Udupa Calls for a Rethinking of Internet Regulation and Policy

Associate Professor Sahana Udupa will be participating in a panel with digital media researchers from the University of Michigan, Oxford University, Erasmus University, and Denison College in Berlin on October 6. She will be presenting a paper on “abusive speech on social media and raging debates on internet censorship in India.” Udupa says that the character of online abusive exchange in India is unique combining insult, comedy, shame, and abuse. She argues that it calls for a rethinking of internet regulation and policy. “Regulatory efforts should draw a typology of online volatile speech based on the context of digital use, histories, and public cultures of speech forms and variation in user motivations,” she says.