In his study of digital activism within the Arab Spring movement, Ramesh Srinivasan has examined the way that new media technologies influence – and are influenced – by social, cultural, economic, and political dynamics. His other projects include studies on how technologies can support economic and political mobilization in rural India, the indigenous peoples of Bolivia, and Native Americans in the United States.
Realizing that many other scholars across the University of California system share the same interest in the role that digital technology plays in a global context, Srinivasan, an associate professor at UCLA’s Department of Information Studies, established the UCLA Center for Global Digital Cultures this spring, bringing a myriad of experts and interests from across the UC system together to work on this field for the first time.
“There are a number of fantastic people across the UC system who are doing work that explores technologies from a cultural perspective, meaning they are interested in thinking about how these tools can serve people from different cultures,” says Srinivasan. “This question connects with issues around politics, design, cultural heritage, economic development, democracy and government, and the environment. Bringing together a number of eminent scholars and graduate students who do this type of work was really the charge of my idea to start the center. There was no space for these individuals to come together to think about our world today; where six billion people own mobile phones, what that means, and how that can be understood relative to people’s values, aspirations, and priorities.”
Srinivasan emphasizes that the mission of the UCLA Center for Global Digital Cultures is to not just create another think tank of scholars, but to collaborate with community-based groups to present the Center’s research – and to gain a better understanding of the role that digital technology plays in these communities. Plans are being made to collaborate with Native American communities around conversations focused on the environment and climate change, and for an event in collaboration with at least three high schools in South Los Angeles.
“There are two major distinctions between the Center and many others that exist,” Srinivasan says. “One is that we are interested in culture first [before] digital technology. The Center will explore every theme of the human experience today, including labor, politics, citizenship, and identity. Secondly, we intend to put together events that are in collaboration with the types of communities that we as scholars work with, and we claim to serve. We are bringing people together to do work that is meaningful and outward.”
In his own research, Srinivasan examines “[digital] tools in the hands of people… who are at the margins of political and economic power.” He says that the mission of UCLA’s Center for Global Digital Cultures is to create a better understanding between scholars and on-the-ground use of digital media within these populations.
“Our goal is to look at technology and media practices that already exist in these communities to see how we can learn from them and support them in various ways,” he says. “The model we’re attempting is less talking and lecturing, but collaborative workshopping, where in many cases, we will learn more from the communities with which we partner than vice versa. Our idea is to learn from them, rather than teach them, and to understand the challenges and opportunities around digital learning and inequality, to positively influence the various types of barriers that these communities and students have historically faced.
“It’s exciting that the UCLA Center for Digital Global Cultures exists,” says Srinivasan. “There is a need for us to understand the distribution of technology that is respectful of the cultural, political, and social realities that people are facing around the world. At the end of the day, these devices are not transcendent or magical. They are tools and tools are always dependent upon what people do with them.”
Srinivasan says that the possibility of collaborating with the UCLA History Department to study the legacy of digital technology in the Arab Spring movement is in the talking stages. He is also at work on a book that examines power, voice, and identity in the era where digital media technologies are omnipresent, with the working title, “Whose Global Village?” The book is slated for release on NYU Press next year.
Before arriving at UCLA in 2005, Srinivasan was a lecturer in lecturer at UC San Diego in the College of Art, Culture & Technology. He was a visiting professor at the Freeman-Spoegli Institute at Stanford, and the Departments of Anthropology and Digital Arts/New Media at UC Santa Cruz.
Professor Srinivasan earned his Ph.D. in design studies at Harvard; his master’s degree in media arts and science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at Stanford. He has served fellowships in MIT’s Media Laboratory in Cambridge and the MIT Media Lab Asia. He has also been a teaching fellow at the Graduate School of Design and Department of Visual and Environmental Design at Harvard.
Srinivasan is a regular speaker for TEDx Talks, and makes regular media appearances on NPR, Al Jazeera, “The Young Turks,” and Public Radio International. His writings have been widely published by Al Jazeera English, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post.
Photo by Andres Cuervo