Gajjala, Radhika

Considering the ideological bases of our methodological choices in accessing, collecting, and interpreting discourses of marginalization.

Abstract

While much theoretical and practical work has been done to encourage the study and designing of online networks, there has been insufficient thought or engagement with concerns related to the unequal power relations that mediate online collaborations. My approach to cyberethnography takes into account the embeddedness of cyberspace in real life socio cultural, economic structures of power. Further, much of the rhetoric that surrounds the phenomenon of digital existence and virtual technologies is blindly celebratory (see for example, Benedikt 1991 and Tapscott, 1996) and conflates mere connectivity with power. The impression generated by such rhetoric is that those who are not connected are inferior and illiterate. These largely unchallenged discourses of the metaphysics of cyberspace are rooted in developmentalist narratives of Linear Progress, and Objective Science. Within such a framework, how can we study and design online spaces that are dialogic? My discussion in this roundtable takes this question as a point of departure. I will discuss the conditions under which men and women have access to digital technologies and how (if indeed they are) digital technologies contextually empower (or not) both men and women of lesser material and socio cultural privilege.