Understanding Web 2.0 in India

Singapore.
The next speaker in this ICA 2010 session is Debashis Aikat, whose interest is in how popular communication is transformed in the digital age, with a specific view towards India. India and a number of other countries, like China, continue to be areas of significant growth in Internet access, while there is saturation uptake in the US and a number of European countries already.

Aligned with this is the explosion in Web 2.0 sites and platforms, some of which last only a very short time, while others develop into major market leaders. In light of this, how are emerging technologies reshaping concepts and theories of communication and technology? How does this communication revolution play out? How does it affect us? Debashis runs through a number of ways to conceptualise this - categorising the range of Web 2.0 activities, and outlining the changing value chains from mass media to mass social media.

In India, for example, there are some 65,000 newspapers and periodicals in some 120 languages; there are 300 national and regional TV channels; news and entertainment programmes in over 20 languages; 500 mobile phone subscribers; and a rising number of Internet users; Bollywood has become a global industry player - and still, these media industries don't even reach a large number of Indians yet. There continue to be significant differences between different strata in Indian society, and the mobile phone more than the computer is the key media tool today. Google has begun sending mobile access vans to remote communities.

There are various approaches to understanding online communities, too, and a number of models which explain community dynamics and participant roles in different community types. Specific relationships between culture, standards, leadership, and ownership combine to govern communities.

And that's it for this pre-conference - I won't blog the final session as they're commandeering my laptop to present from...

Technorati : ICA 2010, India, Web 2.0, community, produsage, social media
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