Anti-corruption movements and the 'twittering classes' in the postcolony: an Indian case study

Authors

Ramaswami Harindranath, University Of New South Wales
Sukhmani Khorana, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

78556

Publication Details

Harindranath, R. and Khorana, S. (2012). Anti-corruption movements and the 'twittering classes' in the postcolony: an Indian case study. In C. Anyanwu, K. Green and J. Sykes (Eds.), ANZCA 2012 Adelaide: Communicating Change and Changing Communication in the 21st Century (pp. 1-10). Australia: Australian and New Zealand Communication Association Inc.

Link to publisher version (URL)

Australia & New Zealand Communication Association Inc.

Abstract

Recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have been widely celebrated as the triumph of civil society. Such accounts extol the role of social media and the Internet as the loci for the mobilisation of popular protest, so much so that news narratives and scholarly commentary both see these technologies as shaping these revolutions, as enabling such upheavals in civil society. Using a recent case of popular mobilisation in India, namely the anti-­‐corruption movement inspired in 2011 by Anna Hazare, this paper attempts to locate these developments within particular formations in the postcolony.