[Reader-list] Survey : Digital Natives with a Cause?

[Vishal Makhija]

Hello,
 Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. 

Founded in 2008, The Centre for Internet & Society [1] (CIS) is a
Bangalore-based independent, non-profit, research organisation which
is involved in research on the emerging field of the Internet and its
relationship to the society. CIS brings together scholars, academics,
students, programmers and scientists to engage in a large variety of
Internet issues like governance, privacy and freedom of expression,
etc.  

CIS works in the areas of histories of the Internet, digital natives,
and a reader on the Wikipedia, enhancing higher education for the
downtrodden, and accessibility for the disabled, openness, telecom and
Internet governance. CIS runs different academic and research
programmes and is receptive to new ideas and collaborations, projects
and campaigns from the public.  

CIS, in collaboration with Hivos\' Knowledge Programme [2], launched
a project, Digital Natives with a Cause? [3] in 2008. As
younger
generations growing up in emerging information societies learn to
engage with their geo-political and socio-cultural environments, a
form of technology-mediated identity, popularly dubbed as the Digital
Native, has been the discussion of a growing public and intellectual
debate. These digital natives are transforming the ways in which they
understand themselves as well as the world around them while engaging
with Internet and digital technologies. Young users of technology are
moving towards a reconfiguration of the world, where questions of
identity, political participation, social transformation, cultural
production, education, and livelihood are being restructured. The
Digital Natives Research Programme focuses on producing new knowledge
frameworks, vocabularies and lexicons to understand, investigate and
support these new citizens or netizens rather who shall be the agents
of change in the future. After the initial research (click here for a
free download [4]), CIS will
gather responses from young users of
technology to help us understand, document and support different
practices aimed at social transformation and political participation
more efficiently. 

We believe that the world we live in is changing rapidly and the rise
of Internet technologies has a lot to do with it. As young users of
technology (as opposed to young users who use technology) adopt, adapt
and use these new technologised tools to interact with their
environment, new ways of effecting change emerge. This survey is an
attempt to capture some of the information which gives us an insight
into who the people are using these technologies, the ways in which
they use them and what their perceptions and experiences are. 

The survey will not take more than seven minutes of your precious
time and it will help us get a better sense of the way things are.
Please click here [5] to start the survey. We would also appreciate if
you could share the link to the survey with your friends and
relatives
via your blog, tweets or other social networking pages. Your help
would go a long way in enabling us to find out how the youth of today
are shaping the society and influencing the political/social scenario
around them. Please note that the data collected as part of the survey
would be anonymous and not used for any commercial purposes. We would
also acknowledge your help in preparing the final report.  

In case you need any further information or clarifications, please
feel free to call us at +91 - 080 - 25350955 or write to us at
nishant at cis-india.org [6] 
With best compliments, 

Vishal    

Links:
------
[1] http://www.cis-india.org/
[2] http://www.hivos.net/
[3] http://www.cis-india.org/research/dn/dnrep
[4] http://www.cis-india.org/publications/cis/nishant/dnrep.pdf/view
[5]
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG9reUVvQ0w4d1ZER3lKOUtFanZMUnc6MA
[6] mailto:nishant at cis-india.org