Shriram Venkatraman
Biographic Data
| ID | 3589368 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shriram Venkatraman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shriram |
| FAMILY NAME | Venkatraman |
| SIGNATURE | VENKATRAMAN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3984-6367 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Between paper and platform
This field note examines how digitalization is reshaping everyday accounting practices in small family-run businesses in urban India. Drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in interconnected marketplaces in Kanpur, this study shows that as QR payments, e-commerce dashboards, and cloud-based accounting software become routine, families selectively incorporate digital tools while retaining paper-based verification and continued oversight of elde…
Pandemic Memes and Tamil Health Narratives
This article analyses the Tamil COVID-19 memes as artifacts of humor and social commentary during Tamil Nadu's first pandemic wave. Drawing on a corpus of WhatsApp memes, cross-verified on Facebook and Instagram, we trace how Tamil cinematic iconography and anthropomorphism articulated health anxieties and negotiated therapeutic authority between Siddha and biomedicine. Using visual ethnography, we identify two narrative logics, namely, dissonanc…
Bridging the digital divide
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing educational inequalities in India, particularly for students in government-funded schools with limited access to digital infrastructure. This paper examines the processual nature of resilience in bridging the educational digital divide during the COVID-19 pandemic in TPuri (pseudonymized), a low-income community in the National Capital Region of India. Drawing on fieldwork, interviews, and observations, …
Qualitative Methods for Digital Social Research
Qualitative Methods for Digital Social Research
‘It's not for the children's sake’
Recently, the Danish Health Authority began recommending vaccinating children aged 2-6 years against seasonal influenza, underscoring the pivotal role of children in its transmission dynamics within the wider population and the need to protect vulnerable population groups after COVID-19. Under a third followed the recommendation. For the routine Danish childhood vaccine program coverage is usually well above 90%. Through a qualitative in-depth st…
God's wealth, legal frames, and the question of material and immaterial heritage
Analyzing the battle over Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple’s enormous treasure, the paper documents the litigious journey of the concept of sacred possession and heritage. It shows how the evolving and complex logic of secular governance in India provides the legal categories that animate this contestation over the deity’s wealth. While the enormous treasure trove housed in the six chambers of the temple’s basement ‘belongs’ to the idol (murthi) Lord …
Working for your own folks
This paper uses a comparative ethnographic approach to explore the ways in which social media enables new economic strategies that capitalize on women's traditional forms of reliance within their local communities. We use ethnographic examples from northern Chile, southeast Italy, and south India to show how women are successful in establishing small but prestigious entrepreneurial activities by using social media to respond to local social and c…
Cashlessness and scalable multi-pay practices
Millennial India”
In this special issue, we examine the two decades of digital media expansion in India, the world’s second largest Internet user domain, to propose the idea of “millennial India.” Millennial India highlights the processes of digitalization as a distinct sociopolitical moment entailing new conditions of communication, and the stakes of “millennials” who are drawn to digital media to articulate political matters. These processes, we suggest, have le…
Contemporary Comparative Anthropology - The Why We Post Project
This paper confronts the disparity between a tradition that has defined anthropology as a comparative discipline and the practices which increasingly embrace cultural relativism and the uniqueness of each fieldsite. It suggests that it is possible to resolve this dilemma, through creating a vertical structure that complements the horizontal task of comparison across fieldsites. This vertical structure is composed of different methods of dissemina…
Facebook Interactions
This article starts with a consideration of the different reasons academics might be interested in the detailed analysis of who interacts with whom on a social media platform such as Facebook. We then describe our analysis of the levels of interaction between Facebook friends for two populations, one based in South England and the other in South India. We first used statistical data analysis to identify those who interacted most with our informan…
"Everyday Life in Tamil Nadu, India and Its Cost to "Free Basics
This paper explores how the 'Free Basics' initiative in India got transformed into a national debate on 'net neutrality' principle and finally led to it being banned in India. Further, this paper will also use ethnographic data to analyse how this 'controversial' initiative was debated, the claims it made and the actual ground level reality in the state of Tamil Nadu
How the World Changed Social Media
How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of nine anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and exploring the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we b…
Why We Post
How the World Changed Social Media
How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of nine anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and exploring the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we b…
Contemporary Comparative Anthropology - The Why We Post Project
This paper confronts the disparity between a tradition that has defined anthropology as a comparative discipline and the practices which increasingly embrace cultural relativism and the uniqueness of each fieldsite. It suggests that it is possible to resolve this dilemma, through creating a vertical structure that complements the horizontal task of comparison across fieldsites. This vertical structure is composed of different methods of dissemina…
Millennial India”
In this special issue, we examine the two decades of digital media expansion in India, the world’s second largest Internet user domain, to propose the idea of “millennial India.” Millennial India highlights the processes of digitalization as a distinct sociopolitical moment entailing new conditions of communication, and the stakes of “millennials” who are drawn to digital media to articulate political matters. These processes, we suggest, have le…
Facebook Interactions
This article starts with a consideration of the different reasons academics might be interested in the detailed analysis of who interacts with whom on a social media platform such as Facebook. We then describe our analysis of the levels of interaction between Facebook friends for two populations, one based in South England and the other in South India. We first used statistical data analysis to identify those who interacted most with our informan…
Working for your own folks
This paper uses a comparative ethnographic approach to explore the ways in which social media enables new economic strategies that capitalize on women's traditional forms of reliance within their local communities. We use ethnographic examples from northern Chile, southeast Italy, and south India to show how women are successful in establishing small but prestigious entrepreneurial activities by using social media to respond to local social and c…
"Everyday Life in Tamil Nadu, India and Its Cost to "Free Basics
This paper explores how the 'Free Basics' initiative in India got transformed into a national debate on 'net neutrality' principle and finally led to it being banned in India. Further, this paper will also use ethnographic data to analyse how this 'controversial' initiative was debated, the claims it made and the actual ground level reality in the state of Tamil Nadu
Why We Post
"Everyday Life in Tamil Nadu, India and Its Cost to "Free Basics
This paper explores how the 'Free Basics' initiative in India got transformed into a national debate on 'net neutrality' principle and finally led to it being banned in India. Further, this paper will also use ethnographic data to analyse how this 'controversial' initiative was debated, the claims it made and the actual ground level reality in the state of Tamil Nadu
How the World Changed Social Media
How the World Changed Social Media is the first book in Why We Post, a book series that investigates the findings of nine anthropologists who each spent 15 months living in communities across the world. This book offers a comparative analysis summarising the results of the research and exploring the impact of social media on politics and gender, education and commerce. What is the result of the increased emphasis on visual communication? Are we b…
Why We Post
Facebook Interactions
This article starts with a consideration of the different reasons academics might be interested in the detailed analysis of who interacts with whom on a social media platform such as Facebook. We then describe our analysis of the levels of interaction between Facebook friends for two populations, one based in South England and the other in South India. We first used statistical data analysis to identify those who interacted most with our informan…
Millennial India”
In this special issue, we examine the two decades of digital media expansion in India, the world’s second largest Internet user domain, to propose the idea of “millennial India.” Millennial India highlights the processes of digitalization as a distinct sociopolitical moment entailing new conditions of communication, and the stakes of “millennials” who are drawn to digital media to articulate political matters. These processes, we suggest, have le…
Contemporary Comparative Anthropology - The Why We Post Project
This paper confronts the disparity between a tradition that has defined anthropology as a comparative discipline and the practices which increasingly embrace cultural relativism and the uniqueness of each fieldsite. It suggests that it is possible to resolve this dilemma, through creating a vertical structure that complements the horizontal task of comparison across fieldsites. This vertical structure is composed of different methods of dissemina…
Cashlessness and scalable multi-pay practices
Working for your own folks
This paper uses a comparative ethnographic approach to explore the ways in which social media enables new economic strategies that capitalize on women's traditional forms of reliance within their local communities. We use ethnographic examples from northern Chile, southeast Italy, and south India to show how women are successful in establishing small but prestigious entrepreneurial activities by using social media to respond to local social and c…
‘It's not for the children's sake’
Recently, the Danish Health Authority began recommending vaccinating children aged 2-6 years against seasonal influenza, underscoring the pivotal role of children in its transmission dynamics within the wider population and the need to protect vulnerable population groups after COVID-19. Under a third followed the recommendation. For the routine Danish childhood vaccine program coverage is usually well above 90%. Through a qualitative in-depth st…
God's wealth, legal frames, and the question of material and immaterial heritage
Analyzing the battle over Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple’s enormous treasure, the paper documents the litigious journey of the concept of sacred possession and heritage. It shows how the evolving and complex logic of secular governance in India provides the legal categories that animate this contestation over the deity’s wealth. While the enormous treasure trove housed in the six chambers of the temple’s basement ‘belongs’ to the idol (murthi) Lord …
Qualitative Methods for Digital Social Research
Qualitative Methods for Digital Social Research
Between paper and platform
This field note examines how digitalization is reshaping everyday accounting practices in small family-run businesses in urban India. Drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in interconnected marketplaces in Kanpur, this study shows that as QR payments, e-commerce dashboards, and cloud-based accounting software become routine, families selectively incorporate digital tools while retaining paper-based verification and continued oversight of elde…
Pandemic Memes and Tamil Health Narratives
This article analyses the Tamil COVID-19 memes as artifacts of humor and social commentary during Tamil Nadu's first pandemic wave. Drawing on a corpus of WhatsApp memes, cross-verified on Facebook and Instagram, we trace how Tamil cinematic iconography and anthropomorphism articulated health anxieties and negotiated therapeutic authority between Siddha and biomedicine. Using visual ethnography, we identify two narrative logics, namely, dissonanc…
Bridging the digital divide
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing educational inequalities in India, particularly for students in government-funded schools with limited access to digital infrastructure. This paper examines the processual nature of resilience in bridging the educational digital divide during the COVID-19 pandemic in TPuri (pseudonymized), a low-income community in the National Capital Region of India. Drawing on fieldwork, interviews, and observations, …
Sociology (8 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Political science (5 works) · Anthropology (4 works) · Ethnography (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Economics (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Social media (3 works) · Social Media and Politics (3 works)