23 November 2023
Sahana Udupa received the European Research Council Consolidator Grant (2023) for a five year multi-country study on small social media platforms and contentious speech. A team of postdoctoral researchers and Udupa will explore small platform discourses and their implications in an anthropologically rooted comparative framework. The project will also provide policy recommendations for small platform governance. News coverage: European Research Council | Forschung & Lehre Magazine | LMU Munich
29 October 2022
At the UNESCO organized Design Challenge, 136 participants from 36 countries pitched their ideas to address gender discrimination and violence in the digital space using methodologies from digital anthropology. Sahana Udupa served on the jury with Gabriela Ramos, Richard Rogers, Anders Munk and Patrik Wikstorm to select the winning projects.
09 December 2021
The Belgium based Francqui Foundation has awarded Sahana Udupa the 2022 Francqui Chair in recognition of her contributions to critical digital research. The chair is linked to a series of lectures on the subject of “Online Extreme Speech” that Udupa will deliver in spring 2022 at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU). More about the award here.
09 December 2021
Two open positions (one doctoral and one postdoctoral) are available (starting from 1 March 2022) in a new multiyear project on online misogyny. The project is funded by a new grant Sahana Udupa has received together with Juergen Pfeffer and Janina Steinert from the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation.
26 July 2021
Team AI4Dignity is organizing a two-day collaborative coding event with fact checkers, AI developers and academic researchers to improve machine learning models to flag and label online extreme speech. The event will also feature public plenary and panels on, “AI, Extreme Speech and Disinformation: Global Challenges and the Way Ahead”.
20 July 2021
Sahana Udupa has been selected as a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. During her fellowship in Fall 2021, she will write a research paper on artificial intelligence, extreme speech and the autonomy of fact checkers. The paper will critically evaluate the global practice of fact checking by inquiring into the interrelated axes of digital labour, political control and technology deploymet.
23 November 2020
Project AI4Dignity has organized the first international meeting with fact checkers at LMU Munich to assess the needs and challenges facing online extreme speech moderation.
16 June 2020
New York based Henry Luce Foundation has awarded the ONLINERPOL project team with a new grant under the program, “Religion in International Affairs”, to build a multimedia installation project on digital dignity.
European Research Council has awarded project PI Sahana Udupa Proof of Concept award for the proposed AI4Dignity project. With a team of international collaborators and software architects, Udupa will develop AI4Dignity as a collaborative Artificial Intelligence model to tackle online extreme speech. For more on the award, see here (in German)
The Academic Network on Peace, Security and the United Nations, program of the Social Science Research Council, commissioned project PI Sahana Udupa to prepare a comprehensive review of current scholarly debates on hate speech, information disorder and conflict. The review, co-authored with Iginio Gagliardone, Alexandra Deem and Laura Csuka, is published here.
A special public policy series on tackling online extreme speech edited by Sahana Udupa, Elonnai Hickok and Edward Anderson is now live on Scroll.in. Articles scan the digital sphere in India…
The Centre for Internet & Society and Project ONLINERPOL are jointly organizing an International symposium on internet speech and regulation at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi.
International Workshop “Global Perspectives on Extreme Speech Online”
Papers are invited for a two-day funded workshop on online extreme speech (10-11 December 2018) organized by ONLINERPOL at the House of Artists in Munich
This panel recognizes the digital turn as a paradigm shift in the anthropological study of media, and aims to push further the ethnographic knowledge into the role that digital media play in people’s everyday life and broader sociopolitical transformations.
Sahana Udupa will be presenting her work on digital media and politics in India at the annual ICA conference to be held in Prague this year.
This month we speak to Craig Calhoun about the public sphere and Sunil Abraham about digital privacy.
This month we speak with Carole McGranahan about lies and Atul Khatri about comedy.
03 April 2018
This blog post is the second in a series of blog posts from the project “Law, religious violence and Internet and social media regulation in India” funded by ONLINERPOL.
The phenomenal expansion of Internet media in India in the last two decades has enabled new forms of political participation in the public domain, while also facilitating hitherto unimagined ways of consolidating domination and state power
This blog post is the first in a series of blog posts from the project “Law, religious violence and Internet and social media regulation in India” funded by ONLINERPOL.
Recent political upheavals in Europe and the US have once again highlighted the paradoxical nature of contemporary digital communication. The celebratory discourse of digital technologies’ potential for openness and democracy is now eclipsed by the “dark side” of new media as a platform for promoting hate speech, fake news, terrorism, misogyny and intergroup conflict.
This month we speak with Radhika Gajjala about cyberfeminism and Sofia Ashraf about online content creation.
In this episode we speak with Nick Couldry about the Mediated Construction of Reality and Nida Hasan from Change.org India about e-petitions.
Our new Podcast Episode for October is out, in which Victoria Bernal talks about digital diaspora politics and Rishi Bagree about being a right wing twitter superstar. Check it out here.
We are happy to announce that Krishanu Bhargav Neog has been selected for the Internet memes fellowship to carry out a study on memes and their competitive claims on the religious and secular, and politics of belonging in digital India. Learn more about it here.
Submit abstracts for the upcoming international symposium “Digital Politics in Millennial India” (15-17 March 2018) organized jointly by Project ONLINERPOL and IIITD Delhi. Deadline for abstracts 15 October 2017. Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich, Germany. Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, New Delhi (IIIT-Delhi). Conveners: Sahana Udupa, Professor, LMU, Germany Aasim Khan, Asst. Professor, IIIT-Delhi
The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty for the Study of Culture invites applications for one postdoctoral and two doctoral positions for ONLINERPOL, a five year research project (2017-22) on political cultures of new media in India and among the diaspora. The project is funded by the European Research Council Starting Grant
Recent political upheavals in Europe and the US have once again highlighted the paradoxical nature of contemporary digital communication. The celebratory discourse of digital technologies’ potential for openness and democracy is now eclipsed by the “dark side” of new media as a platform for promoting hate speech, fake news, terrorism, misogyny and intergroup conflict. Researchers