Nishant Shah described the many contradictions that qualitative research reveals, based on his work in rural India. In a region with the highest mobile phone penetration in India, children and young people use Chinese-based mobile phones, where they have learned enough of the characters to manage to communicate. Despite women’s access to technology being difficult and not always socially allowed, it was intriguing that women with limited access to mobile phones were often up to date on their favourite soap opera because they could access what Shah called ‘human internets’: their young children would borrow their father’s devices, and then stage afternoon performances to re-enact key moments for the village, to update themselves on the content of soap operas and other popular shows. Using these examples to demonstrate the richness of qualitative data collected by Shah and his colleagues, he focused on children and young people’s participation in the research process. Shah urged a shift in thinking from ‘children on the internet to children as internet’. He encouraged participants to re-think the image of the child internet user as ‘fragile’. for children to have access to laptops outside, but not in their homes. Here, traditional measures of household computer access would miss key contextual clues to the everyday life of the child. In developing studies of children, Shah recommended thinking of children as having agency, and empowering children and young people to help researchers develop a child’s eye view of the world – how do they think of themselves, and what interventions would they want to make? What is lacking for many is a structure of belonging (online) over and above access to technology.

1.
Opportunities & Barriers to
Children’s Rights in a
Digital Age
A Child’s-eye view of the
world
Nishant Shah
Centre for Internet & Society,
Bangalore
Institute for Culture & Aesthetics
of New Media, Leuphana University
Lüneburg

2. Hybrid
Reali,es
:
Children
in
Mo,on

8. Moving
Beyond
Literalness

9. How
would
a
child
engage
with
rights?

10. From
Beneficiary
to
Actor

11. Thinking
of
the
‘child
in
mo,on’
Construc,ng
child
as
stakeholder
of
infrastructure
Expanding
our
repertoire
beyond
literalness
Child’s-­‐eye
view
of
the
world

12. Thank you
nishant@cis-india.org
@ latelyontime

13.
Thank you
nishant@cis-india.org
@latelyontime