Payal Arora

Why do citizens of states with strict surveillance care so little about their digital privacy? Why do Brazilians eschew geo-tagging on social media? What drives young Indians to friend “foreign” strangers on Facebook and give “missed calls” to people? Payal Arora answers these questions and many more about the internet’s next billion users.

textabstractTo date, little attention has been given to the impact of big data in the Global South, about 60% of whose residents are below the poverty line. Big data manifests in novel and unprecedented ways in these neglected contexts. For instance, India has created biometric national identities for her 1.2 billion people, linking them to welfare schemes, and social entrepreneurial initiatives like the Ushahidi project that leveraged crowdsourcing to provide
\nreal-time crisis maps for humanitarian relief. While these projects are indeed inspirational, this article argues that in the context of the Global South there is a bias in the framing of big data as an instrument of empowerment. Here, the poor, or the “bottom of the pyramid” populace are the new consumer base, agents of social change instead of passive beneficiaries. This neoliberal outlook of big data facilitating inclusive capitalism for the
\ncommon good sidelines critical perspectives urgently needed if we are to channel big data as a positive social force in emerging economies. This article proposes to assess these new
\ntechnological developments through the lens of databased democracies, databased identities, and databased geographies to make evident normative assumptions and perspectives in this under-examined context.

E-cadherin is a major cell adhesion molecule implicated as a potent tumor suppressor, which is frequently altered in human tumors including hepatocellular carcinoma. Here, we report that hepatitis C virus Core downregulates E-cadherin expression at the transcription level. This effect was abolished after treatment of 5'-Aza-2'dC, a specific inhibitor of DNA methyltransferase (DNMT). In addition, this repression was strongly correlated with hypermethylation of CpG islands of E-cadherin promoter via concerted action of both DNMT1 and 3b in Core-expressing cells. The decreased E-cadherin expression results in dramatic morphological changes in Core-expressing cells. In addition, Core-expressing cells aggregate poorly in suspension culture, reflecting their altered cell-cell interactions. The biological significance was further demonstrated by the increased collagen invasion ability of Core-expressing cells. Therefore, our finding suggests that Core plays a role in hepatocellular carcinogenesis by favoring cell detachment from the surrounding cells and migration outside of the primary tumor site.

This paper calls for an epistemic disobedience in privacy studies by decolonizing the approach to privacy. As technology companies expand their reach worldwide, the notion of privacy continues to be viewed through an ethnocentric lens. It disproportionately draws from empirical evidence on Western-based, white, and middle-class demographics. We need to break away from the market-driven neoliberal ideology and the Development paradigm long dictating media studies if we are to foster more inclusive privacy policies. This paper offers a set of propositions to de-naturalize and estrange data from demographic generalizations and cultural assumptions, namely, (1) predicting privacy harms through the history of social practice, (2) recalibrating the core-periphery as evolving and moving targets, and (3) de-exoticizing “natives” by situating privacy in ludic digital cultures. In essence, decolonizing privacy studies is as much an act of reimagining people and place as it is of dismantling essentialisms that are regurgitated through scholarship.