New Front in Digital Divide Exposed by India s COVID-19 Meltdown
While social media is being used to share information and resources, the poor and marginalised are left helpless without access to such information.
Daily wage workers and homeless people wearing protective masks wait on the banks of Yamuna river as police officers arrange buses to transfer them to a shelter, during the lockdown last year. Photo: REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis
Rights6 hours ago
Lucknow/Mumbai: As India’s daily coronavirus cases set global records, people desperately searching for hospital beds and oxygen cylinders are finding help on social media. But for others like Ruby Yadav, who has never heard of Twitter, time and hope is running out.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
This diary jotting by Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank, whose life was cut short at a tender age of 15 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Nazi Germany in February 1945, rings prophetically true for today’s young activists who are literally just a click away from “starting to improve the world”.
Activism lately is armed with social media, which has emerged as a dominant medium for speech and expression, freedom of which are guaranteed in the Indian Constitution.
Activism – assuming legitimacy from this constitutionally granted freedom – is the effort of seeking a perceived good through reforms in domains directly or indirectly affecting humans and their surroundings.
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activism has improved. there s lots of tweets and attacks on the internet. 18-year-old are not millennials. we re already in the new generation of the youngs. there are even younger people than millennials. what are they called? time out on this conversation. good to have you back onset. we ll be back with much more on this conversation and others including us getting out on swamp watch patrol. looking at a new report about the interior secretary s travel habits and his wife. we explain why it s raising red flags with the report who broke the story joining me next. open an e trade premium savings account and earn 1.9% apy on your money. that s over 15 times the national average!
social media activism does work. there was this outrage. so because of the new oscar voting rules that was put into place, it allowed more diversity, more space for oscar voters to vote differently. so i don t think it s solved but we re on the right track. the films that are nominated this year, it s not tokenism, as some folks have said. they are phenomenal films, moonlight, fences, if oscar so white didn t happen, it probably wouldn t have occurred. critics are pointing out there is still this lack of asian and hispanic representation at the oscars. is this a problem that hollywood can solve? if they can solve it, they put in the work. i was so happy to see six black actors being nominated. it s a record for the academy awards but it was sad to see that, once again, latin actors and asian actors are being ignored.