NEXT19
Payal Arora – The Next Billion Users
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After immersing herself in factory towns, slums, townships, and favelas, Payal Arora assesses real patterns of internet usage in India, China, South Africa, Brazil, and the Middle East. Why do citizens of states with strict surveillance policies appear to care so little about their digital privacy? Why do Brazilians eschew geotagging on social media? What drives young Indians to friend ‘foreign’ strangers on Facebook and give ‘missed calls’ to people? Arora reveals habits of use, bound to intrigue everyone from casual internet users to developers of global digital platforms to organisations seeking to reach the next billion internet users. She pushes us to look beyond the framing of users as data producers and markets and instead as new global publics shaping the future of the internet.