Ascendant India, digital India

How net neutrality advocates defeated Facebook’s Free Basics

Bibliographic Data

ID11267463
AuthorsRevati Prasad (0000-0003-0819-210X, University of Pennsylvania, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume40
Issue3
Pages415-431
Publication date2018-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedia Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-4437 • E-ISSN: 1460-3675
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0163443717736117
OpenAlexW2766562078
LanguageEN
Citations received32
References cited18

This article analyzes the 2015 campaign by net neutrality advocates against Facebook’s Free Basics service in India, and argues that their victory can be best understood by analyzing their privileged place in an India that imagines itself high tech and global. The advocates, predominantly tech workers, loosely organized under the banner of Save the Internet (STI) echoing the net neutrality debate in the United States. The article assesses the competing claims and modes of contention of both Facebook and STI, and examines how STI’s appeals were able to mobilize public opinion in record numbers. I argue that STI formed a ‘recursive public’, which practiced a technopolitics that resonated within the broader narrative of technocultural nationalism championed by the current ruling party. I trace the historical origins of this dominant discourse that eventually led the regulator to ban all zero-ratings plans, including Free Basics

Art · Banner · Media studies · Narrative · Nationalism · Net neutrality · Neutrality · Political science · Politics · Sociology · The Internet · Victory · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · South Asian Cinema and Culture