In her keynote ‘Next billion users, next billion journalists?’ on May, 5 professor Arora will talk about how cheap mobile phones and data plans have brought the “next billion” users online, the vast low-income communities in the global south who are engaging with and shaping the global infosphere and the future of data-driven journalism. Does this translate to Spivak’s subaltern finally gaining voice not just as speakers but as authors, as reporters? The talk pushes against simplistic tropes of empowerment and collective intelligence by looking closely at the politics of Archiving for future facts, the Aesthetics of everyday news-making, and the Affect of digital communalism that impacts newsworthiness.
Payal Arora is a digital anthropologist and an author, speaker and professor. She holds the Chair in Technology, Values, and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her expertise lies in ethical AI, inclusive design & UX among low-income communities worldwide and comes with more than a decade of fieldwork experience in such contexts.