User:Tash/grad project proposal4

Graduation Project Proposal Draft 4 – November 11th 2018

What do you want to make?

'Blind Carbon Copy' by Stephanie Vilayphiou

I am interested in exploring the ways netizenship and citizenship inform each other in present-day Indonesia. As a publisher I have always been fascinated by the culture of the internet – what habits and relationships are we creating? How can we design online platforms with an attitude?

When it comes to the context of my home country Indonesia, social media in particular has become inseparable from youth culture. Millenials like me use it as a space to access information, perform their identities, and engage in alternative political discourse. At the same time, rising religious and political conservatism is putting pressure on freedom of speech in the country. With this project I want to explore the way social media could be used as a critical tool to resist these trends. What can I reveal about the censorship mechanisms that play out on these platforms? How do the self-censorship habits we have offline, manifest themselves online – and how do they affect women specifically? Can I experiment with these tendencies, or build tools to break them?

Ultimately my aim with this project is to question mechanisms of self-censorship on Indonesian social media, and propose new tactics to challenge them.

Examples of existing projects which inspire me:

• Blind Carbon Copy by Stephanie Vilayphiou, a series of hacks which challenge copyright (a different but still related barrier to knowledge)
• Thunderclap, a steganographic zine, that piggybacks on fashion accessories to publicly distribute the erased writings of Chinese anarcho-feminist
• an Anthem to Open Borders a performance on the phenomenon of social behavior on YouTube music videos which trigger emotional reactions that span from nostalgia to fierce political divisions
• Politwoops, a platform which collects and displays recently deleted tweets from politician's accounts
• Ethira a social, mobile app which allows users to post anonymous and ephemeral messages on a public forum
• Various works by Sarah Maple, which explore the convergence of her dual-Muslim heritage with feminism, and often deals with online abuse and trolling

'Freedom of Speech' by Sarah Maple

Why do you want to make it?
Being born and raised in Indonesia, my motivations for this project are both personal and political. After 8 years living and working here in the Netherlands, I plan to return to Indonesia next year to set up my publishing practice there. But in the last few years, I’ve noticed a worrying trend in Indonesian public culture: while the number of media platforms seem to be growing, the scope of expression and discussion seem to be shrinking. New, stringent laws on issues like pornography, blasphemy and defamation, combined with rising religious intolerance in society, has created a hostile environment for freedom of speech in Indonesia. In fact, according to a recent index on democracy and media freedom, “Indonesia was the worst-performing country in 2017, falling by 20 places in the global rankings from 48th to 68th position.” (The Economist, 2017) As a publisher (and a non-muslim, biracial Indonesian woman), my instinct is to resist these mechanisms of suppression, and to carve out spaces for more open conversations between young people in the country.

Relation to larger context
Today, Indonesia is at an interesting crossroads in its political and cultural evolution. In 1998, the authoritarian regime led by President Suharto finally collapsed, after 31 years in power. The simultaneous arrival of networked media and Internet culture played an important role during this time. Mobile phone and internet usage skyrocketed, alternative media sources proliferated, and so did the consumption of pop culture (Heryanto, 2017). As a result, the first few years of the new millenium felt like a moment of opening up, and of substantial advances in freedom of expression, and freedom of connection.

However, these extended freedoms are proving difficult to sustain. Though we now have more access to knowledge, other forces continue to impede meaningful political discourse. A low level of media literacy outside of urban centres is one factor. Corruption in mainstream media industries is another. But one of the most influential cultural forces in contemporary Indonesian society, is the rise of political and religious extremism. As a recent article by the Asian Correspondent warns, "Islamist conservatives are in many ways the local equivalent of America’s alt-right – and they are just as adept at online disruption and manipulation. Research by State Islamic University Jakarta links the rise of religious intolerance among young Muslims to their increased access to the internet and social media." Following this, representation and discussion on mainstream Indonesia media is becoming more narrow.

For me, one of the most acute symptoms of this polarised political climate is the spread of (self)-censorship. Throughout the last ten years, the state has intensified its censorship activities, drawing up legislations which inhibit freedom of speech and religion. According to a 2017 report by Freedom House, under the current administration of President Joko Widodo, “religious and other minorities face ongoing harassment and intimidation, often with the tacit approval of local governments and security forces”. In addition, women and LGBT people remain subject to discriminatory local bylaws which regulate their dress, behaviour, and overall place in public life.

These processes play out both offline and online, with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram becoming some of the most heated battlegrounds. What concerns me and intrigues me the most, is seeing these mechanisms become internalized by the people. Netizens are self-policing, and the loudest voices band together to create an atmosphere of fear and a mob mentality. In this way, several subjects have become taboo, including the public expression of minor faiths, of female sexuality and agency, or Indonesian history and culture before the arrival of Islam.

This is where I would like to intervene. Thanks to its velocity, its polyvocal and participatory nature, social media offers valuable spaces for young Indonesians – especially young women – to engage in alternative discourses. However, free and open discussion on these platforms need to be actively maintained – and defended. What if we could we troll the trollers, weaponize the silent majority, empower the ‘almost-speakers’? In a country where free speech is becoming a risk more than a right, we need more tools to and safe spaces to discuss, disagree and deconstruct what it means to be a modern Indonesian citizen.

I think this topic is also relevant beyond Indonesia, as politics becomes more polarised across the globe, and social media continues to be used and abused to great impact in public and political culture. In similar Islamic contexts, it has been indispensable; empowering revolutions across the Middle East during the Arab Spring. Social media has also been a powerful tool in the context of feminism, carrying the voices of women via hashtags like #MeToo and #BringBackOurGirls. Of course, just like in Indonesia, both of these examples have also produced backlashes. Today, governments take an aggressive hand in shutting down digital channels people use to organize against them. "In Egypt, for example, where 26 million people are on Facebook (up from 4.7 million people in 2011), security forces arrested three activists who administered nearly two dozen Facebook pages." (Hempel, 2016). In the case of women, incidents like Gamergate show that social media is also rampant with online abuse, and "studies have consistently shown that the threat and attacks against women online are distinctly different from men’s. While both genders receive physical threats, those against women are sexually-related, meant to assert dominance, silence and intimidate." (Gutierrez, 2017). Under these pressures, I think it's important that publishers and artists alike find a way to redress the balance.

Screenshots from a profile 'Closing Account Services', which 1) offer Indonesian women the erasure of their pre-hijab accounts 2) promote intolerance by advertising the 'sins' of non-hijabi women

How do you plan to make it?
I would start by conducting a close-reading of the current digital media landscape in Indonesia. In particular, I want to analyse the way young Indonesians on both sides of the political spectrum are using social media in their interest. How does it contrast to the way traditional media is produced and consumed? Where are the opportunities and barriers when it comes to (self-)censorship, literacy and access? Then, I will research how other groups / artists / publishers have tackled this issue in other countries, specifically in similar South-East Asia contexts.

During this time I want to continue last trimester’s experiments of prototyping software that would allow for a) reading information and b) sharing information. For example, could I write a programme which helps me analyse the indicators of self-censorship in comments sections? Something like Politwoops – using Selenium and html5lib – that scrapes Instagram comments periodically and saves those that have been subsequently deleted? What about a bot that intervenes in a back and forth discussion between commenters?

I've also recently come across social media profiles specifically aimed at Indonesian women ('akhwat' is the term used, which translates to Muslim sisterhood) which offer 'Account-closing' services. They target young women who have recently started wearing the hijab, and tell them they must erase all evidence of their previous 'sinful' lives – including their social media accounts and any old images of themselves pre-hijab. For me, this represents a kind of revisionism – a censorship on the identity and history of Indonesian women. Could I collect more of these kinds of online acts of suppression and hack their tactics?

Finally, I plan to learn more about web and mobile application frameworks like Django and Flask, so that I could prototype platforms or tools which allow for the open expression of its members. These could be hybrids of existing concepts like anonymous chat rooms, browser plug-ins which reveal / enable certain forms of censorship, or even forums like 4chan.

What is your timetable?
September - October: research and make an analysis of the current use of social media in Indonesia. Contact and interview relevant figures in Indonesia. Research existing media tactics, platforms and services which play in the same context.

November: Prototype / make sketches of possible outcomes. What kind of structure would it have technically? Who is the end user? What is my role – editor, facilitator, gatekeeper? Continue to develop my position while touching base with relevant figures in Indonesia.

December - March: Develop prototypes, define scope of the project. Will it be a series or tools or one platform? How will I present it in the final exhibition? Sketch this out and start organising the materials and help I’ll need. Complete thesis.

April - June: Finish practical project, prepare final presentation.

Who can help you and how?
Clara Balaguer, for her experience running an alternative publishing platform in the Philippines. Amy Wu, for her knowledge on censorship in China and the political use of new digital media (memes, social media etc.) Artist Reinaart Vanhoe, for his connection to Indonesian collectives like Ruangrupa, Kunci Cultural Studies and Jatiwangi Art Factory. Other Indonesian platforms currently working in the intersection of media, technology and culture, such as Forum Lenteng, Lifepatch, Taman Baca Kesiman, Magdalene Indonesia and Perempuan Berpolitik (Women in Politics Indonesia).

Relation to previous practice
Similar questions explored during the Poortgebouw project: What are the politics of representation and of erasure? The idea of the artist as an archivist (and vice versa). How to tell stories and create communities in precarious contexts?

Similar questions explored during the OuNuPo project: Technology is not a neutral practice. What cultures do we reproduce when we write programmes? Who is included / excluded in the process of knowledge production?

Similar questions explored during the XPPL / Interfacing the Law project: How do you engage with unstable information? Can we design reading / searching interfaces that are able to represent uncertainty, locate outsides, explore agonisms? How can we intervene during the process of ‘downloading’ and ‘uploading’ information? Where are the grey areas when it comes to accessing and distributing knowledge?