Digital Swaraj Fellowship: Revisiting the Journey of DEF’s Flagship Programme
I Made Pickles on my Periods and it Didn’t go Stale is a publication analysing the impact of critical digital literacy on communities in India.
There is a considerable difference in the consumption of digital information between rural and urban India. The access to the digital world is limited, in the case of rural India, by the digital divide. As per a study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, only 29% of rural India can access the internet, compared to 64% of the urban population. The latest National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data place this figure at 24% for rural Indian households. Moreover, only 14% of rural citizens “actively use the internet, in contrast to 59% of urban adoption.” The report cites affordability issues, patchy network coverage, and a lack of localised vernacular internet content as possible reasons for this disparity.
This disconnect prevents a rural population from accessing opportunities, entitlements and rights. For instance, “only 27% of beneficiaries under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM Kisan) scheme receive Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) payments digitally.” Due to the digital divide, there is a lack of credible mechanisms to tackle misinformation and disinformation and influence operations. The increased emphasis on urban narratives can be seen in how fact-checking websites operate in the country.
A cursory look at prominent fact-checkers such as AltNews, BoomLive and Quint showed that a significant chunk of their coverage was devoted to debunking events/news emerging from urban India. Additionally, their focus was impeded by a limited understanding of “national” narratives. These narratives often get fixated on prominent political parties in India. The fact-checking websites tend to focus more on wrong information unintentionally/deliberately spread by “national” leaders rather than instances of misinformation and disinformation harming people in rural India. This could be attributed to a lack of resources and a workforce available to fact-check websites. However, the focus on rural India is critical due to the unique nature of challenges posed by misinformation and disinformation in such regions.
The advent of the digital age also meant that social media platforms are increasingly used to spread misinformation and disinformation. A BBC study in 2019 showed that WhatsApp was extensively used in India to spread misinformation, even leading to incidents of mob lynching and violence. Additionally, digital platforms are used for cyber fraud, online harassment, and various other scams. A study by Oxford University Press reveals that 54% of Indians rely on social media for factual information, with 87% of content sharers expressing confidence in its accuracy, highlighting the urgent need for critical digital literacy. The rural population is more susceptible to scam messages and cyber fraud than the cities, especially using fake Unified Payment Systems (UPI) screenshots. Another key aspect is the gender digital gap. A study by the Observer Research Foundation indicates that Indian women are 15% less likely to own mobile phones and 33% less likely to use internet services than men. Moreover, rural women face even greater challenges due to the urban-rural digital disparity.
It was in this context of the persisting gendered digital divide and a simultaneous spread of misinformation and disinformation that the “Safeguarding Rural India Through Critical Digital Literacy” was envisioned and implemented. The following report is based on the insights from the women Infopreneurs from four states, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, on their experience of tackling uncritical consumption of information, which is often entangled with gender rhetorics, gendered narratives and regressive social norms. The project focused on empowering rural women with both skills and digital devices. Our goal through this initiative was to enhance the skills of individuals and communities in rural India to analyse digital content and platforms effectively.
Through the program, 30 rural women from the districts of Bhadohi, Chandauli, Jaunpur, West Champaran, Nalanda, Darbhanga, Kishangarh, Ranchi, Ramgarh, Khunti, Raipur and Bhilai received laptops and printers to broaden their digital services. They, in turn, trained 450 rural women to become information entrepreneurs, focusing on functional digital literacy, digital financial literacy, and critical digital literacy. Basic digital and financial literacy is vital due to cyber fraud concerns in rural India. We aimed to cultivate a group of rural women skilled in critical digital literacy, forming a fact-checking network. Additionally, 90 exceptional candidates from this group of 450 women received digital devices to establish their centres.
The training included modules on Functional Digital Literacy, Digital Financial Literacy, Facilitating Access to Citizen Service and Critical Digital Literacy. The Functional Digital Literacy module has been designed to support women in various parts of India to learn the skills that will enable them to use digital technologies, including mobile phones, social media, and the internet. The Digital Financial Literacy module aided the participants with skills that would enable them to manage their finances better. The third module provided an overview of various digital solutions that can be used to facilitate access to citizen services.
The fourth module, the main focus of the project, focussed on critical digital literacy, which was also supplemented by a Media Information Literacy Toolkit. This module defines critical digital literacy as the “ability to produce and consume digital content critically.” The module focuses on three categories of fake news: disinformation, misinformation and influence operations. Disinformation is defined as the deliberate invention of stories designed “to make people believe something false, to buy a certain product, or to visit a certain website.” Misinformation includes stories that are partially true but are never 100% accurate. Influence operations are “organised attempts to achieve a specific effect among a target audience.” These could be targeted WhatsApp forwards to influence voters’ choices during an election or propaganda aimed at a certain group/ community.
Our Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with rural women who took the Critical Digital Literacy training helped us understand essential themes concerning misinformation, disinformation and influence operations that are unique to the experiences of women in rural regions. The narratives from DEF Infopreneurs include incidents of misinformation and cyber frauds specifically targeted at women. We also learned how social practices form the top layer of misinformation in rural India, with women having to spend a considerable amount of energy and resources fighting these beliefs in their families and communities. The FGDs brought about narratives that focus on the implementation of learning from the critical digital literacy module. They include stories of DEF Infopreneurs fighting misinformation and disinformation in their communities.
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