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This volume offers a series of practical methods to study digital behaviours considering the socio-cultural realities of the global south. It includes methodologically rigorous applied research chapters from leading international researchers offering information on gold mines and blind spots in researching the digital in the global south. It develops a tri-sectional format based on distinct areas of research, geographical variability and diversity of methods and approaches. The first section focuses on Dissecting Research Fractures–which disrupts the established research ideologies and practices, user behaviors, theoretical perspectives, and field methods in the study of digital social research. The second section on Innovating Methods proposes and extends mixed methodologies that go beyond research boundaries to produce novel possibilities for study. The final section on Re-Imagining the Field breaks new ground in exploring the social-digital where a transient research field is contextualized and stabilized through the social, infrastructural, and digital interweaving. The book offers the reader an inside view of studying marginal yet emerging users and consumers of digital technologies. The three sections together purport to draw textual, graphical, temporal, and ethnographic insights via innovative and hybrid observational tools to record, annotate and formulate everyday experiences of digital life. The volume addresses scholars interested in hybridizing methods, early career researchers, and graduates working on connecting humans and digital technologies. It also holds considerable appeal for digital marketers and strategists, offering practically …

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his volume presents fourteen critical explorations in digital studies, grounding qualitative approaches to digital social research within the often-overlooked geographies of the Global South. Digital social research operates within complex sociotechnical landscapes, encompassing a wide array of technologies, products, users, and contexts of use. This diversity is exemplified by the rise of Web 2.0 technologies leveraging digital and stored data from varied social platforms and digital ecosystems. Digital technologies have transformed the research field into a dynamic, co-constructed space shared by users, researchers, and digital artifacts, marking a significant move toward more adaptive and qualitative approaches in digital social research. By re-evaluating the role of technology in society, this volume provides diverse perspectives and methodologies, offering both innovative theoretical frameworks and practical …

Abstract

his two-volume proceedings, set CCIS 2337-2338, constitutes of the proceedings of 15th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction Design and Research, IndiaHCI 2024, held in Mumbai, India, during November 7–9, 2024. The 30 full papers and 12 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 235 submissions. These papers belong to various tracks which have been divided between the two volumes as follows:-Part I: Paper Track. Part II: Game Design Track, Student Research Consortium Track; Posters and demos Track; Artworks and installations Track.

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India's gig-based food delivery platforms, such as Swiggy and Zomato, provide crucial income to marginalised communities but also entrench workers in cycles of invisible labour. Through 14 semi-structured interviews, we analyse waiting time and repetitive UI itneractions as key burdens that contribute to 'digital discomfort' for gig based food delivery agents. We find that workers employ creative strategies to navigate algorithmic management, yet remain constrained by platform-side 'gamification' and system opacity. We propose worker-centered GUI automation as a potential intervention to reduce friction while preserving agency. In conclusion, this position paper argues for rethinking HCI approaches in the Global South to prioritise worker autonomy over efficiency-driven design optimisations.

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The global rise of football analytics has rapidly transformed how clubs make strategic decisions (morgulev2018sports,). However, in India, the adoption of analytics remains constrained by institutional resistance, infrastructural limitations, and cultural barriers—challenges that grassroots innovation and low-cost data solutions have the potential to overcome. Despite the increasing popularity of the Indian Super League (scroll2020isl,; chatterjee2021isl,), resource scarcity and fragmented governance continue to hinder the widespread adoption and impact of analytics. This mixed-methods study explores how informal, decentralized analytics communities—comprising amateur analysts and Twitter-based “data sleuths”—navigate these constraints through peer mentorship and grassroots innovation. Drawing on extensive digital ethnography, participant observation, and interviews, the study illustrates how these informal networks mitigate data scarcity, limited digital infrastructure, and institutional indifference while fostering skill development and professional growth. Building on these insights, the paper proposes HCI interventions such as decentralized knowledge platforms to facilitate structured, cross-border peer mentorship and low-cost data solutions—including AI-assisted player tracking and mobile analytics dashboards—rooted in principles of frugal innovation (shauloff2023ai,). These interventions aim to bridge the data divide, support inclusive technical engagement in sport, and enhance analytics-driven decision-making in resource-constrained environments. This paper contributes to HCIxB’s focus on cross-border collaboration by highlighting how community-driven technological adaptation in the Global South can foster meaningful participation, skill-building, and long-term sustainability through informal learning networks and scalable, context-sensitive tools (vashistha2017cve,; nawaz2021farming,).

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In recent years, widespread internet adoption and the growth in user base of various social media platforms have led to an increase in the prolifera tion of extreme speech online. While traditional language models have demon strated proficiency in distinguishing between neutral text and non-neutral text (i.e. extreme speech), categorizing the diverse types of extreme speech presents significant challenges [1][2]. The task of extreme speech classification is par ticularly nuanced, as it requires a deep understanding of socio-cultural contexts to accurately interpret the intent of the language used by the speaker. Even hu man annotators often disagree on the appropriate classification of such content, emphasizing the complex and subjective nature of this task [3]. The use of hu man moderators also presents a scaling issue, necessitating the need for auto mated systems for extreme speech classification. The recent launch of ChatGPT has drawn global attention to the potential applications of Large Language Models (LLMs) across a diverse variety of tasks. Trained on vast and diverse corpora, and demonstrating the ability to effectively capture and encode contex tual information, LLMs emerge as highly promising tools for tackling this spe cific task of extreme speech classification. In this paper, we leverage the Indian subset of the extreme speech dataset from [3] to develop an effective classifica tion framework using LLMs. We evaluate open-source Llama models against closed-source OpenAI models, finding that while pre-trained LLMs show mod erate efficacy, fine-tuning with domain-specific data significantly enhances per formance, highlighting their adaptability to linguistic and contextual nuances. Although GPT-based models outperform Llama models in zero-shot settings, the performance gap disappears after fine-tuning.

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This paper contributes to the expanding research on toxicity in online games, exploring the relationship between game design and player behaviours in India. Using an ethnographic approach and in-depth interviews with gamers, we capture firsthand accounts of toxic gaming experiences, delving into game design, game mechanics, and player interactions intersecting to shape player behaviours. While previous research on toxicity in gaming environments has largely focused on the role of game design, aspects of gender and, to a lesser extent, race, primarily within the context of the Global North, our study shifts the focus to India and, by extension, the Global South. We seek to uncover broader dimensions of gaming toxicity that go beyond design and gender. Our analysis examines the underlying factors contributing to the prevalence and persistence of toxic behaviours in Indian gaming environments by highlighting the influence of cultural and contextual elements in producing toxic behaviours. Expanding the scope of research to include these overlooked aspects, our study aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities of toxicity in online gaming spaces within the Indian context.

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From an study of food delivery workers, we examine the precarity and consolidation of working conditions driven by the platform economy in the context of Urban India. The study considers the apparent threats in ‘gigging’, informalisation of labour and the obvious need to reconceptualise worker well-being, risks, stress and the eventuality of workplace and worker alignment in food delivery labour.

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