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Neelesh Agrawal – Dual Degree EH

Neelesh Agrawal received his MS-Dual Degree in Exact Humanities (EH). His  research work was supervised by Dr. Radhika Krishnan.

Here’s a summary of  Neelesh’s M.S thesis, The Digital Challenges to Democracy: Social Media and New Information Paradigms as explained by him: 

The social and political shifts being perpetuated by the Internet and social media are dominating contemporary discourse around politics, society and technology. The difficulties in regulating online practices, in advancing Internet literacy and moderating machine learning algorithms that govern online behaviour, and moreover in preventing malicious users from infiltrating the Internet have been highlighted by scholars in this domain. As the Internet and social media have become a ubiquitous and inseparable part of our lives, so have the social shifts brought on by them. The influence of modern technology on human behaviour, both personal and social, poses a great challenge to one of the most fundamental democratic principles; human free will.

This thesis highlights the anti-democratic phenomena emerging out of the incessant use of the Internet in daily life, while also looking at precursors for these phenomena through history. This thesis employs formal analysis using natural language processing as well as actor-network theory to comprehend some of these phenomena. It also connects various theories proposed by thinkers like Kierkegaard, Chomsky and Foucault, and ideas expressed by researchers, authors and journalists in recent years, to sufficiently understand these phenomena. Through the discussions and analyses presented in this thesis, the dynamics of the social ills posed by the Internet can be better understood, and this can inform further research as well as policy-making aimed at combating these issues.