Unfortunately, we don't have similar studies in Indian context despite burgeoning disability rights activism online. We witnessed enlightened debates and discussions during the RPD Bill last year which drew traditional media outlets to lend greater coverage to disabled-people's concerns. Full article can be accessed at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2015.1051516#abstract Abstract This article examines the changing nature of disability activism through the influence of social media. As disabled people in the United Kingdom have been subjected to acute austerity, this has coincided with a new era of disability activism channelled through increased social media participation. Drawing on the analysis of one group’s online activities and a qualitative content analysis of disability protest coverage in traditional news media during the 2012 Paralympic Games, this article positions this shift in the broader framework of ‘new media ecology’. We explore how emerging structures of disability activism have begun to offer a more visible profile to challenge government policy and negative stereotypes of disabled people. This highlights the usefulness of campaigning strategies for generating favourable news coverage for disability protest.
Over the last decade, much has been written that has identified the impact of a digital divide on the lives of disabled people (see Ellis and Kent 201117. Ellis, K., and M. Kent. 2011. Disability and New Media. London: Routledge. View all references). This has centred largely on issues around access, accessibility and social inclusion. By 2013, the Oxford Internet Survey (Dutton and Blank 201316. Dutton, B., and G. Blank. 2013. Next Generation Users: The Internet in Britain. Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute. View all references) reported that 51% of disabled people in the United Kingdom were using the Internet on a regular basis. This represented a leap in participation amongst the disabled population, although still considerably less than the 84% of non-disabled respondents. Earlier work in this area has highlighted how online technology has reproduced and even exacerbated the environmental barriers that traditionally exclude disabled people from key areas of social life (Dobransky and Hargittai 200614. Dobransky, K., and E. Hargittai. 2006. “The Disability Divide in Internet Access and Use.” Information, Communication and Society 9 (3): 313–334.10.1080/13691180600751298 [Taylor & Francis Online] View all references; Goggin and Newall 200320. Goggin, G., and C. Newall. 2003. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Disability in New Media. Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield. View all references). As such, access and accessibility issues arguably resonate with key arguments in both disability and Internet studies. In one sense, the exclusionary design of some of the new technologies ‘add[s] significant weight to a social barriers model of disability’ (Roulstone 199846. Roulstone, A. 1998. Enabling Technology: Disabled People, Work and New Technology. Maidenhead: Open University Press. View all references, 1). At the same time, there has been also a tendency among Internet scholars to assimilate accessibility issues to the digital divide paradigm (Vicente and Lopez 201054. Vicente, M., and A. Lopez. 2010. “A Multidimensional Analysis of the Disability Digital Divide: Some Evidence for Internet Use.” The Information Society 26 (1): 48–64.10.1080/01615440903423245 [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] View all references; Warschauer 200356. Warschauer, M. 2003. Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. View all references), which points to the inequalities caused by a disparity in Internet access, use and information technology literacy to argue that online media may be inherently dangerous for democracy and society more generally (Norris 200132. Norris, P. 2001. The Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: CUP.10.1017/CBO9781139164887 [CrossRef] View all references). However, despite this awareness of the Internet’s ambivalence for disabled people, a number of commentators writing over the last two decades (for example, Johnson and Moxon 199825. Johnson, L., and E. Moxon. 1998. “In Whose Service? Technology, Care and Disabled People: The Care for a Disability Politics Perspective.” Disability and Society 13 (2): 241–258.10.1080/09687599826812 [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [CSA] View all references; Polat 200544. Polat, R. 2005. “The Internet and Political Particpation: Exploring the Explanatory Links.” European Journal of Commuincation 20 (4): 435–459.10.1177/0267323105058251 [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®] View all references) have emphasised its potential for promoting civic participation among disabled users and strengthening the influence of disability organisations in policy-making. This work provided some useful early insights into the significance of online media for disabled users. In particular, it heightened the importance of discussion forums and blogs for the diffusion of alternative, unmediated representations of disability (Goggin and Noonan 200721. Goggin, G., and T. Noonan. 2007. “Blogging Disability: The Interface between New Cultural Movements and Internet Technology.” In Uses of Blogs, edited by A. Bruns and J. Jacobs, 161–172. New York: Peter Lang. View all references; Thoreau 200651. Thoreau, E. 2006. “Ouch! An Examination of the Self-representation of Disabled People on the Internet.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11 (2): 442–468.10.1111/jcmc.2006.11.issue-2 [CrossRef] View all references), exposed the role of online communications as a booster and multiplier of interpersonal relationships for disabled users (Anderberg and Jonsson 20051. Anderberg, P., and B. Jonsson. 2005. “Being There.” Disability and Society 20 (7): 719–733.10.1080/09687590500335733 [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] View all references), and revealed the benefits of both online support communities (Obst and Stafurik 201034. Obst, P., and J. Stafurik. 2010. “Online We Are All Able Bodied: Online Psychological Sense of Community and Social Support Found through Membership of Disability-specific Websites Promotes Well-being for People Living with a Physical Disability.” Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 20: 525–531.10.1002/casp.v20:6 [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®] View all references) and mobile Internet connections (Goggin 201119. Goggin, G. 2011. “Disability, Mobiles and Social Policy: New Modes of Communication and Governance.” In Mobile Communication: Dimensions of Social Policy, edited by J. Katz, 259–272. New Brunswick: Transaction. View all references) for disabled people. In light of this, it is important to ask whether these new opportunities for disabled Internet users to connect with others are having an impact also on their political participation levels, as well as on the structure and strategies of disability advocacy groups. Since the outset of the austerity programme, platforms such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook have proved important tools for disability activism in challenging government policy. As the proposed changes were initially debated in the Westminster Parliament, the strength of different social media drives emerged. One line of response came through what the prominent blogger Sue Marsh termed ‘from bed activism’ (Butler 20129. Butler, P. 2012. “How the Spartacus Welfare Cuts Campaign Went Viral.” The Guardian, 17 January. View all references). This saw a sustained attack on the welfare cuts from the ‘Broken of Britain’ group in 2010/11 and the ‘We are Spartacus’ campaign thereafter, which were organised through a small but extremely active group of disabled bloggers. The social media presence of this group on the day of a key government vote helped secure three defeats of the Welfare Reform Bill in the House of Lords. This was achieved when a report outlining a series of contentions with the Coalition plans to remove the Disability Living Allowance (Campbell et al. 201210. Campbell, S. J., Anon, S. Marsh, K. Franklin, D. Gaffney, Anon, M. Dixon, et al. 2012. “Responsible Reform: A Report on the Proposed Changes to DLA.” Accessed November 12, 2014. http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/responsiblereformDLA View all references) became one of the top-trending Twitter topics of the day. Whilst the Spartacus Report had been largely ignored by traditional news media, interest generated by activists on Twitter led to support across the political and celebrity spectrum and to an unprecedented level of public interest. This was clearly a new era of campaigning in disability politics. The next section explores this shift in more detail by looking at the work of one particular disability organisation, DPAC, which has emerged as a key player in the new era of digitised disability activism. -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. 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