Internet Studies (Sociology)

This report examines the social media strategies of six leading English-language Indian news outlets--- two newspapers (Hindustan Times and The Indian Express), two television stations (NDTV and News18), and two digital-born organisations (Firstpost and The Quint).

News organisations are found to take different strategic and operational approaches to social media.
Strategically, most of the organisations covered here primarily pursue an on-site strategy oriented towards driving social media referrals to their website (where content can be monetised through advertising), though the recently launched digital-born organisation The Quint has embraced a greater o -site component, and has built large audiences via social media.
Operationally, several organisations operate with a centralised social media team that creates, curates, and promotes content across social media, but some operate with decentralised teams where people across the newsroom are responsible for social media.

Alongside the growth of Internet and Game Studies fields, there is a need for a sociotechnical approach of games, and of videogames and online games in particular. Thus, T.L. Taylor noted how play activity relied on a sociotechnical assemblage. For their part, Stefano de Paoli and Aphra Kerr, through working of cheating practices and definition, have shown how the social and technical territories of online games actually are negotiated continuously between various actors - developers, players, cheating companies, etc. In my own researches regarding the relationship between game users and producers, I also highlighted how the definition of a shared space for players is negotiated between heterogeneous social worlds (Strauss, Clarke & Star) through a complex agencement of mediations. Within this agencement, developers and editors appear in a dominant position as they theoretically are the only ones who can handle and change the game world rules - including social, technical and legal rules. My communication will investigates the ambiguities and resources of the central position of the game masters by focusing on how their authority is challenged by some actors, who are developing alternative places to play. The private servers are illegal copies of the original online game, which are ruled and played by a few individuals in margin from the largest players community. Relying on an empirical fieldwork conducted on official and private servers of World of Warcraft (online ethnography, participant observation, interviews), I will try show how this marginal and little studied phenomenon (Debeauvais & Nardi), can contribute to a better understanding of the role of sociotechnical infrastructures in complex social arenas that are online game worlds.