March 2021: TransAsiaSTS Invited Lecture, Prof. Itty Abraham

This is the link to the first invited lecture by the TransAsiaSTS Network delivered by Prof. Itty Abraham at the National University of Signapore. The talk is titled: Technology as a Political Instrument: The Tactical and the Strategic. 

Abstract: The close association of social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter) with the so-called “Arab Spring” popular movements has reinforced our collective understanding of new media technologies as a great political disruptor. Under some circumstances, digital media can become a force multiplier for an unarmed public against a repressive state. Such a politics of confrontation should be seen as a tactical use of technology, facing certain inherent limits. Political technologies can be strategic as well, however, going far beyond the direct encounter of a movement and state to threaten state legitimacy, as this case study will discuss. My examination of a KL-based Rohingya diaspora group explores the long-term strategic implications of what I call the politics of recognition through discussion of two technopolitical moments – the group’s negotiations with the Unicode Consortium to make the Rohingya script visible on electronic screens and efforts to use blockchain to create a transnational refugee database.