jailing or eliminating opposition leaders and troublemakers as a means of censorship is nothing new. 

Yet, Putin is beginning to demonstrate a real fear that opposition is spurred on by the free internet. Russia’s inability to tackle Silicon Valley’s influence in its country could create a serious obstacle for their regime in the near future. However, Putin has curtailed similar mass protests before, like the 2011 protests, showing that Navalny might not be as real of a threat as the western media paints him to be. Navalny’s prior commitments to nationalist groups, his history of making xenophobic and controversial videos, along with his constantly fluctuating views on economic and social issues have caused Russian citizens and Western observers alike to be skeptical of a Navalny Russia. But, even if Navalny’s success as the de facto leader of the opposition is unsuccessful in dismantling Putin’s regime, the Kremlin’s lack of control over the free internet could pose significant problems for their future political success.

Psychological operations (PSYOPs) are the planned use of propaganda and other forms of disinformation to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of certain groups. These operations are dedicated military actions that were first created during World War I to destroy the morale of German soldiers. In our current age of information and big data, PSYOPs are mostly being used by private and public actors to influence the way people vote. 

Data is one of the most valuable resources in today’s world. Both public and private actors are racing to amass data on consumers and citizens, using it to enhance their economic profit, power and influence. Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, is the most prominent example of a company that was able to access the personal data of global citizens, using it to construct PSYOPs and influence elections all over the world.  

Cambridge Analytica described its mission as “us[ing]advanced scientific research and social analysis techniques, adapted for civilian use from military applications, to better understand behavior within electorates.” They combined the military application of PSYOPs with user information to influence the way people vote via social media platforms. The firm’s aim was to bring a potentially powerful new weapon to the market that allows wealthy investors to reshape politics in their vision. Their successful campaigns range from assisting in several Kenyan elections to helping President DonaldTrump in his bid for the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.

The company played a dominant role in Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s election campaigns in 2013 and 2017. Cambridge Analytica conducted a vast political research effort with 50,000 respondents and used the data they collected to craft the campaigns. They worked with a local research partner “to ensure that variations in language and customs were respected,” and then used social media to target the youth population. Cambridge Analytica used their data to conduct misinformation and disinformation campaigns in order to sway the youth vote in favor of Kenyatta. Kenya’s presidential election in August 2017 pitted President Uhuru Kenyatta against Raila Odinga. This election was overruled by the Supreme Court in September due to procedural irregularities. The election was held again in October, where Kenyatta won with 98 percent of the vote. 

However, the 2017 election saw two key incidences of misinformation. The first was a video entitled “The Real Raila,” which depicted a world in 2020 with an imagined Odinga presidency. This video was viewed more than 141,000 times. The second incident was the misinformation about the violence that surrounded the electoral process. People would take videos and photos from the past and post them as current, on-going events.  Rebekka Rumpel, a research assistant for the Africa program at think tank Chatham House, said, “there were certainly a number of sites and campaign ads that were flagged by Kenyans and international organizations as using scaremongering tactics to win votes ahead of the August 2017 elections.” 

Cambridge Analytica is most famously known for being hired by Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign. The firm harvested private information from Facebook profiles of as many as 87 million users without their permission and used this information to create targeted advertisements to sway voters away from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Facebook’s trust in software developers allowed Cambridge Analytica to access the data and create psychographics for numerous voters. 

Facebook offers a number of technology tools for software developers, with one of the most popular being the Facebook Login extension, which lets people log in to a website or app using their Facebook account instead of creating new credentials. Back in 2014, Facebook’s terms and services allowed developers to collect some information on the friend networks of people who used Facebook Login. That meant that while a single user may have agreed to hand over their data, developers could also access some data about their friends. Cambridge Analytica accessed this data via a third party and collected details on “roughly 30 million [people]containing enough information, including places of residence, that the company could match users to other records and build psychographic profiles.”

Christopher Wylie, a co-founder of Cambridge Analytica, stated that its leaders wanted “to fight a culture war in America…Cambridge Analytica was supposed to be the arsenal of weapons to fight that culture war.” With this as their mission, Cambridge Analytica did exactly that with the U.S. 2016 presidential campaign. Traditional analytics firms used voting records and consumer purchase histories to try to predict political beliefs and voting behavior. However, Cambridge Analytica instead used private data bought from Facebook, identifying users’ inherent psychological traits, and using them to design powerful political messages aimed at swaying voters. As in Kenya, the U.S. 2016 elections saw the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation on voters’ social media platforms. 

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Cambridge Analytica is no longer in business due to its part in the data breach scandal with Facebook. However, there are still many companies like Cambridge Analytica that exist and work in similar ways–Clarity Campaigns, bluelabs, and Civis Analytics are just a few to name.  Social media platforms, like Facebook, are being pressured by politicians to strengthen their data privacy terms in light of public protest. The data used in the Cambridge Analytica scandal was collected without the consent or knowledge of the people whose information was being used psychologically against them. In July 2019, the Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook around $5 billion to settle their investigation into the data breach. Additionally, there were various regional governments in the United States with lawsuits in their court systems from citizens affected by the data breach. It will be impossible to ever say definitively whether data manipulation tipped the results of the American presidential election. Yet, it is evident that “the Internet has created a political ecosystem in which the extreme, the incendiary, and the polarising tend to prevail over the considered, the rational, and the consensus-seeking.”  

This data breach calls into question whether governments around the world can control these social media giants and how they obtain and use their users’ information. The Cambridge-Analytica and Facebook data scandal has made people all over the world more aware of the fact that their information can be used and acquired by a variety of public and private actors without their explicit consent. The fallout of this scandal has prompted politicians to recognize the way these monopolistic companies mine and exploit our data to make their vast profits, with governments around the world strengthening their regulatory framework of the digital economic sector.

Another question that has been brought into play, is whether governments can control the AI-powered information bubbles that are used by tech giants Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft. In 2009, Google announced that it would use fifty-seven signals to customize search results. These customized search results are from the collection of data about the users’ activity to tailor information to each person according to their interests, desires and preferences. 

Initially, these information bubbles were meant to help users find information that conforms to their preferences. However, these bubbles also allow personalization algorithms to provide people with the information that will most likely align with their beliefs. As a result, people are segregating themselves into information bubbles, where their own beliefs are reinforced and they are not exposed to opposite views. Eli Pariser, the man who coined the term ‘filter bubble’, has stated:  “Left to their own devices, personalization filters serve up a kind of invisible auto propaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas, amplifying our desire for things that are familiar and leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark territory of the unknown.” Personalized algorithms allow people to believe that the information they consume represents the undisputed truth, when in fact it may be far from reality. 

This can be seen in the 2016 U.S. election, where people continuously saw polls showing Clinton in the lead, which influenced  some people to believe that they did not have to go out and vote. Additionally, those on the fence between Clinton and Trump were targeted with ads made by Cambridge Analytica. The firm had created personalized propaganda that was pro-Trump, which pushed viewers towards voting for Trump. After  viewing one Trump-related ad, user’s personalized algorithms continuously provided that user with pro-Trump information, real or fake. 

Yet, the challenge of regulation is difficult in an ecosystem with so many actors, many of which utilize covert tactics. Cambridge Analytica stated that they used propaganda anonymously and “just put information into the bloodstream of the internet and then watch[ed]it grow, g[a]ve it a little push every now and again.” Everyday people would be exposed to this information and it would “infiltrate the online community and expand but with no branding – so it’s unattributable, untrackable.”  

So, what can politicians do about this? Politicians will have to choose between establishing advanced regulatory frameworks to better monitor and control the online sphere or they can continue to give in to these data giants, allowing them to continue amassing information on global citizens and disrupt democratic processes. Politicians could force social media platforms to create stricter privacy terms, adopt fact-checking tools, comply with independent regulatory oversight, declare the origins of political advertisements, and ensure their algorithms and AI tools are conducive to a pluralistic media ecosystem. 

Some social media sites, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, currently have adopted the fact-checking tool. Facebook has used third-party fact checkers to reduce the volume of false information since 2016. On October 14, 2020, Facebook also announced they used other methods to reduce the distribution of potential disinformation but did not go into detail about what those methods are. On the same day, Twitter users reported they could not share certain links and would get an alert saying, “Your Tweet could not be sent because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Angie Holan, the editor-in-chief of PolitiFact, questioned Twitter by saying “Who are these partners they (Twitter) speak of? Has Twitter partnered with fact-checkers without telling anyone? It would be news to me.” These fact checking tools are still being questioned by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and are still relatively new to know if they are effective in reducing the amount of false information online. More time and research are needed to conclude whether or not fact checking tools are useful in combating this age of misinformation.   

Europe has also passed rules and laws in regard to monitoring social media. The European Union has introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which set rules on how companies, including social media platforms, store and use people’s data. Additionally, Australia passed the Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material Act in 2019. This introduced criminal penalties for social media companies, possible jail sentences for tech executives for up to three years and financial penalties worth up to 10% of a company’s global turnover. 

It is increasingly evident that “politicians cannot control the digital giant with rules from the past” and that legislative change is necessary to effectively regulate today’s big tech companies and the expansive use of big data.  

Who makes up the internet?

India’s internet penetration rate stands at ~50% ‒ one of the poorest statistics in the world. Access has long been consolidated in urban, richer locations, though it is increasing in rural India due to affordable data plans and smartphones (even then, there are concerns about whether usage is being calculated appropriately). According to a 2020 UNICEF report, only 24% of Indian households have internet connections with which they can access remote learning.

Significant rural-urban and gender divides in internet access are obvious, but there is little data on the role of caste. Generally speaking, the Indian caste system consists of four castes. In order of precedence, these are the Brahmins (priests and teachers), the Kshatriyas (rulers and soldiers), the Vaisyas (merchants and traders), and the Shudras (laborers and artisans) These make up the upper castes of the Indian caste system. A fifth category falls outside the varna system and consists of those known as “untouchables” or Dalits. One 2019 study by the CSDS found that 29% of the people in India’s Dalit communities have used social media (compared to 46% in caste-privileged communities). High usage was seen only in 8% of Dalit communities, and 9% of OBC communities. Smartphone ownership too was found to be much lower. 

“Social media usage data suggests that the social media space has always been upper-caste dominated and continues to be so.”

The internet, of course, exists beyond social media. For many, a lack of access to the internet, rooted in their social and economic marginalization, hinders their ability to work, receive an education, and survive in an increasingly digitized world. India’s BharatNet program aims to connect 250,000 gram panchayats (village level grassroots organizations that make up the local self-governance system in India) via optical fiber by 2023, but the implementation of this program has been slow. Aditi Agrawal from MediaNama writes, “1,07,260 gram panchayats are still not connected and if work continues at the pace it did in January-August 2020, the project would take 6 years and 8 months to complete.”

How can narratives about the democratizing power of the internet be considered true when massive caste-related access gaps still exist? These statistics ‒ and the ones we don’t see ‒ reiterate the fact that social dynamics don’t cease to exist on the internet. In fact, the internet becomes an extension of our physical lives right from the moment of access. 

Even where there there is access, there is inequality

This July, Dilip Mandal, an expert on media and sociology, wrote about how India’s subaltern ‒ Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, and other backward classes ‒ have not been able to challenge oppressive powers as effectively as once thought possible. This is attributed to the replication of social hierarchies ‒ the domination of privileged castes ‒ in the digital space. The internet is widely considered to be a public sphere, a realm of politics where strangers come together to engage in the free exchange of ideas. However, Mandal rightly asserts that India’s public sphere itself is hegemonic and distorted thus resulting in a similarly distorted online realm.

Here are the key highlights from a 2019 Oxfam and Newslaundry report on the representation of people from different caste groups in Indian media:

• Of the 121 newsroom leadership positions, 106 are occupied by journalists from the upper castes and none by those belonging to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. 
• Three out of every four anchors of flagship debates are upper caste. Not one is Dalit, Adivasi, or OBC. 
• For over 70% of their flagship debate shows, news channels draw the majority of the panelists from the upper castes. 
• No more than 5% of all articles in English newspapers are written by Dalits and Adivasis. Hindi newspapers fare slightly better at around 10%. 
• Over half of those writing on issues related to caste in Hindi and English newspapers are upper caste. 
• Around 72% of bylined articles on news websites are written by people from the upper castes. 
• Only 10 of the 972 articles featured on the cover pages of the 12 magazines under study are about issues related to caste.

The threat of the Internet

The internet has brought with it a new set of potential issues, including the looming threat of state surveillance, privacy concerns, and the seemingly inevitable rise of technology-enabled state power. These are novel concerns for many and their rise terrifies me, but that is partly because my privilege has shielded me from an experience of life where surveillance is the norm. This is one of the many functions of caste. These concerns are only heightened under the current hyper-nationalist government.

Surveillance is a part of the process through which the dominant castes uphold their power over the oppressed castes. Privacy is the privilege of the oppressors, as has been reiterated by many Dalit-Bahujan writers and activists.

Examples of tech’s rising role in enforcing the caste system are plenty: GPS-enabled trackers tagged on Swachh Bharat (translation: Clean India) sanitation workers, the leakage of Aadhaar numbers of scheduled caste students by the Andhra Pradesh government website and the broader concern of caste-based geolocation, the surveillance and resulting criminalization of Dalits’ rights defenders, the internet shutdown in Saharanpur after a fatal caste atrocity, COVID-related personal data leaks that reveal people’s names and caste locations and hence carry the potential for abuse, the many instances of the exploitation of personal wants, needs and identity by big tech and many more instances.

This violence and violation, alongside political harassment, hyper-nationalism and the disproportionate representation of dominant castes on the internet, are a grave cause of concern, and conversations surrounding it deserve more space in the mainstream.

Mulling on social media

Recently, as #DalitLivesMatter trended online in light of caste-based violence in Hathras and systemic oppression, I wondered whether my opinion — as a woman from a dominant caste — urgently required space on social media. My conclusion was that it didn’t. 

Caste-privileged proclamations of allyship overwhelm conversations, leverage virality, and are celebrated — despite, or perhaps due to, their mediocrity. All of what is said has already been said before by people from Dalit and Bahujan communities, and I feel acutely aware of having taken up space similarly, now and in the past. 

Our proclamations are transient and fleeting, yet we are convinced that our opinions are entitled to space. This is a function of both what Dilip Mandal called replicated social hierarchies as well as the neoliberal rooting of Instagram and the social currency it demands.

Anti-caste activism and identity

Professor Mandal said that his once-held assumption that social media will allow India’s voiceless underclass to express themselves has been proven both right and wrong. The wrong is illustrated above ‒ but the right holds immense power.

Tejas Harad, journalist and founder of The Satyashodhak, writes about the sense of community that Twitter has given Dalit youngsters, and how “social media was, finally, a platform where lower-caste individuals could come together to overcome geographic and cultural boundaries”.

Even six years ago, Sunil Gangavane, working on PUKAR’s research on caste identities on social media, spoke of how students in urban cities are more likely to seek out caste-related communities online than to talk about caste in physical spaces. 

There is the power of archiving and sharing, through platforms and blogs like RTI, Velivada, and Dalit Camera. There is art, music, community, and discourse, and the best memes on the internet. The internet has aided this process of creativity, self-empowerment, solidarity and emancipation.

While the internet is not inherently democratic, and privacy concerns are rising, it’s up to all of us ‒ technologists, researchers, allies, students, and people who love️ the internet ‒ to work collaboratively to create a healthier cyberspace that prioritizes the safety of vulnerable communities. This, especially in the Indian context, requires a critical anti-caste lens on all of the things that make up our digital realities. 

It is imperative to think about ‒ and act on ‒ how systems of oppression enter and influence this space we call home. We must remember that the internet is what we make of it ‒ it has the potential to reproduce caste dynamics, exacerbate them, or challenge them.

Understanding the mission of this protest movement requires a thorough analysis of the power dynamics within the government and the impact of recent events, like the COVID-19 pandemic, on the country’s economy and society. 

In theory, Thailand is a constitutional monarchy — with both a king and a parliament overseen by a prime minister. However, in the past few years, the king’s authority has extended beyond constitutional norms. The monarchy has directly intervened to sanction overthrows of civilian governments and has used their allies to influence politics behind the scenes. 

The military junta that controls the parliament reinforces the influence of the current king, King Maha Vajiralongkorn. In 2017, the government, headed by former Thai army general and current prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, enacted a new Constitution that allows the military junta to appoint senate officials. In addition to these changes, the King is currently working to amend the new Constitution to facilitate his reign from abroad in Germany, where he spends most of his time.

The military has also used its authority over the judiciary to quash political opponents. In 2019,  when a pro-democracy party backed by young voters called the Future Forward Party (FFP) earned a large presence in parliament, a military-controlled court ruled that the FFP received an illegal loan and forced them to disband. 

The Thai youth’s vocal pro-democracy stance has broken with a long-standing taboo against criticizing the Thai monarchy and government. The Thai military has a history of staging coups and violently suppressing protest movements to protect the elites. Generation Z, too young to remember the military coups and civilian massacres of past decades, brings a breath of fresh air into Thai civil society. After the FFP’s disbandment in 2019, they began to speak out against the regime fearlessly, a precursor to the mass protest movements they would soon lead. It’s also important to note that these protests were originally largely organized by young student groups. And in early August, two major student groups raised demands for reform. These demands came just a few months after protests and demonstrations erupted in various high schools, colleges and universities throughout the country; and along with students speaking out against the government, young organizers used social media and trending hashtags to spark a national conversation.

Ultimately, the political, economic, and social developments of 2020 have marked a change in Thailand. This past year, the Thai government has continued to expand its infamously harsh lèse-majesté laws that criminalize criticizing the king and other senior royals. The police have arrested over 90 people under these laws since 2014 with sentences as long as 15 years. Although they have been in place for years, the laws have recently elicited increased opposition amid growing anger with the regime. 

This rise in political dissent, and by young Thai citizens in particular, has been met with brutal suppression by the government, even beyond its borders. This past June, armed men in Phnom Penh, Cambodia abducted Wanchalearm Satsaksit, a young Thai human rights and LGBT activist, who is now presumed dead. Thai security forces are believed to be responsible due to Satsaksit’s pro-democracy activism. His disappearance is part of a worsening pattern of silencing anyone who speaks out against the government, even beyond the kingdom’s borders.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also significantly impacting Thai socio-political and economic culture. Although Thailand was able to contain the pandemic effectively, there has been public outcry over the government imposing strict social distancing measures for citizens, while allowing elites and military personnel to disregard quarantine regulations. During the pandemic’s peak in March, the government allowed the king to travel back and forth from Thailand to Germany, while pursuing an aggressive strategy of contact tracing and quarantining in government facilities for the general public. The Thai people viewed this as the government, once again, privileging elites, even amid a crisis that is often seen to impact the less privileged in society.

Even before the pandemic, however, Thailand was experiencing slow growth and critical economic troubles due to its political infrastructure. Wealth and power are linked to one’s proximity to the elites and the military. This elitism, combined with little to no redistributive measures, makes Thailand one of the world’s leaders in income inequality. Once the pandemic hit, Thailand’s tourism and trade-dependent economy was battered. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Thai economy shrank by 12.2 percent in the second quarter of this year, its worst downturn since the Asian financial crisis. This recession, combined with persistent inequality, only heightened the country’s issues and the public’s discontent with those in power — and this glaring inequality and lack of opportunity further exacerbated youth unrest.

While in lockdown, the Thai people, primarily university students, turned to social media to express their anger with these recent developments. They found a “safe space” on Twitter to break the political taboo and openly criticize the government. Although they had long felt disillusioned by those in power, the expansion of the lèse-majeste laws and the government’s handling of the pandemic this year pushed them over the edge. 

When the lockdown lifted, the students took their #WhyDoWeNeedAKing and #GenerationOfChange hashtags and their Hunger Games memes to the streets. The group of students known collectively as “Free Youth” partnered with feminist and LGBT activists to form a near-daily, mass protest movement in Bangkok and other major cities. 

The Thai government has not shown any willingness to listen to the protestors’ requests. The police arrested numerous demonstrators, but the king has held off on prosecuting them for now. In a Reuters article from late August, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha warned that if these protests and criticism of the country’s leadership continue, “everybody will be on fiery land, engulfed in flames,” and that “the nation will collapse.” 

The monarchy still has broad support in the country, and the Thai youth’s “confrontation” style has been deemed extreme by older generations. Viengrat Nethipo, assistant professor of political science at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, said that “[the students]are too brave… they feel able to shout in front of the puuyai [grown-ups], the respected people, the people who have power.” 

While it remains unlikely that their demands will be met, the protests still mark a monumental change in Thailand’s political culture. In a country that has long been quiet on governance matters, the protestors have effectively shifted the boundaries of political discourse. The youth’s power is not just in their numbers, but also in their resilience – free of the burdens and taboos of Thailand’s past. The protests have no end in sight; the self-proclaimed “Generation of Change” will continue to push for a freer Thailand, for a better present and an even stronger future.